Here Come De Judge

...And that title will be the last time I go to the "Laugh-In" well of jokes. Younger Readers likely won't get the reference at all.

I'm excited to finally have my first pro tem opportunity today. It came at an inconvenient time; I had to stay up late last night getting some things written that I otherwise would have done this afternoon. I also have a presentation to prepare for tomorrow morning (in 24 hours I'll be before an audience, needing to look well-groomed, intelligent, and confident). And Friday morning I'll be on an airplane.

I got some good plans put in place yesterday. Unfortunately, tours of the Denver mint are booked up for months in advance. I can't think of anything else to do in Denver that's particularly distinctive to the city, although the guidebooks and online posts all mention something about a very large blue fiberglass bear. Strange. But, I got us a fabulous bed and breakfast and dinner reservations at CIA for the Napa Valley segment of our trip. I'm really looking forward to dinner at CIA next week.

And, tomorrow night I'm the master of ceremonies at the Toastmasters meeting. (Confusingly, the master of ceremonies is called the Toastmaster, but each individual member is also called a Toastmaster.) The Wife roped me in to joining but I figured if I did join I might as well do something with it. There is already some politics going on with someone who doesn't like the time limits I've imposed on him. I've laid the groundwork as much as I can and now my challenge will be to find a way to gracefully keep things moving along. I suspect I know a few people who can give me advice.

So it's a lot on my mind and a lot of stress right before vacation. But for now, I need to finish my presentation (and a little discovery) and get down to Santa Clarita to meet with the courtroom staff before I take the bench for the afternoon. Sadly, I'm not allowed to discuss any pending cases in any fashion, but I will be able to report on some other aspects of the experience later.