“The sun is shining, the sky is blue, it's a beautiful day for baseball!”

That was legendary Mets announcer Bob Murphy's take on days far less sunny, blue and beautiful than today's in Rochester, New York.  I'm meeting our fellow vaccinees in a little under two hours and we will smell the grass (just infield this year;), check the concessions, and join in the singing of the anthem, the fight song and the seventh inning stretch hymn for the first time in 622 nights. Or, if you're up on your Rent, eight hundred ninety five thousand six eighty minutes since we last heard the cry of "Play Ball!"

Seasons of love, indeed.

The past 500 or so count of minutes, at least the waking ones, have been a mixed and largely defective and lump-filled bag of work, as courts have conspired to make me crazy at every turn.  State court first.  Last week, a small claims court called, after finally scheduling a case I filed months ago for a hearing early next week.  It had to be postponed because the notice to the defendant was returned. Wow, that seems quick, I thought. They send them certified, and I just got the notice myself a week or so earlier. Welp: they ALSO send the notice to the defendant by regular mail, which gets returned faster if it's nondeliverable. Client believes the defendant was up to something, so on my way from my weekly teeth visit here last week, I drove by the house. Her name's still there.  I suspect it's because the street address has a "½" in it, which likely confused the poor sorters.  I called them back to ask for a new date and told them I'd get it served myself if I had to. That's not our policy, they replied.  They go in the "personal service" pile and only we can take them out when we're good and ready. You could practically hear the snoring:



I'm so tired of this myself, I am calling the slippery defendant to see if we can just settle the damn thing before Flash finally gets to it.

On the bright side, I did settle one that won't go to state court. Client and opponent (the latter I've been tilting with for over 20 years in different incarnations of his business) actually agreed to split the difference on something that is a fair outcome for everyone. Fortunately there's no clerk involved to muck it up. Also bright: a court ruled on a case from last September, one of the few I actually got dressed up and did in person with an actual opponent in the room. We'd offered him a nominal sum to settle the thing, and after all that work and all that waiting, he was awarded barely a pittance above what we offered him way back then. I told the client, I considered sending it to him in pennies, but the postage wouldn't be worth it. Plus, there might be a problem if they found a ½ cent in the bag:P

I moved on to today, where all three bankruptcy judges got in on the act of making me crazy. The senior of them, who I get along fine with, was intercepted from helping me by the animated creatures in HIS clerk's office: a routine thing I've filed without need for formal hearing dozens of times got kicked back to me: you need a formal hearing. Which, thanks to some of the other goofy rules that almost got me to quit last month, couldn't have been scheduled until it was too late for the deal involved.  Fortunately, senior judge has my back, and squeezed me in on an illegal Wrong County Calendar.

His Buffalo colleague was fine, but the phone call wasn't. I was done with main office work and stopped in transit to call into a hearing with him. The calendar took just over an hour, and I was on it, in various car parks, for almost the entire time. "Almost" being "the whole damn thing except MY hearing when the phone service dropped."  No harm, no foul, as it turned out- I got what I wanted in absentia- but I did have to park near this lovely set of signs:



He seems nice.

Not to be outdone, the third and persnicketiest of them got his clerk on the phone with me, to bug me about something from my fab Pyrrhic victory before him on my actual admission anniversary.  I blew the bugging off sufficiently legally,  but it was just one more thing I did not need in the course of events.

But the papers are out for the needed-hearing hearing, the phone case was confirmed, and did I mention it's a beautiful day for baseball?