Law Practice Part II – Making the Move

As I approached the 1-year anniversary of my initial foray into the practice of law, it was becoming increasingly clear to me that I needed a change of venue.  It wasn’t really a reflection on my boss.  While I had hoped to receive more from him in the way of guidance and inspiration, we got along well and I respected his abilities.  I was also quite grateful to him for the opportunity with which he had provided me.

It really boiled down to the fact that I wanted to be in Charlottesville.  They call it “The Hook” for a reason.

My bride didn’t need much convincing.  She was wrapping up her second year of a judicial clerkship and was ambivalent about practicing law, so we weren’t tied to North Carolina.  I did want to continue practicing, however, so I had two hurdles to clear in order to make the Charlottesville move a reality – pass the Virginia bar exam, and find a job.

There are many ways to spend three months of one’s life that are more enjoyable than studying for the bar exam, but if you want to be a lawyer, there’s just no way around it.  The experience is certainly not something that you want to undergo more than once if you can help it.  However, I had several years left to practice in North Carolina before I would be eligible for admission to the Virginia bar by reciprocity, so I needed to take the test.

As is turned out, I actually found Virginia’s exam to be less of an ordeal than North Carolina’s.   I don’t think the Virginia exam was any easier – actually, it was probably more difficult, especially for someone like me coming in from out of state.  Virginia jurisprudence tends to keep one foot firmly planted in the 18th century, and if you didn’t go to law school in the Old Dominion, it’s quite a chore to learn the arcane terminology and procedure.  Even so, the experience of having passed one state’s exam and practiced law for a year gave me a level of confidence that I didn’t have when I was taking the North Carolina exam.  That, and the fact that I was studying on my own and without the distractions and temptations offered by my law school classmates, pulled me through and a few months later I had another fancy piece of parchment to put on my wall.

Making the move to Charlottesville was a real leap of faith, because I gave my notice in North Carolina before I had lined up a job in Virginia.  Fifteen years, four kids and a mortgage later, this seems like a terribly irresponsible if not downright foolish thing to have done.  However, it worked out.  Perhaps there’s a lesson there.

Previous: Part I

Next: Part III

Personality

This is the third time I’ve taken this test and come up as an ISFJ, so maybe it has me pegged.

Me, Robert E. Lee, Jimmy Stewart, Barbara Bush, and Mother Theresa.  Could be worse, I suppose.

So tell me again why I’m in sales?

The Big One

Have you ever had a worry that nagged at you night and day, never completely leaving you, to the point where it colored your entire perspective on life?

And have you ever found out later that the worry was completely baseless?

I have. 

If you have as well, read this.

Planning for Sacramento

I’m traveling again the week after next. This time it will be 5 days in Sacramento, California.

Sigh.

I’m not looking forward to being away, but at least I’ve found a running route that looks promising – the American River Parkway. If you have any other Sacramento running routes (or anything else about the city) to recommend, please leave a comment.

OBX Marathon

84 days, 7 hours, and a few minutes to go before the OBX Marathon on November 11.

I got in 12 miles today, and 10 miles last Saturday. If I can only figure out a way to squeeze in some runs Sunday-Friday….

It’s Always Something

As Roseanne Roseannadanna used to say, “It’s always something.”

Today, the “something” was news from an HVAC technician that our heat pump is officially dead beyond any reasonable hope of repair, having exceeded its life expectancy by over a decade.  The bottom line is that we need to replace our entire system.  We’ve known this day was coming, but the timing is less than ideal, considering tomorrow’s forecasted high temp of 99 degrees.

Ugh.

So, after spending too much time on the phone lining up appointments for estimates, it was off to KMart to buy fans to see us through until we can get the A/C back online.  I was a bit worried that fans might be hard to come by since we’re on the eve of the annual UVa student influx, but I found an ample supply and hope that we’ll now be able to keep our ambient temperature down in the low ’80’s.

If you see anyone in our family over the next several days and we seem a bit, um, cranky … well, you know why.

Bring Back the Old Cheney

I’m not sure why this 1994 interview with Dick Cheney hasn’t received wider coverage, or if it has, how I’ve managed to miss it until now.

I do know that I’m a lot more comfortable with the 1994 Dick Cheney than I am with the current model.

Thanks to Waldo for bringing this to light.

Patience

I’ve always thought of myself as a patient person. 

But, the older I get, the more I realize that it’s just not so. 

I like the idea of being patient.  And, judging from comments that I receive from time to time, others seem to believe that I am patient.  However, I think they are mistaking a diplomatic manner and a sense of outward calm for a patient inner nature.   

I’m generally OK with standing in line, or sitting in traffic, or waiting my turn for something (although I have often wondered why it’s acceptable for a doctor to keep patients waiting in the reception area for a half hour past their appointment time, something I could never get away with in a law practice or corporate setting).  I will admit to angling for the shortest line in the grocery store, but I generally take the wait in good humor as long as it’s clear that the wait isn’t caused by inefficiency or poor customer service.  I guess the distinction with this sort of communal waiting is that it’s just that – communal.  If there is a traffic jam, or a big crowd at the bank or grocery store, that’s just the way it is.  I’ll resign myself to waiting my turn with the rest of the assembled masses – I certainly have no more right to quick service than anyone else does.

Reasonableness goes out the window when I am expecting something in the mail, however.  I lose all touch with reality.  We drop our girls off at summer camp in Pennsylvania on a Sunday, and on Tuesday afternoon I’m calling home to see if we’ve received any letters from them.  College and law school applications, job interviews – same thing.  All the while telling myself that I’m being silly if not downright obsessive-compulsive, I will calculate the earliest possible date that I could receive a response, and start checking the mailbox accordingly.  Email has taken this to a whole new level.  Snail mail is only delivered once a day, but if I’m waiting on an important email, I can wear out the “check mail” button.

So why am I ‘fessing up to my lack of patience?  Better late than never, I guess.  It’s taken me a long time to realize that I’m not nearly as patient as most people seem to think I am.  With the benefit of that realization, I can hopefully save myself from the delusion that it’s perfectly reasonable to expect that the time-space continuum will be warped whenever I am expecting to receive an important communication.

Enough of that.  Time to check my email….   

  

The Real World

“Been outside lately?”  This comment to my last post was a gentle nudge from my wife to get back on the blogging wagon.  Or is it get off of the non-blogging wagon?  I’d plead busy schedule, but my wife is every bit as busy as I am, and somehow she manages to post daily.

Don’t expect that from me, but I’ll try to do better.

That said, where to begin?  I can add little to what she’s already posted on our Emerald Isle beach week.  She might have ooh’d and aah’d a bit more over the size of the fish that we caught, the ferocity of the waves that we battled, or the number of miles that we ran, but other than that she did a good job of capturing the week.  Anyway, she likes to keep her posts in the non-fiction category, so I guess I have no room to complain.

Suffice it to say that it was a great week. So far I’ve been able to retain just enough of it to get me through the day-to-day realities of the “real world” of work and other responsibilities that greeted us upon our return.

As I think about that last sentence, I realize that I need to reconsider my usage of the “real world” terminology. I know that many years from now I will still be cherishing memories of our time at the beach. At the same time I very much doubt that I will remember anything that happened to me at work last week.

Maybe that’s a clue as to which is actually the “real world”.