Father's Day at the Curmudgeon Manse

There are certain things that must be done every Sunday: Time must be found for Mass (lately, we've found that 7:00a.m. works best for us... even if we don't always get there much before 7:15) and the laundry. I got those things taken care of, and while Long Suffering Spouse and Younger Daughter went to the grocery, I resumed work on the appellate brief that I've been working on more or less constantly now for the last six weeks. (I just sent off a publishable draft -- but several sets of eyes must yet review and sign off on the document before it is filed. I anticipate there will be some additional changes requested but I'm hoping there will be no major rewriting required.)

I wasn't quite done with what I needed to do to the brief yesterday when Long Suffering Spouse got back. It wasn't because of interruptions, mind you, it's because polishing takes time. I stopped to hang out the laundry as each load finished, but the wheels continue to turn then. I had two phone calls -- Abuela called to wish me and Olaf both a Happy Father's Day. (Olaf was out, too, shopping for a card for his dad. I had the baby monitor. The baby-to-be-named-later was cooperating beautifully by taking an extended nap. In the family, everyone must do their bit.) Older Daughter also called to wish me a Happy Father's Day -- and to ask if I'd seen the email she'd sent. I had. She'd sent a picture from last summer, from Younger Daughter's rehearsal dinner. It was a picture of just the two of us, but I was thoroughly photographed out by that point in the evening, so I contorted my face as gruesomely as I could. "You're lucky I didn't post that to Facebook," Older Daughter said. "Oh, I agree," I said, and the pleasantries soon thereafter concluded and I went back to work.

I had reason to believe Oldest Son and Abby might come over, and Middle Son and Margaret, too. I'd been told that Younger Daughter had invited them for a barbecue, but I hadn't been informed when the festivities were scheduled to commence. I was guessing they have been planning to start a little later since I knew Younger Daughter and Olaf were going to the nursing home with Olaf's parents and his aunts and uncles to visit Olaf's grandparents. One of them knows they are there. The other? Well, this was presumably his last Father's Day here... only he hasn't been here for some time.

I'm not one of those who measures how much time a young couple spends with his family vs. her family. I remember how difficult it was for Long Suffering Spouse and me, back in the day. And I sure can't complain when Olaf and Younger Daughter visit his family -- after all, they're still under my roof. It does bother me some how hard it is to get Olaf and the baby and Younger Daughter out of the house -- but it was hard for us when we had only one child as well. When you have a small army to move you just herd them to the car and go. When you have only a baby, however, there's luggage. Lots of luggage. And checklists that would do NASA proud. About luggage.

As Long Suffering Spouse put away the last of the groceries and we both tried to shoo Younger Daughter and her family out of the house, Older Daughter called again, this time to wish Olaf and me a Happy Father's Day. "We did this," I protested, as I filled up the cooler with the ice Long Suffering Spouse had bought at the store. (My mistake. I was supposed to put the beer in first.) But Older Daughter's call didn't delay her sister's departure by that much (and, after Long Suffering Spouse chewed me out, Olaf put the beer in.)

So far, so good. I didn't look at the clock, but I'm certain that Younger Daughter et al. began the half hour drive to the nursing home easily five and maybe even 10 minutes before their scheduled 1:00 arrival. Just before their departure, though, I finally got the answer to my question about when Younger Daughter's older brothers might be expected. They were supposed to arrive at 2:00. You need no particular computational skills to figure out, from this, that, not only had Younger Daughter invited people over to my house without telling me about (except as an afterthought), she had planned for them to be present at a time when she would be absent.

I was genuinely confused about this -- and so was Middle Son when he showed up with Margaret just before 2:30. His first question was "where's my sister?" By this point, Youngest Son had already fired up the grill out in the front driveway. The week's laundry was still fluttering in the breeze in the backyard. In general, there is a fragrance from line-dried clothes that's just cleaner and fresher-smelling than anything you get from stinky paper sheets placed in the dryer. But there is an exception to this general rule: Clothes hung out on the line when people are barbecuing nearby tend to smell like smoke. People come up to you on the street and sniff and ask if you've been in a fire.

I hauled down the clothes in a hurry. They were very nearly dry, anyway.

Oldest Son and Abby showed up not too long after with their dog Rodent. Oldest Son brought brats to grill; Abby brought some hard cider that she planned to share with Younger Daughter. But Younger Daughter wasn't there to share.

Long Suffering Spouse busied herself in the kitchen readying chickens and hamburgers (two kinds) and hot dogs and shish kebabs and sweet corn and a couple of different salads.... Later I asked her if maybe half as many dishes might have been adequate. "Well," she said, "not everybody likes everything."

But it all worked out well. Middle Son kept refilling my glass. I kept emptying it. Older Daughter called -- again -- to wish me a Happy Father's Day. I made a snappish response. Hank, in the background, told me to stop whining and have a Happy Father's Day. I muttered something, and so did he, and neither one would repeat what we'd said. It was just as well. "Who are showing off for?" Older Daughter wanted to know. "No one," I said, "no one's here at all," whereupon Long Suffering Spouse, who was swooping by putting something down or taking something away contradicted me, loud enough for Older Daughter to hear: "Your brothers are here and Gabby and Margaret and your father is being difficult as usual" -- there was general agreement on this last point.

And the party kept going. Abuela came over (Middle Son invited her) about the U.S. Open and about the pending NBA Finals game. (She'd been "rooting for Mickelson." She'd been taping the program at home, but she stayed to watch poor Mr. Mickelson fall short once again. Abby is a San Antonio native and she and Abuela were in wholehearted accord about who should win the NBA crown.) Long Suffering Spouse eventually accepted both a chair and a margarita. Younger Daughter texted me and said they were on their way back. Middle Son said, thanks for the warning. I texted this back to Younger Daughter (who responded "ha!"), then I got up to fill his glass this time (and my own).

The party went on for a while after Olaf and the baby and Younger Daughter finally arrived. But the baby was running out of steam -- she'd seen a lot of faces in one day -- and Oldest Son and Middle Son were both tired when they arrived. (Some of their wounds were self-inflicted, but both have been working hard of late.) Abuela went home first, then Oldest Son and Abby (Abby wanted to watch the NBA Finals game at home). Middle Son and Margaret held out a little while longer, but they had to go, too.

I put on a movie I thought appropriate to the occasion (Life With Father) and, although I had to do a tour of duty in the kitchen, I got to watch most of it. Olaf couldn't quite make it to the end; he fell asleep. The baby was too wired to sleep. It was after 9:00 and she looked like she was exhausted but she wasn't about to fall asleep no matter how her mother rocked her. Long Suffering Spouse and I suggested that Younger Daughter try putting the baby in her own crib. She'd go under, we told her. She tried (and it worked). She came back to drag Olaf to bed.

The phone rang.

You guessed it: It was Older Daughter, wanting to find out if I'd had a Happy Father's Day. Long Suffering Spouse talked to her for awhile (mostly reminding her that it was after 10:00 in Indianapolis -- important because Older Daughter has to be at work at 5:30 a.m. these days). I put on the news and fell instantly asleep.

I sure wish I liked hockey

The Chicago Blackhawks will host the Boston Bruins tonight in the first game of the Stanley Cup Finals.

Maybe that isn't big news where you are. In Chicago, however, the Blackhawks are dominating the sports pages, the news pages, the features pages (did you know that, tonight, Bob Gertenrich of Skokie will attend his 2152nd straight Blackhawks game in person? did you know he started this streak in 1966 at the old Chicago Stadium when he was 19?), and even the business pages. Blackhawks flags festoon the County Building this morning and I saw men, women and children wearing Indian head sweaters or hats (or both) as I was coming into work.

The whole town seems bursting with hockey-infused civic pride.

But I don't like hockey.

It's not that I haven't tried. When I was a kid I'd listen to Lloyd Pettit call the Hawks games on the radio but I couldn't make any sense of it. I learned just enough to appreciate that Bruce Wolf did a pretty fair imitation of Lloyd Pettit back in the day. In college I went to some games (my school had a club team). I thought I might understand it better if I saw it in person. But it didn't take.

I know people who like hockey. One of my many ex-partners (whose son was a gifted hockey player) once told me that the only thing worse than having a kid who likes hockey is having a kid who's good at it. I told my cousin that when his two sons began to seriously take up the sport.

Little kids will have practices at 4:00am because that may be the only time that the ice is available. As a baseball parent, I schlepped my sons from the far north suburbs to the far south suburbs and groused about it. Hockey parents not only get up in the middle of the night for practice, they take their kids to Minnesota, Michigan, and even into Ontario -- and they like it.

But I just can't get into it.

This time around, I've taken to reading about hockey. Youngest Son has a subscription to Sports Illustrated and I've read a lot of hockey articles in the past few months as playoff fever began to build in Chicago. I noted with interest a recent column by Steve Rushin, who said that the famous Indian head logo that the Blackhawks use was designed in the 1920s by Irene Castle, then the wife of Frederic McLaughlin, the first team owner. McLaughlin named his new club for the 86th Infantry "Blackhawk" Division, the outfit in which he'd served during World War I. Rushin wrote that Irene Castle "introduced Americans to the bob haircut and the foxtrot" before designing the Indian head.

