9/12/2022

What have I been watching?: Survivor - Winners at War

What have I been listening to?:Jackie Onassis - ELIO

I have a lot to catch up on. Shortly after I took my bar exam, my family left on a trip to Washington. We flew out from Minneapolis and stayed in Washington for about a week. During that time, we did a lot of great hiking and sightseeing and stayed in a couple AirBnBs. We went to Mount Rainier National Park; Olympic National Park; Rialto beach; Forks, Washington (Twilight fans know); among other places.

I'll throw some pics in to help me remember.

For the most part, we had great weather. Only on one or two days did we have rainy/dreary weather. 

I don't recall the order in which we did things, so here are some highlights:

• We hiked through a bit of Mount Rainier, and I was stunned by the vibrance of the water in the lakes and rivers on/near the mountain. It was turqoise blue, so bright it looked like it had been artificially dyed. It was pretty cold water, but I couldn't pass up the opportunity to swim in one of those crazy blue rivers. So I stripped down to my underwear and jumped in. It was an awesome experience. During our hike there, we saw some gorgeous falls as well. Seeing the bright turquoise waters and being able to swim in them was my favorite part of the trip.
• We walked along Rialto Beach. It is this long stretch of beach with tons and tons of massive driftwood. Driftwood is probably not the most accurate word to describe the full downed trees that line the beach. It was quite a dreary and somewhat rainy day that day, so it wasn't my favorite part of the trip, but the coolest part was when we spotted a few small seals in the ocean not too far from the shore. We kept staring out, trying to get another glimpse of them. They'd pop back up every once in a while.
• We explored around Snoqualmie, Washington, and spotted some waterfalls there and at Mount Baker-Snoqualmie National Forest. We enjoyed a bit of perusing at gift shops, as well.
• We checked out Pike Place Market and got drinks from the world's first ever Starbucks. Pike Place Market is a somewhat overwhelming place, but decent place to wander around for an hour or two. It's an indoor market comprised of multiple floors. Some of the sections are food-based (fish market, produce) and there were a lot of beautiful flower stands, too. Other parts of the market are handicrafts and gifts. 
• We visited and hiked at Olympic National Park. We did multiple hikes there on two separate days, one of which was a trail called Hurricane Ridge. That was our most intense hike. Over the course of an hour and a half and 3.8 miles, I gained 816 feet in elevation. It was a challenging hike for sure. Several members of our overall group didn't ultimately go all the way up to the end because they were feeling light-headed from the exertion and all that. The view from the top was pretty sick but you really didn't need to go all the way up to experience the beauty of the view, you could get it from about 2/3 of the way up. During that hike was the only time that I got sun burned at all.
• We visited Forks, Washington, and took photos in front of the "Welcome to Forks" city sign. Forks is the setting for the Twilight books. Forks in real life is not at all worth visiting. It is so boring and dreary, very little to it. 

Rialto Beach

View from a scenic overlook somewhere along the way

View from Hurricane Ridge trail in Olympic National Park

After we got back from our trip late on a Friday night, I had to get back down to Milwaukee from Rice Lake on Saturday so that I could be ready for my first day of work on Monday. I started my first day of my clerkship at the federal courthouse downtown on Monday August 15th. I've now been there nearly a month! I think it's going well and that I transitioned pretty well into it. Currently, I am prepping some things for a jury trial. It may end up being the case, however, that I prep and draft things just to have the case settle last minute. That's often how it goes. I'm hoping if I go through the effort of doing the work, that the trial will at least go through so I can spend a day or two of work sitting in on it, observing. It's really interesting to sit in on hearings at the court. It's a nice way to take a break from the rest of the day's drafting, reading, and researching. It's also really helpful for me as being new to the federal judiciary to sit in on hearings to see how the proceedings usually go. It's interesting to see lawyers in active practice. So far I've pretty much only sat in on criminal sentencing hearings, where usually the defense speaks on behalf of their client and the prosecution speaks on behalf of the government. But soon I will get to sit in on (and take minutes for) a final pretrial conference for the case I mentioned previously.

I'm really content with my job so far. I'm finally getting compensated for work I've been doing for years, whether at school or during unpaid internships, etc. I get to chill in my little office space, manage my time as I see fit (within reason, bearing in mind there are some things that take priority over others), keep my case list organized and updated, answer phones for the court and communicate with attorneys, and draft tons of orders on various kinds of motions. This is the same kind of writing work I did during my 1L summer as an intern for the U.S. District Court for the District of Minnesota. Now, I'm referencing a different appellate circuit for authority, but the gist of the work is the same. 

