As In Full Of Hot...

Your Element Is Air

You dislike conflict, and you've been able to rise above the angst of the world. And when things don't go your way, you know they'll blow over quickly. Easygoing, you tend to find joy from the simple things in life. You roll with the punches, and as a result, your life is light and cheerful. You find it easy to adapt to most situations, and you're an open person. With you, what you see is what you get... and people love that!

What's Your Element?

Peace Through Superior Firepower Is My Motto!

You Are Somewhat Machiavellian

You're not going to mow over everyone to get ahead... But you're also powerful enough to make things happen for yourself. You understand how the world works, even when it's an ugly place. You just don't get ugly yourself - unless you have to!

How Machiavellian Are You?

Blogthings: Waste Time at Work!

I Still Need To Work On The Thriller Dance.

You Are 64% A Child of the 80s

Not only did you experience the 80s... you are practically an expert. You should be totally stoked!

Are You a Child of an 80s?

Blogthings: Discover the Parts of Your Personality that Have Been Hiding

Mr. Spock As An Artist.

Your Creative Power is Your Logic

You're the type of person who is great at execution. You don't just dream about ideas - you make them happen! You are idealistic and determined, but you are also a realist. You only undertake projects you're pretty sure you can finish. You are a natural problem solver, and you actually think better when you're being challenged. You do best when you work by yourself or when you're in charge. You ideas are big, dramatic, and the best.

What's Your Creative Power?

The First Rule of Blogthings Is: You Don't Talk About Blogthings

The Blahs.

I swear I've been infected with a terminal case of the blahs. This is even worse than the typical Monday Blahs. Perhaps a good night's sleep will provide some relief.

40 Under 40.

I admit it. I'm tired of all these 40 Under 40 lists. Whenever I see one, especially when a classmate or schoolmate is in one I wonder: what am I doing wrong? I hate being jealous, but I also hate not being as good as I want to be or being recognized for all the things I do accomplish. I accomplish the dirty jobs. No one ever seems to care about the dirty jobs but they need to be done. I'm a person who does things. I just wish I did a little more.

Be Careful What You Wish For.

The staff came to me with a problem. It seems various people had been doing things without our office. Not only that, they hired their own lawyers to fix their problems. However, those lawyers never contacted our office to see if there were some issues. So it is a few years after they thought they solved their problems. Nope, those idiots were wrong! Not only that, but the idiots wanted our office to solve the problem. Oh, I'm sorry as soon as a problem affects you, now you want to talk to us. Give me a break!

I resent the fact our office has to clean up the mess others create. However, we had a brainstorming session. The idiots want me to resolve the problem. I decided we should solve it, but I'm going to do it my way and not the way they wanted. Not only that after a few minutes we realized the expected answers were not at all like they expected.

I'm going to give these idiots exactly what they asked for. They're not going to like it.

Happiness Is The Simple Things.

Okay, sometimes happiness is visiting the parents after work and taking a nap with DogHound. It was one of those days where it wasn't worth getting out of bed. I think DogHound agreed.

Would This Qualify As Stare Decisis?

This judge never minces words. "Well sir the problem is you're an asshole!" I have no idea how my jaw didn't drop when the judge said that. The guy looked at the judge and agreed. I did raise an eyebrow on that one. I had to ponder. Since it was on the record the guy was an asshole does that set precedence? Would it ever be noted in a hearing in April 2010, that so and so was an asshole? I guess it would only matter if another court needed to determine the issue.

Sometimes there is humor in my day.

Small First Steps.

I'm sure if I got home at a decent time I would have this task finished by now. Instead I'm about halfway through the task. I'm updating my resume. It should have been done a long time ago, but I've finally reached my threshold.

It is officially time to start looking for a new job.

I'm sure the job market sucks. The type of positions I'm most interested in I hear nothing but bad news about in the papers, TV, and web. I refuse to jump ship to just anything else out there. Yet I can't stand the inequity of my current job.

I can't stand the fact I have twice as many hearings as my boss. I can't stand that I put twice as much into the file before a hearing because I figure I should be professional and try to account for the most likely scenarios and questions I'll encounter at a hearing. I can't stand that I put in twice as much after a hearing before giving the file back to a clerk instead of just dumping the file into the clerks' laps. I can't stand the never ending combat with these cases. We can't fix them. We can't solve the problems. We can't make people better than what they are, and these people can't fix a thing in their lives. We can't finish a case.

