The Killer Bees didn't get me... but the wasps sure have

I can't say for sure whether this is the type of bug that bit me Monday. It fits the general profile of the bees or wasps that are buzzing around the side of my house where we keep the garbage bins.

The local NBC outlet ran a story a couple of weeks ago about how aggressive wasps are in this area at this time of year, and all I can say is that I agree.

I'm guessing that, whether this picture correctly depicts them or not, my particular tormentors are ground nesters, and that they've found a home in the narrow space between my house and the house directly west of me -- there are bushes and a fence and ground cover -- and yesterday there was, when I looked, a virtual cloud of a half dozen or more of the creatures, patrolling the space between the bushes and the garbage bins.

We don't have to go through there often. I can't get the lawnmower into the backyard without running through the insect gauntlet. And the garbage bins have to be accessed, and the appropriate bins moved to the curb, once a week, on Mondays, for Garbage Day. But our yard is also accessible from sliding glass doors in our den, and the door hasn't tried to kill me since July, so that's pretty good. That's also another story entirely.

For years I have carefully avoided getting stung. That's the best gloss I can put on my cowardice, manifested on many occasions over the years, bravely running away, like Sir Robin in Monty Python and the Holy Grail, from any sort of buzzing insect or rumor thereof. I was concerned that I might be seriously allergic -- as many of my relatives apparently were -- and, as you know, there is really only one certain way to find out for certain if that might be the case.

I did finally get stung or bit last fall. I brought the flag in around dusk on Labor Day and was preparing to put it away when I got bit by a bee or wasp that had been chilling on the flag. Taking the flag in from the front of the house, across the lawn, into the house -- none of this was enough to rouse the insect to action... or flight... but when my hand got near it, it must have seemed the wasp or bee equivalent of a cheeseburger or something because the insect decided to take a healthy bite. We got the bug out of the house; I kept my hand. I was apparently not super allergic after all.

Which was fortunate indeed because, a couple of weeks ago, as I was getting the garbage bins, I got bit. I didn't cry like a baby, but I did expostulate about my bad fortune, apparently at a loud volume, because my wife intercepted me before I could cross the living room, demanding to see where the wound had been inflicted. I remember sitting on the couch with her examining my hand. I complained that my foot hurt, too, like something was biting my foot. I loosened my shoe just enough to see a bee or wasp or whatever trying to munch through my sock. Maybe it was the same one that bit my hand, maybe it was a different one. That one, at least, will bite no one ever again.

This brings us to this past Monday. I had gotten the garbage out the week before without incident; perhaps this week I let my guard down a tad. All I know for certain is that I grabbed the garbage bin to wheel it up front and an insect grabbed my right ring finger and took a good chomp. I may have responded with a shout, using a word that the three young boys in that house to my west really shouldn't hear. Hopefully, on Monday, they didn't.

Anyway, despite the prompt and repeated topical application of a Benadryl cream, the finger is swollen and clenching a fist is somewhat difficult. At least I didn't get one in my shoe this time.

It was Tuesday, yesterday, when I had to cut to cut the grass in the back, and therefore bring the lawnmower past the bins and through the gate, that I observed a cloud of the little buggers -- but I got in and out of the backyard, with the lawnmower, and without further injury. Brave, brave, brave Sir Robin indeed.

When I was a younger man, it was widely asserted that Killer Bees were going to swarm out of Mexico, into America's heartlands, and sting us all to death. If you think that sounds a little like the current AI hysteria, well, I do, too.

There are -- Google assures me this morning -- still killer bees about. Their range may still be advancing, although, obviously at a much slower rate than that forecast three decades ago. Oh, and the aggressive qualities that distinguished the africanized honeybees are seemingly modifynig as the incoming species mixes and mingles with similar bees already in situ. So nothing to sneeze at, not exactly a hoax, but certainly nothing like the doomsday scenarios that were once shouted by the media.

Meanwhile, in the real world, it's the things that are already here -- like wasps -- that get uber-aggressive around this time every year, as their colonies reach maximum size, and as they somehow perceive that Winter is Coming -- that provide the real threat. And the actual injuries.

So it may also prove to be with AI. While everyone is waiting for Artificial Intelligence to enslave us all, and destroy all human economies, and sap human initiative, it may be the surveillance cameras already in place that actually harm us. Maybe it will be something else. There is enough scary stuff right here, right now, to merit our vigilance, without getting carried away with the latest doomsday narrative about AI.

Oh, my... another year has slipped by without an update

If anyone remembered I was out here, and missed me, I'd feel bad about this.

But no one does -- or should -- let's be real, here -- why should anyone keep following someone who doesn't update for a year at a time?

Of course, I didn't set out to ignore the site for a year... I, uh, fell into a health challenge... and now I'm looking at another one. And there are so many other things I'm trying to do, too.

But I am still using this site... in my real life... this has been a helpful repository for me... so I think I'd better publish this brief update while I am visiting... lest this site wither away from neglect.

Maybe I'll even come back regularly... but not just yet....

A Boomer moment for which I do *not* apologize

Illustrated above is an exemplar of a check. In the prosaic language of Section 3-104 of the Uniform Commercial Code, a check is "a documentary draft, payable on demand and drawn on a bank," the kind of "negotiable instrument" that displays "an unconditional promise or order to pay a fixed amount of money" to a particular person or organization.

Check writing is apparently a lost art.

Indeed, when I went online this morning to search for a picture of a check with which to illustrate this post (not wishing to provide a picture of one of my own -- I see no reason to make it even easier for the Russians or North Koreans to drain my meager checking account), I found all sorts of helpful bank tutorials about how to properly write a check. Because the kids these days... and by "kids" I mean almost anyone 50 or younger... and certainly darn near everyone 30 or younger... don't know how to write checks. Instead, they apparently point their telephones at one another, like ray guns from a 1950s sci-fi kids show, and zap money to each other when required.

The accounts in which their zappable funds are held are still referred to as "checking" accounts, but the word has rather lost its meaning, since account holders seldom or never draw checks on these accounts. At least the phrase 'checking account' is no longer understood in its original sense, much like this symbol:

A younger person will recognize this as a "save" symbol, without having the faintest idea that the image is that of a 3.5" floppy drive... of which there are dozens gathering dust in my house alone.

And, of course, referring to the 3.5" disk as a "floppy" is a further example of a word that lost its original meaning, inasmuch as the 3.5" disk was entirely rigid and not floppy at all, as opposed to its predecessor, the 5.25" floppy drive that could hold an (at one time) astounding 360kb of data. Astounding, that is, compared to the 8" floppy disk... which was really floppy. I don't have any of the 8" floppy disks laying around... but there is quite a collection of 5.25" disks gathering dust in my home along with their 3.5" brothers and sisters.

But we will quickly climb out of that rabbit hole and resume our rant about checks.

The young people don't write checks anymore.

My wife, who is still teaching, has had occasion in recent years to order t-shirts for a school club she moderates. She asks the parents to send a check to cover the cost... and, with each passing year, this apparently becomes a more and more arduous task. Put it this way: The school parents need to look at the online tutorials I saw this morning. One parent wrote my wife a check with the amount of the check on the "pay to the order of" line. I had to take these checks to the bank for deposit... and I was afraid this one might not be accepted for deposit... and, indeed, the young teller gazed quizzically at that particular check for some time, before deciding to accept it.

