Shuffling off in Buffalo....

[captainsblog]

I try to begin every month following the old superstition of making my first uttered words "Rabbit, rabbit, rabbit." Sometimes I'll miss if coming right out of a weird dream, but fireworks at The Nearby Club went off right at midnight, waking not me but the dog next door, and that got the three words in right on time.  Since this time not only ushers in a new month but a new year and (arguably) a new decade, I also accompanied them with a photo-



It's a 20/20 Rabbit Rabbit Rabbit!

The year ended quietly.  The Sabres had their usual Tux and Pucks night downtown, and I occasionally checked the score on my phone as it went from a 4-1 lead to a 6-4 loss. Tux and Sucks, as it's been for most of the decade. Maybe the turn of the page will help.  I spent the morning yesterday doing a bit of work, then running some errands in time to return for a late appointment. 

Lawyers have a reputation for working, or at least being expected to work, ridiculous hours, both quantity and right through nights, weekends and holidays. I have never been one of them. I will if I have to, but especially since 2006 when I went on my own, it's been my choice. Yesterday, New Years Eve Day,  my choice was to stay at my office until past 5 p.m.- but that was to accommodate a client who was herself stuck at work until 4:30 yesterday. While I waited, I settled a case over the phone for another client- with a paralegal at a retail collection law firm mill, who probably will get at least props, and hopefully commission or a nice bonus, for booking it before the end of the year.

After I got home, though, I saw an email come through- on one of my few cases with Big Law on the other side. It was sent at almost 7 p.m. (granted, the firm's in Central Time but that's still almost 6 on New Year's Fucking Eve), and it was from a "senior trial paralegal" who had been tasked to resend certain documents that had been previously sent in error. I don't care if it was his mistake he was fixing or (just as likely) someone else's. That was pure corporate cruel to keep someone in a sweatshop that late on that night for no substantive purpose. And far as I know, paralegals in those concentration camps don't have minimum billing requirements or entitlement to six-figure bonuses for hitting them. I hope he left the coffeemaker on all night and burned the place to the ground after everybody got out.

Eleanor worked regular hours yesterday, and will again today. I might just go in to my own office while she's at work. Or I might not. "Might" makes it right.

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Once home from my lateish commitment, I binged another episode of the new Lost in Space- not bad so far but I think they're Ripper-ing off Star Trek again- and then switched to music and book for the rest of the evening. Earlier in the day, I'd plugged my phone into the charging cable in the car, which almost always results in the iTunes on the phone taking over whatever I might be listening to on the car audio and picking a random song. Sometimes it will just go to the top of the alphabet- and I've replaced Barenaked Ladies' song "A" with John Cage's "33," an essentially silent track- but others it will spin the i-Wheel and pick any old track out of the hundreds on there. This day, it was "Watershed" by Indigo Girls, one of my favorites of theirs, so I decided to leave it on shuffle once I started reading- and Eleanor seemed fine with its choices once she got home and settled down with a good book of her own.

Her choice was her childhood copy of Little Women- we saw the new Greta Gerwig adaptation of it this weekend and she wanted to remind herself of the changes made from the novel and/or from Louisa May Alcott's own experiences- while I was inspired to make some serious dent-age in this:



Earlier in the day, I saw posts about President Obama's year-end list of book recommendations, and even before opening the first of them, I somehow knew this sad and wondrous work would be on it (and it was). We heard her speak in November, and Eleanor is now reading the non-fiction account of some of the lost children's stories from her working with them in immigration detention.

Behind that was the soundtrack, randomly bouncing around my phone.  There's a certain amount of non-randomness to it: it kept picking a lot of Jen Chapin, who I met in 2018 and just missed seeing this past year; several by Katie Meula; some post-band-breakup tracks from both the BNLs and Steven Page. And the variety- from one of my oldest recordings (dear departed Ithaca bar band Desperado) to one of the newest (Jonatha Brooke's latest EP), then Antje Duvekot rolling right into the Clash.  There were the occasional misses- a bit too much Billy Joel after already having that "Fire" thing in my head from yesterday, and some weird comedy tracks- but that's what the "next" button is for. 

After 33-plus years together, our musical tastes and ranges are much the same, but how we listen is different.  I rather enjoy the occasional shuffle (although Eleanor sometimes does, too), and I'm much more inclined to listen to radio programs that mix up artists and even genres. She seems to prefer more deep dives into particular artists- so while one Marc Cohn song came up on my phone last night, she had at least one of his entire albums on when she connected to the soundbar this morning.  I attribute this to my being too ADD to pay attention to an entire album- Oh, look, a kitty!

Eleanor's off to work now.  I'll be in there later, dealing with the overnight change of my medical insurance to the Redshirts:



Hopefully they can fix me up without making me beam down:P