Arrived & testified!

My 2nd attempt to fly to Portland was successful. Phew. I didn't appreciate having to wake up at 4 am again. But on the up side, I was able to sleep for an hour or two on the flight, which is highly unusual for me. I think that helped me make a quick adjustment to the 9-hour time difference.

I arrived Monday mid-day and drove to the city where I was testifying and got settled in. I watched the last few hours of the trial to get a feel for what it would be like.

I went over to the attorney's place in the evening to finalize what I would be testifying on. Almost everything got cut due to time restraints.

I was in court all day Tuesday as an observer, but ironically there wasn't time for me to present that day. My turn came this morning, the 2nd to last witness for the plaintiff.

I never knew that being in a courtroom is like playing sports: there's strategy, counter-strategy, shifting around of the players (witnesses), good sportsmanship and bad sportsmanship, people calling foul (objections), the referee (judge) occasionally reprimanding people for focusing more on showmanship than on justice.

It also reminds me of parenting young children. If you have a problem, you can never address the person directly. You have to go to the judge to settle your differences. "Mom, Dio pushed me!" "Dio, is that true? Did you push Inga?" "No, Inga ran into me and then she fell over." "Okay, I'm going to ask both of you to take a minute and give each other some space."

I'll talk more about it once the case is done, but in short I think it went great. Once I realized the attorneys had no idea what they were talking about, and that I was very comfortably in my home domain, it was fun to field their cross-examination questions.

I stayed to listen to the final witness, who finished at noon. Then I drove to Portland to see my brother. We had a beautiful sunny day--unusual for this time of year--and we went out for a walk at a nearby off-leash dog park. My brother has a lovely dog, Sasha. We ate dinner at a Thai restaurant (driving in his convertible, which was super fun) and then did 3 rounds in my brother's sauna, which he built himself a few years ago. Ahhh...