Next Up: The Year of the Mediation Commences with explosions and blow-ups betwixt implausible cases of past incompetence. Will the resulting flurrying papers behead any beloved characters? Drills come out and smiles break glass as our heroine flees work for a moment of unlikely respite. Court looms in the land of Turkey. Will the clowns ride their horses to victory? And first-husband (W)right begins his Odyssean maunders from home. Will his plucky Penelope fend off the single-lady blues with a healthy heaping of Tour de France and a spatula full of foods?
Strap on your silliest helmet, dye your sheep crimson, and get ready to calendar hop through time to find the answers to this and more...
Strapped in and Ready to Ride the Wiley Workhorse Time for that Dentist's Appointment Yet??
I once again throw my hands to the skies with white flags unfurled: I have no idea what day it is and the day-of-the-week metric is officially useless for the next fortnight or so. Especially with Mr. (W)right's impending Friday-Saturday absence, and related shuffling, There is no anchor reference for my calendar week.
Theoretically yesterday was Tuesday. It did, in fact, conform to certain expectations of Tuesday in that I went to the DRC in the afternoon. In other regards, it lived up to the more relevant expectations of "The Falconers must be coming soon, because things are amping up again" late-July bedlam (ooooh bed). A routine consult turned into a tag-team attorney hunt through the paper trails of two separate cause numbers and administrative hearings - all with some pretty shocking but just-credible levels of incompetence and other flagrant violations of the Rules of Professional Conduct - to sort out what the heck happened and why did your ex wife's brother's pet goat get custody of your daughter??? before even addressing the major emergencies that needed triage.
At the same time, a never-routine mediation turned into a last minute blitz of "well, if that's all you can give us, then why are we having this mediation?" scuffling and shuffling. Sometimes mediation just doesn't make sense. Like when the other side (1) gets in a mediation letter after hours the day before a morning mediation, (2) insists that the first issue to be addressed is one that nobody agreed to mediate, (3) ignores the slurry of documentation, responses, answers, and queries that have been supplied over an eight week period of unresponsive radio silence from that other side, and (4) includes a client's emailed response document to a tangential issue that could have been provided at any time in the last six weeks and isn't relevant to mediation... all with none of the requested documentation or any answers in sight (perhaps the letter was intended to come with a decoder ring and relevant answers properly encrypted to protect against unwarranted google/facebook/NSA/KGB data caching! Maybe the damned letter was in Cherokee translated into Pig Latin).
The cancellation and follow up discussions between attorneys and attorneys, attorneys and clients, everyone and the mediator, interjected itself at random intervals during the tag-team emergency consult. A few minor characters and cameos may have been decapitated by all that flying paper.
...All of which, fortunately was not interrupted by mom-boss' scheduled consult, who'd written down the time wrong and was on her way in an hour late.
... And my mom had a four-way in the afternoon. So kind of one of those days.
I also spent the morning in intensive focus mode to draft a declaration that I'd written down as being due on Friday, but which actually - by any rational count - would not be due until late next week. Ah well. I swear somebody told me to do it by the 25th! I swear. And, hey, at least it's done. Or started. It's a rough draft, after all.
Today, we interrupt our regularly scheduled Wednesday for a dentist's appointment! Yep, they like to reassure me that my dental hygiene is stellar, but there's just nothing to be done about childhood sealants sometimes. So off to numb my face and stare into space for a spell (over lunch time, which is not really how I'd prefer to stuff my face about that hour). I'm looking forward to it. My dentist is preternaturally pleasant and is essentially a model for any client-service based metric. Seriously. I am not being paid to endorse Dr. Lemperes. Though I do not write off some kind of strange mind-control or happy drugs in the well maintained tea/coffee station. I don't know how he does it, but no matter how horrid the procedure, one comes out with a smile (good advertisement for a dentist, I suppose).
The only thing I'd like to amend (other than perhaps bringing back my pediatric dentists' practice of giving me a small toy at the end of each visit... dinosaurs!!) would be that in addition to their office iPod for patients during longer procedures, they invest in some google glass with a kindle app. Seriously, this - to me - is the absolute best theoretical lure of google glass: being able to read when I am in positions that make it impossible to hold a book or device. Laying back during procedures, cooking, out in the rain... talking with boring people... Just think! I joke on that last one. While I'm thoroughly distractible by devices and crosswords when conversations seep around my little happy headspace (drowning out my happy elevator music sometimes even), I get plum irritable if I'm pulled away from an actual tome and have found it best not to attempt reading in mid-colloquy.