Ah, yes, I said to myself, Irene Castle. I remember now: The Story of Vernon and Irene Castle, the last movie that Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers made together, and the only one filmed in color. I watched that -- once. Not a lot of laughs in the story of the two most famous ballroom dancers at the start of the 20th Century, not when British-born Vernon goes off to join the Royal Flying Corps and gets killed in a training accident.

Did you notice? I just can't stay focused on hockey.

Hockey strikes me as soccer on ice, only with sticks. I remember that Knute Rockne didn't much care for hockey; he didn't want the sport adopted at Notre Dame because he couldn't endorse any game where Irishmen were armed with clubs.

I'm happy for all the hockey fans, old and new. I feel like I'm missing out on something, but I just can't get into it. I wish I could.

New Facebook privacy setting?

Obtained from FAIL Blog:

I've been too busy of late to craft any further snark about the revelations that the NSA is monitoring your grandmother's calls to QVC in the interest of foiling international terrorism, but Zach Weiner had a good take on the issue yesterday on SMBC (Mr. Weiner's language is more pungent than that usually employed here, but I ask your indulgence on this occasion):

I like Mr. Weiner's point about the "exchange rate."

The Party of Main Street should be all over this Verizon kerfuffle

Yesterday it was revealed that the Obama administration has obtained secret court orders allowing it to track hundreds of millions of phone calls made by Verizon customers.

This AP News summary, by Matt Apuzzo et al., suggests that the order disclosed yesterday was entered by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court under authority of Section 215 of the Patriot Act, "known colloquially as the 'library records provision' because it allowed the government to seize a wide range of documents, including library records. Under that provision, the government must show that there are 'reasonable grounds to believe' that the records are relevant to an investigation intended to 'protect against international terrorism or clandestine intelligence activities.'"

So... this is all caused by the Patriot Act?

Well, one of the Patriot Act's original chief sponsors, Republican Rep. James Sensenbrenner of Wisconsin, has written Atty. Gen. Eric Holder insisting that the newly revealed surveillance order is not appropriate under the Patriot act but is, rather, an abuse of the Patriot Act.

Actually, it's more polite (and, I think, more accurate) to say that broadly drafted language in the Patriot Act has led to some "unintended consequences." Thanks to sloppy language in so many statutes, these sorts of things happen all the time.

Still, in his letter to Mr. Holder, Congressman Sensenbrenner writes, "How could the phone records of so many innocent Americans be relevant to an authorized investigation as required by the Act?"

It's a good question.

But is it just a political one?

Well... it could be.

See, Mr. Sensensbrenner notwithstanding, many prominent Republicans and Democrats have united in pooh-poohing any civil rights issue in the government's tracking of our phone records (and it is assumed, at this point, that Verizon is not the only company turning over its records for government scrutiny).

This piece on the Huffington Post quotes California Senator Dianne Feinstein, a Democrat, and the chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, as saying, "I read intelligence carefully, and I know that people are trying to get to us. This is to ferret this out before it happens. It's called protecting America."

This condescending attitude finds bi-partisan support. The ranking Republican on the Senate Intelligence Committee, Georgia's Saxby Chambliss, is quoted in the same article, as saying "Every member of the United States Senate has been advised of this, and to my knowledge we have not had any citizen who has registered a complaint relative to the gathering of this information."

Um, Senator, until yesterday no private citizen knew about this.

In the best tradition of the Stupid Party, Republican Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina told Fox News, "I’m a Verizon customer. I don’t mind Verizon turning over records to the government if the government is going to make sure that they try to match up a known terrorist phone with somebody in the United States."

Some Democrats and some Republicans have decried this (literally) unwarranted invasion of privacy. Heck, no less a dedicated Statist than former Vice President Al Gore tweeted yesterday:

Apparently, however, it's easy to be for civil liberties when out of government -- but really, really hard to remember how to defend them once in power. Candidate Obama was a staunch defender of transparency in government. As President, he gives out secret email addresses to senior government officials, Guantanamo stays open, and he continues the practice of spying on millions and millions of law-abiding Americans in the name of detecting terrorist plots.

The Verizon kerfuffle shows, once again, that we have two parties in Washington. We have the Big Government Party and the Big Business Party. Their interests are often aligned -- aligned precisely on this spying issue, for example. Who cares about the Constitution? Warrants? We don't need no stinking warrants.

The government says that they are not listening to calls, or keeping track of who is making each call, only tracking calling patterns such as what number called what number and the duration of each call.

Here's a newsflash, dear readers: Enter your home phone number in your favorite search engine. Your name and address will pop up. (It doesn't work so well for cell phones... but you can buy that information easily enough.) In other words, if the government has your phone number, it also has your name.

If only there was a political party that cared about the working guy and the small business owner, the folks who are supposedly at odds with one another but who together make up the still viable, if declining, middle class. Call it the Party of Main Street. But we don't have one of those in this country.

Someone else laments the perils of long posts

I have been accused of putting up posts here that try a reader's patience. Of course, sometimes, that's a content-based complaint. Even those kindly disposed towards me have mentioned, sometimes politely, that my posts occasionally tie up too much time for an Internet grazer to really enjoy.

I discover, however, that I am not alone. This morning on Facebook I saw a link to an article on Slate.com by By Farhad Manjoo, "You Won’t Finish This Article."

The article works through some analytics requested by the author for posts on Slate.com -- and finds that most people 'bounce' away without reading a thing or else read very little before moving on. Most people, he writes, don't even bother to completely read an article they link to or tweet.

That makes no earthly sense. How do you know whether the article you are promoting, which seems reasonable enough at the outset, doesn't morph into some profane or racist screed by the end? Do you really want such an article in any sense linked to you? And even if there is no abrupt switch in tone from reasonable to rant, a perfectly reasonable beginning to an article may lead to conclusions with which the reader thoroughly disagrees. Or would, if he or she would but finish the piece. Why link to that?

I pulled this excerpt from close to the end of the piece, far further down the page (according to the author) than most readers will read:

Sure, like every other writer on the Web, I want my articles to be widely read, which means I want you to Like and Tweet and email this piece to everyone you know. But if you had any inkling of doing that, you’d have done it already. You’d probably have done it just after reading the headline and seeing the picture at the top. Nothing I say at this point matters at all.

So, what the hey, here are a couple more graphs, after which I promise I’ll wrap things up for the handful of folks who are still left around here. (What losers you are! Don’t you have anything else to do?)

In fact, read all the way to the end, even looking up the meaning of "TK" in the linked Wikipedia article (I was unfamiliar with the term).

That's the good news, Mr. Manjoo. I read the piece. Honest.

But I don't understand the analytics hardly at all.

So... it's June, right?

The calendar page has been turned. All the bills that I paid in May are coming due again. It must be June.

Right?

But yesterday morning I got up and turned off the air conditioner because the temperature outside (according to the radio) was 60 degrees. That was overly optimistic; it wasn't 60 according to the thermometer in the van when we went to church yesterday morning. A couple hours later, when my wife went to the grocery, she called me because the temperature had dropped to 53.

I'd put on a long-sleeve flannel shirt for Mass, but it did seem a bit chilly to me in the house so I added an Irish wool sweater.

It had been in the high 80s during the week before the rains set in, so there have been some signs of summer, and this is Chicago: We have to expect some variety in the weather. We can get two and sometimes three seasons on any given day.

On Sunday, though, we had only one season. Fall. The sky was slate gray and spitting drizzle and I was wearing flannel and wool -- but it really is June, you know. The calendar says so.

Frivolous Friday -- very abbreviated edition

Obtained from FAIL Blog.

Where was this idea when I really needed it?

Obtained from the webcomic SMBC.

Ah, statistics. The cartoonist could have put almost anything after that "and/or" and not changed the pie chart one bit. He could have put meteor strikes, for example. Or, if he insisted on stampedes, he could have used elephants or creditors or angry birds. But, no, Mr. Weiner chose clowns. Why do so many people hate clowns?

Curmudgeon 'briefly' explains his recent absence

I have been engaged for at least two weeks now (it might be three when I put my time together) working on an appellate brief. I haven't had one of those for awhile.

And this is a good case -- a big case -- the kind of case that, should it come to pass that I am associated with the winning side, will almost certainly result in more business.

In law -- in everything, sadly -- you're perceived to be only as good as your last result.

That's a load of road apples, of course, but it's all too true.

Anyway, it's a big case, nearly 70 volumes of appellate record, a trial record over a week long (not counting the in limine motions and other flurry of last-minute motions that preceded this big case, as happens in most big cases). I was not trial counsel. So I've read everything new and fresh -- and for the first time.

There are horrible injuries in this case, horrible enough that the jury's verdict of over $25 million is not being challenged by the losers as excessive (except in one small particular, amounting to less than one million of the total). There is not really a question of liability; the defendants who argued against liability at trial put on a 'sudden stop' defense, the kind of silly defense that juries see through every day in the First Municipal District in soft tissue, low-impact rear-end cases. (In our case the collision was on the Interstate and involved a very big truck... and a pretty small car.) But the problem is that the jury found four entities jointly responsible and only one of them -- the one which is at least arguably the most remotely connected to the accident -- has the wherewithal to satisfy the judgment. And that entity is (unsurprisingly) fighting like the dickens to persuade the reviewing court that the jury's verdict was wrong.

