Today I went to court. It was supposed to be a confidence building default hearing before a court referee. Fifty-five leading questions to my client, a gavel and done. Instead, he respondent, who hadn't made a peep since we served him 10 months ago decided to show up at the Family Justice Center. We spent the next couple of hours attempting to negotiate a deal with him, but couldn't come to an agreement, so instead of closing the file, I went back to school to write a transfer memo and a letter to our client explaining what would happen next. I'm done either way, but it would have been nice to finish the case for the client. I hate having to transfer it to yet another student attorney. Hopefully the next hearing will go smoothly and be the end of the matter, but since I get my bar results on April 15, I can't act as a student attorney any more unless the court sets a surprisingly soon date for the hearing.

When I got home, we decided to take a walk over to my mom's place because she'd been saying that she wanted to take Nathaniel for a night. Since she has conferences tomorrow and Friday, tonight seemed like a good night. She was happy to take him, and off we went. The original plan was to head to a few used bookstores, partially to look for a specific title (George and Sam), but mostly because I love to hang out in used book stores. I'm so romantic when we have a chance for a date.

As we drove down the alley, it occurred to me that I hadn't thought to look into what used book stores we might check out--apart from Mager's and Quinn and three Half Price Books locations, I had little idea where to go. On top of this, it was the middle of rush hour, so a trip to Uptown was hardly ideal. We decided we'd run a quick errand first, and perhaps eat and then decide what to do; Stephanie has been a bit under the weather the last few days (weeks.) We went to GameStop to get a gift card for Stephanie to send to a member of the dance group who's having a bit of a rough time of late (one broken leg, and then the other!) and looked for shoes that Nathaniel could wear with the cute suit his (other) grandmother had bought for him to wear at Easter and his father and aunt's graduations.

Leaving the Midway Shopping Center, Stephanie suggested we try the Blue Door Pub for dinner, hoping that on a Monday it wouldn't be too busy. We were told it would be a 15 minute wait, but were ushered in less than five minutes later when two seats opened up at the bar. I was happy to see that there was Surly on tap, and so without really considering the other options, I ordered a Furious. Soon, however I saw that there were three or four other beers that I hadn't heard of or wanted to try on the list. I managed to try one other but could really feel it when we left, and made Stephanie drive. I had a wonderful burger at the place, though. A Cajun Blucy-cowboy style. A burger stuffed with pepperjack cheese and jalapeno slices, topped with more pepperjack, jalapenos and onion rings. Fantastic. I will definitely be going back. The other beer I had was a Pitch Black IPA, which was billed as a "hopped up porter." It was okay; not something that I'm going to go seek out regularly in the future, but preferable to a lot of lighter beers. It certainly didn't taste as dark as it looked, and even Stephanie thought it was pretty good when I made her taste it.

Tomorrow we'll be taking a walk down to the bank to put in some checks and take out some cash for my weekend in Kansas City. I am looking forward to the trip, but also am worried about it. I'll probably talk more about it later, though. At the moment, I want to read Home Game by Michael Lewis (he of Moneyball fame.)