"Thursday," my DRC shift is all inverted so I can tag along to the small claims court (where we trowel for mediable cases, of course). I anticipate taking the morning off work, running, doing Pilates, purdying myself back up, and jaunting over to court. And since Andrew's going to be gone this weekend, we are thinking of going out to eat with mom-boss and boytoy one day early.
"Friday," Andrew isn't coming home, and it's cycling related. So it's virtually Monday!
"Saturday", Andrew still isn't coming home, at least until pretty darned late. I'm estimating 9 or 10 p.m. at the earliest. Since Thursday's half eaten, I am thinking about coming into work to catch up/start up. Although all the weekend household things I want to do still need to be done regardless of whether husband is around or not.
"Sunday," Andrew may still be alive and I may find him zonked in the bed beside me. No promises on that one. If so, we've of course got the Tour and a little running. And then, on the sacred no-fly-zone of Sunday afternoon to evening, we have a wedding in Darrington to attend. So surely it cannot actually be Sunday.
And, of course, Monday, Andrew is currently planning to go track racing. Obviously this is a thoroughly sane conceit after a 9:00 a.m. - 5:00 p.m. bike race, travelling all weekend, and staying out a bit late on Sunday. Especially with another race far afoot and twenty miles long coming up the next weekend (and work promising to heat up in the meantime). Obviously. You can see why I'm auditioning for replacements here. Even the old bike-and-chain can only take so much battering! And my future second husband is still terrifically underage and on the cusp of that yucky awkward period of adolescence that makes me pretty firm in my plan to defer on that one for at least fifteen more years.
But enough about people other than me, whatever flyballs fall into field, I've got my mit on and am game to chase after them, even if it means smacking right into the fence or toppling over a base.
...Or to just leap onto the counter and battle with the several floodlights we have in our kitchen of bizarre electrical choices!
Happy Whateverday!
Tip O'The Unicorn's Horn on a Gray Thursday Morn
First off, today's tippee toe post is dedicated to my friend Ms. Woo, who has stated her intent (via internet meme) to become a unicorn due to her weariness with the inherent complications of being human. I don't want to stand in the way of anyone's dreams, but I've got to warn her and any others of you that are seduced by said internet meme that the idyllic picture painted of the uni-life is distorted.
It's hard out there for a pimp, but doubly so for a unicorn. There are poachers and alchemists always after your horn. Dragons every which way to be conquered. And that whole laying one's head in virgin's laps thing... (1) confusing because how the heck do you distinguish? (2) a trick! There are hunters nearby. But if you can get past these things, I really do believe you'll make an excellent unicorn and I support your efforts.
Well, darn, I've decided that Pilates would be a bit of a tight (read last dregs of a thoroughly emaciated toothpaste tube tight) squeeze between (1) the work I wanted to get done this morning, (2) the time required to change and arrive at small claims court after Pilates, and (3) the limited scope of my desire to slosh about a lot in that drizzle of an answer to my supplications for Pacific Northwest Weather to return. We's gots ourselves a rainstorm. Worthy of a steamy November even. I'm loving it more than those people on TV purportedly love McDonald's, but I don't need to have soggy feet all morning either.
So instead. I'm at work for another short spell, having finished up most of the aforementioned priority work. And tuning in to realize I have missed the beginning excitement for today's final Tour de France blast through the Pyrenees. Those little avatars are changing place with some rapaciousness today! Almost exciting.
Last night was our last date night before Mr. (W)right's crazy double header weekend nonsense. We enjoyed it by spending some quality time together, and terrorizing local restaurant, The Black Pearl. No, we weren't absolutely appalling, but I can't say we get in A+ in terms of desirable customer ratings.