But that's not the challenge for the appellate lawyer; that's just the set-up. The challenge is that this accident took place over a decade ago. The case has been in court ever since (including a trip to the Appellate Court on a forum non conveniens issue. There's over 10 years of stuff that must be adequately reviewed and condensed and summarized in only 50 pages. Oh, and we also have to rebut the other sides' arguments in those same 50 pages.

We could ask for a waiver of the page limitation, of course. But you can imagine how excited the Appellate Court will be about that. Each appellate justice in Cook County must account for roughly a disposition a day to keep up with the workload. True, most cases will not be this complicated. Many, perhaps. But some are definitely more complicated.

So I'm working on the brief at home yesterday, and I started from a spot where I'd gotten snagged the day before: I'd done my research and still hadn't come up with a clear idea of how to refute the other side's contention on this point. If I thought it would get me nominated for the ABA's Blawg 100, I'd explain the issue a little more. But it won't. Suffice it, then, to say that, with a fresh approach in the morning I saw a way through the problem. I looked up a couple of more cases relied upon by the other side and decided that the other side had really goofed in citing one of them: It made my point for me. I wrote. By noon I had about a page and a half of new material, but I think it was good.

Just not good enough.

My co-counsel really wanted me to have a largely completed draft brief by today, when she meets with the trial attorneys to discuss our progress. They were mad at her, she told me, when she asked for another 35 days to prepare this brief. She got me involved because, even with 35 extra days, because of the press of other matters, she would be unlikely to get this project done by herself.

I have to tell you: Appellate lawyers here almost always ask for one extension. It is routinely granted. It is almost never controversial. I once had a case where my opponent asked for seven extensions (each time asking for 35 more days). On big cases like this one, two or three extensions are not unusual. Indeed, the process of getting the record together and getting the opening briefs on file took opposing counsel in this case about a year (according to the rules, they were expected to get this done within 98 days of filing the Notice of Appeal).

I am probably out of practice. My workload has dwindled, as readers know, and perhaps I take longer now to write because (unfortunately) I have more time to write. Parkinson's Law: Work expands to fill the time allotted for its completion.

I've tried to prevent rust by writing more blog stuff. I managed to do over an entire year's worth of posts on The Blog of Days (a streak broken only this week) and keep up this blog and keep up my posting on my two 'public' blogs as well. But it's not the same kind of writing as in an appellate brief. And, besides, no one ever seems to practice with the same intensity as one needs for a game. Drill and routine may help the soldier facing battle, but it will not be the same.

So my co-counsel was disappointed with me, I think. She'd hoped I'd have more done. Well, I'd hoped to have more done, too.

But, though we know what we want to do here, it takes longer to execute properly.

She was going to add 15 or so pages from her post-trial response to my draft brief in the hopes that it would look more like a 'working brief' for her concerned trial counsel at their meeting today. She was just going to slap it on at the end.

"They've waited so long," she told me yesterday. "They're hungry."

If this brief carries the day (after the other side attempts to interest the Illinois Supreme Court in taking the case -- an exercise that has no greater than a 1 to 4% chance of success, but will delay matters as long as another six months) the trial attorneys in this case stand to make millions.

The trial attorneys have agreed to pay my co-counsel mere thousands, but even this payment is contingent on the trial attorneys getting their millions. My co-counsel has agreed to give me a third of what she gets. (Her extra third comes from the inarguable fact that the trial attorneys came to her with this business, not to me.) If we win, but only if we win, the few crumbs that make their way to my level (roughly just a week's worth of statutory interest on the judgment) will nevertheless be my biggest single fee in years and years. It will actually amount to more than I grossed from the practice of law in all of 2012. (This is why I have $50,000 in credit card debt.) But I don't get a penny, not a sou, if we lose, because my co-counsel won't get a dime.

Yes, I suppose I am taking my time on this. I want to do a great job, not just a good one.

The trial attorneys may be hungry, as my co-counsel says. But I'm starving.

The letter I can't send to my client

I have this insurance company client that hired me to represent its insureds in a number of cases over the past year. That's the good news.

The bad news? Where to begin?

First, I had to register with some third party -- a subsidiary of a major legal publisher and research company whose name rhymes with "Hexes" (I first wrote about this in the second half of this post) -- that, in the name of cost containment, interposes itself between me and my new insurance company client, requiring standardized billing, that it reviews first before passing it along to the client. And I'm expected to pay for the delay -- my $275 annual fee is again due.

This company I'm dealing with is not the only one to get euchred by this third party interloper; I've heard similar complaints from some of my old ex-partners. It's apparently an industry-wide scam.

And getting the bill approved is not just a matter of delay.

Oh, no, there is scrutiny, too.

Not on anything useful or substantive; rather, the bill will be rejected if two activities are combined in a single time entry. There must be two entries in that case. I once had a bill rejected because I put mileage and parking together on the same expense entry. Well, it was for the same court appearance, wasn't it?

But, fine, I am adaptable. I can live with anyone's rules as long as I understand them.

But, now, after bills are allegedly "approved," comes major, major delay.

I wrote a 'what gives?' email -- polite, conversational -- but pointing out that, in one case, my bill was "approved" in January. The end of May is nearly upon us. Several other bills are at least 60 days post "approval." I included a chart, complete with invoice numbers and dates to my contact. "Is there something else I need to do?" I asked.

My contact referred the matter to a subordinate who promptly emailed me that he was looking into it.

Ten more days went by.

I emailed the subordinate.

A few days later the subordinate responded that there was a "glitch" in the accounting system and they were looking into it.

That was a week ago. Messrs. MasterCard and Visa won't take those kinds of excuses from me... but I am obliged to take it from clients. Therefore, I did not, and could not, write this letter, though I badly wanted to....

Dear Mr. ------

Thank you for your email advising of the 'glitch' in your accounting system.

I don't believe it for a second.

In my experience, when corporate bills are allegedly approved and not thereafter paid, it's usually because someone has his or her fat fingers in the till. I'm not accusing you personally. But, with each passing day that these checks are not cut, it is increasingly likely that they are not cut because someone in your organization has diverted the funds with which these bills were supposed to be paid.

You have computers. You have this very sophisticated (you think) third party bill approval system that assigns invoice numbers. Your company pays, and I suspect it pays dearly, for this service. If there's a 'glitch' in your accounting system, you should be looking at your accountants or your own IT people, and maybe both because these 'glitches' are probably where money is being diverted from your vendors to someone else's pocket.

I am unwilling to play victim any longer.

Please cut my checks. I enclose a pen in case you don't have one available.

Mother's Day weekend with the Curmudgeon clan -- Part III (the case of the baseball tickets)

Bee, I promise, this is not really a sports post.

My friend Steve is in a Chicago White Sox season ticket plan with three other guys. The seats are in the outfield, but right down in front, so you can see everything that happens. They're good seats.

But Steve and his comrades split the tickets up before the beginning of the season, before all their respective schedules are set. Steve in particular has encountered problems with his schedule before because of the frequent travel he does on behalf of the charity he works for now that he's "retired."

One such conflict arose this past weekend. I'm not sure where he needed to go, but he did, and he offered me the tickets for Saturday night's game against the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim, Orange County, California. There was only one condition: "See that they're used," he said. "I only ask that there be fannies in the seats. Then I don't feel bad."

That's not an unreasonable request, I agreed. "But I can't go," I told him. "Older Daughter is coming in; we have to pick up Youngest Son. It's just too complicated."

"Well, maybe one of the kids will want them," Steve suggested.

"Maybe."

"So ask. But get back to me, please. If no one at your house can use them I have to try and place them somewhere else."

This was last Wednesday, I think.

I thought of Olaf and Younger Daughter. Maybe they could get friends and go. Olaf graduated; he can have a night out now and again. It's a good thing.

And Younger Daughter thought so too when I mentioned it.

"I'll ask around," she said.

"So ask," I said. "But get back to me, please. I promised Uncle Steve I'd get back to him." (Steve is not actually related by blood or marriage. But the kids all call him Uncle. His wife, though also unrelated to them, is Aunt Charlotte.)

"Don't worry," she said.

I should have worried.

The first thing Younger Daughter did was ask her sister if she and Hank might want to go. But Hank has to sing in Indianapolis on Sundays -- still, he was interested, Older Daughter said. "We could head home straight from the park," Hank allegedly told her. "It's on the way." But they would have had to leave the dog in Indy -- the little bunnies might have survived! -- but, alas, as I mentioned previously, Cork had worn out his welcome at the home of Hank's parents (and they have their own golden retriever).

Then Older Daughter suggested that, if they could stay until the end of the game Saturday night if they went to the ballpark, they could stay in Chicago until the end of the game at our house. Hank was not buying.

All this is easy to relate, but it took time.

It was Friday already and Younger Daughter hadn't found a home for the tickets. In the meantime, she had her own colonoscopy to deal with. Olaf's asked some of his friends, she told me, but she hadn't heard anything yet. What about Youngest Son, she asked. We'd be picking him up on Saturday. Maybe he could get a group together for the night game. "So ask," I said. "But get back to me, please. This is not a nice thing we're doing here stringing along Uncle Steve like this."

