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Mixed bag, these past few, but ultimately everything is working out.
I spent much of the last three workdays last week arguing with a blithering idiot lawyer over a case that had been pending in its present state for almost two months. He waited until after all deadlines had passed, and after I had been given leave to submit a proposed order to the judge, to raise an issue he was plainly wrong on. Ultimately, the judge overruled him, but he still has a couple of ways to make trouble if he wants to waste a lot more time and spent a not insignificant amount of money doing so.
By Thursday afternoon, I had to put him, and all other work, to the side, for it was time for wrangling literal cats. It was Bronzini's first checkup since we lost his real brother late last year, and Jack's first with his soul bro since coming here last spring. Here they are in their pre-appointment portrait:
Big Boy is clearly ready for his closeup. Bronzini was not impressed. That changed when the carriers came out, though: Jack fought like a banshee to not go in, and cried all the way there, but he settled down once in the exam room after he realized resistance was futile:
He checked out fine; weight is almost 11 pounds, but that's about right for his size. We never got a real weight on his bro (the one reading on his invoice says 9.45 pounds, which is utter catshit), but there were other issues with him. Both got vaxxed on the visit- Jack his first distemper, Zini his annual rabies- but the little guy also turned up tapeworms, so they gave him a topical for that. Between the two, and maybe because of isolating him when he got home, our usual feisty little firecracker was down for the count most of Friday, not coming out for morning noms and barely moving off the bed all day while we were home. By evening, though, he was back to chasing imaginary meeses and nibbling on our fingers.
Yet maybe there was one lasting after-effect of his unusual day of calm. For years, back to the days of Evil Cat, we’ve fed our beloved cat Zoey in a separate room, to keep interlopers out of her noms. Lately, the routine has been: split a can for the boys and then take her half can worth down the hall. (The dog eats last. It’s a rule.)
Usually, Zo waits patiently during the dispensing, but at 6 this morning she hopped up and started bogarting Bronzini’s before I even got her half can out. So I gave hers to him. On the same counter. No wars broke out.
B-Man is back to his usual feisty self, but maybe his recuperation day made Zoey more comfortable with him. It also made it easier for me to get back to sleep after the feeding, since I didn't have to stay up to release the one cat-ten from her confines. That led to a particularly weird dream involving burnt brownies, but I was able to get the dog out for our morning walk around the Woods near here:
The bottom right photo was one of the many times we had to stop for her sniffing things. We suspect it was one of a number of deer who were out and about; we never saw them, but one of the other walkers did, and got this shot:
Then I saw this sign outside an office building on the way home:
When I saw the one in the upper right, I wondered how I'd missed Iron Man and the Caped Crusader starting their own law firm. Turns out they didn't; it's a consulting firm, of a type that isn't subject to the restrictive rules we've traditionally had to follow on the naming of our practices. When I posted that, a friend expressed surprise that there are such rules, given how cheesy lawyer advertising is allowed to be. I replied, yes, there are pages of them, and we've been prevented from using anything other than last names of existing firm partners or prior ones in "a continuing line of succession." I also told him how far this shit can go: I used to have my solo practitioner office in a building named the “Law Center.” Some asshole filed a grievance that “we” were using a “unauthorized trade name” and we had to redo all our stationery and building signage to read the “Law Center Building.”
What I didn't know, until posting this here just now, is that the courts here have finally entered the 21st century and now permit the use of law firm trade names. Despite all my recent dabbles into ethics courses, nobody ever bothered to bring this up, and the official site containing the full compendium of these rules has still not yet been revised to show the new rule, adopted over a year ago. We remain disallowed from using names that are false, deceptive, or misleading, but the blanket ban on using anything other than lawyer names is finally gone.
As long as Stark & Wayne haven't registered it, maybe I'll go with HULKSMASH LAW.
----
We came home Friday to find Bronzini was better, but commerce was worse: Lenovo put through word that they'd canceled Eleanor's laptop order. AGAIN. This made three times, including the two attempts I'd made through a retailer. She'd been in near-daily contact with a Lenovo rep, who promised to confirm when it had been billed, confirmed and shipped. It showed up on her credit card account Wednesday, but that reversed Friday. After a fairly light dinner and a film (Joss Whedon's Much Ado About Nothing, which was quite good), she got on the blower with them and found a sympathetic earbud on the other end. They found a virtually identical in-stock unit, for a cost about $60 less than the last canceled one, and yesterday, word came that it had billed, been shipped and is scheduled to arrive here Wednesday.
----
Not so YAY is the state of our refrigerator, which at the moment is an unfortunate mixture of the two states of solid and liquid. I found out about this development on arriving home from writing group yesterday, after Eleanor noticed some water on the floor. This fridge goes back to the 2015 kitchen reno, and we bought a five year warranty on it. That was good, because this same problem arose in the fifth year. About once a month, a hockey rink developed under the lower tray in the bottom freezer section. It became a ritual, using hot water and spatulas, to remove the sheet, but we called it in and in February of 2020, a guy came out and "fixed" it. He told Eleanor it was a known design flaw where condensation was getting to the bottom of the unit, and Whirpool (and the 20 other brands at the same plant) had developed a kit to compensate for the condensate. "Fixed" is in quotes because the problem is now back, and the five years are now up. I spent time with the warranty wonks last night, and at least wrangled the number of the local place which did or scheduled the service last year. If they can confirm that this repair is required regardless of warranty status, or if they should have done something different (some websites suggest this is a motherboard problem), we may get out of this with less damage.
----
And that gets us to halftime of a thoroughly shitty Bills game. I am also one act through the Play Wot I'm Wroting, which got a good response at the group yesterday. The director has called for submissions by Thanksgiving, so I'm NaScripping now, an act a day. Anyone wanting to beta, drop a line.
