Out of all the superhero characters in the comic book lore, Batman sets himself apart by being the only one without superpowers. He's a regular human being who decided to help people.
Now Batman has come to Rochester.
On a cold and windy Friday afternoon, people drive by the Blue Cross Arena, honking their horns and stopping for pictures.
The source of their attention is a familiar face to many. He's known as the Dark Knight — it's Batman, or at least a tall man entirely donning the caped crusader's costume.
The man isn't looking for attention or encouraging photos like those dressed up as comic book characters in Las Vegas or Times Square. Instead, this man waits with a wheelbarrow, expecting a local organization to drop off food, blankets and other life supplies.
His mission is simple: helping the homeless survive in the biter cold.
He refuses to share his name with the press, believing the revelation will distract his mission. His suit is pragmatic, fully customized with the iconic logo across his chest.
His experiences in Rochester have taken a toll on him; nevertheless, his dedication to helping the less fortunate hasn't wavered.
Like the character he portrays. He's an ordinary guy who's decided helping the homeless is worth his time.
"Batman is somebody who just doesn't give up," he said. "That's something I need to believe in personally because some of the things I've seen are terrifying. The conditions people are forced to live in, and the things people will do to someone who can't afford to live anywhere else is just utterly horrifying.
Batman of San Jose: The origin story
So who is this masked man walking the streets of Rochester? He's a second-year student at the Rochester Institute of Technology.
His origin story started in his hometown of San Jose, California. While driving home during his junior year of high school, he noticed a woman that needed her car battery jumped.
The woman was living in her car. He entered an auto parts shop nearby, hoping the store clerk could assist. But when the clerk discovered the woman was homeless, the response wasn't what the future RIT student expected.
"He said it was against company policy to help, and he just talked about her in the most inhumane kind of way," he said. "That stuck with me, the whole idea of people not seeing people."
Feeling unseen was customary for the then-high school junior. Despite a fortunate upbringing, learning difficulties made him an afterthought for teachers growing up.
After years of engaging in cosplay, performance art in which people dress in costumes and makeup, representing movie characters, the young man decided to turn his frustration into a calling.
"This costume is big and distracting, but it forces people to pay attention to these issues they so often ignore," he said. "It's a strange tactic, but it works."
'Why the hell not'
Batman of San Jose researches the homeless encampments in Rochester before creating a route to travel.
"Once you notice a big problem, it's kind of hard to ignore," he said. "I believed that I could do more and that anybody can do more. So I figured, why the hell not."
With aid from the Rochester Homeless Union, Roc Food Relief, Food Not Bombs, the House of Mercy and Recovery All Ways, he assembles supplies and delivers them directly to those living on the street.
His entire mission is conducted on foot.
"It's more personal," he said. "I want to make sure that I don't just bring supplies; I also bring conversation."
Gary Harding is the executive director at Recovery All Ways, a non-profit organization that supports people affected by substance-use disorder, mental illness and homelessness.
Harding met the "Batman" when he visited RAW's warehouse looking for a partnership.
"He had his red cart with some supplies and looked like he could use some more," Harding said. "We have an abundance of supplies due to the community support, and we support his mission."
Like the real Batman, there are dangers to the work. The RIT student was nearly attacked while trying to help someone once in what he described as a misunderstanding.
"I'm not really worried about it," Batman of San Jose said. "What I'm trying to do is so much more important. Also, this suit is knife-proof."
He also receives threats online from some who don't fully understand his mission.
Gary Harding from RAW feels the vitriol is unfair.
"I know in his heart that he is doing it for the right reasons," Harding said. "The costume allows him to do so anonymously as well as give people a reason to stop and ask what he's doing and why. I am a firm believer in the butterfly effect, and if he is able to open just one person's eyes to the circumstances these community members are in, I say mission accomplished."
It seems semi-official now: LiveJournal is no longer accepting cross-postings from anybody- including Dreamwidth, which is where all of my content has come from for most of the past several years. You can read an overly technical explanation of why by clicking here.
So if you've kept up with my merry misadventures through the link to the old LiveJournal site, now would be a good time to update your link, bookmark, desktop icon or carrier pigeon instructions to where my actual current entries are: click this, or paste the following in:
Counting all the crossposts, this is my 6,494th entry on this site, going back to 2004. I will probably post a few updates and reminders about this between now and April to get it to an even 6,500th and last on my 18th anniversary. If this blog is old enough to vote, you can figure out where to find me.
The final two of the NFL's four second-round playoff games take place beginning this afternoon. Yesterday's openers produced upsets of the two teams seeded first in their conferences, and, since last year, the only teams given a "bye" from playing in the opening round. Up first today is Tampa-LA, where the hated Tom Brady tries to move on to the NFC title game at the age of 98. Then our beloved Bills will take on KC on the road; if we win, thanks to yesterday's AFC upset, Buffalo would come home for the conference championship next Sunday against Cincinnati.
I offer no predictions and have no skill for analysis. I'm here to talk about the sudden avalanche of gambling opportunities on these contests here in New York State. It's absolutely everywhere in media, traditional and social. As part of a balance-the-budget effort in Albany, and following a 2018 US Supreme Court decision that overturned an act of Congress limiting "sports books" to mostly Nevada, New York got "in on the action." At first, they only allowed it at its few and far between in-person casinos, but they also began the process of authorizing online marketers. Several met the steep requirements and agreed to the even steeper taxation of their profits, and the whole business went live on January 8- just in time for the opening of NFL playoffs.
Some of the playahs in this new field are longtime Vegas casino names in the bookie business- Caesar's and MGM- but another two were approved who got their start by claiming, no, this really isn't gambling! That would be the main competing fantasy sports leaders, Draftkings and FanDuel. A few years ago before betting on actual games was allowed outside Nevada, they began turning "fantasy league" entertainment into a for-profit model. Unlike the less formal "leagues" formed among friends and coworkers with drafts of seasonlong teams, these two offered the chance to form a new team one game at a time. New York, among others, shut them down because the winnings on these contests were considered gambling rather than skill contests. But then Albany welcomed them back in with open arms (and even more open hands to grab the taxes) when they each applied to offer online sports books on real games. Because some in the Lej remembered the college basketball point-shaving scandals in the 50s, the only off-limit contests are collegiate sporting events involving teams based in New York. But the state's pro teams are perfectly fair game!
And that game is most definitely on. In just the first weekend of online betting being allowed, Noo Yawkahs dropped $150 million into the coffers of those approved sportsbooks, and that was before the NFL playoffs even began. In the two weeks since then, airwaves and Facebook feeds have overflowed with adverts for the competing services. It's particularly noticeable on sports talk radio, where every commercial break now features ads, sometimes one right after the other, for at least three of the books, falling over themselves to offer ridiculous come-ons to get new addicts to the table. One of them promised a 150:1 return on any of the eight teams playing this weekend. If that sounds too good to be true, listen to the fastgtalkingmanattheendofthecommercial: Must be 21+ and present in NY. First online real money wager only. Refund issued as nonwithdrawable site credit that expires in 14 days. Restrictions apply. See terms at blahblah dot.com. Gambling Problem? Call 1-877-8-HOPENY or text HOPENY (467369).
Yeah. Put a tollfree number and text link at the end of the ad after offering to tickle their temptation with ridiculous odds. It sounded all too much like one of Tom Lehrer's oldest songs about another addictive behavior: The Old Dope Peddler.
He gives the kids free samples Because he knows full well That today's young innocent faces Will be tomorrow's clientele
Don't worry about me getting sucked into this. I have no interest, experience or, face it, LUCK when it comes to betting in any form. But I do understand other forms of addictive behaviors, and how hard they are to break when you've gotten hooked. This state has much more experience, and does a much better job, with combating alcohol addiction at the source. They take the age limit very seriously and fine or ban liquor license holders who get caught letting Junior imbibe. More to the point about the "150:1 odds" come-on, they prohibit bars from offering "all you can drink" promotions or anything brazenly intended to get around it. And surprise surprise, right on every page of the State Liquor Authority website is a link to a highlight:
The SLA understands that it is now legal for New Yorkers to place bets on sporting events through online services. It remains illegal, however for businesses licensed to sell alcoholic beverages – including restaurants and taverns -- to “suffer and permit gambling on the licensed premises.” See, e.g., Alcoholic Beverage Control Law Section 106(6). The SLA will not be charging licensees if individuals are placing bets on their telephones with legally authorized sites while at the premises of a licensed retailer, but if licensees promote gambling at their premises in any way, or allow others to promote gambling at their premises, they will be violating the law and subject to charges.
Hopefully once the novelty wears off, these come-ons will be less of a distraction for me and a danger for others. It's going to take more than a fast-talking disclaimer at the end of an ad for one before I'll be willing to bet on that, though.
This entry was originally posted at https://captainsblog.dreamwidth.org/1683372.html. Please comment here, or there using OpenID.
Jack is confirmed as being free of tiny livestock. I got the call from our vet on Wednesday that his sample had tested negative. THAT news came after we'd locked him up over the weekend to get a sample, he finally provided one, but then we wondered if it would still be viable by the time we got it to our vet some 48 hours later. Between the snow, the holiday and their general short staffing (they're no longer open on Saturdays), Eleanor wound up calling one of the specialized 24-hour emergency vet places in Orchard Park to find out if we'd need another. They thought it would be a good idea, so we re-isolated Da Boy all Tuesday morning until our vet finally told us the original would be okay. A day later, he checked out just fine.
The telephonic detour to OP brought back memories of bad experiences we've had and heard about with emergency vet practices. That's not the one we went to- first time in over 30 years we ever had to go to one- when we took Boz in for his terminal diagnosis two Decembers ago. That was a bad experience- some due to the coldness of the season, some the impersonality of still-pending COVID restrictions, but also their business model. You don't even get your furbaby in the door without payment of a steep upfront diagnostic charge. Every other step along the way is met with similar walletectomies. The one closer to us, where Boz spent hours, became internet-infamous a few months later when they treated a dog named Jethro, and when he died sent a "sympathy" card to his family naming him "Death Row." Other friends have told similar stories about their competence and parsimony.
