One Skull, One Heiress, One Box.
Feb. 17th, 2022 10:00 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
captainsblogI know, the Thorogood song is a better combination, but it'll have to do for how the past few days have gone....
Start with Sunday morning. The weather here has been on a roller coaster for most of the past 1-2 weeks, with no significant snow but the temperature going briefly above but then way below freezing. This will be important later. The main weather factor Sunday morning was the cold outside, enough that nobody else wanted to come for walkies with us, but the sun was out, the dog was staring, so I took her on our usual Sunday morning trail walk in the nearby village.
We were just about the only ones out there, but the trail looked clear, with just a little coating of snow above the asphalt. I let Pepper run ahead a bit, but when we got to the street at the other end of the trail, I grabbed her leash and as we started to head into the loop at the end, she hit a patch of black ice and pulled forward. I wasn't so lucky and fell backwards. Usually I can time my descent to let the well-padded ass take most of the brunt, but this time I went straight down onto the back of my head.
No blackout. No bleeding. But sore, and frustrated. Pepper knew something was up, because even when I let go of the leash on the way back to the car, she dallied behind me and even stopped a few times, looking very confused. This will also be important later.
We got home, I still felt mostly sore and embarrassed, but wasn't showing any cognitive problems. Only the following day, when I mentioned it to a friend and he reminded me of Bob Saget's recent death, did I decide to get it checked out. That was yesterday, and by all accounts I'm fine. She told me most brain injury issues manifest in the first couple of hours. She also saved me a trip in two months and worked in my annual physical, and as long as the bloodwork comes back okay, I'm also fine from the neck down.
As for the dog,... even though I was the one who fell, she seemed to suffer the most long-term effects. Not so much that day, when I was home with her, but she was driving Eleanor completely crazy after I went to work Monday and then again that night when we tried to watch the latest of our current Netflix binges. She was whining, staring at one or the other of us, and the word Eleanor thought really nailed it, moping. I sought out advice from the hive mind, includingdauntless_heart who runs a business focused on canine behavior, and among other things we started considering a near-to-my-office doggie daycare place just to give her some stimulation and exercise. It's not lost on me that we've largely ended her dog park romps due to the pandemic, going with just mostly-leashed walks in parks and on the one nearby trail. What is lost on her, though, are almost all of her doggo friends: Jazz, Jake, Ursula and Maddie, who all joined in the Sunday morning "Dog Church" services since we forever-homed her in 2018, have all died in 2021 or since. Jake's humans are the only ones to go with a younger puppy since losing their older one, and she's a handful- fine with Pepper, but very agitated with many of the other dogs we encounter.
While I sorted the daycare option for her, I also had time Tuesday to work a bit longer from home than I usually do, and left a bit later yesterday as well. And,.... she was much better both days, both after I left and at night when we were doing our Anna binge. So maybe some of it was her being upset about me falling and reacting to it. I think we'll still try out Dog Days (20 bucks for half a day, with more affordable packages for more), to see if it wears her out physically or connects with her emotionally. I have good questions to ask them and we'll see how it goes.
----
The aforementioned Anna is,...? Well, we knocked off the finale tonight and we're STILL not sure. Officially, she's a convicted felon who served time in Rikers and ultimately in near-to-us Albion State Prison, for grand larceny in her scheme to con some of the (not so) brightest of New York City's socialite and arts communities. A lot of the Rich and Famous largesse reminded us of Succesion, and at least two of the actors from that play in this series, as well. The series is mostly told from the perspective of a New York magazine writer who heard about Anna shortly after her arrest, visited her regularly at Rikers, and was among the first to break the story which can be seen online here.
