And you lose some...

The BIA did not grant my motion to reopen or stay a deportation. They said there was not enough material evidence to merit reopening my client's case.

To be fair, I knew that this could happen. I just don't like losing. And it sucks for my clients.

Part of the joy of being a member of Netflix is in discovering and watching their vast collection of foreign and independant films.  I can spend an hour alone searching through the Instant Watching selection just trying to decide what to add to my queue and maybe what to see next.  Then of course there's my small addiction to Japanese animation, or anime.  It showed up on Netflix last Spring and I've been devouring the stuff since.  Sure, I really wish they came included with subtitles, but I'm not going to dismiss a perfectly good series just because it's dubbed.  Unless it's horribly dubbed.  There have been a few of those.

I'm running out of anime series!

I'll have weekends were all I do is have movie marathons and throw in some anime to mix things up a bit.  Actually, once I get obsessed with a series, I drop everything else until I've finished the last episode.  It's so bad.  But then again I tend to be that way with books too.

I finished watching Princess Tutu today.  What an endearing little series.  Netflix recommended it because I enjoyed Ouran which to this day I still can't understand why I enjoyed that one, but still.  Tutu was cute and funny, but never in a way that made it seem like I was watching something meant for little kids; quite the opposite, by the third episode there were themes that were very adult.  The series deals with love and hate, loss and acceptance.  And the music is amazing!  It's a magical girl transformation series that uses classical music for its score.  As a music nut, I just loved to watch and identify the composers.  Mahler, Wagner, Tchaikovsky, Mozart, etc.  I'm really going to miss watching it. 

Bar results came out last week, and for the first time in a long time I forgot until my boss walked in and mentioned that St. Mary's managed to score poorely once again.

Oh boy.  Here we go.

A year ago my alma mater was celebrating its improving results.  Apparently they had even brought in a consultant from California to assist with the bar passage rate. 

Deep down I'm listening to my boss talk about this and I can feel my insides twitch.  Bar schmar! 

The discussion leads into the do's and don'ts of the TX Bar Exam, including some minor referencing of past experiences for the benefit of a future examinee in the room.  And I'm feeling antsy by this time.  Guilty, maybe?

Hell, I don't even know if I'll take this beast in February, but based on how I was reacting today, I'm in trouble!  My beautiful peace and resolve has been destroyed!

The process of filing and asylum brief with supporting documents is tedious and agonizing. The first time I did it, I fretted over the brief for an entire month. It took me weeks to research, and days to write. It also happened to be the weekend of Halloween, and my friends had to pry me off the computer. However, it paid off. Migraine. Check. Asylum granted? Hell yeah.

My brief did not win that asylum. My client did. Her story made me cry when we were practicing our direct examination for trial. She finally opened up that day about what happened to her, and I believe even the truly heartless would not have had a dry eye after listening to her.

Ugh.

And I have another abuse asylum case that I'm finishing up. I can even recycle parts of my own brief! The subject matter however, is not something I'm looking forward to reading about in depth. Thankfully, for a brief, I only have to gloss over the surface. Give the facts, show there was persecution, demonstrate my client falls under a protected social class (group), and therefore deserves asylum. The hard part comes after, when you're sitting face to face with your client and asking her to tell her story again, but this time your asking her not to sugar-coat it. She's had the time, and the counseling. Now she needs to convince a judge that she really was abused, and that her country won't protect her. Her testimony needs to be convincing. So while the facts in my brief may be clinical and disconnected, her words need to be emotional and raw.

I practice to ensure my clients know what to expect. Prepare them for the inevitable cross-examination, and just get them through it.

But it all starts with a brief.

El Paso must have around 1 million inhabitants. This is of course a guestimate because I haven't bothered to check Wikipaedia or the latest census data. Also, it's probably a given that not everyone filled out those lovely forms (I received them three times after I filled mine out!)

And in a city so vast and with looming traffic problems, I've discovered that they're so, so behind on technology and transportation, and information. God, it reminded me why I will not move back!

It took me a good half hour to speak to a live person regarding their paratransit service. Why? Because the numbers on the website where wrong! When I finally found a correct number, the person on the other line made sure to let me know they were wrong. Really? My suggestion, you might want to change that. So I called the new number, left a message, and five minutes later received a call back with the information I needed.

