"What We've Got Heah...."

Oh, we all know the next line:

"Cool Hand Luke - Failure to communicate" (Watch on YouTube)

(Actually, I didn't; I had it in my head all these years as "what we have heah....")

But it pretty much sums up the good, the bad and the weird of this past week, which overall has been pretty good:)

Monday night, we called a summit with the mother of Pepper's former owner.  After last Friday's incident of the daughter showing up at our house unannounced and uninvited- and I didn't realize at the time that she was there a good twenty minutes, with Eleanor hiding in the house, before she finally left the bling for the dog- both the daughter and her sister showed up at the store on Monday, again unannounced.  Turned out they were just there to shop, or visit their mom who was working, but it got Eleanor concerned enough about another attempted "I was just in the neighborhood" moment that we called her mom and had an Airing of the Grievances after she got out of work that night.

Ultimately, I think the air was sufficiently cleared, but not without a fair amount of positioning and defensiveness.  Turns out the mom knew about the whole attempt the previous weekend because she drove the kid to our house! She also tried to guilt us in any number of ways- that they "chose" us to adopt rather than another family further away so they'd have a chance to see Pepper in the future; that her kid having the dog's things around her place were reminding her of Pepper and making her sad (we get this- that's why we gave away Ebony's meds and food and other talismen right after she passed); and that the girl is having a hard time in other ways that neither her mom nor we wanted to get into, so it was just hard for her right now.  It took some time and some firmness, but I think we finally got across that the most important thing is the adjustment of the dog, in a consistent and non-confusing sort of way.  She even said they were worried that we'd given up the dog after only a month, or that something had happened to her. (The first? No way. We're lifers, even with evil annoying cats; and we did promise that if anything did happen to her, we'd let them know.) We did also decide that occasional updates on how Pepper's doing, particularly some of the funnier ones, would be a nice gesture to cut down on the emo. Such as last night's, where it looked for all the world that Pepper was calling Dog 911:



“Dog 911, What is your emergency?”

“There’s a squirrel right outside this window!”

“Sitting still or climbing?”

“Taunting me!”

“OMG!”

“OMG!”

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Cah-MUNNNicatin' is also hindered by technology at times- as I experienced at least twice this week.

I took a judgment against a woman who works in a medical practice.  The immediate remedy is to garnish her wages, but it's a complex set of forms (would you like to learn about the blue lines in hockey the limits on income executions under CPLR 5231 and 15 U.S.C. 1671?), so it's best to verify employment first.

The rules for the blue lines in hockey are easier.  It took something like 14 calls over 2 business days to get an actual human being on the phone. Every other call went into the Bog of Eternal Voicemail, never to come out again.  I complained, generally, that every medical practice I've ever dealt with, including our current one, is just this bad- their "out," no doubt for malpractice purposes, is they always start the message with "if this is an emergency, hang up and dial 911." Right- which will subject many uninsured people to four-figure ambulance charges (or possibly talking to a dog;)  I also contrasted it with both of my current law offices, which do use voicemail systems, but in limited and much user-friendly ways.

But. Lest you think all lawyers are better at this? Tuesday proved me wrong.  I wound up calling a law firm with auto-answer voicemail that was designed basically as "Keep pressing 1 to hear the name of every fucking person in the office in random order until you finally get to the old coot who didn't know how to set up his." Including, sadly, one who's been dead for at least a year and a half.

Never did get through to the lawyer on that. Wrote him a letter. With a stamp.

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Sometimes, noncommunication is best- as the next couple of days proved.

I went into Tarjay Tuesday night to pick up the Avengers Infinity War Blu-Ray, to learn the sekrit clues of what really happened and so Eleanor can see it if she wants, and as I was going in, a mother was dragging out a bratty little kid, sobbing uncontrollably about some "get" she didn't get.  It took the whole fiber of my being not to call out to her, "And there's no such thing as Santa Claus!"  (Hey, long as she was in a bad mood anyway,....)

Then, the next night, I was cashed out at the adjacent Wegmans (not Eleanor's store) by one cashier who was being succeeded by a second. One named Hannah, the other Montana.  I did not crack any of the obvious jokes- at least not to them. (I did ask Montana if they worked together a lot, and she seemed confused; I'm wondering if they're just too young to recognize the reference.)  So it was a missed opportunity, but as we all know, a miss is as good as a Miley.

I know. Noncommunicate some more.

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Technology also gets it wrong in other ways.

When I'm driving, especially, I tend to use the microphone function on my phone to dictate emails, texts and even Facebook posts. Hands-free and all that.  It does produce some interesting results, though.

Wednesday morning, I had court in Buffalo and one of the judges announced the courtrooms and clerk's office are moving around the corner.  This had been in the works for years but it's finally a "go" as of mid-October.  In emailing a friend who often appears before him, I said "there will be no motion calendar for Judge Kaplan that week." Siri took that as "there will be no motion calendar for God On that week." Hey. I like the guy, and I stand when he comes in the room, but....

The next morning, she turned another Judge into a God.  Now I'm wondering if it's something in the robes.

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Finally, today, I ended my workweek with a different kind of communication- of learning how to get between unfamiliar neighborhoods of Buffalo that are both very old and very new in terms of their popularity.

We attended our third poetry reading at an Elmwood Village cafe Wednesday night. That's a cool hip neighborhood I know well and has been such for years. But many of the events promoted through the same people are tending to be in the grittier, long undeveloped sections of town. I hear about them all the time, but they are literally off the grid- the one, that is, of the Ellicott-designed street plan of "downtown" as we know it.  Once I get south of Church Street (which, I only just realized, hasn't got a single church on it), I may as well be in Timbuktu.  So I took advantage of a dead hour between court filings and a client appointment to explore some of these places, ever so close to each other and to places I know well.

First, and closest to "the grid," is Canalside- as in the spot where the Erie Canal first connected the Great Lakes to the rest of the state in the early 19th century. It's been misdeveloped, stopped, started, but finally hit its stride in recent years. The oddest symbol of it is a statue bought from a Cincinnati art gallery, and subject of millions of selfies. I finally saw it live today for the first time: Shark Girl.



Also saw the first Smart SUV in existence over there:



From there, Siri took over, and did much better with directions than she did with transcriptions.

"Buffalo Riverworks," I said, and I was sent down twists and turns, over a lift bridge, across tracks and finally to a still largely industrial area being slowly overtaken by hipsters:



Turn right, and there you are with some very large beer cans in sight:



Silos, there are, but Silo City, this is not. Siri sent me round more turns, tracks and one misnamed street to get to THAT:



This, I think, is the one hosting a performance next weekend Eleanor very much wants to go to. I just want to watch out for loony French soldiers up on the parapets of that thing yelling "Fetchez la vache!"

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Maybe Shakespeare tonight. If it rains, Spike Lee.