Youngest Son texted back that he was interested, but he wasn't sure if he could get a group.

In the aftermath of her procedure, Younger Daughter was losing interest in going also. She was knocked down a peg by the whole process and wasn't feeling at all well.

And the next thing I knew it was Saturday morning. I asked again who was taking the tickets. I knew by now Older Daughter and Hank weren't going: We had the bunny-eating dog. But Younger Daughter wasn't sure whether she and her husband might yet go; it depended on how she felt. And she was waiting to hear from some people she'd asked.

"Look," I said, as I stormed out the door for South Janesville College, "I don't care who you get. I'm not going. Your mother is not going. But find some bodies for the seats, pick up the tickets from Uncle Steve, and remember to say thank you. Get this settled before I get home."

And when I got back home, all was settled and done -- and that, ladies and gentlemen, is how I wound up at the Sox game Saturday night, along with Long Suffering Spouse and Youngest Son. (No, I didn't understand what happened either. Still don't.) Youngest Son who was apparently already sick by Saturday night -- he'd really be out of it on Sunday, much to the amusement of his brothers, when they came calling. "I haven't been to the ball game in a couple of years," said Long Suffering Spouse, and that was nice, I guess. She might have enjoyed the game more, though, if it weren't 48̊ at game time -- 46̊, according to the outfield scoreboard, before the game was through. And if the wind weren't howling the whole game.

Oh, and it might have helped if the White Sox had won.

But you can't have everything.

Mother's Day weekend with the Curmudgeon clan -- Part II (CSI: Curmudgeon-style)

Regular readers will recall that Older Daughter and her husband Hank are the proud owners of a golden retriever. I call him Cork.

In yesterday's installment I noted that my poor wife was less than thrilled that Cork was coming. She was even less thrilled when Older Daughter and Hank neglected to bring the dog's cage.

At our house the beast has slept each night in a rather large cage. It's a pain, presumably, to lug it to and from the car and to fold and unfold it upon arrival and departure. Still, it's a piece of home for the dog -- the kids used in their own house, and for the same purpose -- and it's worked well for us.

Lately, though, Hank and Older Daughter have discontinued use of the cage in their own home (Cork may have grown out of the rug-eating phase that cost them a chunk of their security deposit at their last apartment). They proposed that the dog sleep upstairs with the rest of the family. On recent visits, Hank and Older Daughter have decided against using the futon we bought for such visits and have camped out upstairs in the room that Youngest Son used to share with Middle Son. The room is equipped with a bunk bed. No, I don't ask questions.

Anyway, Long Suffering Spouse vetoed this idea -- she didn't relish tripping over the dog at night if she should have to make a comfort stop. The kids were miffed; they stayed downstairs with the dog on Friday night. I know I didn't mind.

Now, Cork, I hasten to add, is a lovely dog. He's bulked up a bit since his puppy days (he's around 2 now) and he probably weighs in at about 85 lbs. He still thinks he's a lap dog, of course. And, for all his shedding and slobbering, he really is very gentle with the Baby to Be Named Later. At one point on Saturday, he laid on the floor next to the baby as she played with toys and grabbed fist-fulls of fur from his side, all without so much as a whimper of protest.

Of course, by then, he was on his best behavior.

He had to be, because of what he'd done earlier in the day.

The Curmudgeon home comes with a fenced-in backyard, accessible from a sliding glass door in the den. There's very little that grows in our backyard, and very little of what does grow there is worth worrying about. So we ordinarily have no problems in letting Cork roam free in the backyard where he can sniff and dig and break off sticks to his heart's content. (He's neatly pruned a couple of bushes for us, inadvertently perhaps: He's killed a couple of others.)

And Cork was in the backyard for a fairly long time on Saturday morning. The weather wasn't terrible and the rest of us were able to eat our breakfasts without undue canine interference.

I was in the living room with Long Suffering Spouse, Older Daughter, Younger Daughter and the baby. Hank and Olaf were in the den, flipping between sports channels on TV. But then, out of the corner of his eye, Olaf spotted some extracurricular motion in the backyard. No, it wasn't Cork -- he's hard to miss -- it was something by the hose stretched out in the middle of the yard, something small. Is that a mouse? Olaf thought to himself.

Long Suffering Spouse, at the opposite end of the house, was instantly alert. If there's anything she hates, it's mice. As on Saturday morning, one need only think about a mouse in order to command her full attention. "Mouse? What mouse?" she demanded. "Where?"

"I don't know what it is," Olaf said. "It's very small, like a mouse, but it's not moving very fast at all. It's barely moving."

Hank had gone to the window by this point. "Maybe it's sick," he offered.

"Well, you better keep Cork away from it, whatever it is," commanded Older Daughter.

The young men went into the backyard, one to investigate the little creature, the other to try and round up the dog.

Soon, though, we had a report.

"It's a baby rabbit," Olaf advised us. Hank nodded solemnly. Cork, newly returned around the house, bounded around in case anyone had dropped any breakfast.

"It's still alive."

"Did Cork get it?"

"It doesn't look like it's been bitten."

Now Younger Daughter was out in the backyard with a box and Older Daughter was looking up rabbit rescue locations.

It turns out, however, that little baby, still-nursing rabbits (like this one) are notoriously hard to rescue. They have an annoying tendency to die instead. The rabbit rescue sites said the best thing that can be done is to return the little creature to its nest.

Now I've telescoped a really overlong exchange into this still-overlong explanation for the sake of moving the narrative along. The question now, however, was where was the nest? The kids combed the backyard (it's not that big, folks) for several minutes, but to no avail. Then Long Suffering Spouse took charge.

Rabbits, it's true, aren't mice. They're not even rodents. But my wife's critter-radar, if not infallible for rabbits as it certainly is for mice, is pretty darn good. She wasn't out in the yard for a minute before I was summoned.

"See," she told me, pointing a row of dug-up plants alongside the backyard toolshed, "that's where it was." Gray fur on the ground corroborated her hypothesis (I don't know how the rest of them missed it).

Pretty clearly, too, it was Cork who was responsible.

The ruined nest was empty, suggesting that Cork had probably eaten the other kits whole. Why he spared this one, at least temporarily, is not hard to figure: He wasn't through playing with it yet.

Dogs are wonderful, loyal companions. Even Cork. But they are related to wolves, you know. They make unconvincing vegans.

The baby rabbit was put back by the nest in the slim hopes that its mother might rescue it. Cork was restricted from the backyard during the remainder of the visit. When he was let out again, it was under supervision -- and, immediately, like the cliched criminal, he immediately returned to the scene of the crime. We shooed him away before he could do any further damage.

It probably didn't do the baby rabbit any good. It was gone the next day anyway.

Mother's Day weekend with the Curmudgeon clan -- Part I

Long Suffering Spouse and I made it to 7:00 a.m. Mass as usual yesterday.

As usual, we weren't there until 7:10.

What was unusual is that we were joined by Younger Daughter, Olaf and the Baby to Be Named Later. They made it by 7:15 or so, comfortably ahead of the drop-dead deadline the nuns used to tell us about. If you didn't make it to Mass before the beginning of the Offertory, the nuns told us, you had not fulfilled your Sunday obligation. It was only later that I made the connection between the passing of the basket and the deadline. But I wasn't always this cynical.

I'm sure Younger Daughter wanted to go to Mass to make her mother happy. And, this year, she and her mother could both step up at the end of Mass for a special blessing -- and they did. But I knew the real reason why they were there: The baby's gums had her awake before 6:00 a.m.

Youngest Son wasn't at Mass. I'd picked him up the day before. I was at his South Janesville College (that's what I call it) frat house only an hour or two later than I'd hoped. With all that extra time, much of Youngest Son's packing actually was done. In the time honored tradition of college students everywhere, he planned on coming home and going to sleep for about a week. There was a detour, however, which I'll explain in a future installment.

Long Suffering Spouse usually comes with me when we pick up the boy from school. On Saturday, she did not.

Older Daughter decided to visit Friday and Saturday. She and Hank and Cork the dog all arrived in time for dinner Friday evening.

I had tried to talk Older Daughter out of bringing the dog.

"But Mom loves the dog," Older Daughter protested. "Oh, yes, she does," I agreed -- remembering Long Suffering Spouse's exact words... Oh no, she's going to bring the dog, isn't she? He'll get hair everywhere, and we have to pick up everything. And he'll slobber all over the baby stuff. Oh, I like the dog, but can't they leave that it somewhere just this once?

As it turned out, they couldn't leave the dog with their in-laws as they've had to do on occasions when they've visited someone other than us: It seems that the last time Cork was at the in-laws' house, he destroyed their swimming pool cover skittering across it. The new pool cover was being delivered Saturday. The in-laws wanted it to remain intact for more than a day.

I should have been in better shape for this weekend's ordeal. After all, I took Friday off to babysit. Older Daughter had to see a GI-doc for a problem and she went to the same doctor who removed the better part of my colon six years hence. When she recounted the family history of colon cancer in our family (in which cancer does not just run, it fairly gallops), the doctor insisted she have a colonoscopy. That was Friday's entertainment.

