My time in Bloomington flew by. In the morning, while Tay went to
interview for an editorial position on the Law Review Journal, I skyped
Saori for awhile to hear about her day in Germany, which was great to
see her again.
After Tay came back it was mid-afternoon, so we wanted to get dressed
up for the evening’s events, which was the epic finale to the Moot
Court championships.
But first, we walked over to a bohemian coffee shop/cafe called the
“Runcible Spoon.” It was a really comfortable cluttered place which
smelled like patchouli. The bathroom still had a standing bathtub which
had been repurposed into a fish tank complete with a plastic octopus.
Good food. I got basically a gourmet egg mcmuffin and Tay got homefries
with buiscuits and gravy. Tasty, not too expensive. Over coffee, we
debated my travel plans and worked out an alternative routing for me
which made a lot more sense, and then I called mom and dad and we put
the plan into action.
And then he told me about Moot court.
Moot court is basically fake court where to law students take
opposing sides in a fictitious case and prepare a brief and an oral
argument before a panel of judges. At the starting tier, something like
160 students entered, and only 32 were selected to move on, and then
there was a third and fourth rounds to eliminate all but the final four
competitors.
I kept thinking about it like it was going to be a wizard’s duel a la
Harry Potter, although Tay told me it was not going to b nearly so
dramatic. After a very stiff Vesper martini at Tay’s friend Zach’s
apartment, the three of us headed over. Zach made it to the
quarterfinals and he had to wear a suit and was compelled to come. The
final is a pretty big deal- the courtroom is packed with students and
they actually stream the proceedings into the adjacent classroom for the
overflow.
It was actually a lot like community theater: student ushers handed
out pamphlets at the door, its hot and stuffy and there’s an air of
excitement and anticipation. The pamphlet sets out the synopsis of the
case which is damned near identical to the background of a play you’re
about to see: “The sun is setting on the sleepy city of Barksville in
the State of Franklin. Life has been good, but with the economic
recession, more and more homeowners are losing their homes, etc. etc.”
The case basically came down to two issues- how biased the judge was and
how much the city was justified in its exercise of eminent domain.
We were there, I should add, in particular, because Julie, one of
Tay’s best friends, was one of the four tri-wizard champions, err,
contenders, arguing, and she was heavily favored.
The judges in this case were actual real judges, one of them from the
US court of appeals. They were flanked by two actual armed police
officers. There was the cry of “Oyez oyez oyez” and the play got
started.
The first round of arguments were really entertaining, and I thought
Julie did a great job. There was a short recess and then the second pair
of students came up to argue their points. I did actually spend most of
that round playing Angry Birds Star Wars on my tablet.
The final announcement was made, Julie was robbed, and everyone filed
out to take advantage of the really terrible buffet outside the moot
courtroom.
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I moved the blog again. I deleted the Tumblr account and moved everything to Medium.com, a more writing-centric website. medium.com/@wende
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I moved the blog again. I deleted the Tumblr account and moved everything to Medium.com, a more writing-centric website. medium.com/@wende
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I started a new blog about being a dad. On tumblr. archdadpdx.tumblr.com
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I started taking German courses again after getting some comments from my bosses that I needed to accelerate my language acquisition. I'...
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