But at least they're there; in fact, with all those late-night visitors coming in at their full rack rate, they've significantly expanded their building and even added a doggie play facility. Furparents in Rochester aren't so lucky now. When we lived there, we didn't know of any 24-hour emergency locations, but over the years since, I'd seen one had opened near one of my former offices, across the road from Monroe Community College's main campus in Henrietta. Now, though,....
For more than 20 years, Rochester-area pet owners with sick animals needing emergency care in the middle of the night could find it at Veterinary Specialists and Emergency Services, 825 White Spruce Blvd., Brighton. That changes Monday, Jan. 17, when the clinic will begin operating from 6 a.m. to 10 p.m. daily instead of around the clock.
A memo to VSES staff cited staffing shortages as the reason and particular difficulty finding people to work after hours or overnight shifts.
ORLY?
A group of 130 workers at Veterinary Specialists and Emergency Services (VSES) are now unionized, following a vote of 65 to 28 to join the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers. The VSES employees — including licensed veterinary technicians, veterinary assistants and front desk staff — had expressed frustration with working conditions since Monroe Veterinary Associates, a group of 15 practices in the Rochester area, including VSES, was sold in 2021 to a Texas company with more than 400 veterinary clinics nationwide and a private equity firm as a major stakeholder.
Private equity and health care. What could PO$$IBLY go wrong? Maybe ask people at the former Rural Metro ambulance service, which got taken over by a hedge fund and bled it into Bankruptcy Court after giving the world the brilliant idea of the $3,000 ride to the hospital. So now private equity is getting into animal care. It's a growth industry, especially since COVID; it mostly avoids the bureaucracy and bullshit of insurance reimbursements; and it preys upon people who will do, and pay, anything for their beloved furbabies.
There's got to be a better way. Unfortunately, veterinary training opportunities haven't kept up with the demand. The only established doctorate-level vet college in this state is hundreds of miles away at Cornell, and at last count there were only 28 of them in the entire country. So building an emergency system on residencies, as medical and dental colleges do, really won't work. Our 30-plus years of experience with our own regular vet practices, here and in Penfield before we moved, have been near-universally good, but there's a lot of stress and turnover in the offices. One vet we met through LJ years ago, who has a mostly farm-animal practice not far from my sister's, has written about the pressures on her and her colleagues, in dealing with demanding human clients, ridiculous student loan and other payment obligations, and the emotions of having to treat or give up on patients who can't say anything for themselves. Meanwhile, Rochester peeps are now faced with a 90-mile one-way drive to OP, or even further trips to Syracuse or Cornell, if they have a vet emergency in the middle of the night.
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Now let's move on to our fictional forensics case.
A few weeks back, Prime offered up a free viewing of the premiere episode of the Dexter: New Blood miniseries, which seeks to correct the horrible ending the original show left us with: Our (Anti)Hero, killing his sister, shipping his son off to Argentina with a future Gilead Wife, faking his own death, and then showing up alive in a final sequence, living in complete solitude as a lumberjack in rural Oregon. A decade later, show star Michael C. Hall and original showrunner Clyde Phillips signed on to give ol' Dex a happier ending than that. Ten hourlong episodes in his old Sunday night Showtimeslot, where he's separated from his Dark Passenger, changed his name (to something close to that of the original novel's author), brought along the ghost of his dead sister as his new Jiminy Fucking Cricket conscience voice, and traded rural Oregon for the only worse place in the universe:
Upstate New York.
"Iron Lake, New York" does not exist, and its stand-in for filming was a rural western Massachusetts town that doubles reasonably well, although this eagle-eyed viewer caught a since-published goof in the free premiere. Where, exactly, it is Upstate is unstated and unclear: the frigid climate and seeming easy distance to NYC suggest something Adirondacky, and there's a reference to Fort Drum being nearby which implies an even northerner country than that. But then, "Jim" has a 716 area code on the number that shows on calls from his mobile, and his police chief girlfriend, her adopted daughter, and many of the locals are clearly identified as Seneca Nation natives, a territory which does not extend beyond our western area code. The Senecas probably come out the best of anybody in the series- respecting the land, mourning the dead (human and animal), and, far as I could tell, not committing or being subjected to brutal crimes like most of the Wypipos were.
Last weekend, I clickied the free week trial so I could binge the remaining nine, and with one day to go, I'm through the penultimate episode, leaving just the finale, which so far hasn't been spoiled. I've seen his once five-year-old son track him down as a teenager and learn his secrets; I've seen a couple of other characters from the original series, other than Ghost Deb, make appearances of varying plausibility; I've seen a very annoying subplot involving a ditzy woman doing a True Crime podcast that doesn't have any of the intentional humor of Only Murders In The Building; but mostly, I've seen Dex Being Dex because his little town of no fixed latitude/longitude seems to attract serial killers like Angela Lansbury's town in Maine had the highest per capita homicide rate on the planet. But then, as the original series and flashbacks in this one make clear, Dexter was apparently only one of several hundred serial killers in just the Miami-Dade metropolitan area, with everybody from creepy clowns to a future Winston Churchill getting in on the axe. Plus, you know, the Florida Man trope is quite real. Still- of all the hick towns in all the rural backwaters in all the other 49 states in America, why does "Jim" walk into this one?
I have other questions. His now-teenage son Harrison just bops into town, gets signed up for school, and sport, and even a job working for the Big Bad of this series, without anybody ever asking for school records or even any questions about his Florida past, or even why his last name is different from the one "Jim" made up. Likewise, Ditzy Podcaster did previous episodes on at least one or two of the Florida villains from the original series, but she somehow never saw a picture of the wily blood spatter expert there, who always knew exactly how the evil villain died. Hell, Big Chief Girlfriend finds out (through a very implausible meeting with one of the other characters from the original series) that Miami had such an expert who had a son named Harrison, and it takes her two more episodes to make that connection.
Not the sharpest knives in the drawer, but don't worry. "Jim" has a whole collection of them.
I'll check back in after the finale to see which of the following he winds up:
- dead; - killing his own son and Big Chief Girlfriend, the only ones who know who he really is, and going on with life there; - going on the run again and becoming "Clyde Colleton" in a strange little town in Arkansas; or - once again becoming a lumberjack 'cause he's okay, sleeping all night and working all day.
Even better, Dex, become a veterinarian. I've got some poop samples for you to analyze.
ETA. A Fulfillingness Final Finale. I finished it, and one of my choices was, at least apparently, correct. Click on the first comment if you want some semi-spoilery expansion on that.
This entry was originally posted at https://captainsblog.dreamwidth.org/1682994.html. Please comment here, or there using OpenID.
THIS snow, we got, precisely on schedule and in pretty much the predicted amount:
Somewhere between one and two feet, depending on the drifting. That's from a few minutes ago, not much more than when I went out to shovel the sidewalk a few hours before. Fortunately, we had no place we needed to go outside these walls, so we've not needed to test what it looks like beyond our lines of sight. It's fitting, I suppose, that on an American icon's 100th birthday, we got so much White.
The holiday that kept me home was one honoring a legend in our Black history, though; it's a day best devoted to remembering all of his accomplishments, speeches and stances, and not the only one that any current right wing nutjob deigns to sputter out:
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It hasn't just been today; after the final clients arrived and departed Friday following my last post here, we've left the house between us a grand total of four times, and two of them were Eleanor going to the same store to buy, then get an adjustment on, some fabric she wants to get sewing with. My only others were a run to bank, office and Wegmans on Saturday and then a late-afternoon trail walk with Pepper yesterday once the temperature finally climbed out of single daytime digits. Our other exciting homebound adventure Sunday was isolating Jack in a single room to coax a stool sample out of him; there's some suspicion that he's got a bit of internal livestock. Eleanor finally snagged one while I was out with the dog yesterday, but we weren't able to bring it to the vet today. We won't find out until tomorrow if it will still be viable 48 hours later or if we're going to have to do it all over again.
Jack, for his part, isn't terribly upset about the traumatic separation:
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Otherwise, inside has been a mixture of a little cook (my first solo attempt at chili) a little read (switching memoirs between the Mel Brooks one and the combined bio of Ron and Clint Howard), some cleaning and some bingewatching (we're now caught up on Succession, and I'm finally getting to my free-trial-week binge of the new Dexter), but for me, an assortment of games.
The Bills finally destroyed the New England Death Star on their frigid home field Saturday night, defeating the Patriots convincingly. They now get to travel to KC next weekend for another Saturday night game to attempt to advance further. While I await that, I've discovered the newest game distraction all the cool kids are getting into:
(That's an explanatory site, though it does have a link to it in it.) It's one-player, web-only, free, quick and as addictive as crack. Guess a five-letter word, any five-letter word, though experts will tell you to begin with certain algorithm-friendly ones. A letter goes gray if it's not in the target word, yellow if it's in the word but not the place you put it, and green for correct in both respects. Six tries are all you get, and only one new one arrives per calendar day.
The nerdy thing to do is always begin with a three-vowel combination, like Wheel of Fortune contestants always picked the same ones until they gave them to every one. I find it more interesting to start with something themed to the day. So, yesterday I said BILLS, which had the first L in green and the S in yellow and I got the full word SOLAR in four tries. Today, duh, I went with SNOWY, from which I deduced SHIRE in only three tries.
(Also a link to the actual game in that explainer.) This version gives you unlimited guesses. You'll need them. Because even if you somehow guess the entire correct five letter word on the first try, it will tell you NO! and replace it with another word. I can't even understand, much less explain, the working of this algorithm (this is the developer's attempt). All's I know is it's evil and wrong, but since you can play unlimited rounds and then unlimited games at a time, it's the sort of addictive crack that Wordle is just a gateway drug for.
Or we could just play Password on Betty White's 100th birthday.
This entry was originally posted at https://captainsblog.dreamwidth.org/1682883.html. Please comment here, or there using OpenID.
A busy workweek is winding down, with more than its share of DEATH paying visits. Beyond Bob Saget and Ronnie Spector passing in the celebrity world, nobody we know has recently shuffled off this mortal coil, but that hasn't kept past grim reapings from repeating. I had two clients pass away in November, both of which I found out about the Monday after Thankgiving. Yesterday brought the occasion for me to finally report on that to the court in which I'd been working with him for over a year. The other entered my dreams earlier yesterday; right before waking, my subconscious included going out for pizza and wings with the other died-in-November client, and then me helping to repair a Dalek. I'm STILL not sure if these two were the same dream or not.