Long Suffering Spouse was not happy about the test, either. "She's too young," she said. I wasn't much older than that when I had my first problem, I reminded her.

As it turned out, Younger Daughter did have one small polyp -- in an area of the colon where I eventually grew them by the bushel -- and if you thought Long Suffering Spouse was unhappy before the test, you should have seen her after. "I went through this with you," she told me, "but I never thought I'd have to go through this with my own children."

I wouldn't have guessed Younger Daughter would have a problem. If I had to make a guess, Oldest Son would be my most likely candidate. He drinks coffee by the gallon, just like I used to do; he works in a sedentary job, like I've done my whole life (he's a computer consultant, but it still involves sitting); and he eats junk food at odd hours, just like I used to before I got married. He's married now nearly three years, but Abby works long hours, too. Neither of them cook. Of course, he steadfastly refuses to be tested -- but I made a pitch to Abby this weekend. He may be in for a surprise. I hope so.

And Long Suffering Spouse had a miserable week at work, too.

No, it was good that Long Suffering Spouse did not make the road trip with me to South Janesville College. She wound up at the store instead with her daughters -- Younger Daughter was still pretty rocky from her test, but she did the best she could.

Hank and Older Daughter had to be back in Indianapolis for Sunday services -- Hank sings, you'll remember; that's his side job -- and if Long Suffering Spouse had come with me she'd have spent virtually no time at all with Older Daughter.

"Does that mean they'll be gone when I get back?" Youngest Son asked me as we started the homeward journey early Saturday afternoon. There was a hopeful note in his voice, which should not be taken as any sort of dislike of his sister. It's just that she had noted pictures of Youngest Son and a girl on Facebook in various poses at each other's respective spring formals (fraternities and sororities do these things, I'm told) and, in prior conversations, she had vowed to wheedle out of him information sufficient for her to decide whether this was a serious relationship.

Who wants to come home to an inquisition?

Hank and Older Daughter finally left Saturday night. Long Suffering Spouse and I weren't there. That's one of the tales I'll spin out of this vortex of activity this week. The other involves Cork, the dog.

But, for now, we'll conclude in the vestibule of the church after Mass. One of the ladies of the parish, an acquaintance of Abuela's, was among the many selling carnations to support the Parish Pro-Life Committee. Long Suffering Spouse directed me to buy a bouquet that she promptly gave to Younger Daughter. "So," said the lady to my wife, "what is your family doing for you this Mother's Day?"

"They're all coming to visit," said Long Suffering Spouse, muttering "I think" under her breath, just loud enough for me to hear. (At this point, we'd heard nothing from either Oldest Son or Middle Son about any possible visits.)

"And they'll want you to feed them, of course," said the lady. It was not a question.

"As usual," agreed Long Suffering Spouse.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Mother's Day always falls on a Sunday, of course, and whoever is coming over, whenever they come, the laundry still must be done, the grass cut, and week's groceries procured. Long Suffering Spouse headed out to the store while I started the washer and the lawnmower. While I was finishing up the lawn, Long Suffering Spouse was unpacking the groceries and trying to pack Younger Daughter for a trip to her in-laws. When I came in, Long Suffering Spouse was wrapping a present for Younger Daughter's mother-in-law. "I must be doing something wrong," she said. "I had to go with her to the store to get this; now I have to wrap it, too." I looked at the mountain of stuff that had been prepared for the journey to the land of the in-laws (it was a family party with all the great-aunts and uncles in attendance) and I went outside to see how Olaf was doing packing the U-Haul trailer. "What U-Haul trailer?" he asked. "We have to fit this in the car somehow." And, somehow, they did....

Password protected -- for our amusement

How many passwords do you have to juggle? Six? Ten?

Simple passwords are too "weak" -- and a lot of sites will insist that you bulk up... passwords must have at least one capital letter, two numbers, a specialty character and anything else that we can think of to screw up your ability to recollect whatever we finally allow you to have. And don't think you can use the password from your most restrictive site as your password everywhere. That would be too easy. At least one of your sites will reject it as having too many characters... passwords must be between 8 and 14 characters long, except on Tuesdays in spring, when passwords must be between 6 and 12 characters long, or Thursdays after the Full Moon in any month having an 'm' in it....

Then there are the sites that make you change your password every 90 days -- because the Russian hackers are always watching you in particular (what makes you so special, anyway?) -- and don't even think of using the password you used to use, either. (The Russians almost got that one, you know.)

But, given the proliferation of passwords, the worst are sites that limit you to one or two tries -- and then make you wait... and wait... for an email. When you get the email, you can reset your password. Too bad you remembered that password in the meantime. Too bad, that is, for you.

W visas? What are they smoking in Washington these days?

I first heard about "W visas" on NPR this morning. Noodling around the Intertubes, I found this April 1 report on Slate attempting to explain the concept.

In a nutshell (and this truly is nuts) the idea is that employers who heretofore have relied on illegal immigrants as a substantial component of their workforce -- in the meat-packing industry, say -- will instead use workers who enter the country on these W visas. Unlike many other visa programs, this W visa will be geared specifically to the unskilled laborer, the guy who will supposedly take only 'jobs no American wants.'

This would be a great deal for the immigrant worker (we're not supposed to say 'guest workers') who would be in this country legally, with the opportunity to seek permanent resident status when the visa expires, and thus on a path to citizenship.

This would be a great idea -- if it weren't so obviously stupid.

Look: The statement that there are jobs that Americans won't take is a lame, transparently fraudulent lie. The truth is that restaurant chains and big box stores and meat packers don't want to hire Americans. They don't want to have to pay minimum wage. Thus, they hire illegals -- often through intermediaries, pretending to 'contract out' for certain services. However they hire them, our big businesses pay the illegals next to nothing -- and thereby squeeze out maximum profits. Why not? No one goes to jail for hiring illegals.

Does any sane person think that the MBA's who have perpetrated this fraud for decades are going to hire people with W visas and pay normal wages and benefits?

No, they're going to continue to hire illegals as long as they can find them, from wherever they can get them. And desperately poor people from Mexico and Central America are going to continue lining up for these jobs because $5 an hour or even $3 an hour is better than $1.50 a day back home. Every now and again, a bunch of poor slobs who wanted nothing more than to better their lives and the lives of their children will be rounded up and deported, just like now, while the greedy, selfish bastards who exploit them replace them without a backward glance -- or the least fear of meaningful legal sanction.

And if you think that immigration "reform" will result in meaningful penalties against the big businesses that benefit from illegal immigration, you're just as high as the lunatics in Washington.

The Right wants secure borders; the Left wants fair wages and an end to exploitation of immigrants. But they don't need "reform." They just need to enforce some of the laws they already have on the books: Put some MBA's in jail. Have a few Fortune 500 CEOs do the 'perp walk' on the evening news. It's already a crime to hire illegal workers and pay them less than minimum wage. Enforce these laws!

This would dry up demand for illegals -- illegal immigration would slow (maybe only the drug runners would have incentive to cross the border after this) -- and opportunities would open up for our kids to get jobs again. The busboy at your neighborhood restaurant might again be your neighbor's teenage son.

I bet most kids today would flunk this test

Chuckle Bros. comic by Brian and Ron Boychuk, obtained from GoComics.

Oh, sure, we old folks think this comic funny because, after all, who can't copy words when the words are written out right in front of you?

The answer, I'm sorry to say, is today's kids. I'm going by what I see from my wife's junior high classes, so perhaps your kids' or grandkids' school is different. But I don't think so. My wife teaches at a private (Catholic) grade school where the students are from middle class backgrounds. According to their standardized test scores, just like the children of fictional Lake Wobegon, the kids at my wife's school are all (or almost all) above average.

And today's kids seem incapable of copying a word when it's written right in front of them.  My wife has showed me test paper after test paper proving this.

Why?

Part of it, I believe, is that teaching methods seem to have changed: When we were kids, we were expected to copy stuff off the board. Accuracy was compulsory; sloppiness was a punishable offense. We were forced to do this time and again in the primary grades, and the teacher actually looked at what we copied. Neatness counted. And graded us very harshly if we didn't copy correctly.  Thus, we learned -- we were required to learn -- how to do this.

Today, rote copying (and -- oh, my gosh, memorizing) are looked on as primitive, wrong, even abusive.  Today's kids didn't learn how to copy accurately in the primary grades; and, thus, they can't do so when they reach junior high.

I don't know why this is the current trend; it seems awfully stupid to me.

Imagine an astronaut in a crisis scenario, trying to copy down critical instructions relayed by Mission Control. "Roger that, Houston," the astronaut would say, but the mushy jumble of characters on his or her note pad might not really match up with the information sent up from the ground.

Apollo 13 would have had a very different ending.

Oh, no, the 'modern' educator may say, in a patronizing tone, today's children have technology (when it works) and spell check will correct their spelling (but only if they get reasonably close to the correct spelling -- and spell check can't help a kid know when and how to use 'there' or 'their' or 'your' or 'you're'). And, as near as I can tell, 'modern' teachers say that kids today don't have to memorize anything because they can always look it up on their ever-present 'devices.' (But how do you 'look up' what you never knew? How do you even know you should be looking for it?)