If all goes well, later this summer, most of the Curmudgeon family will vacation together at a house I've rented for this purpose in another state. Middle Son wanted to book the house, but I pulled rank and claimed the honor. Among other reasons, I don't know how to point my phone at his and make money magically jump to his device from mine. "That's fine, Dad," Middle Son said, "now I'll get to write the first check since I wrote you the check for our vacation rental last year."

So I fully understand that the Young People don't write checks.

But... last I heard... the Uniform Commercial Code is still the law of the land (there may still be some variations of the UCC in Louisiana which are inapplicable to this discussion). A check is money.

So this past Tuesday, when I had occasion to be downtown for my only day of work this month, I brought with me a check to pay a department store charge card bill which was, by coincidence, due that very day. The walk to the store during my break would satisfy my Fitbit that I was exercising as it demands, and lend purpose to my wanderings.

I hoofed over to the store at my first opportunity.

I won't name the store, of course. I'm sure the store would be tremendously embarrassed by this story, or at least it should be, but if you guessed that the store in question has a modified bullseye for a logo, you'd be right on target. *Ahem*.

Anyway, I went to the customer service desk (I believe they call it 'guest relations,' but I have no relations working in that store that I know of) and presented the payment coupon and my check, whereupon the smile on the face of the nice lady behind the counter froze. "Oh, no, sir," she said, "we don't take checks here any more. It's store policy."

Now... being a reasonable fellow... I can understand a merchant being wary of accepting a check for the purchase of goods. If the check is no good, the customer has effectively absconded with the merchandise. There are civil and criminal remedies for passing bad checks, of course, but, while these consequences are far more onerous for the person passing the bad paper, there is, undeniably, a certain amount of inconvenience involved for the merchant. If the merchant does not wish to deal with that possibility, I do not say him nay.

I do not reflexively condemn every reduction of payment options. To cite an example: I am not happy with the fact that the pizza joint where I go for lunch on those few days I work downtown no longer accepts cash. Only credit or debit cards are accepted. But that is because, in Chicago, as perhaps in other big cities, there are people who view a cash register containing cash as an untapped wellspring for their own personal use. The pizza joint's policy is an unfortunate, but arguably necessary, response to a bleak reality of our modern world. The department store's position regarding accepting checks for payment of its store-issued credit card, on the other hand, is just plain stupid.

It is stupid because, when a person tenders a check for the payment of store-issued credit card, the merchant has no additional risk than it would if a person tried to pay online, and no inconvenience whatsoever. It is out no merchandise -- at least no new merchandise -- and, should the check prove to be backed by insufficient funds, the merchant can suspend credit, close the account, and maybe even sue. It certainly will add large penalties and fees and charge usurious interest on the balance due, just as it would do if no attempt at payment were made, or if payment were defectively tendered online.

So... yes, I suppose it was a 'Boomer moment' as I stood at the counter, brandishing my check, dumbfounded by the store's refusal to take my lawfully tendered payment. But it was not simply that I am old and the world has passed me by. I was right, and within my rights, and the store was stupid. So I make no apology -- this time -- for my Boomer moment. (I later paid the bill online, as I usually do....)

ABA spreads ludicrous claims about lawyer income

Ed. note -- I find it difficult to believe that I haven't posted here since 2022, but the list in the archives appears dispositive on the question.

A bit has happened between then and now, and I've written about it extensively, of course -- just not here.

I had a heart attack a couple of days after my last post (no, it wasn't fatal, why do you ask that?) and we've welcomed four more grandchildren into the family between that last post and this one. I've also retired from the active practice of law, mainly because I wasn't earning any money from it. Persons searching the archives here will quickly discern that I've often bitched about not making any money from my chosen profession -- but I'm dead serious here: At the end, it was costing me money to pretend to be in business. I wasn't making enough money to pay for my malpractice insurance, bar dues, and license fees. Why that was the case is not what brought me back here today. The actual reason should become clear momentarily. Read on.

----------------------------------------------------

This past November, the American Bar Association published, as part of its annual survey of the profession, an article purporting to describe the average wage of the American lawyer.

According to the article, which I first spotted on Twitter, or X if you prefer, as of May 2023, according to statistics apparently obtained from the Bureau of Labor Statistices, the average lawyer in America was earning $176,000, a 19.2% increase from 2021-2023. The linked article includes this chart:

Yes, I know some attorneys that made this kind of money. Some.

No, none of them was ever me.

In my best year ever, my K-1 -- the total that got reported to the IRS -- the total on which I had to pay taxes -- was somewhere around $50,000 more than I ever actually saw. Ah, the joys of working at a small firm.... (Of course, I'm grateful for that K-1 now -- that was one of the most important numbers that the Social Security Administration used in calculating the monthly benefit on which I now subsist. And since I did in fact pay taxes as if I'd actually received the amount reported -- according to the partnership's accountants, this really was the share of partnership income attributable to me, my vociferous protests notwithstanding -- the SSA in particuar and the good people of the United States in general aren't being cheated in any way.)

I had some good years. But never $176,000 good. There were more than a few years where it was nip and tuck for much of the year whether I would clear more from the practice of law than my Long Suffering Spouse earned as a Catholic school teacher. (Don't get her started on that -- the starting pay for a newly-graduated teacher in the Chicago Public Schools is somewhere around $55,000 -- well more than my wife makes after nearly 30 years at the parish school.) I'd say I usually beat her number... but not always. Toward the end, I had a year where I made nothing after expenses. And, of course, at the very end, in 2023, when the average lawyer was supposedly banking $176,000, I was loaning the business money to pretend to be in business.

I trust it is now clear why I had to vent about this anonymously. Were I to write about it under my own name, it might appear that I was trolling for sympathy or, worse, setting up a GoFundMe.

No. If I ever attempt to profit from my many failures (a notion I have toyed with in the past) it will be by delivering something of value -- a book, I hope -- that you can buy of your own free will, whether online or at your nearest bookstore.

But, in the meantime, I felt compelled to call out this crazy ABA claim about lawyer income: While there are indeed some lawyers who make $176,000 annually, and some, indeed, who make a whole lot more, there are a whole bunch of us who make a whole lot less. And who have done honorable work nonetheless.

I'm not just talking about public interest lawyers either: The linked ABA article notes that that average salary for lawyers in legal aid, public prosecution or defense, other public agencies, or not-for-profits earned far less than $176,000. They bring down the average, if you will. But there were years I would have killed to make so 'little' as these claimed average figures for lawyers at NFPs or doing legal aid.

Well... maybe not killed... but I would have been significantly envious.

So, bottom line: I think these ABA figures, though grounded in government statistics and other seemingly reliable sources, are ludicrous. The average work-a-day lawyer simply doesn't command this kind of dough. I can't prove the ABA wrong, but I am certain that, on the question of average lawyer income, they most certainly are wrong.

One of the great advantages of being a failure is...

...that it takes a lot of pressure of one's children.

Some cope with prominent parents (that is, parents who are not failures) better than others, of course.

Sir Winston Churchill was long overshadowed by his father, Lord Randolph. Some historians view Winston's career as a series of maneuvers to establish himself as a statesman in his own right, separate and apart from his by-then-long-dead father. As a father himself, Winston was as indulgent as his own father had been aloof. But Winston's son, Randolph, never quite escaped his father's shadow.

It helps to explain why they both drank. A lot.

