A Week of Varied Endeavours
Jul. 22nd, 2018 10:16 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
captainsblogYes, that's spelled right. Once again, since we hardly watch any over-air television anymore, I completely missed the return of the Inspector Morse prequel series named for its lead's (rarely spoken) first name of Endeavour. I was reminded to check when a Netflix showed up which Eleanor had heard of. Called Labyrinth of Lies, it's set in a similar late 50s/early 60s timeframe, and the sets and costumes- especially all those Men In Hats- got me checking. Sure enough, it ran on PBS over the past several weeks, and thanks to being members, we have the Passport to stream them. We finished the second of six last night, and the characters continue to grow and grow on us. Morse has passed his sergeant's exam, and now has his own minion- DC Fancy now joins a cast already containing characters named Bright, Strange and Trewlove (the latter a uniformed "policewoman" as we would have termed it, who is infinitely smarter than the n00b who still outranks her and likely will for the entirety of their careers).
----
Before the weekend, though, was the week. Not the best or the worst overall; I made some significant efforts at marketing and strengthening my own practice while being less and less enamored of the clients I deal with in Rochester. Tuesday was my only day there, and I finally got the unopposed relief I'd wasted a trip for last week. This week also featured a pretrial deposition, which I worried would take hours and go through mindless amounts of bullshit; fortunately, I ran into the one lawyer in town who may hate doing them as much as I do, and we got plaintiff and defendant out in under two hours. The only sin I do place on him, though, was this: the case is about whether the seller (my client) knew about any defects in the home before she put it on the market. (She'd only lived there a few years.) He asked perfectly appropriate questions about whether she'd noticed any problems with X, Y or Z, and then he went on, also quite rightly, to ask whether she'd done any renovations or repairs to the home, as that might've produced evidence of her having seen otherwise hidden signs of problems. Here's where he went wrong, though: her first example of such work on the house was having had its entire electrical system upgraded, as she'd noticed that many of the plugs in the house were looking very old. As we know from our own experiences, any time you change any part of a home's electrical, the town will expect everything to be up to the then-applicable code before they'll approve it- so the plug replacement turned into a $3,500 upgrade. When she told him she'd done this, it went like this:
Q. Wait. You replaced all of this yourself?
A. No, I hired an electrical contractor.
Q-not really a Q. Oh. Because that isn't the kind of thing I'd have expected you to have been able to do.
Unspoken in that, but I suspect he was thinking it, was "because you're a woman." If he'd asked that question of Eleanor, she'd have been over the conference table in a second showing him her circuit testers and roll of electrician's tape. (No, she didn't put ours in, but I'd never assume for a second that she couldn't.)
My client got her comeuppance when she went on to the next project.
Q. Any other repairs or renovations?
A. Yes, the porch was kind of falling apart, so I rebuilt it.
I forget if he asked or if she just added it, but there it came....
A. And I did THAT one myself.
Speaking of conflagrations: the workweek ended, I thought, on a good note. Late last week, I confirmed the final settlement of my biggest win of the year- a decision which got a client out of a disputed $300,000-plus mortgage. The only issue was would the bank pay me for his trouble, and they finally agreed to. I sent them the settlement papers last Friday, they signed and sent them (and the check) Tuesday- from an office barely five miles from mine. It didn't show up for three days, but it finally did. I took the document, copied it, drafted a letter to the judge, ran it downtown, got a primo parking space right outside the courthouse, walked in with my prize,....
and immediately saw strobe lights and reflective-vested deputies leading everybody out. Friday Fire Alarm:P
I just mailed the damn thing to the court.
----
Then there's home. By Tuesday, the bunny nest was down to two-
-and by the next morning, it was empty. Bunnies all gone- or so I thought. (I was saying that a lot last week, too:P) I'd released Pepper from her chain and gave her free rein to sniff out the nest and satisfy herself that there were no more critters back there. Within minutes, she'd gone real quiet and I found one of the former tenants in her jaws. A day later, Eleanor had the same experience, so she was back on the long lead until yesterday, when I followed her round for a good 15 minutes to be sure they'd all amscrayed.