Was Anna ever among the truly rich through her family's Russian-emigree rubles, or did she just fake it to make it? The penultimate episode asks that question but doesn't really answer it, and the final one is more devoted to her antics at her trial, at which Netflix's money largely paid for her defense. She finished her state sentence, but is now in ICE custody awaiting deportation, and in a piece published just as the Netflix series dropped last week, these things are certain about what she isn't: she isn't repentant, or realistic, or any less of a narcissist than the series depicted her as being. I get a kick out of some of the comments who blame her crimes on our libturd immigration policies, and she wouldn't have even been here if we'd have built the Wall! Bullshit. She's exactly the kind of Putinesque white girl TFG would have given citizenship to. She even reacted to the first published version of the story about her, by the one victim she was acquitted of scamming, by calling it "Fake News." That writer's story, itself being adapted into a premium cable series, was updated in response to the Netflix show here.
The series loops in, or at least name-checks, several of the other scammers that have been on the scene the past few years, including Fyre Festival Guy, Pharma Bro and, of course, TFG. There are numerous articles on what's real and what's completely made up; and the finale, which is mostly about Anna'sfashion show trial, had enough blatant goofs for even a non-trial lawyer like me to be driven crazy by (NO, STEWIE FROM SUCCESSION, YOU DON'T GET THE LAST CLOSING STATEMENT TO THE JURY, THE PROSECUTION DOES!!!!). In the end, nobody came off looking good, and Anna, in real life, has been dealt the most devastating blow that can befall a Manhattan socialite, real or pretend:
She's being held for deportation in New Jersey;)
----
One scene in an earlier Anna episode did come to mind in my own real life yesterday morning. It shows her defense lawyer making an indignant demand because the assistant DA hadn't produced all the "discovery" he was entitled to (copies of all the physical and documentary evidence they have and will or might use against the defendant at trial). I WANT MY DISCOVERY AND I WANT ALL OF IT AND I WANT IT BY FRIDAY!!!, we hear Stewie cry.... and then we see the DA backing up a Ryder rental truck to the loading dock of his building. Careful what you ask for, yo.
My version of that, I never asked for. I had my doctor's appointment scheduled for yesterday at 2, no other appointments in or out of the office, and enough to work at home with, so I walked the dog and then hung out with her at my desk here to give her a little extra quality time. When I did get into my office-office around 11, I found my own version of Stewie's loading dock contents sitting on my desk:
Fine, I put it on the floor. I didn't even know what case it was about when I saw it; the HodgsonRuss logo on the boxtop envelope identified the sender as one of Buffalo's biggest law firms, but I thought I only had one case with them and that it only had peripheral involvement. Nope, this-all was for my newest-to-me Chapter 11: not the Rochester one I got chewed out on earlier in the month for my "casual attitude" (that one had a hearing this morning that went fine), but the Buffalo one I took over from another lawyer in late December. In the box was a single new document, an eight pager called a "Notice of Removal;" an index of dozens of other documents; and.... the dozens of other documents. Hundreds of pages, thousands of pages, millions and billions and trillions of pages. Today, I received word that the client also received an attempted delivery of the same contents, which were subsequently mailed to them.
That should keep the price of postage steady for at least a few days:P
What's in the box, or what is it about? It's too late at night for me to explain and you wouldn't understand anyway. It involves a federal court rule that, in limited cases for limited time periods, allows a federal judge to take over an entire existing state court case, changing the procedural rules and filing fees and dates and deadlines from one law book to another. In the 37 years I will mark next week on the rolls of New York attorneys, I have been involved maybe half a dozen times with such a procedure, and only once that I can remember involving a bankruptcy court.
Making this an even stranger occurrence? Today, after my early Casual Attitude Case, I had these very clients due back in my office for an hourlong hearing (turned out closer to two), and today was the deadline to file papers with a state appellate court to extend time to file a similar size box of court records, times two, in two related appeals of decisions made against my client long before I'd ever met them. That effort, now modified by the box contents, wound up being My Day yesterday: redoing those appellate papers to explain, hey, I just got hit by a copier box and I'm gonna need time to respond to it. Even though I'd done the original drafts of those papers over the weekend, I hadn't filed them yet, and good thing, because this development totally changed what I was asking for (less. now) and how much time I was asking for (more, now). I got the one filed before my doctor's appointment, the other one after I got successfully back from it. Now we figure out if all these trees were cut down for nothing or not, because the Bankruptcy Judge can keep the case if we all agree, or turn it down even if we all agree, or listen to arguments from anyone and everyone about why he should or shouldn't keep or turn down all or some of it.
