"Could be worse.... could be indictin'...."

It’s been a verklempt couple of days this week. Not a major amount of work, new or older, but one or more annoying virtual court appearances almost every day this week. I’ve also been playing a very difficult game of whack-a-mole with a client- actually the bookkeeper for a client- that I got a very good result for several months ago and I’m trying to keep them on track for paying me for that result.

“It’ll be this week,” I heard two weeks ago. “It is going out today,” I heard last week. Finally, I told them that this Thursday, as in  yesterday  was my absolute dropdead date to get some things paid myself.   More promises. They use a commercial version of PayPal to send the payments direct to your bank account, with the same advance notification of when it will be sent and then another one confirming that it has. Why the two? Because just like PayPal, they offer the recipient the option of “instant transfer.“ Needless to say, instant is not free. It would’ve run at least 30 bucks for the “instant“ receipt of the money I’ve been waiting for lo these many “instants.” As of late Tuesday, though, I hadn’t received even that advance notification, so I went out, of course in a driving rainstorm, to shovel just enough around to get bills paid by today.

That led into a very difficult night the night following that. I wound up with positively wicked insomnia for the better part of three hours. it was a wonderful trifecta of doom leading to my lying awake. Take some hourly flareups of sciatica in one leg, the resulting startup of the wheels in the brain, and finish, once Zoey is awakened by my rolling over, with a fun 15-minute game of “bat at the human.”

(Isn’t she adorable? Taken on Black Cat Appreciation Day, yet:) After keeping your human can opener awake half the night, a girl needs her rest, after all:P)

During one of those late-night insomnia bouts, I decided to check my email, because why the fuck not? And there, barely 12 hours after all my running around, was the notification that the client's payment had been sent, and it would be here yesterday, or sooner if I paid the $30 ransom. (It was, and it was, and I didn't pay it.)

So now comes the reversal of fortune, replenishing what I took out of the stash along with paying a bunch of other things coming due between now and the end of the month. Even more of that can be done if another client who's promised payment "today" at least three times this week actually shows up before the end of the day.

I also got word earlier this week of another positive step along the Pony Express of Fail from the money order that never showed up in my account. The Post Office sent me (via snail mail, of course) word that they could not confirm the instrument had been cashed and that, ten days from August 3rd, they will (snail) mail me a replacement.  So, like, October maybe?

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Still, as the header referenced:



(It's not at the moment, but it has just about every day this week for at least a few minutes at a time, sometimes a sunshower, others outright downpour.)

While I was trying to get to sleep after Tuesday's adventures, another old guy was probably having some trouble, too, not nestled snug in his Florida bed but raging at his keyboard:



That makes four; and as

angledge aptly pointed out via her brother, "if only Philadelphia can find a way to indict Trump, he will have an active court case in every city in the NL East."

I replied to that with just four words: "Four Seasons Total Landscaping."

Speaking of landscaping, somebody's gravesite could use some:



And the schadenfreude keeps coming!



Maybe in addition to the rest of his life in prison, Georgia can fine him $11,780.

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I do have some nicer stories to share- one about cutting through court bureaucracy for a good cause, the other about finding a retired lawyer going on to doing good things and probably getting what I was going to bug him about anyway- but I'll save those for during or after the weekend. That will also include attending at least one and maybe both days of a local "48 hour Film Festival" that several friends are participating in.  Think of it as NaNoWriMo on steroids: filmmakers were given no more than 48 hours to script, film and edit their pieces for submission for screening at the City of Buffalo's last remaining fulltime movie palace, the North Park.  I also am ticketed for my first, and probably last, baseball game of the season, Red Wings at Bisons, on Sunday, which will be after the screenings at 11:30 that morning.

Also just in, and deserving of an eventual post of his own: Rick Jeanneret, until this past season the forever voice of the Buffalo Sabres, passed away yesterday at 81 after a long illness.  His legendary calls of goals, brawls and other hockey moments have been playing all over the airwaves today, and I will remember some of my connections to them and to his memory being enshrined.

Let's end, though, with something else old. Inappropriately old:

Several media outlets have noted that this month marks the 50th anniversary of the style of music now known as Hip-Hop: while definitions and opinions vary somewhat, the paper of record traces the genre to Aug. 11, 1973, when DJ Kool Herc created continuous break-beats by working two turntables during a party in a rec room at 1520 Sedgwick Ave in the Bronx. A few nights ago and a few miles away, mostly younger fans celebrated that anniversary with a concert at the new Yankee Stadium. (Oddly, researching some Last Concerts at Sports Venues earlier in the day, I'd discovered that the last major concert at the original Yankee Stadium was one given by Pink Floyd almost 30 years ago. I also found myself, in the course of that research, finding a reference that got me to quote one of Rick Jeanneret's famed goal calls. Then I found out he'd died.  The only thing I can say about that is, MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!)

Still, the sounds and moves of hip-hop are really just for the young, so I found it rather weird to see this ad for an online program about the influence of the genre on business- 



- to be sponsored by AARP.  Stay in your lane, Grampa, before you start turning the hits of the hip into Old People Shit.

Can I give you an example? How about a Top Ten List of them? (Letterman's Late Night show had its 40th anniversary last year, after all.)

Here we go, number 10.... Baby Got Bad Back

9. U Can’t Hear This

8. Fuck Tha Ambulance

7. I Got 99 Problems But I Can’t Remember Any of 'em

6. Straight Outta Elderwood

5. Nuthin But a Medicare Part “D” Thang

4. Fight the Power and Get It Off My Lawn

3. Rapper’s Early Bird Special Delight

2. The Message (My Grandkid Didn’t Write Down)

and the number 1 old people hip hop song,....

Get Yur Depends On!