In a very small way, I had a famous father. My dad was in law, not politics. But, in his field, he was recognized as a leading expert. And, going into the law, as I did, I was to those who knew my father readily pigeonholed. I was my father's son. But my father practiced in a very narrow specialty.

I did not engage in the same specialty as my father. And there are a lot of lawyers in Chicago. There were a lot of lawyers even then. So, with one entertaining exception I won't go into now, I didn't get a lot of "are you related to..." questions -- and when I did, it was more of a general inquiry than anything.

Time passed, and I built my own reputation. I published a number of articles under my own name in a legal publication. Then, one night, at a holiday party, a judge, before whom I regularly appeared, sidled up to my father, and asked, in seeming innocence, "Say... are you Curmudgeon's father?" He knew damn good and well that he was talking to my father. But my dad was thrilled to tell me about it. And proud, I think. As if I were now the one casting the shadow.

As if.

Successful people cast shadows. Failures do not.

Consider the aforementioned articles, for instance. They earned me not one penny of income. Lawyers in Chicago are expected to share their experise with their brothers and sisters for the good of the profession (and the benefit of the entity publishing). (And this was before the days of MCLE -- so I didn't even get the minimal credit for continuing education hours that might be available now for those efforts.)

The hope was that being a published legal author would bring clients (waving healthy retainer checks) to my doorstep. Now I can't say for certain that none of these articles ever helped generate a client. I did more than 100 of them, but I shared the byline for almost all of those published during the first six years that I was writing them with one of my firm's named partners. I do not say he did not participate in these articles. Sometimes he told me what case to highlight and what our 'take' on it was to be. Some months he merely read what I wrote before I submitted the articles; I think there were many months where he did not read the articles until they appeared in print.

Maybe, in those early years, perhaps, my co-author got some business from one of these articles. If he had, he would not have told me about it. Lest I get a big head about it or something.

But I doubt the articles did generate any real clients and I base this assertion on the fact that, when I went out on my own, I was given the opportunity to continue writing the articles. Some months I did two articles. I think there was a month I did three. Truth be told, I didn't have a lot else to do in those days.

As each new article appeared, I would carefully cut it out and photocopy it (I can lay out a page very nicely, thank you) and send it off to a whole bunch of propsective clients (clients of my old firm, persons with whom I had worked on a regular basis for years). I spent all sorts of money I didn't have on postage. And from this I got... bubkus. No fat retainer checks. Not even checks that bounced. No clients. No business. Once, during my first year on my own, at a women's bar association reception, I had the opportunity to introduce my Older Daughter to the first female justice of the Illinois Supreme Court. Older Daughter, then still in junior high, was with me because it was Take Your Daughter to Work Day and I thought this reception, at least, might make up for the eight hours she had spent watching me twiddle my thumbs. The Supreme Court justice was there as one of the evening's honorees. There was a receiving line; that's where the introduction was made. The justice was very kind. As I introduced myself and my daughter, she pretended to recognize me. "Ah, yes," she said, "you write those articles." We were quickly moved down the line, of course, but Older Daughter finally had something to write about in the school assignment she was expected to complete about her adventures with me that day.

So maybe not a complete failure. Some rain falls on the driest deserts, too, with the apparent exception of portions of the Atacama, but the odd sprinkle here or there never relieves the permanent drought.

My consistent pattern of failure has made it easy for my children to establish themselves as persons in their own right. I think they're all an interesting bunch.

None of them followed me into the law, of course. Why would they?

Still, I sometimes wish I'd been a little more successful -- if only because then my sage advice as the family patriarch might carry some actual weight with those independent, unshadowed kids. There are situations upcoming in which that might be helpful....

The email riles up Curmudgeon... again

I have a number of email accounts, personal and professional, and they all get clogged with garbage. But some of the emails get my goat more than others....

This one hacks me off every single month: I have a DirecTV dish and a ginormous AT&T bill each month that goes along with it. Which I have faithfully, if never cheerfully, paid when due.

This never stops AT&T though. It insists on treating me as if I were a habitual deadbeat. From today's email:

For the record (although, as a long-time solo practicing lawyer I know this is one of the oldest lies in the history of commerce) my check to AT&T is in the mail.

And was, moreover, before I got this insulting notice.

I can't imagine ever sending such a notice to a client, huffing about payment on a bill not yet due!

Didn't we used to have antitrust laws in this country? AT&T was broken up during my lifetime -- how was it allowed to recombine, like a Ray Harryhausen skeleton in Jason and the Argonauts, only bigger and more evil?

Slightly less aggravating was the email I received from an auto dealer. (A couple of years ago, I was compelled to buy a new van to replace our old one. Indeed, it was at the repair shop referred to in the linked post, on a subsequent visit, that the repair technician came, someberly, into the waiting room -- I think he was clutching his hat with both hands in front of him, eyes downcast -- to tell me, "You know, Curmudgeon, we all have to go some time....")

Anyway, the dealer (separate and distinct from the repair shop) showers me with emails, touting new models or service on my van. I don't answer them. And I don't feel bad in not answering them.

It's not like they're paying for postage.

But the dealer, apparently, is becoming slightly peeved, as this excerpt from the dealer's most recent email would indicate (edited to remove identifying details):

Hello [CURMUDGEON],

I have attempted to reach you, but I've had no success.

Either you have been eaten by alligators or you are just plain swamped. If you have been eaten by alligators... my deepest sympathy goes out to your family members. If you are still alive, one of the following is more likely to have happened. I hate to keep pestering you, but I do want to express my desire to work with you.

Please pick one response, email or phone (773) xxx-xxxx letting me know what our next step should be:

1. Yes!, I have been eaten by alligators. Please send flowers.

2. No, I have not been eaten by alligators but you may wish I had been because I have decided I have no interest in your service. Sorry, you are sunk (Thanks for your frank honesty, I can handle it.)

3. Yes, I have some interest, but here are my challenges:..............

4. Yes, I have some interest. Let’s talk and get together on:...........

Please be as open as possible. Thanks for your response.

Doesn't that seem a tad peevish to you?

I have not, and will not, respond to this email, although the temptation to choose option 1 is pretty strong.

But I, of all people, should be sympathetic when an attempt at humor falls flat.

Least aggravating, for purposes of this review, but still, in my opinion, a nusiance, is this reminder from Walgreen's:

Yes, I am cheap. (I prefer to say frugal, but I won't argue with cheap.)

But would I really venture out unnecessarily in the midst of a record COVID-19 surge just for the sake of 83 cents?

I'll have to get back to you on this... I'm still thinking it over.

Meanwhile, have a safe and healthy New Year's holiday.

Curmudgeon turns out to be not the retiring sort

Photo credit: Ernst Vikne Flickr stream from Wikipedia Commons

I am not ready to retire.

No, that's not right: I'm ready. I'm more than ready. I am not able.

I meant to be rich and famous some day. Or at least rich. Or at least not broke.

I joked about it -- in 2010 I said I was disappointed to learn that the Mayan calendar had been mistranslated and that the world would not end in 2012 after all. (Spoiler alert: It didn't.) But, see, I said I was rooting for the End of the World in 2012 because my credit cards would have just about maxed out by then.

In reality I scrimped and saved and got my credit cards back under control (the last of my five kids finishing college helped a lot in this regard). But I'm not out of debt yet... and I'm not likely to ever be completely out of debt.