Finally, one of the fairly major hearings I had scheduled for late yesterday got postponed because the clients' niece just died and they are in charge of the arrangements. That hearing has now been postponed three times on account of various contingencies. Hopefully nobody else will die or get pregnant before the 19th.
Fortunately, I've been able to stay close to home all week, not leaving the town boundaries for anything. The temperature has gone from frigid to above-freezing and heading back down to dangerously low levels for the Saturday night gathering of frigid drunks at the Bills' first fully-attended home playoff game since 1995. I will not be there. We're also getting early warnings of more OMGSNOW on Sunday night into the Monday holiday, but we're closed so who cares.
So I'll just comment on the state of the menagerie before the last clients of the week roll in here in half an hour.
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The dog’s been getting on our nerves of late. With me, it's endless mooching for snacks or walkies from the moment I wake up. Eleanor gets interrupted after I leave in the morning when she’s on her computer, or Pepper will beg to go out and then won't come back in. We both have been getting unbearable whining from her while we’re trying to watch anything on the TV at night. I think she’s put off by the tense music and arguing during Succession, but she does it during other things.
Finally at wits' end, Eleanor tried this as a solution: a new crate between us in the living room. We put Pepper's original doggie bed inside and her fren Ursula’s beloved blankie on top. It’s not perfect, but the first two nights she’s gone in and shadappad her face. Kittehs like it up top, too.
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No real problems from the gang up top, but a friend did bring their species to mind. chaosvizier posted this photo and explanation:
I took this picture in Turkey several years ago. I believe it says "Beware of cat with lifeless soul-draining eyes", but perhaps my grasp of the language is imperfect...😉
That, in turn, reminded me of this longago tale: On our honeymoon many years ago, we were driving somewhere in the UK, and passed a sign reading “CATS EYES REMOVED.” We were scared enough to look up what it meant. Apparently that’s what they call reflective metal studs the English put down to help mark the middle of their winding "single carriageway" roads.
In looking up that photo, I discovered from a 2017 UK news story that at least one British county has changed them, on account of complaints from cat-loving Murkin tourists who accused them of animal cruelty:
No word yet on whether fans of Sam Elliott are now equally pissed;)
This entry was originally posted at https://captainsblog.dreamwidth.org/1682631.html. Please comment here, or there using OpenID.
Don't worry. They're decent stories, maybe even funny.
* Riding Outside Cars With Dogs.
By Saturday, all the Snowmageddon from earlier in the week had melted, and the whole day Saturday was sunny and nice. Unfortunately, Sunday is our scheduled morning for walking Pepper with assorted frens.
It had been raining in Amherst ever since the top of the page, but it looked to have let up around 9 a.m., when I decided to take the dog for a walk - just us- down the usual Dog Church morning trail.
But first, coffee.
Despite it being cold and starting to drizzle again, and the assembly of 70,000 drunks at the Bills game pushed back to 4:25, the drive-thru line at Timmys was backed up to the 290. But the inside was open, so I got out of the car, placed and received my order, headed back to the car, reached for the handle just as I heard a beep:
Pepper had sat on the fob and locked the car.
Now usually, you can touch the door handle and, if the fob is in range, it will just open it. Except when it's got 55 pounds of dog on it, apparently.
Fortunately, we have remote entry apps on our phones; just as fortunately, I had my phone on my person. So I got it open that way before arriving at our destination.
The trail was an icy mess and we lasted five minutes.
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* A Seal, a Binge, and Not Freezing An Ass Off:
That afternoon consisted of me learning how to seal the just-mopped kitchen floor (Eleanor just can't handle the squeezy thing on the mop anymore), a binge of more Succession, and checking in on the Bills winning their division for the second straight year. One of the Succession episodes- the final of season 2- showed Logan's son Kendall planting what appeared to be a Judas kiss on his father. That turned out to be funny for two reasons. One, we'd just watched a Mark Ruffalo film from a few years back called Thanks for Sharing, which is centered on a 12-step recovery program. Mark's character suffers from a sex addiction, so one of the things they show is, when his character travels on business, he has the hotel remove the television from his room so he won't be tempted to watch porn. Toward the end of the film, he suffers a relapse and they show him desperately pacing his hotel room in search of something to get off on/with. My instant thought: Hey, Adam, there's a bible in that one drawer there, and it's got plenty of kink in it.
Within a few hours of thinking that, this meme showed up on my Facebook feed:
Then, that got me thinking of a riff on Succession based on the Passion of the Christ, where the disciples all plot and scheme to take over after His unfortunate ultimate demise. Judas would make a pretty good CEO; he's got the killer instinct! Throw in Mary Magdalene for the feminine touch! And Doubting Thomas can go running around the Last Supper complaining about the place settings and the butter being too cold!
Speaking of too cold: by the time the Bills finally clinched at about 7:30 at night on a frigid Orchard Park field, the rest of the post-season field was almost complete. The final contender came several hours later, when the Raiders kicked their hated rival Chargers out of the playoffs. In an oddity of math, if those two teams had played to a tie, they both would have made it in, and the Chargers would have come here for the first round game next weekend. Instead, only Las Vegas got in, changing the seeding and giving us a third matchup in six weeks against our hated rivals from New England, this one on our home field,....
at 8:15 on a Saturday night. When the predicted game-time temperature will be a single digit Farenheit.
Where would I rather be than right there, right then? HOME, DAMMIT!
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* Finally, who REALLY sucks:
Yet I finish this from work, which has been two days of assorted weirdness. Beginning yesterday, when I got a referral in of a case in Queens. Yes, every once in a while, I wander into the strange and wondrous land of downstate New York to handle a bankruptcy or file a state court case. I'm fully licensed for all state and federal courts there, but it may as well be the Klingon Home World.
This one began with a simple check on some real estate holdings of a potential opponent who lives in Queens. The Five Boroughs do have "county clerks" in more or less the same sense we do, but the online searching process has thus far been befuddling. Mr. Google directed me to an official looking site that didn't work, but also suggested a somewhat sketchy alternative. See if you can spot the clue that this miiiight not be legit.
Hint: I'd suggest that Pete Davidson get his cholesterol checked;)
Today, meanwhile, has just been a bag of annoyance, with a client not showing up on time and now running late for a rescheduled time, and a court hearing I thought I had on Teams at 3:00 actually being at 3 next Tuesday. Yet in between, we started a new binge of a Hulu series based on a sucky mocumentary Eleanor assures me we both watched:
Wow, Statin Island makes another appearance! Those vampires better be careful, because the last thing they need is having their cholesterol going too high.
This entry was originally posted at https://captainsblog.dreamwidth.org/1682420.html. Please comment here, or there using OpenID.
Also, Busy Work Week, Overblown Prediction of a Snowstorm Week, and Ray Being Generally Stupid Week!
Let's start with the Recent Unpleasantness, which marked its first Klan-iversary on Thursday January 6th. Until a year ago, that date on the calendar had two relatively unimportant tabs on it. One, it was my father's birthday, so yes, this year he would have turned 106 on 1/06. I didn't play any lotto numbers despite that. More historically, it is the supposed day of the Epiphany, when the Christ Child was worshiped by three mysterious visitors from the east. Seers, sages, soothsayers!
No, not him.
Ultimately, though, supporters of The Former Guy chose this relatively minor religious holiday to mount the biggest attack on our nation since 9/11. I finally got the connection:
Both featured visits by strange men sent by insane paranoid kings.
But not before I had, um, an Ephipany of mine own and put the modern events to the tune of the old 12th Day Carol:
♫We, three Insurrectionists are, Leading traitors come from afar Filled with malice, they’ll burn the ballots That toppled their orange star….
Ohhh, OHHHH,…
“Kill Pelosi! Hang Mike Pence! Poison Joe with frankincense!” A coup we’re leading, it’s still proceeding- And we deny our Capitol offense!
“Gym Rat” Jordan wasn’t alone Had Dear Leader there on the phone “Fight like hell!” he cried and did tell him The votes must be overthrown
Ohhh, OHHHH,…
“Kill Pelosi! Hang Mike Pence! Poison Joe with frankincense!” A coup we’re leading, it’s still proceeding- And we deny our Capitol offense!
Lauren Boebert is so dumb She can’t be safe without her gun Leading tours of Shamans and boors, They knew just when and where to come
Ohhh, OHHHH,…
“Kill Pelosi! Hang Mike Pence! Poison Joe with frankincense!” A coup we’re leading, it’s still proceeding- And we deny our Capitol offense!
MTG has a story to tell: Lasers sent from Israel! No support from any court So she said, “Storm the Capitol!”
Ohhh, OHHHH,…
“Kill Pelosi! Hang Mike Pence! Poison Joe with frankincense!” A coup we’re leading, it’s still proceeding- And we deny our Capitol offense! ♫
----
I whipped that up on Wednesday morning, in the midst of a very intense first full workweek of the year. Both new bankruptcy cases churned along with significant progress, the newer-to-me becoming officially mine on Tuesday and the initial bumps ironed out of it. The other had its first formal court hearing at 1 on Thursday, by phone from the Rochester office. Getting there was part of the weather fun I will report on below, but I did without issue and it went reasonably well. The week also brought at least the scheduling of a half dozen other court proceedings via phone or Teams, and while most were brief, postponed or in one case mis-scheduled by both me and the other lawyer, it added to the stress. Also, new referrals picked up noticeably, and while I passed on a couple of them, 2022 is looking to be keeping me from sitting around the office eating Bon-bons.
(That's partially untrue. Somebody actually brought us a box of them for Christmas. I tried eating one but it stuck to the package and exploded cherry juice all over the counter. That'll teach those lazy housewives;)
----
As mentioned, Thursday was the designated travel day, made multiply more stressful by them droning on all week about the long-awaited OMG WINTER STORMAGEDDON we haven't had all winter. Our December snow was minimal, and our electric bill was its summertime minimum, which means the solar panels covered all of our usage even in the darkest month of the year. (It's when snow covers the panels that they don't produce anything.)