We continued the work back there through yesterday. Eleanor's largely finished the brick part of the patio extension- which was immediately claimed by Pepper the Wabbit Hunter-
- and she then moved on to the area between the dog and the wagon, getting it ready to be filled in with paving squares as you see in the main area of the patio. Midafternoon yesterday, though, she hit a snag. Literally. We have wisteria all over the yard, and one of their burrowing vines caught her, causing a fall that put nasties into her knee (six stitches at the Doc-in-a-Box to tidy THAT up) and may have done more damage to her shoulder. We're toning this all back for at least a bit. At least it didn't happen on her birthday proper, which was Friday (a low-key evening at home with finger foods in the back yard and a new patio table on the way), but it still happened close enough to count in our "disasters on holiday" book.
----
I spent Wednesday mainly away from both home and work- results mixed between frustrating and downright joyful.
After spending that morning finishing up a major work project, I left just in time for my appointment to get the car's idiot light checked out. They're still in major reno mode over at the Mercedes place, and their service intake and waiting area has been moved into what was formerly their sidecar Smart Car sales area. It even still has the charging station out in front, although blocked so you can't connect a car to it:( The good news is they fixed it, and under warranty; the bad news was it took three hours. I spent most of that time listening to their one service employee whose only job is to call customers and beg them to give them perfect 10s on their customer satisfaction surveys when the manufacturer calls them. I doubt they'd bother with Little Smart Me about my experience- and it won't go well if they do. Meanwhile, I found this parked outside; if they're not gonna sell Smart cars anymore, at least I know they have a Benz that fits my budget;)
I was already feeling kinda grumpy when I got there because I'd just realized, leaving the office, that I'd spent the entire four hours of my Morning Project in a pair of mismatched sneakers. At least I had one left and one right on- and I had a matching pair in my gym bag, so I limited the stupidity to just one morning. By evening, me and my mostly matching clothes had a nice night out with the missus- a Buddhist friend of hers works at a cafe on the Elmwood Strip, and they did a night of poetry readings.
Talk about a front-row seat (more like an only-row seat). One of the later poets on the schedule came in through the window from the patio just behind Eleanor's left shoulder. A fun time, and we will likely be back for more.
----
And now it's Sunday. It rained cats and dogs when I got up this morning, but as almost always, it stopped by the time we were ready to go to the Parp! Pepper and I had a nice hour with the place almost to ourselves. I'm guessing there's at least one more Endeavour in our plans for the day today, too.
----
Before the weekend, though, was the week. Not the best or the worst overall; I made some significant efforts at marketing and strengthening my own practice while being less and less enamored of the clients I deal with in Rochester. Tuesday was my only day there, and I finally got the unopposed relief I'd wasted a trip for last week. This week also featured a pretrial deposition, which I worried would take hours and go through mindless amounts of bullshit; fortunately, I ran into the one lawyer in town who may hate doing them as much as I do, and we got plaintiff and defendant out in under two hours. The only sin I do place on him, though, was this: the case is about whether the seller (my client) knew about any defects in the home before she put it on the market. (She'd only lived there a few years.) He asked perfectly appropriate questions about whether she'd noticed any problems with X, Y or Z, and then he went on, also quite rightly, to ask whether she'd done any renovations or repairs to the home, as that might've produced evidence of her having seen otherwise hidden signs of problems. Here's where he went wrong, though: her first example of such work on the house was having had its entire electrical system upgraded, as she'd noticed that many of the plugs in the house were looking very old. As we know from our own experiences, any time you change any part of a home's electrical, the town will expect everything to be up to the then-applicable code before they'll approve it- so the plug replacement turned into a $3,500 upgrade. When she told him she'd done this, it went like this:
Q. Wait. You replaced all of this yourself?
A. No, I hired an electrical contractor.
Q-not really a Q. Oh. Because that isn't the kind of thing I'd have expected you to have been able to do.