Actually, it turns out that reaching retirement age is in some ways like being a teenager all over again, except without the hormones (darn it): As my friends in high school all turned 16 and got their drivers' licenses I wasn't 16 yet and I was kind of envious because I wasn't yet old enough. Now my friends are all retiring and I'm not quite old enough and I neglected to get a pension from anyone.

That was poor planning on my part.

This is the 'second wave' of retirements in my case: Some years back, when I was coaching at what I called Bluejay Park (my coaching "career" ended in 2006) a lot of my fellow coaches started turning 50. That may not strike you as a particularly important milestone. But most of these dads were City workers -- cops mostly, but some firemen, at least one guy in the Department of Forestry) and they had their 30 years in with the City and were therefore eligible to retire and collect their full pensions. Many did retire. Most found other jobs, too, meaning they had some pretty good earning years while I was rooting for the Mayan prediction to be true.

I had a plan about how I was going to get a pension -- lots of plans -- none of them practical.

So I'm still here, still pursuing plans that are unlikely to bear real fruit. But I'm more at peace now with that. And I'm prepared to muddle through.

I'm not either of the old duffers on the bench in the picture above. But come sit next to me on this bench in the Blogosphere. I'll tell some stories, and maybe I'll even make you smile.

Or piss you off. In 2021 I suppose that seems more likely.

Yogurt: Why in the world does anybody eat this stuff?

It's supposed to be good for you, I know. What I don't understand is why.

Yougurt, sold openly in stores in containers such as that pictured above, is, insofar as I can tell, the exact same thing as milk that's been left in your refrigerator a week past its use-by date.

Except for Greek yogurt. That's milk that's been left in your refrigerator two weeks past its use-by date. That's why it's chunky.

And, yet, this container has on it its very own use-by date. A date that is, inexplicably, still in the future.

America: We don't make much of anything anymore, but we can market anything!

As you may be able to deduce from the foregoing, this container of yogurt, taken from the Curmudgeon family refrigerator, was not purchased for my consumption.

My wife, Long Suffering Spouse, claims to like plain yogurt. She uses it, sometimes, as an ingredient in 'smoothies.' These are concoctions, made with a blender, into which all manner of fruits and vegetables are hurled, there to be sliced, diced, and liquified. Along with yogurt.

It is a fate too horrifying to contemplate.

Mind you, I don't much care for fruits or vegetables either. But I harbor no special animus against them. I would never mutilate---indeed, utterly destroy---them in this fashion.

But my wife---my wife who claims to like fruits and vegetables---sees nothing wrong with condemning innocent fruits and vegetables to such a gruesome fate. With yogurt, yet.

But, whether it is from pangs of conscience or the press of time, Long Suffering Spouse does not always get the chance to ritually slaughter fruits and vegetables in whirling blades of death before her yogurt goes "bad."

Each time this happens, when she happens to mention it to me, I ask, "How can you tell?"

For some reason, my wife does not always find this endearing.

Since the Pandemic began, my wife and I often do our grocery shopping together. I go racing through the aisles, grabbing the usual sundries (bread, coffee, coffee cake...), and bringing them back to the cart; she lingers among the fruits and vegetables, carefully choosing which ones she will destroy. The container used in the above illustration was acquired during one such recent joint venture.

I brought it back to the cart as directed.

Now you have to understand that the last couple of times we have bought yogurt, my wife was unable to use it before it supposedly went bad. (I've also sometimes asked if yogurt becomes edible after its experation date; this, too, has not been well-received by my better half.)

Anyway, because I am an obedient husband, I fetched the yogurt, reporting the stated use-by date to Long Suffering Spouse, who always asks about such things. "Can we just throw it out now, when we go through the checkout line?" I asked, as I dutifully put the container in our cart. "It would save time later."

My wife was not amused. On the other hand, in the week or more since we returned from that expedition, she has not yet found time to make her "smoothies."

Meanwhile, as you can see, I have, finally, gotten some use from this purchase.

I have this superpower... and it does me no earthly good

I can't fly, of course, or turn invisible, or toss about heavy objects. These days I count myself fortunate if I can open a pickle jar.

But I do have a superpower. I'm like a negative chameleon. Put me in a room with "progressives" -- these days it would be a well-ventilated room, naturally, with all of us wearing masks -- and I become the most conservative person around. At least insofar as they would be concerned. On the other hand, put me in a room with conservatives, and all present will immediately think of me as left of Bernie Sanders.

I used to think that made me a "centrist," whatever that is. A middle-of-the-roader. (And you know what you are likely to find in the middle of the road? If not... consult the Greatest Hit -- and only Top 40 hit -- of Loudon Wainwright III.) I figured, if everyone on the Left disagreed with me and everyone on the Right disagreed with me, I must be charting a proper course.

But, now I know, that's not it. Not it at all. It's a consequence of my superpower. I can bring people together -- I can unite Left and Right in common cause: They can all hate me. If that's not a great superpower, it's at least an uncomfortable one.

Case in point. This morning a lot of people on social media are losing their..., er, are very upset over the Supreme Court's decision not to prevent a Texas law that places certain restrictions on a woman's ability to obtain an abortion in that state from going into effect while the challenges to that law are litigated.

I quickly note that I am not taking a position on a law I haven't read. Nor am I offering any opinion on the action, or, rather, inaction, of the Supreme Court of the United States. But many of the people expressing their outrage this morning were running this image with their posts:

So let's see what this means: As long as a woman has a heartbeat, no one can tell her what she can do with her own [ ] body. So... she is free to refuse to wear a mask, for instance? Or to refuse to get a COVID-19 vaccination?

I am reasonably sure, however, that 99% of those posting this graphic today would recoil in horror (and outrage -- always outrage) at such suggestions. But... isn't that a logical conclusion that must be drawn from such a statement? Otherwise the graphic would mean that, as long as a woman has a heartbeat, no one can tell her what to do with her own body as long as (and only if) we agree with what she wants to do, or not do, with it.

The day before a different meme was making the rounds in the other social media silo, this one a letter from a fire chief in Aurora, Oregon, asserting that he would never insist that the members of his department receive a COVID-19 vaccination, despite a gubernatorial mandate requiring vaccination by a date certain. Even if he loses his job because of it. In the letter, the Fire Chief writes:

The "vaccine" is not the issue. Please take out the word "vaccination" and insert any other medical procedure or medication. These choices are better left beftween an individual and their physician.

I'm certain that a great many of the individuals circulating this letter in the last few days, and lionizing the fire chief's bravery in the face of government tyranny, are among those rejoicing this morning that the Texas abortion law has gone into effect. But I wonder if those persons realize that their new hero has coopted the abortionists' fundamental position: "Those choices are better left between an individual and their physician." (The chief has even utilized the language of the "Pro-Choice" movement, whether wittingly or not.)

We will leave aside, for the moment, the question of how many physicians would counsel a patient against taking a COVID-19 vaccine -- unless the patient had some very specific medical condition which the vaccine might negatively impact. We will likewise leave aside how many people with such exotic medical conditions, whatever they may be, are otherwise fit for the fire service.

But... the question becomes... are all these people, on both sides, mere hypocrites, willing to use any language or tactic to advance their immediate objective? Or are they simply incapable of realizing the inconsistencies of their positions?

