Another week passes...
In theory (though there's never been any evidence thereof...) this blog also keeps kith and kin in the loop on what is going on at the Coffinberry home... so those who read from the Law School, sorry if I'm blathering.
Let's see, what have I been doing this past week? In Torts we've arrived at Causation, and starting with Hoyt's hotel fire, we've distinguished general from specific causation, and begun delving into joint and several liability (note: if you take your novice buddies out quail hunting, don't let a quail get between you and your buddies!). In Contracts we've now covered the basics of Classical Contracting (Offer+Acceptance+Consideration), Promissory Estoppel (Promise+Reliance), and Restitution theory ("moral" obligation). In Property, we've finished up Acquisition by Capture, Creation, and Adverse Possession and are now beginning (eek!) Future Estates (which remaineth a mystery unto me). Civil Procedure has finally finished it's long slow meandering walk through the prairie dog field of Pleadings, and we are poised to begin Discovery next week. The Closed Memo was turned in on Monday (was it just this past Monday? wow!), and now in Legal Writing we begin legal research in earnest (which so far has been very very fun).
On a cloudy misty Thursday the Law School celebrated the placement of the last beam on the new law school building, with a very nice ceremony and a very tasty luncheon. All the students who cared to got to sign the beam before it was lifted (with two flags and a symbolic evergreen tree - for Odin's horse?) - I included my Wood Badge totem by my signature, just for fun.
Life's also been busy off campus. A week ago today I taught this fall's crop of new Den Leaders at Cub Training. On Monday I re-wrote the three-part organ accompaniment to a complicated (G-flat major - SIX FLATS!) John Rutter piece, because our church choir's organist has moved away, and as we already had begun learning it, it looks like we'll have to settle for a pianist instead (uh, maybe me...) and it was way too hard for me to play the way it was. So now it's down to a do-able two-hand accompaniment that I can 'almost' play well (fortunately, there's four more weeks for practice).
Thursday morning after family prayer our older two scurried out to the truck to get to Seminary, only to find that it had been broken into overnight and the stereo ripped out of the dashboard. The stereo was a three-year-old Wal-mart cheapo that nobody ever used anyway (probably worth less than $10), but the damage to the 20-year-old dashboard was estimated at $600 dollars. Grrr.
Friday morning brought the first meeting of the middle school Accountability Committee; we're commissioned to help set realistic goals for the school - specifically relative to performance on the CSAP. Our school has been slowly sinking in the scores, and there is deep concern about whether the children are getting what they need from the system. The buzz in the community about this school has been a perception of decline and hopelessness. But there's a new principal this year, and she has some interesting and realistic plans. One of the tasks we as a committee have decided to take on is to understand better what the kids and the parents think of when they think about "success" in school, and somehow translate back into a grabbable and usable positive message.
Then Friday afternoon about 1:10, I'm sitting in the Law Library (having been chased out of the reading room by the Legal Research class projects going on - but I discovered a wonderful set of carrels with a great view!) studying Pop's v. Resorts International, when my cell phone rings. I decide to break the rules and answer it.
"Mom, there's a bomb threat at the high school, and they've made us all evacuate."
What! (I have got to learn to ramp down that adrenaline reaction, let me tell you!)
I'll shortcut to the end here (because the twenty minutes in between weren't pretty from my point of view - if you're born with only so many heartbeats alloted to you, I wasted a month or so in that half-hour): the son who called was eventually able to locate the other son and confirm that both were safe; the main concerns from their end was that this happened just as lunch was beginning, and they were famished, and Son Two had a symphony retreat this weekend and his viola was in the lockdown so he couldn't get to it. But by the time he needed it, things were back to normal and he was fed and on his merry way again.
It was a couple more hours before I knew the whole story: Someone called in a bomb threat at 1:00 pm, and all evidence suggested to the principal that he should take it seriously, so the school was immediately evacuated. The Longmont Police bomb squad came and searched the building, found nothing, and the students were let back in by 1:50.
You know, this was the first time since starting Law School that I first seriously questioned that maybe Law School was not the right place for me. In that 20 minutes, even though I could not have possibly done one single thing differently, from a gut point of view all I wanted to do was to be there for my kids and all I could think about was that I was 35 minutes away and could do nothing about it. That feeling of helplessness was agony.