Unspoken in that, but I suspect he was thinking it, was "because you're a woman." If he'd asked that question of Eleanor, she'd have been over the conference table in a second showing him her circuit testers and roll of electrician's tape. (No, she didn't put ours in, but I'd never assume for a second that she couldn't.)
My client got her comeuppance when she went on to the next project.
Q. Any other repairs or renovations?
A. Yes, the porch was kind of falling apart, so I rebuilt it.
I forget if he asked or if she just added it, but there it came....
A. And I did THAT one myself.
Speaking of conflagrations: the workweek ended, I thought, on a good note. Late last week, I confirmed the final settlement of my biggest win of the year- a decision which got a client out of a disputed $300,000-plus mortgage. The only issue was would the bank pay me for his trouble, and they finally agreed to. I sent them the settlement papers last Friday, they signed and sent them (and the check) Tuesday- from an office barely five miles from mine. It didn't show up for three days, but it finally did. I took the document, copied it, drafted a letter to the judge, ran it downtown, got a primo parking space right outside the courthouse, walked in with my prize,....
and immediately saw strobe lights and reflective-vested deputies leading everybody out. Friday Fire Alarm:P
I just mailed the damn thing to the court.
----
Then there's home. By Tuesday, the bunny nest was down to two-
-and by the next morning, it was empty. Bunnies all gone- or so I thought. (I was saying that a lot last week, too:P) I'd released Pepper from her chain and gave her free rein to sniff out the nest and satisfy herself that there were no more critters back there. Within minutes, she'd gone real quiet and I found one of the former tenants in her jaws. A day later, Eleanor had the same experience, so she was back on the long lead until yesterday, when I followed her round for a good 15 minutes to be sure they'd all amscrayed.
We continued the work back there through yesterday. Eleanor's largely finished the brick part of the patio extension- which was immediately claimed by Pepper the Wabbit Hunter-
- and she then moved on to the area between the dog and the wagon, getting it ready to be filled in with paving squares as you see in the main area of the patio. Midafternoon yesterday, though, she hit a snag. Literally. We have wisteria all over the yard, and one of their burrowing vines caught her, causing a fall that put nasties into her knee (six stitches at the Doc-in-a-Box to tidy THAT up) and may have done more damage to her shoulder. We're toning this all back for at least a bit. At least it didn't happen on her birthday proper, which was Friday (a low-key evening at home with finger foods in the back yard and a new patio table on the way), but it still happened close enough to count in our "disasters on holiday" book.
----
I spent Wednesday mainly away from both home and work- results mixed between frustrating and downright joyful.
After spending that morning finishing up a major work project, I left just in time for my appointment to get the car's idiot light checked out. They're still in major reno mode over at the Mercedes place, and their service intake and waiting area has been moved into what was formerly their sidecar Smart Car sales area. It even still has the charging station out in front, although blocked so you can't connect a car to it:( The good news is they fixed it, and under warranty; the bad news was it took three hours. I spent most of that time listening to their one service employee whose only job is to call customers and beg them to give them perfect 10s on their customer satisfaction surveys when the manufacturer calls them. I doubt they'd bother with Little Smart Me about my experience- and it won't go well if they do. Meanwhile, I found this parked outside; if they're not gonna sell Smart cars anymore, at least I know they have a Benz that fits my budget;)
I was already feeling kinda grumpy when I got there because I'd just realized, leaving the office, that I'd spent the entire four hours of my Morning Project in a pair of mismatched sneakers. At least I had one left and one right on- and I had a matching pair in my gym bag, so I limited the stupidity to just one morning. By evening, me and my mostly matching clothes had a nice night out with the missus- a Buddhist friend of hers works at a cafe on the Elmwood Strip, and they did a night of poetry readings.
Talk about a front-row seat (more like an only-row seat). One of the later poets on the schedule came in through the window from the patio just behind Eleanor's left shoulder. A fun time, and we will likely be back for more.
----
And now it's Sunday. It rained cats and dogs when I got up this morning, but as almost always, it stopped by the time we were ready to go to the Parp! Pepper and I had a nice hour with the place almost to ourselves. I'm guessing there's at least one more Endeavour in our plans for the day today, too.