It's all well and good, until I have to call and actually schedule my pickup times this week. Then I have to keep my fingers crossed and hope someone picks me up and takes me to the conference!

I was looking at their website again today to scout out regular bus routes. Buses run between 30 minutes to an hour for the most part. The majority of routes end by 9 pm. I had better be finished by then if I get left behind.

Oh, and the most amusing part about my little scavenger hunt? Sun Metro has a Facebook page. They're introducing many of the same changes VIA plans to do. I was just intrigued by all the complaints.

I don't know what I would do without my dog, Ravi. He makes me smile everyday. In the mornings he lies down by my knees while I eat, or nudges right next to me when he wants to be petted. When I'm home from work he jumps on the couch ready for me to put the leash on him so I can take him out. He'll lie on his back so I can scratch his belly, and I swear he does it on purpose because he knows he looks adorable doing it. And he sleeps curled up against my back in bed. He won that battle. I tried.

My dog is smart. When I'm mad at him he howls. It's a cute baby howl. It's practically impossible not too laugh. He sounds like I'm killing him, and I haven't even touched him! Seriously, he's so melodramatic! I wonder where he gets that from...

It's impossible to discipline him. He does know that I'm the alpha, but barely. When I'm training him... let's not mention the training. The clicker is a godsend though.

Here's the thing. My dog is like my kid. I adore him and worry about him. I never would have thought like this a year ago. I've joined 'that' club. Awesome!

The Family Based Immigration Conference is scheduled in El Paso a week before Thanksgiving, and it's my first attending.  I'm excited about the conference but handling the transportation has been a pain in the butt.

Before I left El Paso, the city was known for its advancements in transportation.  San Antonio modeled their system initially after my hometown.  Then the city kind of went to hell.  But that's no surprise because being that it's the safest city means it's also the most boring.  Anyway...

I had heard that transit programs gave visitors trips for a limited time.  San Antonio's VIA has it though I can no longer find the link.  After a week and a phonecall, I finally found the same info on the SunMetro website.  Now I just need to talk to a live person and hope I don't get ditched on the days of the conference.

You never know.

If there was one thing set in my mind from the time I was a kid, it was that I would fight for people's rights.  I was old enough then to understand that I was different, and as such treated with a certain fragility and ackwardness which I freely took advantage of by high school.  I also knew that somehow I was related to an infamous Mexican attorney disguised as my grandfather, so I had to prove myself.  Advocacy was a legacy.  Not necessarily inherited, but earned. 

My grandfather.

I think about him and I remember the man who was literally a jack of all trades.  He was a lawyer.  Then judge.  Engineer.  He even went to pharmacy school.  That last bit got him into alot of trouble in his later years.  My grandfather was a very smart man.  Too bad he was so bitter in the end. 

I remember the day I found out he died.  It was a few days before graduation, and my father called to give me the bad news.  I was so disappointed afterwards.  At first all I could think was how he had ruined this for me.  If he had just followed the doctor's instructions...   Now the majority of my family was going to have to bail.

Then I realized it wasn't so much the disappointment that they wouldn't be here that bothered me, but that my grandfather would miss my graduation from law school.  He was looking forward to this trip.  I know he would have been proud.

His absence in my grandmother's house is still a litte erie.  The rooms are too quiet, yet everyone else is calm but busy.  I find myself wondering what he would he think of Mexico's current situation.  Then I stop because I know that's not a rant I'd want to be trapped into with him.  Papa Ricardo did like to rant, and poor ole me had to listen because I was usually trapped in manual wheelchair unable to wheel away!

Those were the days.

What do you write about on days when you're supposed to write about everything?

I swear NaNoWriMo means the plague is coming and it ain't pretty. How do I know? I actually wrote something today. It was about 100 words, but at least it was something! And then of course my dog started licking me and my tablet. Then my tablet attempted to delete an entire paragraph, freaking me out in the process. Thankfully, the 'undo' button is awesome, and my work was saved.

To be honest I'm kind of loving the whole typing on the couch with my tablet. The access it provides is intriguing. The accidental auto-delete was not cool, but the independence from the desktop is nice. I tried the voice function and it failed stupendously. If it has a training function I have yet to find it. Maybe I'll make it my goal for tomorrow.

So technology is supposed to be fun.  I'm typing right now from my uber cool tablet.  If it publishes ok, then I'll be very much amused.

Cheers!