Overdue Post Part I: How Long Can You Go?

Almost two weeks without a peep outta me here.  It's been busy, but not THAT busy.  Well, you decide: in that time, I and/or we

- attended three poetry readings, two of them in new venues;

- acquired and watched two very funny zombie movies with Bill Murray in them, although he never actually turned into one;

- didn't travel all THAT much, or have all THAT much court, but what there was, was tiring enough;

- continued to work on the Mystery of the Scratching Dog (more to come about that);

- attended one wake for a client, whose family I've been friends with for years, and got to hear plenty of stories about her I'd never heard before;

- met over the phone with a financial planner and have begun implementing some of his recommendations;

- and on my end, made plans for one new concert in December, have so far passed on a just-announced one in March, and attended the one last night which will be the subject of Part II to follow.

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So to start with the dog....

Although there was suspicion that Pepper might have gotten skeeter-bit at her baseball game a couple of weeks ago, Eleanor wound up calling them last weekend because the Benadryl they prescribed didn't seem to be helping all that much. Despite the initial diagnosis that it was not any kind of infestation, they changed their recommendation and I picked up a flea-kill-and-prevent pill from them, which she's had in her system for a week. That, and upping the Benadryl (and cheese, Gromit!) to t.i.d., seems to have conquered it. (She still scratches occasionally, but duh, she's a dog....)  It's unresolved whether her prior dry food had anything to do with it; I took her off that and have been bringing home the Wegmans patented Grain Free Mixture of Free Range Chicken Raised on Pillows with Poems Read to Them by Maya Angelou. She scarfs that shiz right down, unlike the kibble which she would just pick at (and that wasn't cheap kibble, either- it was from the Earthbound Toni Morrison Collection).

Zoey the Mostly Good Cat also got treated for tiny livestock at the same time, partly for prevention but also because she managed to sneak out back a few times. Hers is a topical which goes on her back- and she does not like it one little bit. It took both of us holding her down while she screamed and then peed on the table where we did the deed.  The good news is that they are now on the same treatment schedule and we don't have to deal with this for three months. The bad news is, in three months we're gonna get pissed on again.

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Eleanor's been trying new things.  A couple of weekends ago, she joined the Y. Actually, we both did, since there was barely any difference in the cost of a two-person versus one-person senior membership (yes, she qualifies since she's 63, so we both got to join their Get Off My Lawn plan).  She's gone swimming at the local branch several times since, and it seems to be an exercise that agrees with her and her various conditions.  It did get me at least inspired enough to acquire a new swimsuit. I picked a Tarjay in North Buffalo, where the crowd in the parking lot is a little more interesting than the ones in Stepford Consumer Square:




She also had a serendipitous experience with her artwork. A friend recommended that she talk to a gallery owner in a not-next-door village, but she couldn't remember the name of it. So Eleanor googled "East Aurora gallery" and found the place. Earlier this week, she met the owner, who seemed interested in getting her work on display once currently booked shows were cycled through.  When she went back to the friend to report the news, it turns out it wasn't the gallery she'd had in mind- and THAT one has less of a reputation and hardly any web presence.  (It evoked a line I came up with ages ago at a fancy dinner party out at a restaurant with my then-partners; when my food came, I told the waiter, This is very nice.  It's not what I ordered, but it's very nice.)

Speaking of very nice: since Eleanor visited this gallery during my workday, a neighbor accompanied her to help wrangle the artwork and provide some emotional support on the journey.  Lisa's husband had been over the previous weekend to help reinstalling the roof on the greenhouse, and we tried to find a suitable thank-you for them. They mentioned liking craft beers, so I explored the local section of them in Wegmans, and found this oddity:



We went with just giving them a gift card, but I did pick up some of the stuff for myself, and it ain't bad- very Guinness stout-y with only a hint of the chocolate in it. 

Lisa and her boyfriend recently moved here from where they'd been living in Maine, to take care of her parents, who are in their 80s and not able to live alone anymore.  Mom's still got some spunk in her, though; when Glenn came over to introduce me to her and her husband and told them I was a lawyer, Mom piped right up in front of her husband, Is he a divorce lawyer?

Burn.

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The beer theme continued into this past week.  I spent all of Monday downtown, where I spoke at a continuing ed seminar.  These are as dull as dishwater, and I usually look to see if there are any other seminars going on at the same time at whatever conference hotel is hosting ours.  This is what I found next door at this one:



They actually got kinda loud and boisterous by the middle of the afternoon; somebody must've gotten on their lawn.  I had to go back to my car during the lunch break, and as I was walking there and back, I passed no fewer than five different craft breweries, or at least bars specializing in the genre.  I did not partake, but did especially like this sign outside of one of them:



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Midweek, I discovered another Jeopardy! winning streak is going on, this one with a local connection:



That's Jason Zuffranieri, and while they list him as being from Arizona, he grew up here. I recognized the last name because I went to law school with his brother Ben (he was a year ahead of me, and he still practices here).  Unlike the last unstoppable champion they had, who I couldn't stand, Jason looks like he's having fun at it; the one game I watched, he fell behind early, but fell into good luck by getting a heavy metal category which he cleaned up on (anyone who bets 13 grand on knowing Twisted Sister is fine by me:).

I'd been thinking of Jeopardy! during the week anyway after seeing this picture accompanying a story about the most recent Contentious Democratic debate:



Looks just like the game stage, doesn't it? It led me to modestly propose that they scrap the primaries, pick the two best challengers and put them on against the incombent in a win-it-all 30 minute game.  You'd have to choose wisely, though: Bernie would keep trying to redistribute the other players' winnings, Biden would be asking to buy a vowel, and Cheeto would be drawing all over his screen with a black Sharpie.

I figure the worst that could happen is we'd wind up with Sean Connery as President. I'd be okay with that;)

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Back in my own world, I returned to downtown Buffalo, minus beer, three more times in the past two days. Once was a futile errand; I'd hoped to pay off a client's property tax bill before an auction next week, but they don't extend their stupidly short hours even before the event, so I wound up making a separate trip yesterday morning to do it.  This came after a previous on-the-road court engagement in the bizarro City of Lackawanna- adjacent to Buffalo, and the former home of Bethlehem Steel before it put out the fires on that factory almost 30 years ago.  Their court is inside their City Hall, generally recognized as one of the biggest Mistakes on the Lake ever built:



Yes, it's on stilts.  Some kind of political corruption was the cause of that.  Anyway, I stopped in the gents on the second (first actual) floor to freshen up in the midst of my two-hour wait for a ten-minute hearing, and found these immortalized on one of the stall walls:





They’re planning on tearing down this hated butt-ugly building. I’ve joked that the local preservationists will lie down in front of the dozers because of its significance as an example of horrid 60s architecture, but now I’m thinking they should at least preserve this one stall wall, track down Kev and Ken, and present them with some kind of Graffiti Longevity Award.

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Just a few other quick updates:

- My dead client got another credit offer when I was in the office last weekend:



-I continue to have assortments of tech support problems, in both work and personal lives....



- And the Mets continue to hang on by the thinnest of threads. I listened in for a few moments between songs last night as their best pitcher beat Cincinnati and their best hitter pounded his Met-record 50th home run.  It may still end badly (I wouldn't know, I haven't read the whole script;), but it's been a lot more fun than anyone expected back in June.

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Still to come: music, and plenty of it!