First, for whatever reason, the heat was on (THE HEAT IS ON! No, literally, they had the heater on in the restaurant). It was rainy and cool last night, so I understand, but the downtown incarnation of Black Pearl is a little sweat box, and I admit to avoiding it during nice weather because it turns into a bit more of an authentic Southeast Asian experience than I'd like in there. We were initially seated at a nice table right under the heaters. My head immediately commenced to throbbing, and after some five to ten minutes of feeling more and more miserable, I decided to take agency for my own comfort and change seats. Of course, the next table was also under heaters. And the other table had a little window right next to the diners (whom I knew just to add to awkwardness).
The serving lady/owner, who is an angel, thought we were leaving in impatience and rushed to intervene while I roved about the restaurant like a dog circling its final seating spot. Finally, I gave up. Then I noticed Andrew putting on his sweater, and was surprised to realize that he felt enough of a draft in his seat to want to warm up. Naturally I recanted my prior refusal of his offer to "switch" seats and musical chairs resumed. I don't know why he was cold. I was still down to my cami and slightly roasting. But it was better.
Yes, Mr. (W)right is - of course - right: My body/god/the fates hate me. I am consigned to always have algid feet and hands, while my arms and legs to turn numb and violet at the first tremor of chill. But in all circumstances I shall still find rooms stuffy and hints of calescence shall stoke nausea and the steady beat of head-bangs up top.
Anyways, back to the restaurant. Having finally surrendered to the least stuffy spot in the (still stuffy) restaurant, I then pursued fussy customer status by sending back my "Yummy Vegetarian Salad." My explicitly and repeatedly requested "on the side" of peanut sauce had been unceremoniously sludged atop the mound of greens. I feel guilty about this, but I actually don't really eat the sauce. A large percentage of peanut sauces have fish sauce in them, which I don't care for. And it's just a bit heavy for me. I order it on the side in case I want to dip, but more often because my meal companions might want it. Of course after the kerfuffle, our server/owner made special effort to accommodate my on-the-sidedness with serving spoon and several mentions that we could serve you another dressing. Naturally, Andrew didn't really want the peanut sauce that evening, and it went mostly unused. So, thanks to me, a full salad doused in peanut sauce was chucked. And another large vial of peanut sauce was to follow! Ah well. I'm now enrolled in the Food Plus compost pick up service from home so I'm earning a little credit towards my profligate dalliances with unnecessary food waste.
Andrew, being sweet like this, mitigated my lingering roving puppy dog peanut sauce hating contrition (and demonstrated his love) by upending the end portion of his bowl of noodles into his lap. Quite the dramatic gesture! Don't think I don't appreciate it. I'm not sure those tiny rice noodles will ever fully detach from his brown Carharts.
Thank goodness for heavy work pants meant for factory work. Date night is hazardous for those who don't pack the appropriate OSHA certified safety equipment (the goggles were handy as well on this sploosh of an outing!).
Thank greatness, we all survived (including The Black Pearl, despite our best efforts to the contrary), and returned home to swap out our sotten sundries for some cozier enduement.
And back to today with a smile on my face. I'm off to Small Claims court for a brief spell soon. Just to be proper, I may even put on real pants and a real shirt. Sure, I found it on the side of the road in a free pile, but it's a real honest to goodness shirt and everything! Really!
Forget Nine2Five, How About Six-Thirty2Six-Thirty? Single Lady Weekend Has Begun
The Ol' Bike-and-Chain is officially off. Well, he will be soon. I left for work while he was still in pjs, but I can only assume that he has subsequently packed up the double lunch I made him to be spread across two days (knock on wood he doesn't gorge himself on it all at once!), the several pounds of bike paraphernalia that he prepared last night, and maybe some extra clothes, and has hit the road.
After a spot of work today, he'll be heading to Seattle to stay the night with a teammate (his lurid video editing affair with another woman was just the beginning of course and now he's moving on to all sorts of acquaintances and all sorts of bike related activities). Tomorrow morning, he'll drive to Roslyn and ride his bike around-and-around-and-around-and-around from 9:00 a.m. until some time after 5:00 p.m. After the bike riding is done, I suspect there shall be feasting on rib roast and general bedazed befuddlement. Eventually he intends to drive home and sneak into bed (long after I've offlined).
I've wished him well, given him a few extra kisses to make up the difference of a lost morning and couple of evenings together, and will see him on Sunday.