I can't stand the hour long commute. I put on over 26,000 miles on my car last year. I can't stand the long hours on the job, the long hours on the road, the too few hours of sleep and the scant few hours remaining in the day. I'm tired of every Saturday wondering if I should go into the office and the Saturdays I do go down wondering why the network is only available until noon.

It may be a day or two before I get back to my resume. It might be the weekend before I start paying the legal websites to get access to any open positions listed. It might be awhile before I find a good ad to respond to. It might be awhile before my life changes, but change it must.

On Call Again.

This time I'm on-call for jury duty in Big City. I have to call a number and listen for my lottery number. If my number comes up I report for jury duty the next morning.

Given that I am an attorney I have great difficulty imagining that I'll every actually serve on a jury. What lawyer would want another lawyer in their jury?

Toying With My Prey.

He's a clueless moron. At the last hearing the judge ripped into him like polar bear. Deservedly so I might add. He's a moron that fails to realize his actions have consequences. The judge told him what conditions the moron must follow to be in the judge's good graces. I wrote that order of course and I try to use simple every day language. I even broke down the judge's conditions using the numbers 1, 2, and 3. Nothing was unreasonable or difficult to do either. We knew he had a problem with employment and money so the third condition was if you work at all that week pay something towards the obligations you owe. Even if the moron only paid $5 - $10, we could have worked with that. The second condition was if you get or lose a job just let your attorney or me know in a timely fashion. Neither of those sound unreasonable or difficult to do, right?

Over the past few months I had a few email exchanges with the moron's attorney. We could tell the moron was having trouble following the simple directions. I noted if the moron wouldn't correct the problem soon I would press the issue with the judge at the next hearing. When I prepped the file for today's hearing I discovered the attorney had withdraw. The excuse was the moron wasn't fulfilling his end of the bargain in a nutshell.

The moron walked in today. I knew I would finally have fun and hopefully make a point to this dumbass.

Me: Okay did let me or your lawyer know you had a job?
Moron: Yeah I got around to telling the lawyer I had that I was working.
Me: When did you start working?
Moron: November.
Me: November? I don't see any money till just before Christmas. Did you get paid in November and early December at all?
Moron: Yeah I signed a sheet saying it was okay to garnish my pay.
Me: So did you pay anything once you started working?
Moron: I signed the sheet saying it was okay to start garnishing my pay.
Me: No I understand you signed a paper to start the garnishment. My question is when you saw your first couple of paychecks, you saw taxes were taken out right?
Moron: Yea.
Me: And you saw that FICA was taken out for Social Security right?
Moron: Yeah they always do that right?
Me: And you noticed there wasn't any garnishment right?
Moron: Well I signed a sheet after that saying it was okay to garnish my pay.
Me: No I understand you signed the sheet. What I'm asking is you saw the garnishment didn't come out for at least a month right? Did you pay anything at all until the garnishment?
Moron: No.
Me: Do you remember what the judge said at the last hearing?
Moron: No that was a long time ago.
Me: When you got the order in the mail, did you read the part saying if you worked at all to pay something? And if you lost your job you had to tell your lawyer or me?

The judge ripped into the moron again and sent him to jail for contempt of the court. All too easy!

My Red Pen Ran Out Of Ink.

How's your tourney bracket looking now? While upsets are awesome to watch and it is fun to see powers go down, it does make one's bracket sheet look like it was used as gauze for treating a wound.

Wounded brackets, yeah that sounds right. Heck we still have all of Sunday's games to go through for the rest of Round 2!

Congratulations to No 1 Kansas. You are officially the biggest choke in the 2010 tourney!

Our Proper Mission Statement.

We fail to do the impossible with minimal resources.

I'm Going To Need So Many Furry Kisses Tomorrow.

This week has been hell at work. Seriously I can think of no other way to describe it. I've stayed until 6:30 p.m. twice to get ready for the next day, tonight I stayed until 6:00 p.m.. Tuesday was my early night by getting out at 5:00 p.m., by going through 30 hearings in 3 hours. What...the...hell! For the last two and a half weeks I've been dealing with either a continuous flow of hearings or needing to prep all those files for the continuous flow of hearings.