I could go on. There are so many othe examples I could cite. And... maybe I will... someday. But, then, you'd really hate me... wouldn't you?

The gear-shifting problem -- we have different faces in different places but it's not always easy to transition

In yesterday's post, I lamented that my babysitting obligations are preventing me from getting any real work done.

I call it the 'gear-shifting' problem.

Long Suffering Spouse has experienced it: She teaches kids from preschool to 8th grade, albeit with varying frequency. She sees the middle schoolers three days a week, but she only sees the kids in Pre-K through 3 once a week and then only one trimester a year. Anyway, she has noticed that, after a grueling battle -- er, class -- with noisy, disobedient, disrespectful (i.e., normal) 8th graders, she finds it difficult to transition to a class of kindergartners. They file in, cute and ready to learn, only moments after the sullen 8th graders have trudged out, and my wife sometimes greets the little ones with fangs bared and raised hackles and, on those occasions, scares them half to death.

It takes a moment or two to calm down and reach the right 'pitch' with which to address a class of eager 6-year olds.

And teachers also have to shift gears when dealing with grown-ups, whether each other, as colleagues, or with (*gulp*) parents.

I think some of them can't do it at all -- which may explain some of the difficulties Olaf and Younger Daughter are having with Granddaughter No. 1's kindergarten teacher.

But I digress.

For me, the transitions are even more abrupt. Dealing with obnoxious opposing counsel, with clients who can never seem to find their checkbooks, or with court personnel who have no discretion and no imagination (and couldn't use either if they had), gets my fangs bared, hackles raised, and stomach churning. It's hard to calm down, some days, to try and think which, after all, is what I'm pretty much supposed to do for a living. Hard to 'gear down' to the point where I can dispassionately analyze facts and read and interpret and apply case law and then formulate and coherently express opinions. And that's when Lexis is working, as it wasn't, for me anyway, for a couple of weeks recently. And every time the phone rings, that little bubble of concentration bursts, and must be reformed.

That's the range -- and the challenge -- for lawyers generally.

But I have to field calls on potty training. Or babysitting requests. Or just because. One of my daughters prefers, while driving from appointment to appointment, to talk on the phone instead of listening to the radio.

Yesterday, Older Daughter called to ask if I could babysit next Wednesday afternoon. Younger Daughter had previously requisitioned me for Tuesday morning. Then she called me yesterday to ask me to pick up Granddaughter No. 1 from kindergarten because her younger two had not cooperated on naptime and were, according to her text "WRECKS." (I had to walk to my wife's school to pick up the family van; she drove yesterday, you may have noticed.)

How can I say no to any of these requests? Why would I want to? And, yet, I somehow have to get work done.

But, with the grandkids, far from being angry or even analytical, I want to be happy and playful and downright silly and make as many googly eyes or silly voices or fake pratfalls as may be necessary. Who wouldn't?

But I've gotten less done than ever this year so far, less still now that I'm home full-time. And I have an appellate brief due later this month that I haven't really begun. And my stomach is really churning this morning, and my chest hurts, too.

I need a better clutch.

(For you young people out there, once upon a time, we had to push the clutch pedal in the car in order to shift gears. I won't explain every reference for you; some things you should look up on your own -- but, now and then, I'll give you a break. As opposed to a brake. As in I think I've downshifted enough that I can hit the brakes on this morning blogging exercise and get some work done... as long as the phone doesn't ring.)

It's all my fault, as usual -- Curmudgeon tries to explain what he should have said. Once again.

Long Suffering Spouse is having a tough morning already.

She was looking for something.

She'd set up a packet of materials for expense reimbursement -- she just needed one item, that being a copy of the charge card bill on which we'd booked her recent seminar -- and that bill did not show up until this week.

It took me a couple of days to get around to making a redacted copy of the charge card bill (no one at my wife's school needs to see what else we charged on that card in order to confirm that we paid for the seminar) -- but that wasn't really the reason why it's all my fault this morning.

That just started things down the wrong road.

See, I did prepare the redacted copy yesterday and left it on my wife's chair. All she had to do was insert that one missing piece of paper into the set she'd carefully assembled to present to the office -- the seminar brochure, for one thing, a copy of her certificate of completion, for another.

But she couldn't find those papers this morning.

Time ticked inexorably by as she searched with increasing franticness upstairs and down -- talking, mainly to herself, but not entirely so.

And that's where I stepped into it.

Somewhere in the course of this search, Long Suffering Spouse suggested I drive her to school. That way, I could have the car. You know, she added, in case Younger Daughter needs you.

Now, a smart husband, a wise man, would have said "OK," and left it alone.

But... unfortunately... I am not always so smart.

"I don't need the car," I said. (Superfluous, but not problematic.) "I don't want the car," I said. (Redundant, unnecessary, but still not dangerous.)

But I continued.

Maybe it's because I didn't yet know what she was looking for -- and my part, however inadvertent, in creating that problem -- or maybe it was because my morning coffee had yet to take effect.

Or maybe it's because I'm a little sensitive about this "working" from home stuff -- maybe I'm a little prickly about not contributing to the family exchequer these days -- OK, maybe I'm a lot prickly -- anyway, what I said was something along these lines: "Look, I'm happy to retire right now. But, if I'm not going to retire, I have to work here -- I can't be dropping everything everyday just because one of the girls needs something."

"Yes," said Long Suffering Spouse, darkly, though I was oblivious to the warning signs, "you do have to work. You can start by getting off the iPad."

Admittedly, as I was slurping my morning joe, I was playing a word game on the aforementioned tablet.

A smart person would have immediately put down the device and found a way to change the subject (e.g., what are you looking for? can I help you find it?) but we have already made abundantly clear that this was not one of my brighter mornings.

Having walked to the edge of the cliff, I decided (without consciously thinking about it) to swan dive off: "I have a hard enough time gearing up to work," I said -- this is true, although this is probably a personal failing, and not characteristic, necessarily, of lawyers generally -- "without being interrupted all the time. I don't just grade papers."

Ouch.

It is true that Long Suffering Spouse generally has with or near her person, at almost any hour of the day or night, in almost any place she goes, a bag of papers to correct. And she doesn't just carry it with her; she pulls stuff out constantly to work on. It came with her to all our kids' sporting events when they were growing up. If she has five minutes to wait in the car, she gets a stack out. And she never gets caught up -- there is always more work to do.

"I don't just grade papers," she said, icily... and truthfully, too.

"I know that," I said -- too little, too late --

"But you are available for emergencies," Long Suffering Spouse continued.

"Of course I'm available for emergencies. When I was downtown, I was available for emergencies, too."

There may have been more, but I think the quest for the missing set of papers once again consumed Long Suffering Spouse's attention.

Eventually, dimly, aware that Long Suffering Spouse was going to be late, I put down the iPad, refilled my coffee, and went out and started our poor, dying car. With my key. I was going to drive. I put on my coat.

Long Suffering Spouse came downstairs again, muttering something about maybe the papers might be... but they couldn't be there... I'll just look here one more time... and, lo and behold, she found them. "I don't know how they got there," she said. "I don't know how they stayed there," there being an area that would likely be disturbed by crawling grandchildren. She quickly finished assembling her stuff to take to school.

The first thing she noticed was that her keys were still on the dining room table.

"Why are my keys here?"

"I'm driving you."

"You are not driving me. You don't want the car."

"It's OK," I said (too, too late).