I have one paycheck under my belt and am eagerly anticipating my next, to come this Friday. Money is really tight right now since I have lived in my new apartment in Milwaukee since graduation in May while I studied for my bar exam. During that time, I had no income whatsoever. So any money I had has been depleted from rent and living costs from the summer. Now it is time to get strict with my income and start putting money towards my loans. 

In addition to having started work, I went camping for the weekend with my dear friends Anna and Phil, with whom I attended UW-River Falls. We camped at Kettle Moraine National Forest. We had the site for Friday and Saturday night but ultimately only ended up camping Saturday night. This was because they were coming to the area all the way from the Twin Cities, so they weren't able to get in after work until like 9:30. So they just came to my apartment and we had a little sleepover here, heading out early the next morning to get to the campground. We did some hiking, ate a ton of snacks, cooked impossible burgers over the fire, played games and gabbed in Phil's tent while it drizzled for an hour and a half, and chilled by the fire into the evening. It was an awesome time, I always love being able to get together with them. Anna is engaged now, so I am looking forward to her wedding next year! We are hoping to turn our camping into an annual thing, probably trying to hit a new state park/state forest each year.

We had an awesome time despite the slight bit of rain during the day. Only other snaffu was that during our second hike of the day, one in the afternoon, we somehow managed to take the wrong fork in the path and ended up walking two whole miles down the path before discovering that we had messed up. We had set out to do this loop which would conclude in an overlook tower. We were barely into the loop when we came upon the fork and somehow misunderstood and went the wrong way. This resulted in our going two whole miles off of the loop trail. We instead apparently went two miles down the Ice Age trail, which we did not realize until the path stopped to cross a road and we saw on a map sign that we had erred. We were pretty tired and dismayed to realize we were going to turn what we intended to be a 3.75 mile hike into about a 5.75 mile hike. But we had to turn around and backtrack the two miles. We just went back to our car at that point, not having it in us to complete the actual loop we had intended to do.

Boggle action during a rainy spell

Afternoon hike in which we went the wrong way

I left the campground early Sunday morning because it was Jacob's last race of the season and I didn't want to miss it. I drove south back through Milwaukee, stopping at the apartment to shower (glad I had enough time), then went further south to Lake Geneva. Jacob's race was at some like ski hills there. I got to watch with his parents and a friend and coworker of Jacob's. 

Since then, a friend of Jacob's has actually lent us a mountain bike because I have been wanting to give it a try since before I even met Jacob, but my bike is too shitty ($150 craigslist bike has run its course--it had probably already run its course by the time I got it). I was thrilled when his friend offered to let us borrow a bike. It's a Giant, nothing terribly new, but compared to what I'm used to it is an absolute dream. Jacob and I have taken it out on two rides, so far. We went up to Rice Lake for labor day weekend, and during that weekend we took the bikes for a ride at Pipestone Quarry at the Blue Hills. It was probably a bit challenging/technical for my first ever mountain bike ride. The paths were so, so rocky--there was barely a stretch of three or four feet without rocks jutting out. Despite that, I think I did pretty alright. Our second ride was at Minooka Park here in the Milwaukee area. That trail is a loop of about 5.15 miles and it took me 53 minutes, with Jacob patiently keeping my pace. We had to pull over a couple times to let folks pass and everyone was super nice. I felt like I had to go pretty slow, really using my brakes, because there were a lot of pretty tight bends and narrow spots. But again, I felt like I did a pretty decent job considering my inexperience. It's great exercise and pretty thrilling, but definitely a bit scary at times because I had moments where I realized how fast I was going and how fucked I would be if I clipped my handlebar on a tree or something like that. During these two first rides, I had a few "wipeouts" but nothing serious, moreso just kind of tipping over a bit or having to bail. It's something I want to continue to improve at. I am hoping to invest in a new bike within the next couple of weeks so that I can get some use out of it with Jacob before it gets too cold.

Summer is coming to a close. Yesterday, Sunday, it was a heavily rainy day all day. It was very brisk out yesterday and today as a result, around 50/60 degrees. I didn't get to enjoy my warm summer months as much as I would have in other years because of my bar exam. But the fall months will bring new experiences here in Milwaukee, and soon I'll have my first winter in Milwaukee.