As Blog of Days readers already know, this is Teacher Appreciation Week. It's an especially appropriate time to think about teachers and teaching -- especially good teachers and good teaching.  In that spirit, share this post with a teacher in your life. Am I being unfair to 'modern' teachers? Am I being unfair to today's kids? What do you think? What do the teachers in your life think?

Olaf graduates -- finally -- and Curmudgeon must begin thinking about his next great acting job

Olaf finally got his degree Saturday. "I don't have the diploma yet," he'd say if he saw this -- but his name was in the program and he walked across the stage with everyone else.

Well... maybe more staggered than walked.

Younger Daughter thought it would be good to celebrate the night before the graduation ceremony.

When I heard she was planning a party, I asked her where she planned to hold the event. My real question, of course, was "if the party's at my house, am I invited?"

In the event, Younger Daughter had a couple of friends meet them at the house, then they repaired to a gin mill on the Near North Side where many others gathered. Ethanol was consumed in copious quantities.

Olaf gets up at 4:30 a.m. for work and, although he doesn't always work Fridays, last Friday he did have to go in.

So he was dog tired before they headed out. And Younger Daughter's not sleeping soundly these days because the Granddaughter To Be Named Later is cutting her two front teeth (gosh, I hope we don't have to wait until Christmas for them) so she was dog tired before they went out.

Well.

I don't know what time they got home (Long Suffering Spouse and I got the baby down and went to sleep ourselves) but I do know that Olaf was sick as a dog on Saturday morning. Younger Daughter was worse.

The plan had been for them to drive down as a family to the graduation -- there's a whole 'nother set of grandparents, you know, and they were looking forward to holding the baby while their son walked across the stage -- but this plan had to be abandoned because of the glacial pace at which the kids were able to move.

Eventually, though, Olaf went in his car, with the new baby seat so the family could head out to his parents for a celebratory barbecue. The old car seat was put into my van so I could take Younger Daughter and the baby if ever they got ready.

I was beginning to wonder if that contingency might not occur -- but, eventually, Younger Daughter rallied sufficiently. She and the baby were there when her husband's name was called. The other grandparents got their carrying time. Everyone looks fine in the pictures. The baby didn't complain about her teeth either.

Long Suffering Spouse and I had a sense of accomplishment as we ushered them out of the house, finally. Not because we got them moving when they were in such a state, of course, but because Olaf had finally -- despite all the obstacles that his health and his teachers combined to throw in his path -- completed his degree. And, Friday, before they went out, Olaf happened to mention that his boss did mention that salary discussions might soon be in order.

Once Olaf gets on salary they ought to be able to put together a security deposit on an apartment -- maybe even, if interest rates hold, a down payment on a house somewhere. They may actually move out someday.

And that's when I'll have to do the best acting job of my career. Long Suffering Spouse -- whatever she may say now -- will be tremendously sad when they go. I will have to pretend to be unreservedly happy. Only you here can know any different.

Lego finds robots -- and redemption

You never know when that next wave of nostalgia will crash over you. Today it happened as I was reading an article in this month's Smithsonian, "How Lego Is Constructing the Next Generation of Engineers."

Remember Lego?

I loved Lego as a child. My parents would get me boxes of just plain bricks like this one (in addition to this standard 2 x 4 size, there were several other sizes too, 1 x 2, 2 x 2, 2 x 3, 2 x 8, 1 x 6....) but, with just these little rectangles I could build anything.

And I did. I built buildings to accompany the train setup, I built cities, I built ray-guns (I had a pretty good phaser design, if I do say so myself), I built control panels -- buttons on buttons -- to operate spaceships that would take me all around the Galaxy -- without ever leaving my parents' house.

I didn't play with Lego as often as the years went by, but (like the boy in Toy Story) I had occasional relapses for many years. Eventually, though, I went away to school and my mother gave my Lego collection (by then quite massive) to my aunt so that my 14-years-younger cousin could play with them. I thought I'd get them back for my own children, but that's not how it worked out: The whole box got sold in a garage sale at some point; I was not informed until well after the fact.

Still, by that time, I was married and looking forward to my own children and the chance to play with their Legos. We did fine with the Duplo blocks (Duplo being the giant Lego blocks that are made for little hands) and we built up quite a collection of these (which we absolutely refused to share so that my grandchildren will have them). But when the time came for my kids to graduate from Duplo to Lego, Lego wasn't the same.

Lego was very different.

When I was a kid, the idea behind Lego was that you could build anything you want. When my kids were little, the Lego philosophy had degenerated to 'you can build anything we want.'

There may always have been Lego models; I don't think so, though. I think somebody built the Empire State Building (I remember a huge Lego Empire State Building in the toy department at Marshall Fields one Christmas) or the Statue of Liberty from Legos without instructions. But, even if there were models, the big sellers were the boxes of bricks.

And those boxes of bricks didn't exist when my kids were little. I looked everywhere for them. There were only models. We have a green Lego Statue of Liberty in the dining room still, a little dusty, and with a few of the pieces missing after being jostled from time to time down through the years. My wife bought it for Oldest Son. I hated it. He loved it -- until he was done with it.

After he built it, what else was there to do with it? Admire it? For how long?

So we didn't get Lego Millennium Falcons or any of the other models.

Now I must admit to a certain prejudice against models. My father tried to interest me in model making -- a standard hobby for boys in the 20th Century -- and my father continued making lots of models, even later in life (a lot of them ones I hadn't already ruined). He had the fine motor skills and patience necessary to build models. He had hopes of capping off his model making career by building a ship in a bottle. He never quite got to it.

When I tried to make a model airplane, on the other hand, the wings wound up on the same side of the fuselage, or at least out of alignment, and I usually glued my fingers together. I was a disaster. If I was supposed to break off a plastic strut here, I inevitably broke it off there. There was no model so simple I couldn't screw it up. I learned to hate model making. (You lose a little skin off your fingers each time you pull the glue off.)

So my feelings about model making generally may have colored my feelings toward Lego models in particular. But, if so, I was not alone. As the Smithsonian article relates, Lego sales were in decline during the late 20th Century. By the early 2000s, Lego was on the verge of being bought out by Mattel.

I wasn't following Lego's decline; my kids were largely grown by this point and their Lego window had closed. But, if I had known of Lego's near demise, I might have smiled a smile of secret satisfaction.

And then Lego found robots. And schools, even middle schools, found Legos to teach basic engineering principles by having robot competitions. The latest entry in Lego's robot reboot is Mindstorms EV3:

Mindstorms EV3 is a jumble of parts (nearly 600 separate elements) that can be plugged together many ways. The toy, which clocks in at $350 and will be in stores this fall, comes with 3-D interactive building instructions for 17 different bots that walk, talk and stalk. And, this being Lego, enterprising kids are encouraged to hack away and turn the components into whatever they can dream up.

Well, it's not exactly a box of bricks from which one can make anything yet... but it sure sounds like a giant step in the right direction. And, this time, the blocks can move.

It gives me something to look for at Christmastime when the grandkids start coming along in more quantity....

Law Day: Respect the laws... or repeal them

May 1 is Law Day in the U.S.A. Whatever the paranoid Cold War origins of the observance (it was intended as a red-white-and-blue substitute for that Commie-tainted workers' holiday, May Day) it is a good opportunity for all of us to pause and reflect on how important, how vital our legal system is as the guardian of our American freedoms.

It is also an opportunity to stop and think about laws themselves -- and what they should be.

America breaks down irrevocably if, as a society, we lose respect for the law. In specific instances this has already happened.

It happened nearly 100 years ago when Prohibition was imposed. Many otherwise law-abiding people simply refused to obey this one: Speakeasies... and gangsters... flourished. People who publicly favored Prohibition did not obey the law either: Liquor flowed freely at the Harding White House. Many in the upper classes thought that Prohibition provided a good dose of discipline for the working class, but the 'better sort' did not need that discipline -- or to stop drinking. Eventually, Prohibition had to be abandoned.

The so-called "War on Drugs" hasn't yet been abandoned, although cracks are finally beginning to appear in places like Colorado. But for decades now, draconian penalties against everything from pot smoking to heroin use haven't halted drug usage -- and the children of middle and upper class families seem always to fare better when picked up on drug charges than poor or working class kids. One judge's nomination for the United States Supreme Court was derailed when it was revealed that he regularly smoked marijuana with students while a member of the Harvard Law School faculty. Both Barack Obama and George W. Bush acknowledged drug use that -- had they been caught and prosecuted -- would have effectively ended their political careers before they began. (Bill Clinton admitted smoking marijuana as well -- but denied that he inhaled. Mmm hmm.)

We now pass laws we don't intend to -- or can not -- enforce. My favorite example (probably because it impacted me directly at the time) was raising the drinking age to 21. (It was 19 in Illinois, 18 in many of the surrounding states.) I recall one legislator insisting that this wasn't meant to keep college kids from drinking; rather, it was to keep booze out of high schools. But... wait... most college kids don't turn 21 until they are juniors or seniors. Maybe the honorable gentleman had a bit of a load on when he made these remarks; maybe his remarks were symptomatic of the institutional hypocrisy that threatens to undermine respect for the law.