By Wednesday night, the French Toast Alerts were reaching Bostonian Code Red proportions: STAY AT HOME TO SAVE YOUR LIVES! GONNA SNOW ALL NIGHT, ALL DAY AND INTO JULY! I made backup plans to call into my bankruptcy hearing from a different phone than the client, and to have Rochester coworkers meet and witness clients who I'd done wills for. Because Rochester, all along, was reported to be out of the path of this lake effect event.
That's when I Got Smart:
No, not that one. (Would you believe we'll get to him in a moment, though?)
I may need my law degree for my career, but it sometimes helps to have a passing interest in meteorology and geography. It finally occurred to me: Rochester is actually northeast of here, and although the 90 goes right through the storm's projected snow band, Niagara County to the north was completely out of it. And so I decided to take a little detour “up the Transit” to my appointments that way.
Once I got about two miles north of our house, I stopped seeing anything resembling a flake. All of the rest of my drive there along 31 and 104 was sunny and snow-free. And going that way allowed me to go right past a Barnes and Noble that had the only store copy within 86 miles of the book I wanted to get with my Christmas book bux from my sister:
Mel's a mere 95 compared to Betty White's almost century of just-ended life, but he might now have the title of the oldest funniest human alive. I immediately gravitated to the chapter on his Get Smart co-creation (with Buck Henry, who we lost a few years back and whose acrimony over the show with Mel does not make it out of the Cone of Silence and into this book). It reveals that the initial order for the comedy came from none other than David Susskind, far better known for his erudite intellectualism than for goofy Borscht Belt jokes and sight gags. That led to this exchange after I got home from my voyage through the Not So Polar Express:
Eleanor: That's surprising, that an intellectual like Susskind would have pitched that show. Although we're intellectual and like that kind of show. Maybe we're not as intellectual as Susskind....
Me: Well, I'd say our IQs are higher than his is now....
(Sure enough, Susskind went to that great green room in the sky in 1987, a year after my father did.)
I remember Get Smart as Mel at his televised best, though he had some other dabbles and guest appearances, from Carson to the Muppets in my lifetime. But his career launched well before my memory, joining the legendary writers room of Sid Caesar and finding his fame growing from there. After the curtain heavy doors fell on Get Smart, he wrote, directed and performed in some of the greatest comedies of all time, from The Producers to Spaceballs and back to The Producers again.
So now I get to sit down with his tales of these. Plus the library called and another memoir I put on hold, from Ron and Clint Howard finally came in for me to read, so I'll be busy at home, as well.
Which I did, indeed, make it back home to. Despite getting a call, moments after picking up the book, that my will clients were canceling due to a COVID exposure in their kid's school. That meant I'd made the whole drive for something I could've done by phone. But hey, I was there, I had my book in hand, and I just had to avoid the last traces of the French Toast alert on the way home. It was still snowing pretty heavily on the 90 around Batavia, so I again took the northern bypass, cut down to join the Thruway at Pembroke, and made perfect time until the final two miles on the 290 that were stop-and-go and stupid. I took it nice and easy and was settled in, our sidewalk shoveled, and Succession on the telly at our usual binge time for that.
----
Speaking of stupid, though:
I just had more than my usual number of moments this week. Yesterday, a fairly routine court filing took me about five drafts, as each time right before electronic filing I noticed SOMETHING wrong: a filing fee went up by seven bucks, I used the wrong word in a paragraph and then managed to delete it. Finally got the whole thing right, and decided to come home before any more stupid broke out.
Yet that didn't break my stupid record for the week. That was on the day of the calm before the "storm." A client was due in at 3 p.m. About 20 minutes before that, they came in to say my client was there. Fine, early; I grabbed the paperwork and ushered him in. About two pages of routine questions into it, he started giving weird answers. No, he wouldn't be able to file bankruptcy with that much equity in a car. No, his bank account wasn't at Five Star. Finally, we figured it out: he wasn't my 3:00 client. He was somebody else who just had to sign two notarized documents. I'd actually never met him in person before, and hadn't seen the actual 3:00 client since the summer. Plus, masks. So he wasn't especially fazed by it, but I was just glad I didn't get as far as having him sign and file the thing with the wrong name.
Not as bad as an Insurrection, mind you, but....
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That's us: the Entertainment, Sports and Death Network!
Almost all of our entertainment came from within these walls. Only once all year did we sit in a movie theater (for Venom II); I attended a one-night series of short plays by a local group at a very small venue (that passed on my own submission for a live January production but might still produce it on Zoom in March); and my only ticketed concert of the year was seeing 10,000 Maniacs downtown here for the second time in my life. A handful of other shows were less formally paid for and mostly involved a friend performing. I passed on chances to see headliners that came through various places, including the supposed final tour of Genesis earlier this month and Billy Joel over the summer. When the risks of illness so outweigh the rewards of seeing someone from nosebleed distance, it's an easy choice. We continue to listen, and seek out new music from artists in a range from locals we know to famed ones we've missed.
So our stable of streams and continued influx of DVDs has provided the laughs and the thinks. We are more than halfway through the six-season run of Canada's Republic of Doyle, which never fails to bring smiles even when the plots are utterly improbable. Last Christmas, we gifted the kids an extended HBO Max subscription, which is now part of our own AT&T phone plan, and that's gotten us Mare of Easttown, Ghosts, Awkawfina is Nora from Queens, a Stanley Tucci travelogue in which he eats his way through Italy and never gains an ounce, and, latest, the suddenly discovered first of three seasons of Succession. Netflix, Hulu, Paramount and Prime each has its own sets of series, though many of those are on COVID-caused delays and won't be back until next year. These include Russian Doll, Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, and Picard. I started the fourth season of Star Trek: Discovery and it didn't really click. And over the Amy Pond, Doctor Who begins the end of Thirteen tomorrow after a six-episode season that got no more than a Gentlewoman's "C" grading from me.
----
Sportsball teams managed to finish all or almost all of their seasons in the first ten months of the year, but the Covariants have since played much havoc with players, coaches and, more recently, scheduling of remaining games. Since I never left the bounds of Western New York all year, it was the first time since I began blogging that I did not make it to a game in Queens, or see the Mets anywhere else. They must have missed me, since they lost their best player to injury at midseason (and other stars left in free agency since), saw their manager and GM shown the door after ending the season out of contention, and set an unfortunate record: the 2021 Mets spent the longest continuous time in first place, from May to August, that a team had ever done before managing to fall under .500 and out of the playoffs. The schedule makers did not help in this regard, when they subjected my team to a stretch, home-West-Coast-and-back-again, with 13 straight games against the Giants and Dodgers, the two then and eventual best teams in the league. Stupidly, those two teams were forced to face each other in the first round of the playoffs, the victorious former Brooklynites winning the best-of-five round and ultimately the whole thing. The Mets signed one of the Dodgers' best pitchers after the season ended, and possibly before there will ever BE another season; the millionaires and billionaires are fighting again and all signs point to a delay and possible labor cancellation of 2022.
Despite never leaving the area, I did manage to get to two MLB games this year, and both were right here in Buffalo. Toronto was quarantined out of its home stadium until August, so for most of the season, they took up residence here, in their top affiliate's home park. Meanwhile, our AAA team played most of the year in a schizophrenic existence: as the "Buffalo Bisons" on the road but as the "Trenton Thunder" where they played their "home" games. (Trenton, like many other minor league cities, got screwed out of a permanent MLB affiliation over the intervening winter, as did the lower-minor team in Batavia and dozens of others.) Twice, I saw the Blue Jays play to a full house and a Canadian-branded field, beating the Mariners but losing to the Red Sox in a home run derby that broke records of its own. After the border reopened, the Bisons returned home, and Pepper came with me to one of their Bark In The Park nights to celebrate their homecoming.
The other local teams have had mixed experiences, both onfield/ice and in their behind the scene operations. The Bills have two home games remaining before they will likely make the NFL postseason, but they've been inconsistent all year and have had numerous COVID losses of players for games, including one who famously refuses to get vaccinated. Meanwhile, the Sabres ended 2020-21 by sucking as they have for years, traded off three of their best players including a superstar who fought with them over an injury treatment, and now have a promising first-time NHL coach and a very young, inexperienced group that isn't winning much but is learning a lot. They played their second in two nights last night, their first visit to the Islanders' new ice barn next to Belmont racetrack; in happier times, I would have considered heading down to see them, but the risks are just too great to be indoors with 10,000-plus fans of varying safety and sobriety status. (They lost.)
----
So with all this staying close to home, my last visit to see the Mets remains the one in August 2019, where I reconnected with this teacher and friend from my past and his family for the first time in over 40 years:
I met up with Mr. P for breakfast the next morning before finishing my trip, and that turned out to be the last time I would see him. His passing in January was one of the first visits of DEATH to me in 2021. I hadn't heard much from him in the intervening months, and I eventually found out it had been some time in coming. His beloved wife on his left in that photo, and his two sons who were also with us, were all devastated by the passing. I now see occasional posts from them, and while the grief has subsided, it never truly goes away.
DEATH then took something of a holiday from those we knew and loved, though many passed from fame (from Chick Corea to Hank Aaron to Stephen Sondheim to the recent passing of Desmond Tutu) as well as infamy (Rush Limbaugh, Donald Rumsfeld). But it ended the year with a gruesome flourish. First, October brought the suddenness and sadness of our dear friend from these parts Jessica- nentikobe in LJ-Land (she took the name here but don't think she ever used it). After a year of downs for her that were heading up, she went in hospital that month for a successful surgery and died when her heart gave out days later. We spent much time mourning, and sharing with friends of hers we knew and then met, and we remain a plucky bunch dedicated to preserving her moments and memory.
I then returned from Thanksgiving weekend to learn that two of my clients had passed in separate events earlier that month. One was on his way home in a truck on the West Coast and never made it beyond Indiana. The other, earlier and even more suddenly, passed away in a construction accident in Rochester that had even been covered on upstatewide television. Which we never watch. Both brought sadness and uncertainty that will carry, along with their memories, into the coming year.
And December brought news from my sister of the passing of one of the doctors she'd worked with for years and who I have fond memories of, followed by a friend reporting her father's death at 67. All were good people. We need more, not fewer, of those, thankuvermush.
