captainsblog | Plunging through another week....

Well, we done got our stimmy deposit. This eases the aggravation of having to deal with various and sundries while working who don't seem to understand we have us a New Normal here. Just this week, state courts announced limited reactivations of existing cases, but still, no new ones can be filed as of now. I had to virtually yell at one existing client who had an opponent miss an April 30 deadline for something, explaining that I could not invoke his one and only remedy for the missed payment (which may be deemed automatically extended by the general litigation "pause" and is definitely held up by the specific "freeze" on actions involving real property). Meanwhile, two days ago I did get yelled at by a potential client and, leading up to it, his screaming kid. Turned out it was the same guy who tried calling me after 5 last Friday afternoon while I was driving home, and who I asked to please call during business hours. When he finally did, just as I was shoveling lunch into my mouth at noon on Tuesday, I couldn't hear what he was saying:

Him: "Hi, I'm having a problem with..." ::can't be heard over screaming kid in the background::

Me: "Well, you're also having a problem with a screaming kid in the background. Can you rep...."

Him: "You know what? FUCK YOU!"

He hung up literally as I was about to offer my empathy for his situation. We're all dealing with weird and different shit through all of this. But if the first inquiry (I suppose the first AND second) come off as that contentious, I am more than happy the guy passed on me.

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In other respects, life goes on as always. After the two semiofficial holidays earlier this week (Star Wars Monday and cinco de mayo martes), it was just a matter of time before one or both of us experienced either the threatening medical condition or urgent home repair that always seems to accompany these around here. Last time, right between Christmas and New Year's, it was our hot water heater going cold, which we wound up replacing and, while the guy was here, getting our rather slow bathroom sink drain snaked out.

In honor of the two nerdy holidays, probably, I tried plunging and then Drano-bombing that same sink drain last night after it had gotten slow again, and wound up making it completely impassible. Further fun with plumbing tools this morning did no good, so I was back on the phone to our reliable plumber who, fortunately, sent a guy right away and got it cleared out again. Eleanor and I had words over whether some routine treatments might have prevented this, but in the end the diagnosis was probably not: the plumber said it's more likely an ongoing issue with corrosion in a set of pipes that's as old as I am, and the long term solution isn't going to come out of a bottle but out of replacing those old beasts with PVC pipe. That won't be happening during this shutdown, but hopefully today's repair will tide us over (or under, I guess) until they can.

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Two episodes of Upload to go, probably tonight. We'd have finished sooner, but turned over the television to an archived stream of a performance the night before by our beloved Dar Williams, joined by a singer named Susie Werner I'd not heard of before but who was quite good, and funny, and one of her live albums is now on the way. Then, last night we did another Zoom poetry session: I read twice, once a prompt of some old memories, the other being this:

I prefaced it with a stanza of ones I've received:

Business email compromise attempts are increasing.
Stay home and eat well. Get Nutrisystem delivered!
Bear Gummies for weight loss are finally here!
6-Hour Virtual Seminar on Payroll Virtual Boot Camp: Wage & Hour
We believe in YOU!! These last few weeks have been challenging for many.

It's also been challenging for assorted bugs. Monday night, after the Dar concert, I discovered that we had a ridiculously large and loud fly in our kitchen for two nights now, defying three attentive animals and my lame attempts at swattage. I posted that night: When I get him, AND I WILL, I may try giving him a proper burial like Sol on the Odd Couple, but I don’t know if Albert the parrot’s coffin will be big enough:

Sol II: Electric Bugaloo shifted off this mortal coil the following morning. And at least a couple of the moths that we spent all of last summer and fall fending off have returned. No murder hornets yet, though:

Patton Oswalt's take on that was epic:

Murder hornets. Sure thing, 2020. Give us everything. Hypno-frogs. Fecal blizzards. Toilet tsunamis. A CATS sequel. We can take it.

Not to be outdone by such threats of plagues, it was promptly announced that a new Twilight novel is coming out. We've tried everything else, so maybe the Sparkly can save us!