In my lifetime, attitudes have hardened against drunk drivers. The problem is that drunk drivers don't just kill themselves, they too often take innocent lives with them. Or, worse, they survive -- and wipe out whole families. So we pass increasingly harsh laws against drunk driving, lowering the blood alcohol content levels at which a driver is considered legally drunk and increasing fines and imposing longer, and often mandatory jail terms on persons convicted. We want to get drunks off the road, right? But people with money -- and people who have responsible jobs and families often have money -- and may be sympathetic to boot, especially if they didn't hurt anyone before they were pinched -- aren't convicted. Charges are thrown out on this technicality or that one, or plea deals to lesser charges are accepted -- and too many people who should have gotten help to control their alcohol problems go scot-free... until they T-bone the homecoming queen and her date on prom night. But anyone who suggests scaling penalties in a more reasonable way is committing political suicide -- one can't be seen as 'soft' on drunk driving.

Laws against cellphone usage while driving are taking the worst from the Prohibition and drunk driving playbooks: We pass absolute laws against cellphone usage in cars, but we have no intention of enforcing these laws. Stand on any street corner and watch the cars pass by. Even in cites or states with an absolute ban, it is rare to see someone drive by who is not on the phone. Clearly, many otherwise law-abiding people don't think the bans apply to them. Texting is worse than talking, but stupid people think that keeping the phone in their lap will keep them from being seen -- as they compose texts and weave all over the roadway. But outright bans and increasingly harsh penalties will not end this behavior.

Those terrible commercials one sees everywhere -- a severely injured person explaining his last text, shattered parents recalling their daughter's last text -- are more likely to build consensus over time than any number of laws. In the meantime... why not simplify the law and allow police the opportunity to charge erratic drivers with 'distracted driving' whether they talking are on their phone, texting, or entirely caught up in singing the new Taylor Swift song that's come on the radio?

We must work to repeal (or modify) laws that are widely ignored. Leaving laws on the books that we don't mean to follow, or that we enforce sporadically or selectively, undermines the rule of law in this country.

There may be no stauncher opponent of abortion in government than Wisconsin Congressman Paul Ryan. Yet Ryan recently said that pro-lifers should not lobby for more anti-abortion laws. He has, apparently, come to realize that merely passing an anti-abortion law, or even an anti-abortion constitutional amendment, will not deter determined women from seeking abortions. The goal should not be to make abortion illegal, he said, but rather to make it unthinkable. Change attitudes first, then worry about the law.

You may disagree with Rep. Ryan's objective, but he's got the right approach: Change minds, build consensus, then pass laws. In the long run, that approach furthers the rule of law far more than passing laws to make statements or score political points or show 'toughness' to the voters.

Payton Prep forfeits baseball game after parents refuse to let kids drive to Roseland on a Saturday night

Bee, I know you're going to think this is about sports, but it's not really. Nor is this really about race, but that's the way it's being reported here.

Walter Payton College Prep and Gwendolyn Brooks College Prep are two of the best, most prestigious high schools in Illinois. That's not my opinion; that's the verdict of the current U.S. News & World Report rankings. Payton checks in at #2, Brooks at #13. These are both Chicago Public Schools (indeed, seven of the top 20 in the state are CPS schools -- most of them, Payton and Brooks included, highly selective "magnet" schools).

Payton is located not far from the Loop, at 1034 N. Wells, in an area the Realtors call the Near North neighborhood, close to both the Gold Coast and River North neighborhoods. Brooks, on the other hand, is located at 250 E. 111th Street, about two miles east of I-57, in the Roseland neighborhood.

Roseland is increasingly in the news these days, and not in a good way. It is wracked by gang violence, shootings, drugs, and all manner of crime. You can get mugged near Payton on a Saturday night, too. Cabrini Green used to be just a couple of blocks away -- but that neighborhood is, objectively, far safer these days than Roseland.

The Brooks baseball team plays on its own field, on the school grounds. According to one account I saw, the field is literally locked away from its surrounding environs. Ninth Ward Ald. Anthony Beale, who happens to be an assistant coach on the Brooks team, says that Brooks has the nicest high school field in the City. Even if he is a Chicago alderman, on this point at least, I take him at his word. It looked pretty sweet on TV.

The story broke this way: Sunday morning it was reported that Payton forfeited its scheduled night game at Brooks because 'team parents' refused to let their kids venture into the Roseland neighborhood. The Payton coach was embarrassed. The Brooks coach was embarrassed -- and angry. Furious backtracking has been underway since.

We will probably never know exactly what happened. It seems, however, that a bus was supposed to take the team to and from the game -- which may or may not have been hastily arranged. It's been an awful spring around here, folks. Coaches can't reschedule all the rain-outs and freeze-outs and they are grasping at any opportunities they can to get their kids some playing time. It's quite possible that last-second bus arrangements might have fallen through.

Unless you've had kids who've played high school baseball you may not know what that means.

Let me tell you: Some parents would have been able to take their own kids and maybe a couple of others. But, on a Saturday night, in families with more than one kid, there may have been -- would likely have been -- conflicts. Who knows? Maybe some of the moms and dads had plans of their own. So that means that kids would be expected to get themselves there. To carpool. To drive to an unfamiliar, and dangerous, neighborhood, where kids can, and do, get killed because they looked like someone else. Or maybe just because they looked like they didn't belong.

Chicago Sun-Times columnist Mary Mitchell, an African-American, wasn't happy about the situation, but, she wrote, "Given the steady stream of shootings and killings occurring on the South Side, I really can’t blame any parent for having concerns about a night game." She added:

I’m not proud to admit it, but I don’t travel certain streets at night when I have my grandson in the car.

Crime can happen anywhere. But by now, I have a good idea where I run the greatest risk.

Obviously, this is not something parents should have to worry about, but they do — especially when they are not familiar with the area.

Unfortunately, because of the increase in homicides that we experienced last year on the South Side, the entire area must seem like one big shooting gallery.

Mitchell writes that there were 13 shootings in Chicago this weekend, one resulting in a fatality, and most on the South and West Sides. "Although none of the shootings occurred in Roseland," she writes, "the entire South Side has been stigmatized by the gun violence."

I agree with Ms. Mitchell about the stigma that attaches to the entire South Side -- but the fact that none of this weekend's shootings were in Roseland is no more than a happy coincidence.

But at least Ms. Mitchell is trying not to see this controversy in terms of black and white. Simply calling this a black and white issue is overly simplistic, of course, and (although perhaps nut just because it is the simplest) it is the the one adopted by the media generally: Brooks is in an African-American community, therefore Payton parents must be bigots for refusing to let their kids go play. A picture of the Payton team, gathered around their coach during a game Monday at Taft (in a largely white neighborhood on the Northwest Side), on page 10 of this morning's Sun-Times, subtly reinforces this view. The kids sure look white, at least from a distance. I'll bet some of them are.

But there is no such thing as a lily-white Chicago Public High School, and certainly not a magnet school. Every race and nationality is represented at Payton. If Brooks is predominantly African-American, it is a function of its location in such an overwhelmingly African-American area -- but I'd bet there are white kids there from Mt. Greenwood and Beverly, too. That makes it a little harder to just cry bigotry.

Image from this morning's Chicago Sun-Times

I'll also bet that, even if there aren't a lot of African-American kids on the Payton squad, there probably are a lot of Hispanic players. A lot of high school baseball teams in this area are heavily, if not predominantly, Hispanic. And appearances can be deceiving: My kids are half Cuban. Middle Son's high school catcher, a 6'4" behemoth who looks more like a Viking than anything else, is half Dominican. The picture that accompanies the on-line version of the page 10 story I just referenced shows Mayor Emanuel making nice with the Brooks players. Some of the kids are surely African-American, but -- again -- I'd bet money that the Brooks squad is heavily Hispanic, too.

Moreover, although I'm sure Payton students are drawn from all over Chicago, I'd guess that the majority may be native to the North Side. It is a fact of Chicago life that North Siders are cheerfully ignorant of anything south of Roosevelt -- Soldier Field and McCormick Place occasionally excepted -- just as many South Siders, white and black alike, are ignorant of anything north of Oak Street (North Avenue, perhaps, for the adventurous). I am a rarity among my fellow Chicagoans. I was born on the South Side and I've lived on the North and Northwest Sides. There aren't that many of us. So it's neither surprising nor conclusive evidence of racism if Payton parents plead unfamiliarity with the far South Side.

Sixty-six years after Jackie Robinson, white Payton parents weren't refusing to let their kids play against African-Americans. Parents, white and Hispanic alike, weren't comfortable allowing their kids to go to an unfamiliar, dangerous neighborhood on a Saturday night. Especially when they'd have to drive themselves. Is that really racism? Or is it prudence?

(Those who think that having a bus available would have solved everything need to consult the very politically incorrect police blog, Second City Cop. In SCC's coverage of this story, in NEWSFLASH! South Side Isn't Safe and in today's post, More Payton vs. Brooks Controversy, it is noted that school buses are sometimes targeted by gangbangers with guns.)