All of this wound up hurting my brain more than the fall on the ice. But I'll get through it. Maybe I can hire Anna to help; I hear she's looking for something to do these days....
Start with Sunday morning. The weather here has been on a roller coaster for most of the past 1-2 weeks, with no significant snow but the temperature going briefly above but then way below freezing. This will be important later. The main weather factor Sunday morning was the cold outside, enough that nobody else wanted to come for walkies with us, but the sun was out, the dog was staring, so I took her on our usual Sunday morning trail walk in the nearby village.
We were just about the only ones out there, but the trail looked clear, with just a little coating of snow above the asphalt. I let Pepper run ahead a bit, but when we got to the street at the other end of the trail, I grabbed her leash and as we started to head into the loop at the end, she hit a patch of black ice and pulled forward. I wasn't so lucky and fell backwards. Usually I can time my descent to let the well-padded ass take most of the brunt, but this time I went straight down onto the back of my head.
No blackout. No bleeding. But sore, and frustrated. Pepper knew something was up, because even when I let go of the leash on the way back to the car, she dallied behind me and even stopped a few times, looking very confused. This will also be important later.
We got home, I still felt mostly sore and embarrassed, but wasn't showing any cognitive problems. Only the following day, when I mentioned it to a friend and he reminded me of Bob Saget's recent death, did I decide to get it checked out. That was yesterday, and by all accounts I'm fine. She told me most brain injury issues manifest in the first couple of hours. She also saved me a trip in two months and worked in my annual physical, and as long as the bloodwork comes back okay, I'm also fine from the neck down.
As for the dog,... even though I was the one who fell, she seemed to suffer the most long-term effects. Not so much that day, when I was home with her, but she was driving Eleanor completely crazy after I went to work Monday and then again that night when we tried to watch the latest of our current Netflix binges. She was whining, staring at one or the other of us, and the word Eleanor thought really nailed it, moping. I sought out advice from the hive mind, including
dauntless_heart who runs a business focused on canine behavior, and among other things we started considering a near-to-my-office doggie daycare place just to give her some stimulation and exercise. It's not lost on me that we've largely ended her dog park romps due to the pandemic, going with just mostly-leashed walks in parks and on the one nearby trail. What is lost on her, though, are almost all of her doggo friends: Jazz, Jake, Ursula and Maddie, who all joined in the Sunday morning "Dog Church" services since we forever-homed her in 2018, have all died in 2021 or since. Jake's humans are the only ones to go with a younger puppy since losing their older one, and she's a handful- fine with Pepper, but very agitated with many of the other dogs we encounter.While I sorted the daycare option for her, I also had time Tuesday to work a bit longer from home than I usually do, and left a bit later yesterday as well. And,.... she was much better both days, both after I left and at night when we were doing our Anna binge. So maybe some of it was her being upset about me falling and reacting to it. I think we'll still try out Dog Days (20 bucks for half a day, with more affordable packages for more), to see if it wears her out physically or connects with her emotionally. I have good questions to ask them and we'll see how it goes.
----
The aforementioned Anna is,...? Well, we knocked off the finale tonight and we're STILL not sure. Officially, she's a convicted felon who served time in Rikers and ultimately in near-to-us Albion State Prison, for grand larceny in her scheme to con some of the (not so) brightest of New York City's socialite and arts communities. A lot of the Rich and Famous largesse reminded us of Succesion, and at least two of the actors from that play in this series, as well. The series is mostly told from the perspective of a New York magazine writer who heard about Anna shortly after her arrest, visited her regularly at Rikers, and was among the first to break the story which can be seen online here.
