I gots those four-time stage-crossin' mortarboardin' blues...

Against my better judgment, I have decided to attend my November 20th convocation. I now have two attendees and three tickets. The third ticket is up for grabs, and there may be more available. If anyone wants to be bored to tears for no good reason, just let me know. Personally, I think convocation is just a scam to get another $35.00 fee out of me and to make me sit around wasting a whole day on a work day when I could be out getting people divorced.

This one will make # 4. High school, BA, LLB. and now LL.M. Oddly, the one I seem to actually remember is high school.

The other news is that Jenn has a job full time staring Tuesday. She will be teaching .829 FTE at an elementary school covering what appears at this point to be a long-term leave. There may be more permanent jobs show up soon, we don't know. Next year is looking good because 6 new Jr and Sr high schools re opening in Edmonton and there will be a wave of retirements, too, most likely, so there will probably be a ton of positions opening up, at which she will get an insider's crack, being employed by the board and all. So this year we eat, next yer, maybe even more.

Test results

Some of you may remember my April 22 Beer Judge Certification Program exam. While I was away camping in Fairmont, the results came in by e-mail. I scored 83/100 on the tasting portion and 90/100 on the written portion. What this means is that (if you apply last year's statistics to this one) I am in the top 10% or so of exam writers. This thrilled me to no small extent.

Also camping was good, but I ate wayyyyyy too much everything.

Aaaaaaaaaannnnnnnnnnnnnd.............Done

As of August 22, 2008, I have completed all of the requirements of Master of Laws. My convocation is on November 20, and if you want to celebrate, I think I may be feeling partyish at that point. This is the culmination of 4 years of research, hard work and procrastination, and I feel like I have accomplished something. About 6 students per year start their LL.M at the U of A, and every time someone graduates, an announcement is made via e-mail to the rest of the students. About 6 people have completed in the 4 years I have been at it. I suspect that the drop-out rate is around 75%, on that basis.

So, big kudos for me.

Hemi-demi-semi done his thesis, he quavered...

I handed in my revisions Tuesday, today (Wednesday) got a call from my advisor saying he would call back tonight with an hour or so worth of revisions still needed, but nothing major, which means (If he ever does call) that I may be able to hand in my thesis by this Friday, rather than next and by doing so:
1) Be able to actually enjoy camping;
2) Be flipping well finished.

Also today, I went to court and actually WON! Completely won, like, on everything. And it was actually over an amount of money worth fighting over, too. I called my client to let them know we won, and they seemed kinda noncommittal. If I was about to get as much money as they re, I would be flipping thrilled.

This week seems to be my week of settling files. About 2 per day. If this keeps up, I will be able to take new clients again soon. And other clients fired me, which works just as well for reducing workload, if not more so because inevitably it is on high-conflict files that you get fired, and dropping one of those is as good as dropping three or four regular files.

Plus people seem to actually have recognized the fact that they have to pay their lawyer in a timely and complete fashion, which is a giant bonus when you are trying to justify your existence. A fellow needs to do more around the office than look pretty and drink his weight in beer

Update

How has the thesis writing been going? Good during the weekend, not as good weeknights, which has put me a little behind. I have therefore ordered a "Do it yourself long weekend kit" consisting of telling your boss you aren't coming in on Friday, a box of Popsicles, and 72 straight hours of quality time with my word processor. On the up side, I seem to be getting ahead at work, although I have yet to find a good balance between hyper-busy and kinda bored. At least hyper-busy means that I might make some bonus money this quarter to keep the wolves at bay. I seem to have managed to wind up in court four days next week. Not sure how that happened. Then we are going camping, which should be fun.

My main complaint lately is that the Olympics are too cool, and i wind up staying up past my bedtime to watch. I think they need to make sports less interesting.

Owen's Thesis

So it turns out that my defence was not on the 12th, but rather on the 1st, which was today. This was not a surprise to me, it just didn't make it onto my blog. The defence itself took 3 hours and the verdict was passed subject to revisions, which is exactly what I expected to happen. The practical outcome of this is that I have one more round of revisions to do to my thesis before I am done, but I don't have to go back before the committee. I will, however, be disappearing from view and spending most of my time working on the bloody thing some more until it is done. It could take me a few days, it could take me two weeks, but I will not be doing anything else until I am done, because I don't want to have to jump through the hoops needed to re-register for an additional semester after the technical end date of my program.