"No," she said, "you need to work. You said so."

"I'll drive," I said, and headed out the front door.

"I'll walk!" she said, and she meant it, too, as she barrelled past me.

In the end, she drove. She turned off the car and threw my key at me, then put hers in the ignition and started off. I half expected to see or hear a crash before she got a block away -- she was that angry and, besides, it's very busy on our street at and just after 7:30, as the cars come streaming past en route to a nearby public high school. But I believe she made it to her school without incident.

"And this is before I see any kids today," she said on her way out.

Woe betide the first kid to cross her this morning.

I have a colleague who says solo practice is another way of saying unemployed. At least, that's how our family members view it. This week, just to cite a single example, Older Daughter called immediately after Granddaughter Number 3 did number two in the proper place. Now there's a very good reason for making this call: She wants to reinforce how happy she is -- how happy we all are -- that Granddaughter Number 3 has achieved this latest milestone on the road to being successfully potty trained. (And hers has been a long and winding road, too.) My job, in this circumstance, is to say "hooray" and "yaay" and "good for you" without the least hint of irony or snark. I can do that. Truth be told, I like doing that.

However, let's look at this a moment.

Older Daughter might call her husband for this purpose -- but he's too busy in his office. She might call her mother -- but Long Suffering Spouse can not be disturbed at school. She might call her sister -- but Younger Daughter is chasing after her own kids.

The perception is that I have nothing better to do.

And, again, in terms of what is good, and what is useful, and what I like, this statement is true.

But it is hard to try and analyze a case, or recreate time for billing purposes, or explain the finer points of the law to a client who doesn't want to hear bad news. And when I have finally got the legal oxen hitched up and plowing a straight furrow, it is jarring, and often fatally jarring, to any productivity I might otherwise have achieved, to get called away to say "yaay" and "hooray" for successful pooping.

If this working from home business is to have any hope of success, the family is going to have to think of it as working first, and to be just as wary of interrupting me, toiling away in the girls' one-time bedroom, as they would be of interrupting Long Suffering Spouse.

No, I don't think that's going to happen either.

And, to refer back to the title of this morning's post, the above and foregoing is not what I should have said. I should have avoided the entire conversation -- under the circumstances -- particularly under the circumstances -- and just said "OK."

Once again we see the wisdom in the epigram that appears on the front page of this blog: "Ve grow too soon old, und too late schmart."

Curmudgeon grapples with depression, death, and dying

Really fertile ground for an alleged humorist, doncha think?

But these less-than-cheery subjects are much on my mind of late.

Winter weather in Chicago can account for a serious mood indigo all by itself. We set something of a record recently for consecutive days of one sort of precipitation or another. It's been gray, it's been gloomy, it's been wet, it's been cold. We have less sunlight in an ordinary February, I believe, than in any other month -- and we're running well below average this month.

Of course, the Sun is out this morning, just to make me look like a liar.

But the weather alone does not account for my current funk.

I mentioned yesterday that I closed my downtown office and am now 'working' from home.

I didn't do this because I had paying clients climbing over each other to shower me with money. I did it because I didn't make one thin dime from the practice of law last year.

I'll let you chew on that for a moment. I did pay the rent, or at least my portion of the rent and electric and Internet. I paid a King's ransom for my Lexis research service. I paid my membership dues in all the various bar groups to which I belong. I paid medical expenses through the firm -- I operate as a C corporation expressly for this reason. But never, not once, during the entire year, was I able to squeeze out so much as a penny of salary. In fact, I had to lend my firm money to keep it going -- doing strange magic with credit card advances -- and the chickens are about to come home to roost on that venture.

All the years that I've been whining about my impecunious stature here on this blog -- in all those years but 2018 I was still able to pay myself something. Thus, last year was awful, even by my low standards.

My lease was up at the end of January. Rent was an expense I could cut, so I did. With efiling it really is almost possible to work from anywhere and still practice law.

I wish I still wanted to.

Now there's a problem.

I do have some work to do. Some of it may eventually realize income. Emphasis on eventually.

But what I've noticed lately is a complete disconnect between effort and results. I do good work on something -- what I think is good work, anyway -- and I get shot down by this judge or that one. I did actually "win" a case recently -- and, from a cynical lawyer's perspective I should be rejoicing because I not only won, my opponent filed an immediate appeal. And this on one of my only paying cases.

However... I should have won that case two years ago. I have been beating my head against the wall -- figuratively, so far at least -- filing motion on motion, raising argument on argument, laying out an airtight case -- and until the learned trial judge who had been handling the matter suddenly retired, I was losing. The other side would -- and I am not exaggerating -- make stuff up -- sometimes inventing some ridiculous claim in open court -- and the judge lapped it up. When I did win, the new judge based the ruling on something that, in all candor, was pretty much irrelevant, at least insofar as I was concerned.

I settled a case last year -- pursuant to client instructions, of course, but for far less than I thought the case was worth -- as it happened, the client's conduct had undermined the value of his claim, but let's leave that to one side -- and the insurance carrier immediately reported the settlement to Medicare. Which meant that I had to deal with Medicare's "Super Lien."

And the carrier should never have done this: My client had slipped past his 65th birthday during the pendency of the claim -- but he was not a Medicare recipient when the accident happened, nor was he a Medicare beneficiary during the entire time he treated for the injuries sustained in that accident. The carrier, in a move apparently calculated to add injury to its insulting settlement offer, made the bogus Medicare referral so that it could try and delay payment on the claim. This is illegal under Illinois law, as long as I made the undertakings required by §2-2301 of our Code of Civil Procedure, which I promptly did -- but I still had to complain to the Illinois Department of Insurance to get my check -- which I had to keep in my client funds account for the inordinate amount of time it took me to convince Medicare that it really didn't have a lien.

I could go on.

I don't have many cases these days but each and every one of them has some obnoxious, nonsensical twist that squeezes any satisfaction from the case that might otherwise exist. And/or the client doesn't pay. Usually and.

Long Suffering Spouse has noticed my depression, and she tries to encourage me to get back in the traces and work my way through all this.

Which, certainly, is the right thing for me to do.

But Long Suffering Spouse's situation also distresses me.

She is a teacher, of course, and, as indicated above, pretty much the sole breadwinner in the Curmudgeon household at the moment. And, because she teaches in the Catholic schools, she makes a fraction of what her colleagues do in public schools -- and she has no pension besides. (Actually, that's not entirely true -- the Archdiocese of Chicago did not discontinue its pension plan until shortly after my wife began teaching full-time. It lasted long enough for my wife to partially vest in the plan. I believe that, when our golden years arrive, we may look forward to $17 a month from that plan. Or maybe it was $17 a year. Whoopee!)

Basically, my wife works so that we have health insurance. (The Cardinal has not yet -- thank God -- discontinued that benefit.)

And, brother, does she work.

As the school's Spanish teacher, she sees every student in the building at some point during the year. She sees the middle school scholars three days a week, the fourth and fifth graders two days a week, and everyone else, from preschool on, one day a week for 'enrichment' during one trimester a year. Many days she has no break at all. Many days, she can't even go to the bathroom even once during the school day.

This has predictable consequences.

