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* Old.
Getting WAY old, that is: this bug. It's rounding the clubhouse turn on its third week, and while it's definitely improved over two weeks and even two days ago, damned if it isn't hanging on. It seems to be the Urgent Care flavor of the month: I met a client for a breakfast meeting first thing this morning, apologized for my adventures at Camp Hock-a-Loogie, and he said it's been rampant in his workplace as well, and the one from there who last went to Doc-in-a-Box heard they were getting multiple cases of it every day. My codeine scrip is gone, not that it ever really did anything; at least I'm sleeping better; and it just seems to be one of those Give It Time things. Meanwhile, I'm holding off on my flu shot until it's passed and, given Eleanor's experience, am not sure I want to get the shingles vaccine if I can even find it in stock.
But work proceeded reasonably normally through yesterday; two early Rochester court trips Monday and Wednesday went okay and without me feeling like total crap by my returns, and one other here yesterday afternoon was fine once the judge finally agreed to show up.
Through it all, Pepper got her daily walkies and her playtimes, although seeing Daddy down for the count gave her some sads:
(Note the "face" in the base of the lamp; it's got the same sourpuss she has!)
Wednesday night, I got to my first workout in two weeks and survived it, even though my hamstrings took about 5 seconds to start sending 911 calls up my nerves. And after court yesterday, I saved up my energy to meet Eleanor to go try something.....
----
* New.
Well, a new role for us.
A little over a year ago, one of Eleanor's friends from the Buddhist community got her, and then me, interested in an open mike poetry series that was held every other Wednesday night at a cafe on the city's Elmwood strip. It was a remarkable mix of ages, races, genders-cis-and-others, and a perfect location. While I only read once, we thoroughly enjoyed the creativity, the energy and the passion coming from mostly the 20-to-30-somethings who made up the core of the group. A few months ago, Eleanor's friend moved to Nairobi, and one of the cafe's baristas took over the hosting- until he stopped. He was no longer working there, and while the issue with that was related to his job rather than this series, the conflict threatened to end the whole tradition for us and for everybody else.
Through some contacts Eleanor had (she's connected online with some of the participants and sees some others while they shop at Wegmans), we got in touch with the owners of the cafe. Romola was the contact we'd been given, who we'd seen in the cafe, but we were to meet her and her boyfriend Rino in a more traditional Italian place they also run closer to home.
As they say in the old country, Mama Mia! They brought antipasto. They brought pizza. They brought vino. We talked. We laughed our fool heads off. We start running it the Wednesday after Thanksgiving. "Running it" basically consists of showing up a bit before 8 with a spiral notebook, taking down the names of the poets who want to read, and then introducing and thanking each before and after their five-minute slots.
There's some logistical stuff to be worked out (for one thing, neither of the owners has the password to the cafe's Facebook page), but it's going to be a learning and growing experience for both of us.
As opposed to the "learning" experience I had today, which can only be summed up in one word:
----
* Borrrrrr-ingggggg.
One biennial birthday observance of mine is having to re-up my law license. They make you do your certifications, paperwork and payment within 30 days of your alternate birthdays. The most common impediment for most lawyers I know, including me in many years, is getting the required continuing ed credits in before you turn in the paperwork. We're required to do 24 credit hours every two years, with four of them required to be on legal ethics and, new this time!, at least one of them (only for the older farts) has to be in the area of diversity and inclusiveness in the profession. Oddly, I'm fine with all of that this time round: I teach, which gives you stupid extra credit for prep time, and I knocked off the ethics hours between my own seminars and the ones the seminar company comps me for as "payment" for my melodious voice and corny jokes. (The diversity was covered in a one-off lunchtime deal I attended over the summer.) The vouchers are good for a year from when they send them, and my 2018 presentation's comp voucher was about to expire, so a few weeks ago, I picked a daylong Friday program on the rules of evidence with a focus on how to (and more importantly, how NOT to) dig dirt on potential witnesses from their social media pages. That was today.
It seemed like a good idea at the time. What I didn't know at the time was (a) I was going to be sick, (b) one of the presenters was also sick (quite possibly with the same evil thing I had) and (c) one of the other presenters got called into court and didn't even show up. So the good news was we got out a little early. The bad news is, the two presenters who were there each had to go way longer than either expected, they duplicated a lot of each others' material, and had me generally searching for bamboo shoots to ram under my fingernails just to distract me from my own malaise and the general gloomery of their presentations.
Not sure if I will get 5, 6 or 7 hours of credit for all of that, but almost all of it counts towards the next reporting cycle not due until my birthday in 2021, I have another comp voucher for the seminar I did for them a few months ago, and I KNOW now to pick something more interesting. Like How to Bury Dead Bodies and Not Get Caught or something. Gotta be some diversity credit in THAT.
----
And finally,
But that was today. I ended my workday Monday with a longer than usual drive home through back roads, and for most of my cough-a-minute foray through Orleans County. I was listening to an interview on NPR's World Cafe with Pete Townshend, the heart and soul of The Who. It's available in both text and audio here, and worth every minute. He and Roger are about to release the band's first album of new music in years, titled simply, Who (there's a track from it during the interview, which they did not play when they I saw them in Buffalo back in May); he's written his first novel, which is planned for adaptation into a new rock opera and multimedia presentation; and for a 74 year old, it's still pretty clear that he never did "get old" before he hopes to die.
At least he doesn't have to attend seminars in order to retain his rock star godness.