----
And with those reports, and memories, and uncertainties, we close the books on a year that will go down, maybe not as the worst of times and certainly not the best, but certainly one of the weirdest trips around the sun we've ever taken. Be well, and safe, and smart in the 365 to come. We need that from each and every one of you.
ETA. WTF?!? BETTY WHITE?!?
Well, that gives us the two words we need to send this year packing:
This entry was originally posted at https://captainsblog.dreamwidth.org/1681411.html. Please comment here, or there using OpenID.
- but only have one recap in the books before this one. Let's work on catching up.
Yesterday was my last Rochester trip of the year, and today I was tied up with finalizing paperwork for the second new big bankruptcy I'm plunging into this month, along with this afternoon bringing our annual office lunch here. It was down a participant because yet another COVID exposure has hit somebody that was supposed to come. She, fortunately, is only part-time in here and we've kept things mostly masked in recent days among ourselves.
For this post today, I will review the comings, goings and keepings among our four-legged crowd.
----
As this year began, we were still grieving the loss of Boz, one of our two just-rescued kittens from October 2020. Bronzini- his brother, or likely half-brother from another baby daddy- quickly found his own place in the home. Tolerating the good older cat Zoey, alternating between snuggling with and harassing the dog, and doing his level best to ignore Evil Cat. Michelle by then was by far our oldest companion and by further the most annoying. She'd always been loud, and demanding, and prone to pee when and where she was displeased with us, but by early this year she gave up her good looks, which were her only redeeming quality.
That's from shortly before Boz passed in 2020. By late February, she'd stopped grooming herself, making us give her baths in the tub to keep her from stinking up the whole house. Eleanor took her to her final vet visit, in early March of this year, when all but euthanizing appointments still were pet-only. They called her while she waited in the parking lot and quickly concluded kitty's kidneys had failed and there was nothing we could do, unless we wanted to come in for a final goodbye.
We didn't. Her pine box showed up a few weeks later. It, along with Boz's, still await planting in the bed of passed furbaby souls out front. We'd hate to annoy the other souls out there with her ghost yowling at them.
----
A few weeks later, we decided it was time to seek out a new playmate for the little guy. A few rescues offered and rescinded opportunities, but we finally came upon one in Rochester which had just brought a haul of dogs and kitties from a high-kill shelter in Tennessee. From that we quickly found love at first picture with a boykitty just about Bronzini's age, a grey tabby named Jack. We headed off on an April weekend for a meet-and-greet, and took him home straight from his foster mommy's. He's quickly grown to much bigger than the other boy, and is heavier and floofier than even Zoey. He and she are the only ones who really don't get along famously, and even some of that ice has melted in recent weeks. The three of them even eat on the same counter together most mornings and evenings without fights breaking out. Jack and Bronzini playfight like banshees, and then cuddle up with each other like the brothers of different mothers that they are. Strangest and loveliest of all is watching this grey tabby floof with the dog: Pepper will spoon with him, and he'll often walk right up under her chin and give her loving headbutts.
----
Our now-oldest has made it to half past twelve, two years after the vet prognosed her remaining time in months if not only weeks. Fuck you, cancer, Zoey replied, and without any treatment other than essential oils and love, her mouth tumor has stabilized and she's remained her sweet, adorable, feisty self. A couple of times this year, including ending just now, she's had a flareup of a herpes condition that requires eyedropping and antibiotics, but she becomes tolerant of the former after a few rounds and we slip the latter into her evening chow which she eats ravenously. She may not make it to the almost-20 landmark that Evil Cat almost hit, but she's already given us way more good days than that cat ever did.
----
Pepper has become the eldest among the regular weekend dog walkees in the group that goes back to Ebony. She lost Jazz, Jake, Ursula and Maddie from that pack during 2021. Quite a few other older dogs also passed during the year, including the very sweet yellow lab who lived next door to us. Jake's humans have now rescued a pittie mix who is very sweet to humans and Pepper but needs a lot of language cleanup when she sees unknown pups on the path. Others may join us in time. She's goofy and playful and retains a lot of her puppyness even as she's passed at least the six-year mark, half of them with us.
----
One more workday in '21. A final review or two will be coming right at you during or after it.
This entry was originally posted at https://captainsblog.dreamwidth.org/1681093.html. Please comment here, or there using OpenID.
Five days remain of this year, which began, more or less, with an insurrection and will end, more or less, with some trepidation. Every day now seems to bring word of somebody we know, or at least somebody they know, being laid up with COVID- and that's even before the latest variant has really taken hold here. Even more scary, it's kids- daughters of a friend and a fellow lawyer are down for the count at the moment.
But I'm at the office, and at it for most of those remaining four days. Looks like next week will be VERY busy in the one case I filed a few weeks ago and in another I have a meeting for Wednesday to confirm I'm getting into, as well. Fortunately, the next four workdays look quiet, and the phones and inboxes are quiet to match.
So here, I guess, I'll review the Business and Finance sections of the year almost ended, which have been full of changes but overall good ones.
Work for me has settled into a New Normal of sorts. My travel is way down, as almost all things I used to drive to in downtowns and farflung places are now done by phone or virtual video. I have a half-suit of sorts that hangs behind my office door, which I throw on from the waist up for the Teams sessions that most state courts have gone to. Bankruptcy is entirely telephonic, with confirming documents uploaded ahead of time; clients are usually with me for those, but they don't have to be. Since the shutdown in March 2020, I have only stopped in or driven through eight counties of Western New York and only made it to the easternmost a few weeks ago. That's cut down on gas and maintenance expense on the car, and on a lot of stress on me. The moratoriums here on finalizing evictions and foreclosures are scheduled to end in a few weeks, and while I don't do much work in those areas myself, we expect those may unleash a major backlog of bankruptcy filings that has been a relative trickle the past two years overall.
Unless there's a major filing rush this week, 2021 will end with fewer than 2,000 cases filed in the entire Buffalo/Rochester district where I do almost all my work. In contrast, in one of my first years practicing, there were exactly 2,000 cases filed in the smaller Rochester division alone, a figure way below the 10,000-plus filed in the year of the Credit Card Company Protection Act of 2005. Of the not quite 2,000 filed in 2021, I filed 16 of them and may be taking over a 17th filed in November. That's a little lower than last year for me, but way below my record year of 2019 when I put my imprimatur on 27 of them that year. They've been a mix of easy and hard, of consumer and business. If both of this month's new-to-me filings carry on through the new year, I expect that hours will exceed even the record year, and the total number may come close to the record as well. I've got at least a half dozen clients who I started preparing papers for in 2021 who have indicated they are still interested in proceeding. Many of them have legal plan coverage where all they have to pay upfront is the filing fee, and at least one or two of those already have paid that. They just haven't gotten off the pot yet.
That legal plan also brings a steady stream of will and similar preparations, traffic matters and smaller state court cases. I've been getting picker about turning down some that are outside what I do best and most often, are likely to be sinkholes of my effort, or are where the client just didn't connect with me in one respect or another. Who needs the aggravation? With still four more days to put in the books here, I've already put in more than 100 hours in 2021 than I did in all of 2020 on my own practice side; Rochester is more hit-or-miss, but that's about 50 more hours than a year ago. Granted, we lost a lot of 2020 time to the pandemic's first adjustments, but it's good to see recovery there.
----
The year also brought big changes with the other half of the mawwiage eqwaztion. Eleanor was able to cut her hours at the end of last year once her medical insurance coverage through Wegmans was locked in from October 2020 to September 2021, and then even more so when she no longer needed that coverage after turning 65 in July. Medicare is by no means a financial panacea, especially for her coming from a fairly generous employer plan, but it has helped with costs a little, and she's been lucky in not really incurring all that much in out of pocket either before or after the July change. As of this month, she's back on disability due to pains aggravated by the demands of retail, but her Social Security has replaced most of those funds. It's more affected her in missing the social interactions and work's opportunities to fill her inborn need to keep busy.
We're also ending the year in better financial shape than we started. We refinanced out of a low-interest but bad-for-credit type of mortgage and also replaced the last of our solar panel loan with a second home equity loan that also covered our upgrades to furnace, air conditioning and insulation. We've managed to sock away a lot more towards taxes than I'd managed to do in previous years, and we just got another three month reprieve on resuming the payments on our parent loans for Emily's college. As much as it's nice to go without that, I'm also preparing to resume it, because the sooner we start up again, the sooner the damn thing will be gone for good. I have no expectation that the Joe in Charge (Manchin, not Biden) will ever offer any relief to us or anyone on the payment obligation itself, and I don't want to be paying on that while I'm drooling and in diapers.
We have the same phones as ever but significantly cut our monthly expense for them by taking a stupid old burner phone off our wireless plan; our computers have finally been upgraded; there's plenty of home entertainment to keep us out of the virus pits of indoor cinemas; and the cars are in good shape (mine will be paid for in 2022 and I hope to go as long as I can with the little guy after that).
Oh, and not for financial reasons or any other outside pressures, but we both stopped drinking at the end of October. It's remarkable how much discretionary cash THAT frees up, and how much better we're sleeping and interacting as a result.
So it may not be all "all good," but we're happy with it.
This entry was originally posted at https://captainsblog.dreamwidth.org/1680721.html. Please comment here, or there using OpenID.
Nobody came for Christmas here today- neither by the door nor the chimney. Nobody left, either, unless you count one walk with the dog and her multiple backyard visits. When Santa made his annual firetruck run around our block yesterday, Pepper stood on the back of the sofa and growled at him. By nightfall, though, she was asleep on that bed, as visions of kitty fur danced in her head:
Though she and her brethren insisted on their usual morning feeding, they all let me get back to sleep after that and I stayed there until the unheard-of time of almost nine. The Christmas Eve snow was all washed away, but we got a walk in while the rain let up. The highlight was her coming nose to, um,
whatever that is below the goggles of this Minionish elf.
The lowlight was around the corner from him, where we realized that the sirens we'd heard close by during the walk were not Santa taking another run around the block. Rather, we passed a full contingent of fire, cop and ambulance vehicles out in front of a near-the-Minion's house, and a stretcher was on the lawn, with nobody moving particularly fast. We hope it wasn't somebody's grandsomebody who passed on Christmas morning and will cause them bad memories of this day in the future.