And because she has students during virtually every period of the school day -- when she does have 'breaks' she often has students in her room anyway -- she has no time for grading, or posting grades, or doing lesson plans, or doing any of the other tasks she has been assigned by an ungrateful and unsupportive administration. She's in charge of the honor society, for example. (And, for the record, I like her principal -- I'm just telling it like it is.) So, consequently, when my wife does get home (and after she makes a bathroom stop) she continues to work here. She falls asleep every night -- no exaggeration -- every single night -- grading, or posting grades, or doing lesson plans, or responding to anxious or angry parent emails.

Ah, yes. Parents.

Our school parents pay enormous sums of money to send their children to our parish school. For these prices, they expect miracles. In fact, they demand miracles.

And the teacher is always wrong.

I attended Catholic schools when I was a boy. We had nuns then. That's why the tuition was so much lower; the nuns were really paid next to nothing. Yes, even though modern lay teachers make a pittance compared to their public school counterparts, their salaries and benefits are still 90% or more of our school budget. Divide that up among the number of students in the school, and voila!, you have a princely sum per student.

When my older kids were still in school, the parish was allowed to subsidize the cost of operating the school -- and did -- some years kicking in as much as $250,000. The Archdiocese demanded an end to this before my youngest kids graduated. There is no way Long Suffering Spouse and I could have sent our children to Catholic schools the way things are now.

(And still the bishops wonder why Catholics are falling away!)

So it's understandable why the parents have such inflated expectations about what our school can do for their kids.

The problem is, of course, that the kids don't know any better; they don't appreciate the sacrifices their parents are making to send them to the parish school. So some of them behave as some kids have always behaved -- indifferent, even hostile, to attempts to teach them anything.

My wife's students hate her. She makes them work. She holds them to standards. She will threaten to actually fail those who will not toe the line. She doesn't always succeed at this because the parents of these miscreants scream bloody murder -- and the administration almost always intervenes on the side of those who pay the bills. The teacher is always wrong.

The funny thing is, those same kids will eventually, despite their best efforts, wind up in high school. Where they will retake Spanish I -- and, usually, get A's. The good students, who also hate my wife because, you know, they are kids and don't want to work (and we do?) will place out of Spanish I or place into an honors class and also get A's. Many of these kids, even some of those who were the most hostile and disruptive in junior high, will come back and express gratitude for the preparation they received from my wife. Some of their parents will seek Long Suffering Spouse out and praise her to the heavens -- these same persons who just a year or two ago were sending angry emails to my wife's principal -- and some will even have the good grace to admit that they were wrong back in the day.

There's some satisfaction in that.

But it doesn't stop the next crop of angry, demanding helicopter parents who, despite having access to their darlings' grades all trimester long, wait until the last week of the grading period to insist on extra 'help' or demand 'extra credit.'

I've tried to explain to my kids that there is a great deal of difference between "want to" and "have to." The psychic satisfaction from the many kids who come back and thank Long Suffering Spouse for their success would be so much greater if she didn't have to keep working to keep us afloat.

And Long Suffering Spouse carries the extra burden these days of worry about her mother.

Abuela is 85 now and is on what, if memory serves, is her third round of cancer treatment. Maybe fourth. The day after Grandchild No. 8 was born, Abuela went into surgery to have radioactive "seeds" planted in her liver. This is the second time this procedure has been done; the first did not keep the cancer at bay for even six months. (This was originally a colon cancer. I've had colon cancer.^* Mine did not escape the colon. Abuela's did, moving to the liver -- thus the seeds.)

My mother-in-law is not the world's most compliant patient. She's not eating or drinking as directed and, although her initial "numbers" following this most recent procedure are very encouraging, she is convinced that she will not recover this time.

Of course, Abuela says this every time -- but one of these days she must, of necessity, be correct.

And Long Suffering Spouse has become persuaded that this time really may be it. She is having definite forebodings -- and I have been with her too long to dismiss these out of hand.

I have long held the belief that Abuela was destined to outlast me. If she really is going, this time, I'm getting even more nervous than usual.

But I have whined too long today. I do have things I should be doing... and while there's more on these unhappy subjects I'd like to talk about, I'll have to come back to it later.

Perhaps. When I can better articulate what else I want to say.

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^* If you are interested, you can read about my somewhat cockeyed experiences here, here, here, here, here, and here.

In which the Curmudgeon takes a stand against personal corruption... what an idiot

We're #1! (In public corruption, that is...)

We take a sort of perverse pride in the breadth and depth of corruption here in Chicago.

There was no actual civic rejoicing when a new University of Illinois at Chicago study was released recently confirming that Chicago is the most corrupt city in the country -- but the study received prominent play on all the local news broadcasts -- and there would have been considerable wailing and gnashing of teeth (or at least some serious skepticism) if the authors of the study had failed to accord our miserable metropolis its accustomed place atop the garbage heap.

If you're interested, you can find a link to the actual report at the Chicago Politics website, a website maintained by the study's leading author, Professor (and former 44th Ward Alderman) Dick Simpson. Yes, the professor was a member of the Chicago City Council during most of the 1970s. Simpson was already a professor when he got to City Hall. Many of his colleagues, and many other Chicago aldermen down through the decades, became 'college guys' after leaving the City Council. Some went to Oxford.

(Is 'college guys' a strictly local expression? Can you figure it out from context anyway?)

Anyway, the new Simpson study was on my mind last week when I went downtown for an interview. I suppose I might be accused of burying the lede here, but, as of this month, I have closed the Teeny Tiny Law Office and now exist, as a professional, entirely in the virtual world. That's the fanciest way I can think of saying I'm working from home now.

Or I'm supposed to be.

So I had this interview downtown, and I had to drive because, wouldn't you know, I had a meeting to go to in a western suburb immediately thereafter. There was no way to take the train.

Our van, as I've mentioned, is on its very last legs. You know things are bad when the guy at the repair shop just shakes his head sadly and says, "You know, Curmudgeon, we all have to go sometime."

Every trip is an adventure at the moment.

But I made it downtown, the check engine light and the oil light notwithstanding. I'd changed the oil in the van one last time two weeks before -- and the day before this trip I added a quart.

Which reminds me. It probably needs another quart, or maybe two.

But I parked in the garage across the street from the former Teeny Tiny Law Office without serious incident.

And then it occurred to me.

As a tenant in that building, I was entitled to park in this garage for a reduced rate -- $15 for the day, which is a serious savings over the $50 list price.

If you're reading this in midtown Manhattan, you may be envious.

If you're reading this in rural Iowa, I'll wait until your heart stops racing.

I was thinking about the casual atmosphere of corruption in which we Chicagoans live. My wife's students give her Christmas presents in the hopes that she's susceptible to a bribe. (She isn't.) Everybody's got an angle. And, here I was, interviewing for a job that requires impeccable honesty and character.

Why, then, was I thinking of running my ticket through the machine in my former building?

Was even thinking about this demonstrating that I, too, was not immune to the corrosive effects of corruption in the air? And, yet, if I were to walk into my old building, the security guard would greet me warmly and ask how I'm getting on -- and wouldn't blink as I ran the card through the machine on his desk. The folks at the parking garage would never know the difference -- and, if they did, they probably wouldn't care either. I figured the odds at about a million to one against anyone so much as giving me the stink-eye.

But then I wondered -- what would folks in Minnesota or Oregon or one of those other supposedly more virtuous jurisdictions say about validating my parking ticket in this way? I went to my interview, thinking on this the whole time. I probably should have thought more about what to say, and how to say it, during my interview.