Bring on the cabana boys! Adella's single for 48 hours! WHOOOOO! Or just plop me on my mom's couch with the remote control and let me fast forward through a week of Tour de France recordings (leave a tissue box nearby to daub the drool from my face).
I'm torn between all the clamoring alternatives for things to do with this single-lady time. Do I go about my usual chores? Do I put in some extra work to recover from a topsy turvy work-week? Do I glom onto the aforementioned couch? Do I take some kind of ad-hoc adventure somewhere that only I'd appreciate? Do I try to finish this book I'm reading that is simultaneously interesting and yet emanating some kind of reader-repellant juju that has made it difficult for me to indulge in my usual biblio-binge (thus frustrating me into a far more urgent state of "let's just get this over with already... ooooh squirrel!")? Do I pretend I'm going to read my book and then enter into a cross-wording frenzy from which I emerge several hours later covered in pencil smudges and more newspapers than are circulated in Whatcom County?? I just can't decide.
But I think I might try to play it cool and focus on recovering. Because it really has been an odd week.
Yesterday's arcanity was of a mellower peculiarity than earlier in the week. Instead of my afternoon shift, I went with the WDRC to small claims court. The biggest area in which the DRC mediates is family cases. The second biggest, though, is small claims. Family is generally more specialized (being a family law attorney, I know from reviewing some train wrecks of "settlement agreements" that extra training and finesse is required; getting a family mediator with the right blend of training and temperament is a rarity), and takes extra training for mediators to master.
Small Claims mediations have a satisfying symbiosis between the court's needs to lessen the load of litigation, the litigants' interests in actually reaching cost-effective conclusions to their disputes, and the DRC's need to have a forum for their training and practicum students. Since the disputes are generally more straightforward, more contained, more varied, and more amenable to creative problem-solving, they are tailor-made for mediator training. As such, small claims courts and mediation centers have long partnered.
At UW, small claims was our largest mediation source as well, so it was a bit of a flashback. Except Whatcom County seems to take its small claims courts a little more seriously. In the King County courts, there's usually a single judge handling the entire docket. All litigants wait in one courtroom. The judge cursorily reviews the claim, asks some questions, and then rules. They churn through like butter.
In Whatcom, there are three sitting small claims judges. In the first courtroom, all litigants are given a roll-call and asked if they'd like to try mediation. Those that decline are assigned a court-room/judge. Those that try mediation can come back and be heard same day usually, but aren't assigned a judge. The trials are a little longer and a little more formal, as well.
I may be called to case manage the process at some point. That would involve giving the opening "what is mediation and why you might consider doing it instead of airing your irrelevant and legally anemic dirty laundry in a public forum where your chances of recovery even if you get a judgment are slim to none... did we mention mediation is awesome and super successful?" spiel. Aaaand filling out some paperwork. Aaaand wrangling the mediators. So I was there to observe all that. As was New-Vanessa, Luke, who will be doing all the wrangling as of next week! I also sat next to a practicum student who went through the UWLS training with Julia Gold. I initially thought perhaps at the same time as me until I realized I'd actually already graduated in 2012 and must have done the training in 2010 or so. But he was nice. A retired municipal attorney who put in some time teaching ESL and traveling around Turkey in the Peace Corps way back when.
Anyways, if you enjoy Judge Judy/People's Court, then you should know that small claims in Whatcom County starts at 9:00 a.m. You can usually eyeball an interesting case during the roll call/mediation answers. And small claims cases are open to the public.
Since there were only a smattering of mediations, Vanessa, Luke and I sat through a fairly lurid little tale of landlord-tenant mayhem. The black-letter law is dull and clear-cut in this area, but the stories... and oh the stories will out! Clowns! Horses rampaging down the highway! Sotten sexual advances and dogs peeing on inebriated tenants passed out in lawns! Really, I couldn't repeated it here on such a family friendly forum. Really.
Moral being: mediate, because you probably have never consulted a lawyer and you have no idea that (unfair as it might feel) you still owe way more/are due to receive way less than you think. Mediate because you may have a business that doesn't need the public humiliation of your prior ill-fortune and regrettable decisions. Mediate, because... otherwise I will be tempted to attend your small claims court and start mentioning names in a blogger post or Bar Newsletter regular article. A little more of a strong arm approach to mediation, but one for people to consider. Really, the moral is that if you're idly unemployed and can't afford cable, you are missing out on some real entertainment opps at the local court calendars.