DEATH does remain an increasingly popular visitor to those you know as you get older. My only vocal interaction today with anyone other than Eleanor and the animals was with my sister, who called in between various holiday outings. She'd left word a while back of the death, earlier this month, of a Binghamton cardiologist she'd worked for back when I lived near there and who I met many times. I finally tracked down his obituary today; "Doctor Sam" was a caring soul who spent a dozen years in the clutches of Alzheimers before his final passing.
Yet let us not forget the symbolism of new birth that comes with this annual holiday.
Born of a human mother, his many words and deeds revealed the true nature of his parentage from the heavens above.
He performed many miracles and the crowds marveled what could be done by the mere laying on of his hands.
His death and resurrection became an inspiration to all of his generation…
Our afternoon film was a Netflix just-release titled Don't Look Up. Leonardo DiCaprio and Jennifer Lawrence try to Follow The Science, while a very Trump-in-Heelsy President played by Meryl Streep seems more determined to follow the votes, or the money, or the vapidness of the current generation of media. It's about a killer comet about to strike the earth, except that it's more about much realer and scientific threats to our world that about half our population wants to ignore or deny. The A-list supporting cast, many uncredited, is also top-rate. Take the message of Dr. Strangelove, work in the casting and cinematography of Thick of It/In the Loop, and throw in some moments of Network and you've got this. It's over two hours long, putting it into current Marvel movie territory, but it doesn't require sitting in a badly ventilated cinema with potentially infected COVIDiots, so that alone recommends it. Until recent days, I'd thought about checking out the only-in-theater release of the latest Spider Man film, but with the Greek Letter Chorus now putting out a new variant at every turn, I really don't want to go out anywhere I don't have to.
----
But I will start posting year end things. Probably tomorrow.
This entry was originally posted at https://captainsblog.dreamwidth.org/1680520.html. Please comment here, or there using OpenID.
Nothing's being wrapped in the paper sense. Timing is weird this year because of the Big Day falling on a Saturday, so yesterday was our last day with everyone in the office, but the usual office luncheon won't be until next week. A couple of people dropped off the obligatory bottles of booze, not having gotten the memo that we're not drinking anything anymore (or that we rarely drank red wine even when we did). They're on top of my office bookcase, joining the bottle I got from somebody a year ago, and there they will remain until suitable regifting can take place. My only gift purchases, beyond the white elephant gift for Axe Night last Friday, were of a couple of the latest candles from Record Archive, in the modern day saint collection-
- and both of those recipients aren't even working with us anymore, but they seemed perfect for them. I'll get a gift card for Jeff The Mailman today as we always do, and if something comes along that looks right for someone, I'll get it.
We don't exchange gifts here, having given up our contracts to the team that encourages that, but yesterday, in the midst of a busy afternoon at work, I got the nicest gift I can imagine from my beloved- seeing a simple post on Facebook:
She's feeling a bit better the past day or so; her acupuncturist tried running electric current through two of the needles, and it really seemed to help. She was able to do more things around the house while I was out. Still, I'm doing virtually all of the shopping, a lot more of the meal prep, and trying to keep up after the fur and other detritis that accumulates here. And then there's the dog, who's been whining the whole time I've been writing this, for snacks and walkies and other attention. It snowed last night just enough to meet the mandatory White Christmas Expectation, only that means we're dreaming of muddy paws until it melts or completely freezes over.
::goes, walks the dog::
----
Eleven hours later.
Oops. Walked the dog, got to the bank and library and a couple stores, read a little, napped a little, watched a film with Michelle Yeoh doing badass martial arts. This followed on last night's viewing of Shang Chi, with Michelle Yeoh also doing badass martial arts but also Awkwafina joining in. I'm waiting for her to join the MCU as a millennial superhero known as Slacker.
Zoey looks almost completely better and we're finishing up her two courses of meds. The boys are getting into their usual sorts of trouble-
- going after artificial flowers.
I'd noted a couple of weeks ago that we watched the filmed adaptation of Jonathan Larson's one-man show, which featured work by Stephen Sondheim. Within a week, Sondheim was dead.
Then last week, we watched a film starring Aubrey Plaza and Elizabeth Olsen, which featured work by Joan Didion. And now Joan Didion is dead.
I think maybe I'll take one for the team and watch Home Alone 2.
Hey. It's a Christmas movie, right?
----
Off to Canada now for some Friday night Doyle.
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I never got to my entertainment report following my assorted rants of the past couple of days. One of the more entertaining things I didn't watch was the Bills breaking a two-game slide and beating an eminently beatable Carolina team. The entertaining part didn't show up online until yesterday, though:
Right before the game started, the Panthers' placekicker injured himself during pregame warmups. No, that's sad and not the entertaining part. THAT came after they carted him off the field, when the team quickly realized they had nobody on the roster even remotely qualified to handle the job. The Panthers, like most NFL teams, only have one placekicker on the roster; that involves running up to a teed-up ball, usually held by another player. It's just like Lucy does with Charlie Brown only they don't pull it back at the last minute:
Teams also employ a "punter" who kicks in a totally different manner without a holder, and Carolina's is an Australian with a soccer background who'd never kicked a teed-up ball before. There's nothing in the rules prohibiting this kind of approach for kickoffs, field goals and extra points; it's just not done because they don't generally go as far or as well. As he quickly found out when they experimented with it in the mere moments before the game began. A few of his teammates, some of whom had kicked field goals back in high school, took their own shots, and those attempts didn't go well, either:
It helps if you whistle "Yakkety Sax" during this playback;)
So the Panthers only placekicked when they absolutely had to: kicking off to start the second half, and then kicking the ball back after their two touchdowns. The emergency kicker didn't make a total fool of himself, but it certainly helped the Bills amass a bigger lead and put the game away much sooner than if they'd been able to kick a field goal or two.
----
After the game and then into Monday, I took a couple of entertaining virtual trips- one to Ennui, France, the other to Freeport, Maine.
The Ennui reference comes from Wes Anderson's latest film, The French Dispatch. We'd planned to see it in cinema when it came out, but with COVIDiocy being particularly strong around here, neither of us is really looking to spend time inside in close quarters more than we have to. Fortunately, it started streaming over the weekend, and we watched it Sunday night and can now go back to it any time we want on Prime.
It's a lot of the usual Wes Anderson casting with a few new ones added, but the subject matter is close to home and heart, since the magazine of the film title, despite being published in a fictional French town, is almost entirely based on the New Yorker. Bill Murray plays the editor of the magazine, who dies in the opening scene but flashes back throughout. We quickly found this piece from the real magazine where Anderson was interviewed a few weeks before its release, and it gives some of the provenance of a lot of the characters.
Murray's editor is mostly based on the New Yorker's founder Harold Ross, with a bit of his successor William Shawn folded in. Frances McDormand is a blend of Mavis Gallant, Lillian Ross and some of the actress herself. The essay is included in a collection of mostly New Yorker pieces that Anderson published in connection with the film, titled An Editor's Burial. I tracked it down to Barnes and Noble Monday afternoon, and that's where the side trip to Maine came up.
LL Bean just opened a store in a nearby strip mall that has just about everything we need: books, pet supplies, Best Buy, Bed Bath and a Target. I picked up a couple of things in the latter before heading to Beans & Noodles for the book, and in between was the newly opened LL Bean outpost. I took note of the hours they said they were open-
- and was surprised they were not open 24 hours. Immediately, I thought of a comedy bit I first heard in college, from the team who went by "Bert and I." They memorably made fun of the Freeport flagship store being open 24 hours, and thanks to the internet, I found the entire routine in seconds.
It's more New Yorker style humor. Eleanor had never heard it before and loved it.
She also took an interest in Succession, an HBO show we'd been hearing about after reading this profile of one of its stars. I'd thought about getting into watching after reading their earlier review of the series, which sounded interesting but maybe too close to previous efforts with dysfunctional rich families like Arrested Development and Schitt's Creek.
Between the different previews, we gave it a try last night, and I think we're hooked on the basis of the first two hours. The cast is an amazing (and humongous) ensemble, many of whom we've seen in other things- from a fairly obscure Kate Winslet effort to Ferris Freakin Bueller's bestie?!? Being an HBO show, it's full of F-bombs, but they're strategically placed and distracted less than we expected they would. Best of all, it's funny; not as over the top as the Roses of Schittsville, but not as visually violent as The Sopranos, which it has been compared to and shares some provenance with.
We've got some catching up to do, since the third season has concluded and we've barely breached the beginning of the first. The family relationships/rivalries are the best part and seem quite real, echoing the genuineness along those lines that makes Republic of Doyle so endearing to us.
We just hope none of them get injured kicking one of their siblings in the ass (_ _)
This entry was originally posted at https://captainsblog.dreamwidth.org/1679924.html. Please comment here, or there using OpenID.
I don't know how we managed to live without online drama in those halcyon pre-social media days. When you got into a dispute with someone, you were generally there when it happened, and you knew who you were in and out with and why. These little 0s and 1s have expanded our universes, but not only at a cost of immense time-wasting. It's become possible to make and lose friendships without even knowing.
Back in LJ days, when I had dozens of friends of varying real-life connectedness posting (including my wife, child and eldest niece at various times), there was a lot more back and forth and a lot of words being exchanged that could easily be misunderstood. The message you'd get if you got into one of those misunderstandings was blunt and harsh:
I don't know if Dreamwidth, my current hosting site, even has such a thing, and I can't recall ever getting such a notice. For one thing, this site doesn't describe your fellow bloggers as "friends;" you "subscribe" and "grant access" to each other. Just as important, the number here of people posting regularly is so comparatively small, and the posts of those who do even more sparse, than at the height of the blogging movement back in the oughts. So I've been spared the drama of finding out that someone unfriended me, often without telling me, and at least sometimes without my even knowing why. On one day about a decade ago, I got a simultaneous boot from two LJ friends who both were equally offended by a userpic I put up. I missed them; one was one of my earliest friends here, the other became even closer friends with the first after I introduced them to each other. But if they were going to take offense to a fucking picture, I had better things to do than grovel back into their good graces. One of them continues to post regularly to this day (all of them friendslocked), the other doesn't have one here and purged the old LJ account. I've somehow managed to live without them. Others, who I do maintain connections with, deleted me over one stray remark or another, but I reached out, discussed what it was, and we lived, learned and got over it. As friends do.
