Jazz has pulled my coat off the rack and is sleeping on it in the front hallway. When the literature says that Eskies shed in the spring, it doesn't mention the three weeks or so when every room in the house is knee deep in clumps of fuzzy white wool. Every spring, I wear out a vacuum and have to buy a new one. She keeps scratching herself and pulling off clots of fur, then dropping them and moving to another spot. "Here's a clean spot..." Unfortunately, the carpet is a sort of red rusty color, which shows the fur to great advantage. I keep taking her on the deck and brushing her, and getting enough fur to make a few more dogs, but it doesn't seem to help. Someone bred these dogs with sheep, I swear. Still, she looks so cute with tufts hanging off her. Like a llama, but smaller.

When people speak badly of you, you should respond in this way: Keep a steady heart and don't reply with harsh words. Practice letting go of resentment and accepting that the other's hostility is the spur to your understanding. Be kind, adopt a generous standpoint, treat your enemy as a friend, and suffuse all your world with affectionate thoughts, far-reaching and widespread, limitless and free from hate. In this state you should try to remain.

-Dhammapada

hmmm. not asking for much, are they?

I'm studying prosecutorial discretion. Some folks have spent a lot of time writing almost unreadable articles on the subject. In an effort to stay awake, I went to read it in the bath. Ran the risk of drowning. I still have far too much work to do... I'm currently chasing "unendorsed warrants" and whether or not you can sentence someone via video monitor. For the record, you can't. Not in BC, anyway.

More today about the events of yesterday. Not nice... sounds like a very nasty party.

Dear kate,
Here is your horoscope
for Tuesday, May 20:

Patience is your strong suit. Take notes as your experiment plays out along its logical or surprising lines. Who knew that you could have this much fun without breaking any laws?

Well, I went to court. and so did this gentleman. He wasn't given bail, surprise surprise. The courtroom was full of kids, 17 or 18 yrs old, most of them, and every now and then one of them would break into tears. Also there were the mother of the victim, who was dry-eyed but very tired looking, and the mother of the accused, who sat in the same row as me... I took tons of notes, lots of other things went on too, and I'm hoping to get some sense out of what I wrote down. A woman got a week in jail for shoplifting 6.99 worth of cosmetics. Another woman had a bench warrant issued for her, but it turned out that she had just gotten the wrong courtroom, and when she did show up, her lawyer said, "She's here now, so we can throw out the warrant." In some ways it was more formal than I thought it would be, there were a lot of requests to adjourn things to later dates, but in some ways it was less formal. The accused people sat in among all the grieving kids, and the judge was actually very sweet to some of them. One guy with a 'failure to provide a sample of breath' charge was also up on possession of marijuana, and the judge said to him, at one point, quite mildly, "Four ounces is rather a lot of marijuana..." Another guy with an impaired charge told the judge he was taking welding at the college, and the judge said, as if they'd just been introduced socially, "Welding is a good career choice. I wish you the best in that."

Another young man was up on armed robbery charges (stole cigarettes and phone cards by brandishing a syringe full of blood at the cashier) and when the judge was sentencing him, he said, "Many thousands of people go out every day to their minimum wage jobs standing behind counters in stores, and we have a duty to protect them from people who come with guns or syringes..." Guy's lawyer wanted a conditional sentence, but he got jail. An interesting morning, all in all.

Another holiday. Another day at the mall. I'm working on a difficult paper, one which seems to have no backbone and threatens to drop into little pieces on the floor if I look at it wrong. I've got three weeks to finish it yet, but I've also got another one due in a week and a half, and a book review and a midterm. I'm crabby today. Tomorrow morning I'm supposed to go and observe at court, so I can write about remand. Might be interesting, I guess we'll see...