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What, you expected accurate math? As I finish up posting this, it is May 25th, known the world over as Towel Day, in honor of Arthur Dent and Ford Prefect in Douglas Adams's Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy trilogy. A trilogy ultimately consisting of five books. And numerous radio series, a televised film, a big-budget one with Martin Freeman and Alan Rickman, and possibly a lawsuit. So it's understandable I'm not keeping track.
Besides, I started writing this about 24 hours ago whilst sitting in an Abbott's Frozen Custard in Irondequoit, waiting for a client to get home so I could meet him and end my day there. On the whole, the past48 72 hours have gone quite well, and the "fixed it" theme ties most of them together, especially because "fixing it" is not something I'm all that known for being able to do.
----
Starting Monday afternoon, a sequence that led to what I am calling The End of the Zoom Suit:
The same coat, shirt and tie have all been hanging on the back of my office door for over three years. Anytime I needed to make a virtual court appearance, I would take off whatever I was wearing from the waist up and put these stupid things on to impress some judge. Was I wearing sweats from the waist down? Shorts? Anything? Only my followers on OnlyFans know for sure;)
Around 2 Monday afternoon, I had a deposition at a lawyer’s office around the corner from the gym, so I dug out the matching pair of slacks, took them to work and changed into them and the rest of it for the deposition, and then switched out of it for their 4:15 class. Before starting, I asked a friend in the front desk area to shoot me in my final appearance in it:
I probably had the thing on for a total of about 12 hours over those previous three years, since most of the appearances take about five minutes tops. But I’ll have it cleaned, and the shirt laundered, and switch it out with another one for the next three years, or when I retire or die, whichever comes first.
----
Tuesday, then, brought a different kind of renovation.
I only had a couple of onsite appointments here, and was doing some final preparation for the case that brought me to Rochester the next morning (and Abbott's Frozen Custard the next afternoon). But then a text came from home. It was not a happy one.
Over the weekend, we had both done a bit of mowing. I'd noticed that the electric mower seemed a little less hungry than usual, and its motor even quieter than normal (which, at its loudest, is always quieter than a gas-powered one). My theory was it needed a full charge. Eleanor, though, had a second theory, which was hers, and she had it, too: it was time to sharpen the blades.
No, nobody got hurt while I was at the office and she attempted this. Rather, the problem was that she didn't reassemble it exactly right, and the reassembled blade seemed loose. Nobody got hurt from that, either; it just wasn't doing a good job. She stopped, and then couldn't undo the getting-back-on she'd done. The nut holding the blade to the assembly wouldn't come back off. It had possibly been cross-threaded and removing it might strip those threads, rendering it useless. She felt, in the word I heard as I came in the door, "shitty" about it.
This is the sort of household fail that often sends me into a tailspin, but somehow it didn't. Not only that, I looked at it and said, I think I can get that sucker off. Somehow, with two simple hand tools, that's exactly what I did before she even came back from the cellar with some proposed heavy artillery to attempt removal. A part simply needed to be reseated and, once put back, the thing worked, and works, just fine.
Given my general spatial-reasoning cluelessness, this doesn't happen often, but I'm glad it did when it did. I had a potentially sleepless night ahead, made even insomnier by a wonderfully weird season finale of Mrs. Davis, and it was one less thing to keep my mental wheels turning all night.
----
The worst of the morning hearing yesterday was not knowing how it would go. In theory, it should have all been easy peasy- I'd gotten all the support from other parties I needed, the witnesses were where they were supposed to be, nobody was drinking vodka at 10 in the morning, and nobody had filed anything bad ahead of time. Still, this was my first hearing of this kind with this judge- and of anything even close to it, this close to the end result, in well over 10 years and closer to 15.
We started spot on at 11 a.m., and by 11:30, we were done. It was the easy peasy I'd hoped for, and by the end of the day I'd even gotten final approval on one of my single largest fee awards of the past several years. It may take time to get it, but it's better than being told I never would, which in some potentially similar cases has happened in those 10-15 years.