Not that I miss any of this bullshit, but if I ever did, it's alive and well on the universal center of bullshit known as Facebook.
----
I use an addon called FB Purity on my Facebook account. It lets you see more of the entries you want and fewer of the distractions you don't want. It also includes a feature that periodically scans your current list of Friends and notifies you if one of them is no longer in social communion with you.
More often than not, it pops up when someone deactivates their account. I've got close to a half dozen friends still showing as in this Facebook purgartory- who just got sick of the data gathering and time wasting and who knows what else, but who kept their basic existence alive while they take a "Facebreak" of weeks, months or forevers. You can delete them if you want, but otherwise when and if they come back, your friendship picks up where it left off.
Other times, it's just a matter of trial and error. I've had people from musical connections, and poets, and people from past home towns, add me and then subtract me a few weeks later. That's cool; not everyone wants my endless puns, bad fucking language, and rants about sportsball teams. Most of these people, I've met no more than once or twice, if at all.
But the name that popped up last night surprised me. It's someone I've met numerous times, attended multiple sporting events with (along with other family members), bought and sold tickets and other minor merch with, and even been out to dinner with when a family member was in Rochester for an event. We have dozens of mutual friends. What caused this sudden turn?
I actually worry about shit like this. There hadn't been any direct exchanges in days or even weeks, though I did leave a comment on a mutual friend's post they were tagged in. After wondering all night about it, I reached out this morning along these lines:
I hate non-apology apologies where people say "sorry if you were offended by something," but in this case I have no idea what I said that was offensive, so I guess I'll have to go with that.
It brought a quick enough reply: I wasn't offended, but your comments are often off topic and derail the discussions. Sure enough, my stray comment on the mutual friend's post was the one that led to it. I thought (not particularly) long and (not particularly) hard before I decided to take the high road and said I'd try to be less scattershot in responding to posts that might have this effect. For now, we've made up and are friends again, but it was still a distraction I didn't need going into what is likely to be a short but busy week.
And so, kids, the moral of the story:
If I ever cause you concern, grief, pain or anything bad on account of something I said, didn't say, did or didn't do? Tell me. I think most people would want the same, rather than just finding out they've been kicked aside on account of it. I'm reminded of something once heard from a college professor I once knew, which I quote often:
Words are a clumsy way of talking.
Eleanor and I have at least one experience a week where that proves to be true. And online forms make it worse: text doesn't convey tone, and emojis only go so far to compensate. The lack of immediacy in response can lead to causes and effects being forgotten, which can lead to simple misunderstandings being harder to understand and forgive.
I tend not to drop the banhammer on people, other than Trumpernutters and TERFs, but I can passively ignore as well as the next person. That said, a friend's a friend, and if you're reading this and I know who you are, if there's something I can help with, I will do everything reasonably feasible to do so, no matter how far or how tenuous the "real life" connection is.
Cutting off me (or a loved one) will make it much less likely that will happen, though.
This entry was originally posted at https://captainsblog.dreamwidth.org/1679723.html. Please comment here, or there using OpenID.
I'm almost through my third month of using the Everything's Up To Date version of Office products, including Word, Excel and Outlook. Eleanor's finishing up her first month, and she's made her own choices about some options (like not using the cloud for file storage or the Outlook calendar option). We both are having slow adjustments to it all, and usually find the built-in or online help recommendations to be pretty damn helpless.
My biggest annoyance of the past week was discovering that my calendars were not syncing between phone and laptop. One of the sheer joys of the upgrade was that I no longer needed to use iTunes to manage the sync; I didn't even need to connect the two devices to each other by physical cable. Enter an appointment in either place, and voila!, it instantly appeared in the other.
There were exceptions, of course. Any time I was sent an email invitation to an online meeting (usually a Teams court appearance), it would only show up in my Offishul Outlook calendar connected to my non-Apple email address. No biggie; I just remembered to put an entry in the iCloud version I have as my go-to, that duplicated or at least pointed to it. But last week, I noticed that entries in either were NOT showing up in the other. Ever. I looked for helpful hints in official Apple and Microsoft support groups:
"Make sure your phone is not in airplane mode." Derp. I haven't been on a plane since 2005.
"Flush your DNS cache." Sounded kinda dirty, but I tried the DOS-looking command and it did nothing.
"In Outlook 365, from the file menu, select Account Settings>Account Settings." Obviously a suggestion from the Department of Redundancy Department. Whatever it was, it didn't work. But meanwhile, back at the ranch file menu, was a box buried at the bottom of the list:
slow and disabled com add-ins
Since nothing else had worked, I clicked it, and there was my answer: Oopsies, it looks like Outlook crashed when we tried syncing your calendars, so rather than fix the bug, we decided to just disable syncing. Ticky this box====>> if you want to turn it back on.
I did, and instantly appointments popped up in both places!
So now I know what to do if this happens again. Unfortunately, the nature of the problem is such that you won't necessarily notice it's not syncing appointments until (a) it doesn't and (b) you miss one. In turn, that means I'll need to double check after every entry to be sure it's working, which eliminates much of the efficiency the "feature" is intended to create.
----
Other things are incredibly easy to turn off on your own.
We did a short round of bill-paying this afternoon. Eleanor's been learning how to access all the various sites, navigate the mazes of logins and HOW DO I JUST PAY THE DAMN BILL, and then print the confirmation. Every one of them makes some effort to get you to "go paperless" with your statements, and to get you to agree to autopay their bill every month or quarter or whatever. I've always resisted both; paperless billing is only as good as your access to the paperless method, and thanks to hacking and just plain bad coding, at least once a month I find myself locked out of being able to pay a bill because they didn't recognize my IP address or operating system or browser-
- and then go through these "Let's Verify Your Identity" rounds with two-factor texts or emails before I can GIVE THEM MONEY. Autopay has its own issues; often you're authorizing them to charge an unknown amount (which may be higher next time) on an unknown date (which may be earlier next time) and if you don't have the scratch, both they and your bank charge you fees for not having it.
For your convenience.
Anyway, while doing the billpay today, Eleanor inadvertently turned on paperless on one of the accounts. I turned it right back off. Their only stated incentives for this are: guilt (see the nice green leaf we put there?), alleged convenience (no stamps! even though you can pay online without stamps even if you get paper statements), and no clutter (from the places that move their websites and login procedures around like a floating crap game and you have to keep track of THAT clutter). The only ones I'll do paperless or autopay with are ones that actually give you a discount for doing it, and those, I NEVER tie to a debit or bank account, just to a credit card.
Now the one thing I would LOVE to be paperless is pharmacy paperwork. Usually a 30-day supply of a prescription med is accompanied by a 90-day supply of 8½ x 11 paper, filled on one if not both sides with lists of side effects, suicide prevention warnings, poison control center referrals, and endless streams of medicalese. The same ones on every bottle every time, times about nine for the two of us. I've asked if they could turn the paper off on those, like they fortunately have been able to send Eleanor's arthritis meds home in non-childproof caps. Nope. Gotta get those disclosures every time, trees be damned.
----
It's also annoying how they try to talk all cutesy when putting you through this. Banks and other websites increasingly go with "Let's verify your identity," or "Let's make sure your contact information is up to date." How about "Let's not and say we did," guys? AT&T was a constant annoyance of this kind; I say "was" because they ARE now on paperless and autopay because they showed me the money to do it, but I still log in occasionally to check a balance or get a record of a past call. Instead of "please wait" or just the spinning circle, you get this, every stinking time:
No, that's not true. Because before I could screenshot THAT, of course I got this:
Um, is "blown out of your ass" an available option?
Oh well. We're going to stream French Dispatch tonight after I feed the animals. At least THEY know who I am:P
This entry was originally posted at https://captainsblog.dreamwidth.org/1679482.html. Please comment here, or there using OpenID.
I figured I may as well start a post while I’m waiting in a parking lot again. Our vet has gone back to pets-only-in-the-building protocol at least on Saturdays, so Jack is in there getting a booster. I just finished a week with some potential big new stuff and the long anticipated round of axe throwing.
Sure, there are the jokes. Sure, there are the filmed fails. For me, at least, it wasn’t made any worse by the addition of alcohol to the mix. I don’t think I’ve mentioned it here previously, but both of us have been almost completely alcohol-free for almost two months. My only fail was a couple of beers at a concert back on Halloween; Eleanor's, the one night after she worked two straight days and just couldn't take the pain of it anymore. She's since discovered that the wine really doesn't do anything to dull the pain anymore, so she's been off it since. I accompanied the blades with Dr. Pepper.
Lasertron must've been losing business for team-building exercises to assorted bars and gyms offering this "service," so they've added a few lanes for the activity:
Not sure if that's a sanitizer or roach spray in that bottle.
After getting the hang (heh) of it, we settled into mostly games of "pirate tic tac toe," where four groups aimed for spots on a board, getting an X, O, Y or Z for hitting a square and stealing (hence the pirate part) any already-claimed one. This led to some interesting boards, as Rose Marie and Paul Lynde produced this rather interesting combination:
Yiddish axe-throwing. There was a baby with us, but fortunately for her, she wasn't an eight-day-old Jewish male.
I actually did respectably well at this. The easiest way to mess the game up is by throwing too hard, which usually results in it bouncing off the board (and occasionally richocheting back toward you;). I took it nice and easy and was able to come close to aiming properly. It also helped that you start the throw by holding it behind your head with a grip not far off from a dumbbell exercise I've done hundreds of times. So I came out alive and sober, which are good things.
From there, we proceeded to eat and indulge in the annual gift exchange. My contribution was the first gift off the board. Literally:
I found it at Record Archive a few weeks ago and thought it would be perfectly stupid for the occasion. I did check it out online before purchasing, since we had an unfortunate incident a few years back where somebody's kids won a NSFW Cards Against Humanity game, but this one seemed pretty tame. It even offers a money back guarantee: "If for any reason you are not satisfied with your Generic Game, just return it to your closet and we will cheerfully keep your money."
It was kept by the guy who picked it from the treasure trove. I was the last to go and could have stolen it or any of the other 12 gifts opened before me, but that seemed Scroogie, plus I didn't really need another coffee mug or blanket. So I took the last package on the table, which turned out to be an oversized stress ball. It's going to the office, since the cats would destroy it in seconds.