Anyways, the morning was rather devoured by these little fripperies into the lives and livelihoods of others, so the rest of the day was a bit of a flurry. And even madder for the pre-weekend meal out with my mom and the boytoy (just in case Andrew dies, it seemed fitting for them to have a weekend meal with him).
And so, I know now that today is Friday but several days before have already felt like Friday. So I think we're inventing a new name for today. Farfanuggin day, it is!
Mom-boss has a double court date plus double meetings and a mediation letter due out. I've got some support to play in all that. But first I'm off to stretch to the oldies... (with the oldies given the median age of the group).
I missed Pilates yesterday, which I shall rue for ages, since I had been the only student on Thursdays the prior weeks. But it shan't happen again today. Mainly because there is no Pilates to miss!
Happy Farfanugginday to you all!
Time and Trials Single-Lady-for-the-Day Celebrates with a coffee and a chock full DVR
Today I am determined: I will catch up with the live play of the Tour de France. I'm only about fifteen minutes out from catching up at this point. Once I've caught up, yes, I'll get to watch several exciting commercials about how Jelly Beans are the perfect cycling energy food (Jelly Belly makes a good point, considering what's usually in those gels and shots). More importantly, I'll get to figure out whether all the distortion, static, screen melting, etc. is the fault of a crusty dvr or something to do with the station/receiver. Not looking promising. The blips and techno-stutters are full in force during this recorded coverage, and I suspect that there's more to come in the live play. But at least if I've caught up and am still experiencing reality melt, I can supplement with the little Tour de France website avatar cyclists and live blogs.
Time trials are oddly boring and exciting in an entirely new way than the rest of the Tour is boring/exciting. Regular stages consist of long stretches during which nothing happens shocked through with unexpected bursts of sheer adrenaline soaked thrall. And sheep. Chromatic sheep. There are also always matters of strategy, temporary alliances as interests align and diverge like shifting sands on a breezy beach...
Time trial is exclusively about how fast any individual rider is. No deals, all wheels. Of course, they make up for it with exceptionally silly super hero outfits. And it definitely tests a whole new kind of strength and fitness, sending cyclists out in a race alone. With fifteen seconds differentiating fourth through second place (Nibali in first could basically walk his bike across the line, or try unicycling the stage while holding an ice cream cone in one hand and humming a jaunty tune with the time gaps he's got at this point), these little differences in strength matter. The whole top five (after first) is up for grabs and undetermined.
Yesterday was a pretty wild finale to our wacky work-week. Another mediation letter went out reeking of brimstone and sulfur Actually, while I've been fearing the work on this one (heavily sedimented issues from some ridiculously complicated dissonances created by prior attorneys needing to be delicately sorted out from a crypt of old documents and nonsensical spreadsheets), we put in a great letter. Unlike, say, the other side (this is a theme in THE YEAR OF THE MEDIATION so far), who provided no documentation and a list of vitriolic and inaccurate characterizations that essential boil down to Mediation Agenda: Making my client's future ex stop being such a DOO-DOO HEAD! Super promising, I know.
But regardless, my work is done... for now.
In other excitement, a case we've been trying to get an order in on for months finally reached a head with a pending hearing, which was apparently finally enough to get the other attorney a bit more engaged (say willing to return our phone calls more than once a month...). Additional client priorities shuffled in and out at inconvenient intervals of course.
But then we were done! DONE DUN DUN..... Weekend!! And all the bloodshed and inkstains seep away in the dewy mist of freedom. With the boyfrianceband off to chase his cycling doom, I was ready to enter a deep single coma. There was reading (and I've sent the Mirabal sisters off into history once more, time for a French crime novel). There were crosswords. I broke out the spatula and scraped tubs of peanut butter and yogurt clean. A mad evening, I assure. Today my ambitions have faded into "more of the same." After the time trial. There may be chopping. Maybe cooking. If I'm smart, I'll time myself for a walk of some sort.
Aaaaand, I've shifted to the live feed. I see a little disturbance flickering in at the corners... holding my breath. Dun dun DUUUUUN (Still DONE with the week). And it's looking promising on the live feed.
Go superheros!!
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