Getting WAY old, that is: this bug. It's rounding the clubhouse turn on its third week, and while it's definitely improved over two weeks and even two days ago, damned if it isn't hanging on. It seems to be the Urgent Care flavor of the month: I met a client for a breakfast meeting first thing this morning, apologized for my adventures at Camp Hock-a-Loogie, and he said it's been rampant in his workplace as well, and the one from there who last went to Doc-in-a-Box heard they were getting multiple cases of it every day. My codeine scrip is gone, not that it ever really did anything; at least I'm sleeping better; and it just seems to be one of those Give It Time things. Meanwhile, I'm holding off on my flu shot until it's passed and, given Eleanor's experience, am not sure I want to get the shingles vaccine if I can even find it in stock.
But work proceeded reasonably normally through yesterday; two early Rochester court trips Monday and Wednesday went okay and without me feeling like total crap by my returns, and one other here yesterday afternoon was fine once the judge finally agreed to show up.
Through it all, Pepper got her daily walkies and her playtimes, although seeing Daddy down for the count gave her some sads:
(Note the "face" in the base of the lamp; it's got the same sourpuss she has!)
Wednesday night, I got to my first workout in two weeks and survived it, even though my hamstrings took about 5 seconds to start sending 911 calls up my nerves. And after court yesterday, I saved up my energy to meet Eleanor to go try something.....
----
* New.
Well, a new role for us.
A little over a year ago, one of Eleanor's friends from the Buddhist community got her, and then me, interested in an open mike poetry series that was held every other Wednesday night at a cafe on the city's Elmwood strip. It was a remarkable mix of ages, races, genders-cis-and-others, and a perfect location. While I only read once, we thoroughly enjoyed the creativity, the energy and the passion coming from mostly the 20-to-30-somethings who made up the core of the group. A few months ago, Eleanor's friend moved to Nairobi, and one of the cafe's baristas took over the hosting- until he stopped. He was no longer working there, and while the issue with that was related to his job rather than this series, the conflict threatened to end the whole tradition for us and for everybody else.
Through some contacts Eleanor had (she's connected online with some of the participants and sees some others while they shop at Wegmans), we got in touch with the owners of the cafe. Romola was the contact we'd been given, who we'd seen in the cafe, but we were to meet her and her boyfriend Rino in a more traditional Italian place they also run closer to home.
As they say in the old country, Mama Mia! They brought antipasto. They brought pizza. They brought vino. We talked. We laughed our fool heads off. We start running it the Wednesday after Thanksgiving. "Running it" basically consists of showing up a bit before 8 with a spiral notebook, taking down the names of the poets who want to read, and then introducing and thanking each before and after their five-minute slots.
There's some logistical stuff to be worked out (for one thing, neither of the owners has the password to the cafe's Facebook page), but it's going to be a learning and growing experience for both of us.
As opposed to the "learning" experience I had today, which can only be summed up in one word:
----
* Borrrrrr-ingggggg.
One biennial birthday observance of mine is having to re-up my law license. They make you do your certifications, paperwork and payment within 30 days of your alternate birthdays. The most common impediment for most lawyers I know, including me in many years, is getting the required continuing ed credits in before you turn in the paperwork. We're required to do 24 credit hours every two years, with four of them required to be on legal ethics and, new this time!, at least one of them (only for the older farts) has to be in the area of diversity and inclusiveness in the profession. Oddly, I'm fine with all of that this time round: I teach, which gives you stupid extra credit for prep time, and I knocked off the ethics hours between my own seminars and the ones the seminar company comps me for as "payment" for my melodious voice and corny jokes. (The diversity was covered in a one-off lunchtime deal I attended over the summer.) The vouchers are good for a year from when they send them, and my 2018 presentation's comp voucher was about to expire, so a few weeks ago, I picked a daylong Friday program on the rules of evidence with a focus on how to (and more importantly, how NOT to) dig dirt on potential witnesses from their social media pages. That was today.
It seemed like a good idea at the time. What I didn't know at the time was (a) I was going to be sick, (b) one of the presenters was also sick (quite possibly with the same evil thing I had) and (c) one of the other presenters got called into court and didn't even show up. So the good news was we got out a little early. The bad news is, the two presenters who were there each had to go way longer than either expected, they duplicated a lot of each others' material, and had me generally searching for bamboo shoots to ram under my fingernails just to distract me from my own malaise and the general gloomery of their presentations.
Not sure if I will get 5, 6 or 7 hours of credit for all of that, but almost all of it counts towards the next reporting cycle not due until my birthday in 2021, I have another comp voucher for the seminar I did for them a few months ago, and I KNOW now to pick something more interesting. Like How to Bury Dead Bodies and Not Get Caught or something. Gotta be some diversity credit in THAT.
----
And finally,
*Who?
Right.
So often, music gets me through the more troubling of days. I ended this day of sick and seminar by going to Wegmans, forgetting my phone for the trip and finding nothing other than commercials and Impeachapalooza on my usual go-to radio stations. So oot of the blue, I hit a little-used preset on the car stereo which took me to Canada, and a CBC Radio 2 programme playing a bunch of covers by k.d. lang of songs by other legendary Canadians. When I tuned in, they were just getting to her rendition of a Leonard Cohen song. A song he turned in for his 1984 album "Various Positions;" it was rejected by his label, and when Rolling Stone reviewed its eventual release, they didn't even mention this particular song:
But that was today. I ended my workday Monday with a longer than usual drive home through back roads, and for most of my cough-a-minute foray through Orleans County. I was listening to an interview on NPR's World Cafe with Pete Townshend, the heart and soul of The Who. It's available in both text and audio here, and worth every minute. He and Roger are about to release the band's first album of new music in years, titled simply, Who (there's a track from it during the interview, which they did not play when they I saw them in Buffalo back in May); he's written his first novel, which is planned for adaptation into a new rock opera and multimedia presentation; and for a 74 year old, it's still pretty clear that he never did "get old" before he hopes to die.
At least he doesn't have to attend seminars in order to retain his rock star godness.