(Speaking of, I've been home since the second paragraph. Jack's vax went very quickly.)
----
An oversized stress ball may help if I get into something I was offered the other day.
I was downtown Thursday afternoon, in an actual suit about to go into an actual courtroom for the first time in months. We wound up settling it while we waited, but then another call came in from an attorney I just settled another case with. Long story short, he's looking to place a case he just filed but found he had a conflict on. It would be a lot of work but significantly paid for in advance. I did a little looking into it while away with my lumberjack tools yesterday, and will talk to the people involved next week before deciding. Nothing ever came of the other two potential possibles I mentioned a couple weeks ago, so at least I won't have those and this tying up my time.
Also while waiting for my own case to be called, I marveled at how much time can be wasted over much smaller things. My own client was close to an hour late getting there, so when they opened the courtroom doors, one case at a time, I watched as no fewer than four lawyers marched in on a single case in Small Claims Court. Even assuming a cheap-for-this-market average hourly rate of $250 an hour and minimal preparation time, I watched $2500 go up in smoke on a case jurisdictionally limited to five grand. You don't need a lawyer in small or commercial claims court, although they are permitted, but I often advise clients to go themselves and spare themselves the expense if we've prepared in advance. The judges and hearing officers who do these things like to play TV judge ("Wapner," they'll always be to me, though "Judge Judy" seems to be more recognizable among the kids now;) and they seem to not like lawyers interrupting their auditions with objections and such.
Once done with all these weighty things, I headed back to the office and passed an odd sight:
This is the site of the former Buffalo Gun Center, which went out of business earlier this year with a spectacular sale, complete with balloons for the kids! This soon-to-be weed business is taking its place. I guess if you can’t shoot ‘em, stone ‘em.
As I learned in my four-hour seminar on the subject, the rulemaking for allowing the licensing of dispensaries and "lounges" is still in its infancy in New York, but it's hoped they will be up and running in 2022. Maybe by the time of next year's party we can include edibles and such in our gift exchange....
and if so, I strongly recommend we continue to do the axe throwing first;)
This entry was originally posted at https://captainsblog.dreamwidth.org/1679292.html. Please comment here, or there using OpenID.
We've been spending a lot of time lately treating our oldest cat's latest flareup of a herpes condition that gets into her eyes and points south from time to time. The last round was back in the spring, and we still had the eyedrops for it in the fridge. They were technically out of date by a few weeks but the vet said they would be okay.
Objections, of course, were forthcoming from the cat. At first, we both sat down with her twice a day to administer the drops. She no likee. She runnee and hidee as soon as she saw the two of us coming. So we've switched to each doing it solo- Eleanor mornings, me evenings- and she seems to be getting used to it. When it started running low, we renewed the scrip, but they also reminded us of an antibiotic that she'd also been on the last time for the secondary issues that came up with her breathing. We suspect the latter condition was what was making her go off her feed for the past week or so. She just has a hard time sticking her kisser in a food bowl with her schnozz all stuffed up. So I picked that one up last night and we tried the first dose. It's a liquid that goes in an eyedroppy thing you shove down her gullet.
Or try to. She REALLY no likee that, and I've got the scratches on my wrist to prove it. We then remembered that we gave it to her the last time in a bowl with tuna juice mixed in, and it went like a charm....
down the gullets of the other two idiots who broke into the room we were stashing it (and her) in:P It won't hurt them, and we now know to completely isolate them until Zoey is done. Eleanor gave her a full treatment this morning after I left for work and she hoovered it right down. She also ate everything I gave her at 6 a.m., and she looks and sounds much better, so hopefully this is headed in the right direction.
----
If only Eleanor's ills were as simple.
She's back on disability, and is still trying all kinds of remedies for fixing the wrist issue that her working retail aggravates to the point of excrutiating pain. She'd been seeing an acupuncturist for related ills last year, but that practice shut down, and a newer one basically wanted to pay for his next boat with an upfront commitment to eleven sessions. Finally she found one who was able to do pay-as-you-go and thought six weeks of treatments would be enough. She's halfway through, and it seems to be helping some.
Medicare, not so much. She stuck with her Medigap plan after open enrollment, though she did switch drug plans this time which could be an aggravation post in itself. This time, though, she was on the phone for hours trying to find out whether Medicare would cover any or all of the acupuncture cost. She finally got an answer: they only cover it for back-related issues. Fortunately, she wasn't on the automated voice-bot system when she found that out, because otherwise it would have gone like this:
Eleanor: They only cover acupuncture for back pain.
Bot: No, we don't cover it for any pain there, either.
Just under three years before I get to look forward to this:P
----
Which leaves the brain, or what's left of it. The first two workdays this week were incredibly intense, Monday with endless paper-pushing for the big new case I filed last week, Tuesday with running round to various clerk's offices to file or attempt to file things. We've been watching Aubrey Plaza in a bunch of films of late, so I picked up library disks of Parks and Rec which we'd never watched and are trying her out in that, as well. Today, I had a Teams appearance at 9:30 (which really wasn't one but I got what I wanted out of it anyway), and then a phone conference in a second case and an actual live court appearance in a third, both at 2 p.m. So I'm full frontal for once in a suit all the way to the shoes, and will call into the phone one while waiting for the other. Or vice versa.
Tomorrow's the office party in Rochester with axe throwing, and I have to come up with a stupid White Elephant gift. Since most of our discretionary funds have gone to animals this week (we also got Pepper groomed yesterday), maybe I'll just bring a bag of kibble. Wet cat food has become the latest supply chain item to go mostly missing, and I've been reduced to slumming in dollar stores to find Nine Lives, our forever brand of choice.
The brain also barely survived another season of Learned League. Most past competitions, I've made it my goal to finish at least at .500, but that went out the window toward the end of last week. So I was on the verge of being kicked out of my skill-level group if I didn't finish in the top 25 (out of 32), and I went into the final round yesterday smack in the Extinction Zone. Fortunately, I pulled out a win, putting me barely in 25th place. Several of us had the same overall number of points, but I preserved my spot on the first tiebreaker, which was the daily points difference over the 25 game season. Another guy had the same number of points and actually won and tied more games than I did, but he unfortunately forfeited three times during the series and you lose points for that. He and I were the only ones who received even close to as many points as we surrendered. We never played head-to-head this time, but I did have one person forfeit on me a few weeks ago. Even though I only know two other current players out of thousands (and they're literally out of my league), I still worry when someone doesn't show up. I almost reached out to him to make sure he was okay (he was- finished in second place and will be promoted to a smarter group next time).
So thank heaven for small favors- even if I have trouble remembering them;)
This entry was originally posted at https://captainsblog.dreamwidth.org/1678929.html. Please comment here, or there using OpenID.
Wow, getting close to posting every day again. As I probably will when we get closer to month end, when the traditional Year In Review series arrives. Quite a bit to choose from this year, but some are already pretty obvious, while one or two are still yet to be completely written.
As for today's title, it was bound to happen. With the gale force winds all last night, I had no expectation that Rosie was going to last a sixth night on the signpole. What I also didn’t expect was to find it at all, but there it was, maybe two feet from the base of the pole. My best guess is that a thorn stuck in one of the cracks in the pavement and anchored it, low to the ground where the wind wasn’t as strong. There’s got to be a metaphor in that; I just haven’t figured out what it is yet.
I brought it in to show Eleanor. It’s tucked away, safe from prying paws. Maybe we’ll do something like she did with this one, from our wedding service. Thirty-four years along and still beautiful. Now. THAT metaphor’s easy ❤️
The winds died down- still out there, but I'd call them Mostly Dead at the moment- and it got a lot colder overnight after hitting close to 70F here yesterday. That saved a lot of people who lost power and heat in the storm. We weren't among them, fortunately- but more, apparently, is on the way:
The damn cable company- the same one that refuses to send me real emails- sent me two of their own last night, warning about the possible effects locally to be caused by an upcoming event that the Weather Channel has named "Winter Storm Atticus." (The real weather service wants nothing to do with this naming bullshit.)
Given the name, however contrived, I speculated that these effects include possible loss of power and internet connectivity, high winds, blowing and drifting snow, and the unexpected appearance of Boo Radley in your front yard.
----
The weekend went quickly, as things go around here. I headed to the office for a writing group meeting that apparently did not exist, and took the time to clear up some leftover work crap from the week just past. We tried a Netflix film that one or the other of us had ordered at some point, without either enjoying it, and switched over to a Nora from Queens episode and our second Republic of Doyle from its fourth season. Here's where they'd achieved enough popular success to get nice and Easter-eggy in the scripts. The season premiere was partially set in a St. John's strip club they named "Great Big She," after the then-band singing the theme song of the show. And in the second, there's a scene where Rose has hacked into a list of addicts getting hooked up with skeevy oxy prescriptions, and one of the names on the list is Perry Chafe, one of Allan's fellow showrunners.
Rose the character, that is. Not the rose out on our street corner.
I found a film for rental on Prime that Allan Hawco has a prominent role in, opposite Shirley MacLaine and Christopher Plummer. We have a couple others Eleanor found at the library that we'll get to first, but it never hurts to have some Doyle for backup.
----
Today began with a dog walk. A third pup joined the pack, and while she got along fine with Pepper and the humans, she set off the pittie mix who began coming with a few weeks ago. Natasha, also, gets along fine with our dog and everyone else around, but it was a lot more barking to start the day than we're used to in this little group.
For the rest of the day, we restocked our pulled pork inventory. A few months ago, Eleanor showed me how to select a pork shoulder at the store, prep it for a slow cook, then debone it and turn it into bags and bags of barbecue. She helped more this time than previous, which I was a little worried about. After two straight days of four-hour Wegmans shifts early last week, her hands were going to 11 in pain, and she's back out on disability for now. She has a specialist appointment in a few weeks, and is also trying CBD oils and acupuncture. They help a little, but not enough to go back to work. So she's trying hard to do what she can, and I'm trying hard to make sure it's not overdoing it.
----
And that's it for now. Atticus is coming. Better batten down those Mockingbirds:P
This entry was originally posted at https://captainsblog.dreamwidth.org/1678819.html. Please comment here, or there using OpenID.
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