From there, it was meeting one other client for a filing, bringing that and one other downtown, and then heading for ice cream until final client got home. We ended the night with hot dogs on the grill and the second-to-last Ted Lasso on the tube.
Today's been quiet, and I've got music plans for tonight. It's all good, and much of it is fixed.
Don't panic.
Besides, I started writing this about 24 hours ago whilst sitting in an Abbott's Frozen Custard in Irondequoit, waiting for a client to get home so I could meet him and end my day there. On the whole, the past
----
Starting Monday afternoon, a sequence that led to what I am calling The End of the Zoom Suit:
The same coat, shirt and tie have all been hanging on the back of my office door for over three years. Anytime I needed to make a virtual court appearance, I would take off whatever I was wearing from the waist up and put these stupid things on to impress some judge. Was I wearing sweats from the waist down? Shorts? Anything? Only my followers on OnlyFans know for sure;)
Around 2 Monday afternoon, I had a deposition at a lawyer’s office around the corner from the gym, so I dug out the matching pair of slacks, took them to work and changed into them and the rest of it for the deposition, and then switched out of it for their 4:15 class. Before starting, I asked a friend in the front desk area to shoot me in my final appearance in it:
I probably had the thing on for a total of about 12 hours over those previous three years, since most of the appearances take about five minutes tops. But I’ll have it cleaned, and the shirt laundered, and switch it out with another one for the next three years, or when I retire or die, whichever comes first.
----
Tuesday, then, brought a different kind of renovation.
I only had a couple of onsite appointments here, and was doing some final preparation for the case that brought me to Rochester the next morning (and Abbott's Frozen Custard the next afternoon). But then a text came from home. It was not a happy one.
Over the weekend, we had both done a bit of mowing. I'd noticed that the electric mower seemed a little less hungry than usual, and its motor even quieter than normal (which, at its loudest, is always quieter than a gas-powered one). My theory was it needed a full charge. Eleanor, though, had a second theory, which was hers, and she had it, too: it was time to sharpen the blades.
No, nobody got hurt while I was at the office and she attempted this. Rather, the problem was that she didn't reassemble it exactly right, and the reassembled blade seemed loose. Nobody got hurt from that, either; it just wasn't doing a good job. She stopped, and then couldn't undo the getting-back-on she'd done. The nut holding the blade to the assembly wouldn't come back off. It had possibly been cross-threaded and removing it might strip those threads, rendering it useless. She felt, in the word I heard as I came in the door, "shitty" about it.
This is the sort of household fail that often sends me into a tailspin, but somehow it didn't. Not only that, I looked at it and said, I think I can get that sucker off. Somehow, with two simple hand tools, that's exactly what I did before she even came back from the cellar with some proposed heavy artillery to attempt removal. A part simply needed to be reseated and, once put back, the thing worked, and works, just fine.
Given my general spatial-reasoning cluelessness, this doesn't happen often, but I'm glad it did when it did. I had a potentially sleepless night ahead, made even insomnier by a wonderfully weird season finale of Mrs. Davis, and it was one less thing to keep my mental wheels turning all night.
----
The worst of the morning hearing yesterday was not knowing how it would go. In theory, it should have all been easy peasy- I'd gotten all the support from other parties I needed, the witnesses were where they were supposed to be, nobody was drinking vodka at 10 in the morning, and nobody had filed anything bad ahead of time. Still, this was my first hearing of this kind with this judge- and of anything even close to it, this close to the end result, in well over 10 years and closer to 15.
We started spot on at 11 a.m., and by 11:30, we were done. It was the easy peasy I'd hoped for, and by the end of the day I'd even gotten final approval on one of my single largest fee awards of the past several years. It may take time to get it, but it's better than being told I never would, which in some potentially similar cases has happened in those 10-15 years.
From there, it was meeting one other client for a filing, bringing that and one other downtown, and then heading for ice cream until final client got home. We ended the night with hot dogs on the grill and the second-to-last Ted Lasso on the tube.
Today's been quiet, and I've got music plans for tonight. It's all good, and much of it is fixed.
Don't panic.