I spent much of the last three workdays last week arguing with a blithering idiot lawyer over a case that had been pending in its present state for almost two months. He waited until after all deadlines had passed, and after I had been given leave to submit a proposed order to the judge, to raise an issue he was plainly wrong on. Ultimately, the judge overruled him, but he still has a couple of ways to make trouble if he wants to waste a lot more time and spent a not insignificant amount of money doing so.
By Thursday afternoon, I had to put him, and all other work, to the side, for it was time for wrangling literal cats. It was Bronzini's first checkup since we lost his real brother late last year, and Jack's first with his soul bro since coming here last spring. Here they are in their pre-appointment portrait:
Big Boy is clearly ready for his closeup. Bronzini was not impressed. That changed when the carriers came out, though: Jack fought like a banshee to not go in, and cried all the way there, but he settled down once in the exam room after he realized resistance was futile:
He checked out fine; weight is almost 11 pounds, but that's about right for his size. We never got a real weight on his bro (the one reading on his invoice says 9.45 pounds, which is utter catshit), but there were other issues with him. Both got vaxxed on the visit- Jack his first distemper, Zini his annual rabies- but the little guy also turned up tapeworms, so they gave him a topical for that. Between the two, and maybe because of isolating him when he got home, our usual feisty little firecracker was down for the count most of Friday, not coming out for morning noms and barely moving off the bed all day while we were home. By evening, though, he was back to chasing imaginary meeses and nibbling on our fingers.
Yet maybe there was one lasting after-effect of his unusual day of calm. For years, back to the days of Evil Cat, we’ve fed our beloved cat Zoey in a separate room, to keep interlopers out of her noms. Lately, the routine has been: split a can for the boys and then take her half can worth down the hall. (The dog eats last. It’s a rule.)
Usually, Zo waits patiently during the dispensing, but at 6 this morning she hopped up and started bogarting Bronzini’s before I even got her half can out. So I gave hers to him. On the same counter. No wars broke out.
B-Man is back to his usual feisty self, but maybe his recuperation day made Zoey more comfortable with him. It also made it easier for me to get back to sleep after the feeding, since I didn't have to stay up to release the one cat-ten from her confines. That led to a particularly weird dream involving burnt brownies, but I was able to get the dog out for our morning walk around the Woods near here:
The bottom right photo was one of the many times we had to stop for her sniffing things. We suspect it was one of a number of deer who were out and about; we never saw them, but one of the other walkers did, and got this shot:
Then I saw this sign outside an office building on the way home:
When I saw the one in the upper right, I wondered how I'd missed Iron Man and the Caped Crusader starting their own law firm. Turns out they didn't; it's a consulting firm, of a type that isn't subject to the restrictive rules we've traditionally had to follow on the naming of our practices. When I posted that, a friend expressed surprise that there are such rules, given how cheesy lawyer advertising is allowed to be. I replied, yes, there are pages of them, and we've been prevented from using anything other than last names of existing firm partners or prior ones in "a continuing line of succession." I also told him how far this shit can go: I used to have my solo practitioner office in a building named the “Law Center.” Some asshole filed a grievance that “we” were using a “unauthorized trade name” and we had to redo all our stationery and building signage to read the “Law Center Building.”
What I didn't know, until posting this here just now, is that the courts here have finally entered the 21st century and now permit the use of law firm trade names. Despite all my recent dabbles into ethics courses, nobody ever bothered to bring this up, and the official site containing the full compendium of these rules has still not yet been revised to show the new rule, adopted over a year ago. We remain disallowed from using names that are false, deceptive, or misleading, but the blanket ban on using anything other than lawyer names is finally gone.
As long as Stark & Wayne haven't registered it, maybe I'll go with HULKSMASH LAW.
----
We came home Friday to find Bronzini was better, but commerce was worse: Lenovo put through word that they'd canceled Eleanor's laptop order. AGAIN. This made three times, including the two attempts I'd made through a retailer. She'd been in near-daily contact with a Lenovo rep, who promised to confirm when it had been billed, confirmed and shipped. It showed up on her credit card account Wednesday, but that reversed Friday. After a fairly light dinner and a film (Joss Whedon's Much Ado About Nothing, which was quite good), she got on the blower with them and found a sympathetic earbud on the other end. They found a virtually identical in-stock unit, for a cost about $60 less than the last canceled one, and yesterday, word came that it had billed, been shipped and is scheduled to arrive here Wednesday.
----
Not so YAY is the state of our refrigerator, which at the moment is an unfortunate mixture of the two states of solid and liquid. I found out about this development on arriving home from writing group yesterday, after Eleanor noticed some water on the floor. This fridge goes back to the 2015 kitchen reno, and we bought a five year warranty on it. That was good, because this same problem arose in the fifth year. About once a month, a hockey rink developed under the lower tray in the bottom freezer section. It became a ritual, using hot water and spatulas, to remove the sheet, but we called it in and in February of 2020, a guy came out and "fixed" it. He told Eleanor it was a known design flaw where condensation was getting to the bottom of the unit, and Whirpool (and the 20 other brands at the same plant) had developed a kit to compensate for the condensate. "Fixed" is in quotes because the problem is now back, and the five years are now up. I spent time with the warranty wonks last night, and at least wrangled the number of the local place which did or scheduled the service last year. If they can confirm that this repair is required regardless of warranty status, or if they should have done something different (some websites suggest this is a motherboard problem), we may get out of this with less damage.
----
And that gets us to halftime of a thoroughly shitty Bills game. I am also one act through the Play Wot I'm Wroting, which got a good response at the group yesterday. The director has called for submissions by Thanksgiving, so I'm NaScripping now, an act a day. Anyone wanting to beta, drop a line.