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Things haven't been as hell-bent as I expected them to be this week. Over a month ago, events began converging very unharmonically, where it looked like during this week, I would have at least four court appearances in three days, yesterday through tomorrow, two of them extending for almost full days, and all of them spread over three different courthouses in two different cities.
Tonight, they look not so hellish. Yesterday morning was a bear, but a brief bear, and the second, most-of-the-day hearing got postponed, possibly forever. That gave me the time I needed to pick up Emily's new computer and get it mostly working. Now there's just tomorrow morning's still-on hearing, which could take the whole day but should be relatively brief unless my pompous-ass opponent lives up to billing and tries to make a mountain out of something much more akin to (and remarkably shaped like) a molehill.
Next week will be quiet- Thanksgiving and all- but the following one is starting to show signs of the River Styx running through it: Buffalo hearing Tuesday, Buffalo hearing Wednesday, then two Rochester hearings Thursday. In the middle of all of them, Zoey goes back in to have her stitches removed.
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It certainly isn't behaving like frozen hellish parts around here, either. We ate in the greenhouse tonight, the second time in two weeks we've been able to do that. Sixty-degree days are not supposed to be on our menu the week before Thanksgiving, but we're certainly not complaining about them.
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I spent way more time today at Best Buy than I would've liked. The impetus was needing to replace the earphones I use for everything- phone, music, computer videos- which had begun shitting their bed a few weeks ago and are now just momentarily lost.
Finding a comparable replacement for them wasn't a problem, but from there it was kinda downhill. I'd seen a reference to a cool-looking CD of Johnny Cash-recommended songs recently put out by his daughter Rosanne, and while I could download it for 10 bucks, it was one that I thought might have some album art or other added value in actual retail packaging, so I headed over to their CD section to try to find it.
Just one problem. Not only no Rosanne CD; no CDs, period. That section of the selling floor is now turned over to washer-dryers and other major appliances that are presumably harder to duplicate through a torrent.
So I headed to checkout with just my earphones and got behind the Customer From Hell. Your basic Clarence soccer mom was buying all make and manner of electronic junk, a humongous Playstation set being the biggest part of the order. She then proceeded to get upsold on extended warranties for all of said crap, and while the War and Peace of a receipt printed out, over 500 bucks in all, she got out her form of payment. Or rather, forms: a stack- an actual, factual STACK, half the size of a deck of playing cards- of gift cards which wound up paying for more than half her purchase.
Five freakin dollars at a time, give or take. Each one of them requiring the one-of-only-two cashiers on duty to scratch off the coating over the activation code on the back, enter said code, and file away the evidence of the credit before getting her down, finally, to a couple hundred bucks and change that she insisted on paying for with exact change- all while I waited, with a single item and a debit card.
The closest she came to an apology was to say, "Yeah, I get one of these every month from using my credit card. And I use my credit card a LOT." Gee, ya think maybe that's SOME of what's wrong with this economy? Deepening your debt to your bank (and ours to the Chinese) and getting rewarded for it with even MORE unnecessary plastic objects?
I guess I was due for at least a LITTLE hell this week.
(And I finally gave up on getting a hardcopy of Rosanne. The B&N next door had the CD, but they were charging its full $18.99 suggested retail, even though their website sells it to members for 11 bucks. While they still HAVE a CD section in the store, it's way smaller than it used to be- and who can blame customers for not showing up if they're gonna treat us like that? Off to iTunes, where the action is fast and there's no sales tax- or beyotches in line in fronna me.)
Tonight, they look not so hellish. Yesterday morning was a bear, but a brief bear, and the second, most-of-the-day hearing got postponed, possibly forever. That gave me the time I needed to pick up Emily's new computer and get it mostly working. Now there's just tomorrow morning's still-on hearing, which could take the whole day but should be relatively brief unless my pompous-ass opponent lives up to billing and tries to make a mountain out of something much more akin to (and remarkably shaped like) a molehill.
Next week will be quiet- Thanksgiving and all- but the following one is starting to show signs of the River Styx running through it: Buffalo hearing Tuesday, Buffalo hearing Wednesday, then two Rochester hearings Thursday. In the middle of all of them, Zoey goes back in to have her stitches removed.
----
It certainly isn't behaving like frozen hellish parts around here, either. We ate in the greenhouse tonight, the second time in two weeks we've been able to do that. Sixty-degree days are not supposed to be on our menu the week before Thanksgiving, but we're certainly not complaining about them.
----
I spent way more time today at Best Buy than I would've liked. The impetus was needing to replace the earphones I use for everything- phone, music, computer videos- which had begun shitting their bed a few weeks ago and are now just momentarily lost.
Finding a comparable replacement for them wasn't a problem, but from there it was kinda downhill. I'd seen a reference to a cool-looking CD of Johnny Cash-recommended songs recently put out by his daughter Rosanne, and while I could download it for 10 bucks, it was one that I thought might have some album art or other added value in actual retail packaging, so I headed over to their CD section to try to find it.
Just one problem. Not only no Rosanne CD; no CDs, period. That section of the selling floor is now turned over to washer-dryers and other major appliances that are presumably harder to duplicate through a torrent.
So I headed to checkout with just my earphones and got behind the Customer From Hell. Your basic Clarence soccer mom was buying all make and manner of electronic junk, a humongous Playstation set being the biggest part of the order. She then proceeded to get upsold on extended warranties for all of said crap, and while the War and Peace of a receipt printed out, over 500 bucks in all, she got out her form of payment. Or rather, forms: a stack- an actual, factual STACK, half the size of a deck of playing cards- of gift cards which wound up paying for more than half her purchase.
Five freakin dollars at a time, give or take. Each one of them requiring the one-of-only-two cashiers on duty to scratch off the coating over the activation code on the back, enter said code, and file away the evidence of the credit before getting her down, finally, to a couple hundred bucks and change that she insisted on paying for with exact change- all while I waited, with a single item and a debit card.
The closest she came to an apology was to say, "Yeah, I get one of these every month from using my credit card. And I use my credit card a LOT." Gee, ya think maybe that's SOME of what's wrong with this economy? Deepening your debt to your bank (and ours to the Chinese) and getting rewarded for it with even MORE unnecessary plastic objects?
I guess I was due for at least a LITTLE hell this week.
(And I finally gave up on getting a hardcopy of Rosanne. The B&N next door had the CD, but they were charging its full $18.99 suggested retail, even though their website sells it to members for 11 bucks. While they still HAVE a CD section in the store, it's way smaller than it used to be- and who can blame customers for not showing up if they're gonna treat us like that? Off to iTunes, where the action is fast and there's no sales tax- or beyotches in line in fronna me.)