Let's see, what have I been doing this past week? In Torts we've arrived at Causation, and starting with Hoyt's hotel fire, we've distinguished general from specific causation, and begun delving into joint and several liability (note: if you take your novice buddies out quail hunting, don't let a quail get between you and your buddies!). In Contracts we've now covered the basics of Classical Contracting (Offer+Acceptance+Consideration), Promissory Estoppel (Promise+Reliance), and Restitution theory ("moral" obligation). In Property, we've finished up Acquisition by Capture, Creation, and Adverse Possession and are now beginning (eek!) Future Estates (which remaineth a mystery unto me). Civil Procedure has finally finished it's long slow meandering walk through the prairie dog field of Pleadings, and we are poised to begin Discovery next week. The Closed Memo was turned in on Monday (was it just this past Monday? wow!), and now in Legal Writing we begin legal research in earnest (which so far has been very very fun).
On a cloudy misty Thursday the Law School celebrated the placement of the last beam on the new law school building, with a very nice ceremony and a very tasty luncheon. All the students who cared to got to sign the beam before it was lifted (with two flags and a symbolic evergreen tree - for Odin's horse?) - I included my Wood Badge totem by my signature, just for fun.
Life's also been busy off campus. A week ago today I taught this fall's crop of new Den Leaders at Cub Training. On Monday I re-wrote the three-part organ accompaniment to a complicated (G-flat major - SIX FLATS!) John Rutter piece, because our church choir's organist has moved away, and as we already had begun learning it, it looks like we'll have to settle for a pianist instead (uh, maybe me...) and it was way too hard for me to play the way it was. So now it's down to a do-able two-hand accompaniment that I can 'almost' play well (fortunately, there's four more weeks for practice).
Thursday morning after family prayer our older two scurried out to the truck to get to Seminary, only to find that it had been broken into overnight and the stereo ripped out of the dashboard. The stereo was a three-year-old Wal-mart cheapo that nobody ever used anyway (probably worth less than $10), but the damage to the 20-year-old dashboard was estimated at $600 dollars. Grrr.
Friday morning brought the first meeting of the middle school Accountability Committee; we're commissioned to help set realistic goals for the school - specifically relative to performance on the CSAP. Our school has been slowly sinking in the scores, and there is deep concern about whether the children are getting what they need from the system. The buzz in the community about this school has been a perception of decline and hopelessness. But there's a new principal this year, and she has some interesting and realistic plans. One of the tasks we as a committee have decided to take on is to understand better what the kids and the parents think of when they think about "success" in school, and somehow translate back into a grabbable and usable positive message.
Then Friday afternoon about 1:10, I'm sitting in the Law Library (having been chased out of the reading room by the Legal Research class projects going on - but I discovered a wonderful set of carrels with a great view!) studying Pop's v. Resorts International, when my cell phone rings. I decide to break the rules and answer it.
"Mom, there's a bomb threat at the high school, and they've made us all evacuate."
What! (I have got to learn to ramp down that adrenaline reaction, let me tell you!)
I'll shortcut to the end here (because the twenty minutes in between weren't pretty from my point of view - if you're born with only so many heartbeats alloted to you, I wasted a month or so in that half-hour): the son who called was eventually able to locate the other son and confirm that both were safe; the main concerns from their end was that this happened just as lunch was beginning, and they were famished, and Son Two had a symphony retreat this weekend and his viola was in the lockdown so he couldn't get to it. But by the time he needed it, things were back to normal and he was fed and on his merry way again.
It was a couple more hours before I knew the whole story: Someone called in a bomb threat at 1:00 pm, and all evidence suggested to the principal that he should take it seriously, so the school was immediately evacuated. The Longmont Police bomb squad came and searched the building, found nothing, and the students were let back in by 1:50.
You know, this was the first time since starting Law School that I first seriously questioned that maybe Law School was not the right place for me. In that 20 minutes, even though I could not have possibly done one single thing differently, from a gut point of view all I wanted to do was to be there for my kids and all I could think about was that I was 35 minutes away and could do nothing about it. That feeling of helplessness was agony.
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