Was Anna ever among the truly rich through her family's Russian-emigree rubles, or did she just fake it to make it? The penultimate episode asks that question but doesn't really answer it, and the final one is more devoted to her antics at her trial, at which Netflix's money largely paid for her defense. She finished her state sentence, but is now in ICE custody awaiting deportation, and in a piece published just as the Netflix series dropped last week, these things are certain about what she isn't: she isn't repentant, or realistic, or any less of a narcissist than the series depicted her as being. I get a kick out of some of the comments who blame her crimes on our libturd immigration policies, and she wouldn't have even been here if we'd have built the Wall! Bullshit. She's exactly the kind of Putinesque white girl TFG would have given citizenship to. She even reacted to the first published version of the story about her, by the one victim she was acquitted of scamming, by calling it "Fake News." That writer's story, itself being adapted into a premium cable series, was updated in response to the Netflix show here.
The series loops in, or at least name-checks, several of the other scammers that have been on the scene the past few years, including Fyre Festival Guy, Pharma Bro and, of course, TFG. There are numerous articles on what's real and what's completely made up; and the finale, which is mostly about Anna's
She's being held for deportation in New Jersey;)
----
One scene in an earlier Anna episode did come to mind in my own real life yesterday morning. It shows her defense lawyer making an indignant demand because the assistant DA hadn't produced all the "discovery" he was entitled to (copies of all the physical and documentary evidence they have and will or might use against the defendant at trial). I WANT MY DISCOVERY AND I WANT ALL OF IT AND I WANT IT BY FRIDAY!!!, we hear Stewie cry.... and then we see the DA backing up a Ryder rental truck to the loading dock of his building. Careful what you ask for, yo.
My version of that, I never asked for. I had my doctor's appointment scheduled for yesterday at 2, no other appointments in or out of the office, and enough to work at home with, so I walked the dog and then hung out with her at my desk here to give her a little extra quality time. When I did get into my office-office around 11, I found my own version of Stewie's loading dock contents sitting on my desk:
Fine, I put it on the floor. I didn't even know what case it was about when I saw it; the HodgsonRuss logo on the boxtop envelope identified the sender as one of Buffalo's biggest law firms, but I thought I only had one case with them and that it only had peripheral involvement. Nope, this-all was for my newest-to-me Chapter 11: not the Rochester one I got chewed out on earlier in the month for my "casual attitude" (that one had a hearing this morning that went fine), but the Buffalo one I took over from another lawyer in late December. In the box was a single new document, an eight pager called a "Notice of Removal;" an index of dozens of other documents; and.... the dozens of other documents. Hundreds of pages, thousands of pages, millions and billions and trillions of pages. Today, I received word that the client also received an attempted delivery of the same contents, which were subsequently mailed to them.
That should keep the price of postage steady for at least a few days:P
What's in the box, or what is it about? It's too late at night for me to explain and you wouldn't understand anyway. It involves a federal court rule that, in limited cases for limited time periods, allows a federal judge to take over an entire existing state court case, changing the procedural rules and filing fees and dates and deadlines from one law book to another. In the 37 years I will mark next week on the rolls of New York attorneys, I have been involved maybe half a dozen times with such a procedure, and only once that I can remember involving a bankruptcy court.
Making this an even stranger occurrence? Today, after my early Casual Attitude Case, I had these very clients due back in my office for an hourlong hearing (turned out closer to two), and today was the deadline to file papers with a state appellate court to extend time to file a similar size box of court records, times two, in two related appeals of decisions made against my client long before I'd ever met them. That effort, now modified by the box contents, wound up being My Day yesterday: redoing those appellate papers to explain, hey, I just got hit by a copier box and I'm gonna need time to respond to it. Even though I'd done the original drafts of those papers over the weekend, I hadn't filed them yet, and good thing, because this development totally changed what I was asking for (less. now) and how much time I was asking for (more, now). I got the one filed before my doctor's appointment, the other one after I got successfully back from it. Now we figure out if all these trees were cut down for nothing or not, because the Bankruptcy Judge can keep the case if we all agree, or turn it down even if we all agree, or listen to arguments from anyone and everyone about why he should or shouldn't keep or turn down all or some of it.
All of this wound up hurting my brain more than the fall on the ice. But I'll get through it. Maybe I can hire Anna to help; I hear she's looking for something to do these days....
SO glad to read...
Date: 2022-02-23 11:10 am (UTC)