Tomorrow will be a constant flow of courtrooms. In addition to my stuff I'll have to cover some of my boss's hearings as well. When he scheduled his pretrial conferences there wasn't anything on the calendar then, but now there is. I'm sorry but when I schedule my pretrials I only schedule two in a morning, max! I do it so that I can go to some hearings if required. The boss will schedule 4 in a morning and 2 in the afternoon just so he can be finished with all pretrials in one day. I think he's nuts.

I'll be honest I'm getting resentful of having to cover for him all the damned time. I already do the work of two attornies because we're just that busy and Small Town will never hire someone to help us out. Yet I do the work of more than two attornies because I have to double check that my boss is ready for what we know about and quickly spring into action when something goes wrong and he isn't available. This morning was a perfect example. I had a 15 minute break where I wanted to type a motion I needed for tomorrow. A court calls and wonders were someone from our office is. We had hearing then? Really? When the hell did that pop onto the calendar? It wasn't even my file, but after scrounging around for the file I prepped it in about 5 minutes. I could have prepped it in 2 minutes, but the staff kept asking me what was going on. Okay I know people are trying to be helpful, but after I explain the problem once please leave me alone so I don't type in the same incorrect information four times because people keep distracting me. It isn't a good sign when I ask all the parties why are we here today.

At least tomorrow I'll visit my parents. The elderly DogHound had a decent week according to them. I shall place DogHound on my lap, explain how horrible my week was, and let his brown eyes express how much he wants me to pet him. If DogHound is feeling somewhat energetic he may even kiss me. I'm very happy DogHound has lasted this long. I'm really going to need him tomorrow just to feel human again.

I'm Going To Win This One!

One of the courts sent a note down stating I was to provide the written order from an October hearing. Oh crap, did I miss one? It happens every now and then. We have so much volume we sometimes haven't written the order yet, or the file gets into one of the clerks' hands and they forget to bring the file back.

I find the file and open it. Underneath a few pieces of paper is the written order that I typed up the day of the hearing. The judge's signature is dated 9 days later.

I'm already insanely busy and backed up with orders to write. I don't need to deal with a forgetful court as well!

Happy Birthday Chuck Norris.

Today is the 70th birthday of Chuck Norris. Chuck Norris is 70? No way! In typical Chuck Norris fashion I heard he roundhouse kicked his birthday into next year.

Spring Is In The Air.

I couldn't take it anymore. The sun was out, the temperature the warmest since before Thanksgiving, and my window will open. I opened up the window in my office! Sure the temps were barely over 50, but that feels very warm compared to the winter we've had.

Fresh almost springtime air wafted into my office window. Along with the cigarette smoke from the judge by the steps. I've forgotten how far that odor will waft.

I swear nothing totally good ever occurs at work.

Early To Bed, Early To Rise?

I'm so sleep deprived I'm going to try to go to bed now. It is 9:30.

I think I'm turning into an old man!

Sometimes I Just Feel Dirty.

I'm doing a little paraphrasing but it went something like this.

In the beginning A owes B a lot of money. A also owes me a little money.
Later on B should start paying A. However since A owes all that money it is decided that B should burn through all the money A owes as a credit.
I really dislike those deals as no one ever keeps track of when the credit is burned through.
Now B burned through that large credit and never bothered to start paying A when the time came.
I had to figure out all the numbers. Turns out all the money A owed me was never paid and is still owed. Call that value X. What B would owe A is 10X. B was rather shocked by this. Hello you didn't keep track of things did you?
A and B decide instead of B paying A 10X and A paying me X, that B will pay X to me and A will forgive B's debt.
Okay. I did my job and protected X. A and B got something they wanted. A forgives B's debt and resolves the debt to me. B got to settle a debt for 10 cents on the dollar. Legally it is all good and the judge signed off on the deal.
Yet I have a huge moral qualm. A is a deadbeat dirtbag and gets out of paying any money for any debts A owed. I'm a firm believer you should pay your debt. I'm hoping one day all the crap A has pulled off will someday catch up to him in a bad way. I don't have any moral qualms about that.