However, as the linked Sun-Times story notes, the game will finally be played this Saturday night, weather permitting. We can assume that the 5th and 22nd Police Districts will be employing surge tactics along 111th Street: Mayor Emanuel will insist that there be no incidents. The kids will be happy to play, as kids are. It'll take some time, though, for the alleged grown-ups to work through all this.

The Curmudgeon blogging empire celebrates a blogaversary

Today is the first blogiversary of The Blog of Days. Unlike this blog, that blog has had at least one post every single day now for an entire year, Saturdays, Sundays and holidays included. Of course, holidays are included, that being the general idea of TBOD.

Of course, that blog, unlike this one, has a clear and consistent theme. Second Effort is a blog about anything -- and sometimes a blog about nothing. How come it worked so well for Seinfeld, but not for me?

Apparently regular posting pays off: If the increasing levels of anonymous spam are any indication, The Blog of Days seems on pace to surpass this one in terms of page views, possibly in just a few months. I'm hoping that there are some actual real readers there, too. There should be. Judging by the complaints I've heard over the years, TBOD has one distinct advantage over Second Effort. Unlike this blog, the entries on TBOD tend to be relatively short....

"Perfessor, can we have class outside today?" Curmudgeon reminisces

February, March, and (until now) April have been so miserable in Chicago -- cold, wet, gloomy -- culminating just a week or so ago in massive flooding -- that all memory of the unusually warm January we enjoyed in these parts has been erased.

Unless you're one of the unhappy people whose home was trashed by the overflowing Des Plaines River, today, however, almost makes up for what we've been through around here recently.

What a gorgeous morning in Chicago: The air is clear, the buildings downtown stand out against the sky in sharp 3-D relief (too often, recently, the skyline has looked like buildings simply painted on a gray mist-colored scrim). The forsythia have bet that this little Spring-let is the real deal; they are in full yellow bloom this morning. The lilac buds are beginning to swell. The grass has gone from brown to green overnight. There may even be places (one or two) in our yard that could already benefit from the lawnmower. I hung out a small load of laundry on the line to dry this morning before getting on the train to go to work.

And as I was standing in the backyard this morning, squinting into the rising Sun as I hung out my clothes, I couldn't help but think what my college self would have thought on a breathtaking morning like this. "Perfessor," I would say (no, I don't know where the mispronunciation comes from either), "can we have class outside today?" I might not have been the first to ask. And I certainly would not have been the only one pleading. Cabin fever is just as real at 20 as at 56.

And, because of that, sometimes our pleas actually worked, back in the day. We'd all troop outside and sit in the grass and listen to the professor try and keep his train of thought as the warmth of the long-delayed Spring began to settle into his or her bones, too. I can't remember a single specific occasion this morning; I know there can't have been many. I know we asked far more often than we received.

Youngest Son is the only one in college these days. But he can't really ask his professors to hold class outside today. He has finals beginning at the end of this week. A lot of colleges, even here in the frigid Midwest, have finals now.

When I was in undergrad, our academic year lingered into the second week of June one year. If we got out in May at all it was closer to Memorial Day than to the Workers' holiday. There was time enough for even the most tardy Spring to put in some sort of appearance before we were released from our academic confinement. There were opportunities to ask if we could hold class outside. There were sufficient opportunities to allow us to catch a professor in a weak moment and secure an hour of instruction in the sunshine.

Curmudgeon recognizes he is completely paranoid... but is that a real first step towards anything?

The end of the month is approaching and, with it, the never-ending cycle of new phone and rent and malpractice and other bills that must be paid at the office, and phone, electric, gas, cable, and (of course) charge card bills at home.

The bills arrive with distressing predictability and regularity. (OK, we seem to have lost last month's electric bill at home -- unless it's lost in my briefcase -- I'll look later -- but I'm pretty sure we got it, too.)

What doesn't come are checks.

In my mind's eye I see the mail sorting room from Miracle on 34th Street. Letters going to various offices in Chicago's Loop are cheerfully sorted, without much comment. One of the two guys at the end fishes out an envelope from the stream, only it's not a letter to Santa; it's a check for Curmudgeon. "Look," he tells his buddy, "here's another one. Don't these guys ever learn?"

His buddy pulls something from his back pocket, but it's not the newspaper with the story about Macy's Santa Claus on trial; it's an official-looking memo. "Yeah, he's still on the no-pay list."

"Dead letter office then?"

And instead of getting an inspiration to send the impounded envelops to the nice old man with whiskers at the courthouse, the other guy says, simply, "Yup."

I wake up in a sweat.

I know there's no such memo. At least in my more rational moments I know there's no such memo.

At least I'm pretty sure.

Most of the time.

The rest of the time I'm waiting for the mailman.

Getting nickled and dimed to death makes doing the right thing harder to do

I have an insurance company client that recently began sending me work.

This should be a good thing.

So far, though, it's been a decidedly mixed blessing.

I recently wrote about a vendor billing problem -- I didn't pick the vendor -- the client requires me to use it -- but the bills are totally out of whack.

After wringing my hands here, I wrote my corporate contact and laid the problem out. I haven't heard back. I fear I may have given offense. But I believe I did the right thing and I tried to do it in a positive way.

The vendor bills wouldn't be as much of a problem if the insurer were paying my bills. But it's not. The insurer requires me to 'post' bills through some Third Party Interloper that has somehow sold this insurer (and a number of others around the country, from what I'm hearing) a bill of goods about this somehow being a way to save money.

As Col. Potter used to say on M*A*S*H (mainly because the CBS censors wouldn't him use the actual barnyard epithet), "Horse hockey."

Quibbling over bills just breeds resentment between lawyer and client, just like sneezing uncontrollably in a crowded subway car breeds germs. And maybe even faster.

Look: If you think your lawyer is out to cheat you on his or her bill, maybe you should use another lawyer.

If you enter into the relationship with the assumption that your lawyer will cheat on your bill (else why would you need a Third Party Interloper?) you will actually encourage the lawyer to cheat. Or at least not to accord you the little courtesies and economies that we might otherwise cheerfully provide in an effort to build goodwill -- and more business.

Case in point: I got a new assignment from the insurer a week or so ago about a possible underinsured motorist claim. In Illinois, UIM coverage kicks in if -- but only if -- the party responsible for your injury has less liability coverage than you have in UIM coverage. In Illinois, UIM coverage does not 'stack.' Thus, if you carry UM (uninsured motorist) or UIM coverage with a $50,000 limit and the responsible driver has only a statutory minimum (in Illinois, $20,000 per person) policy, then you have up to $30,000 in additional UIM coverage in the event the responsible party's insurance is insufficient to cover your loss.

Still with me?

This coverage does not kick in automatically. The responsible party's insurer has to put its own policy on the table (or, sometimes, something pretty darn close thereto -- but let's not quibble here) before your insurer gets to decide whether to allow you to take the money or (much less often) advance you the money the other insurer is offering. Then, and only then, can you begin fighting with your own insurer over how much of the UIM limit should be awarded you.

The flip side here is that, if you carry $20,000 in UM/UIM coverage, you probably don't have UIM coverage at all... maybe if the responsible driver comes from a state (if there is one) where the statutory policy liability limit is less than $15,000.

Anyway, in comes this new assignment -- a supposed UIM claim. I spend the time to read the file provided and it becomes obvious that (a) the claim with the primary carrier has not yet been resolved and, therefore, the UIM claim is at least premature and (b) there isn't likely to be a UIM claim anyway because the insured's policy does not appear to be for more than the statutory minimum.

I 'wrote up' seven-tenths of an hour for reading the file; it took longer than that, of course, to acknowledge it through the third party interloper and set up a physical file and enter it into my system. I didn't call the adjuster immediately, but when I did I was prepared to explain why there was not much for me to do on this matter, and maybe nothing at all.

And, as it happens, when I did call, I promptly verified there was nothing to do: The responsible driver's carrier tendered its policy limit, that limit being in excess of the UIM coverage of our insured's policy, and our possible UIM claim vanished like a soap bubble in the breeze.

I congratulated the adjuster on her splendid victory and we had a nice chuckle and, in the ordinary course, I would close my file with no bill. Sure I wasted some time reading the file and doing the administrative tasks in setting the matter up. But I shouldn't resent that because I have hopes, or (in the ordinary course) I should have hopes, that this client will send in more and better business in the future.

Right now, I'm not so sure. This morning I opened up my email to find a notice from the Third Party Interloper advising, in a generic way, that another of my bills to this carrier has been rejected. I have to log into the Third Party Interloper's system to find out why.

And, next week, I am supposed to pay Third Party Interloper $275 for the continued privilege of allowing it to delay my billing.

And the icing on the cake is that the carrier has paid only two of my fee bills this year -- two very little bills. Many more than two remain open, although "approved" by the Third Party Interloper (albeit not without a struggle on several of them).

I will close this file without a bill -- I will have to figure out a way to let the Third Party Interloper system allow me to, of course. It will ask for all sorts of information that does not apply before it will allow me to "close" the matter insofar as it is concerned. I can look forward to wasting an hour or more on that thankless task.

But, still. The right thing to do is close this file without a bill. So I must do the right thing. But I don't have to be happy about it.