But, whatever, in the end, I decided to prove -- if only to myself -- how virtuous I was by not getting my ticket discounted.

Fortunately the interview was brief -- and I was back in the car quickly. The full $50 charge kicks in after two hours and I was done before that.

Still, my personal refusal to buckle under to our amoral atmosphere cost me $40 when I might have spent only $15.

I can really use the $25. I must be an idiot... right?

Curmudgeon's van again requires service

Our family van is old now. Very old.

This sporadically-updated collection of essays began in late 2005. Our current van was new then. In fact a tribute to its predecessor is about the only post I can specifically recall from my first, long-abandoned blog (you are reading, now, you see, my second effort at blogging).

I readily concede that all older vehicles have their eccentricities... but I think our van is actually haunted.

By what, I don't know. Some mischievous sprite who has taken a personal dislike to me, I suppose.

I've never been any good with cars. Or car people. I have discovered that car people can actually smell automotive ignorance. And, brother, do I reek.

Despite my limitations, I have done my best to maintain our family fleet. I get the oil changed as directed, for example.

A year or two ago, when the family van's front left turn signal went on the blink (*ahem*) I took it to my neighborhood oil change place -- they do turn signals there, too -- and got the blinker replaced.

It may have worked for a week.

I took the van back and had them replace it.

But, once again, it stopped working within a matter of days.

Incensed, I made plans to take it back a third time, fantasizing about driving the vehicle through the overhead doors.

Then it rained.

And the blinker blinked, just as it was supposed to.

But, when the weather cleared, the blinker stopped blinking.

It took us awhile, you understand, to see the relationship between the rain and the restoration of the turn signal. What rational creature would make that connection?

But, eventually, there was no denying. The blankety-blank blinker only blinked when it rained. Or snowed. You know... adding water is not recommended for the ordinary operation of electronic devices. I may not be a car person, but I could figure that much out. Still... what was there to replace?

I had every reason to fear that some sort of electrical system failure underlay the blinker issue, the same sort of electrical issue that made our power door locks inoperable... and unfixable... some years ago. (On one of my thousand-dollar forays to the dealer, I asked them to repair the locks -- and they did -- for about 48 hours. No, I didn't take it back then. Some things we just must accept.)

Rust is steadily claiming the van's sliding doors. One of these days the doors will simply disappear. If the family purse permitted it, I would be considering the purchase of a new vehicle. But, alas.

So we make do.

Or we have tried.

Lately, though, the van has developed a new trick. The air conditioning works fine -- but the fan that blows the cold air into the vehicle has begun working only sporadically.

'Sporadically', for any of you young people out there with a limited vocabulary, means that the blower generally works when I'm driving -- but generally doesn't work when Long Suffering Spouse drives. Or is along for the ride. Especially if the outside temperature is 90 or more.

A week or so ago, Long Suffering Spouse put her foot down. I had to do something about the blower.

And it is a safety matter. That same blower which keeps the van comfortable in the heat is what keeps the defroster defrosting.

So I took the van to a different car repair place -- not the dealer -- I don't have $1,000 to spare at the moment -- and as I was within a mile or two of the place on that first occasion the blower suddenly kicked on. The van was positively chilly by the time I got to the dealer (the outside temperature -- which had been over 90 the day before -- 'coincidentally' crashed at about the same time -- a pneumonia front came in off Lake Michigan). But I gamely explained these facts to the nice people at the car repair place... and they looked at each other... and back at me... and they agreed to take a look.

An hour or two later, an earnest young man delivered the verdict -- keeping his distance from me, you understand. "We looked at it," he told me, carefully. "But, you see, it's working. Why don't you bring it back if it should stop working? Maybe then we can figure out what's wrong."

They were so eager to be rid of me on that occasion that they didn't give me a bill.

And, of course, the blower has worked flawlessly since.

Until yesterday.

Long Suffering Spouse drove the van to school yesterday, and then to Younger Daughter's house. Younger Daughter had to schedule an unanticipated doctor's visit for Granddaughter No. 1 and Younger Daughter's husband had their family vehicle. Long Suffering Spouse was to let Younger Daughter borrow the van and sit with Younger Daughter's other kids so Younger Daughter could get to the doctor. (We have backup car seats in the van -- that's another story -- so it's all legal.)

Anyway, the blower noticed that Long Suffering Spouse was driving and immediately stopped working. It didn't start again when Younger Daughter took the wheel either. Long Suffering Spouse advised me of these facts, at some length, as she drove back -- with the blower still inoperative -- from Younger Daughter's house last evening.

Accordingly, this morning, I packed up my laptop, hoping to get a little work done at the repair place. Long Suffering Spouse had to go to school this morning -- classes are over, but there are end of the year meetings all week -- and I was to drop her off on the way.

But the blower noticed I was driving... and sprung back to life.

I figured to work from home this morning, and I no sooner exited the van when my cell phone rang.

It was Long Suffering Spouse. She needed to return some school-owned equipment this morning, and she'd forgotten to bring a power cord belonging to same. I went inside, grabbed the cord, and fired up the van again.

The blower worked fine.

I parked at school, and delivered the cord.

I started the van, heading back home.

But guess what decided to stop? Well, hot weather is predicted for the coming weekend....

So, here I am in the repair shop. Typing.

The blower stayed off on the trip over. I told Long Suffering Spouse that, given how they'd looked at me last time, there was no way I was setting foot on the premises if the blower resumed operation en route.

Oh, yes, they remembered me from last time.

But, when the blower didn't work for them this morning either, they agreed to undertake its replacement.

That earnest young man has come into the waiting room a couple of times now to tell me that they've encountered unexpected difficulties getting it out.

The mischievous sprite is no doubt toying with them, too.

But, supposedly, at some point ere long, the van will be restored to me and the blower will work.

We'll see for how long....

What happened to the necktie?

With Father's Day nearly upon us, this is not merely an idle question. The struggling retail industry would like an answer. Remember when a new tie was the quintessential Father's Day gift? Is this no longer the case?

Every day this week, as I've wandered around Chicago's Loop, I've taken time to notice whether men are wearing neckties.

A lot of them aren't.

Men are wearing sportcoats, even suits, but open-collared shirts. Old men, young men, middle-aged men -- clear majorities of men in all age groups are tieless.

That's particularly surprising in my little corner of the world. My Teeny Tiny Law Office is located in a building pretty much crawling with lawyers. I am three blocks from the Daley Center -- a primary county courthouse. There are lawyers everywhere around me, presumably, but very few of them are sporting ties.

Of course, I'm not wearing a tie today either. Truth to tell, I only wore a tie on Monday because I had to go to court. With the sole exception of one judge, since retired, I can't imagine a male lawyer deliberately going to court without a tie.

Of course, accidents do happen. I came to work once, some years ago, wearing a flannel shirt -- I think I was planning to move boxes or something -- only to realize, upon arriving at the office, that I'd forgotten a court date. Desperate, I scrounged a jacket from a colleague -- he was shorter than me, and thinner, so the jacket had no chance of buttoning and the sleeves came only about three quarters of the way down my arm -- but at least I didn't feel completely naked when I approached the bench. The judge -- with whom I'd been friendly when she was a privatus like me (we'd had some cases together) -- regarded me with exasperation: "Really, Curmudgeon? Flannel?"

But those kinds of accidents don't happen if one comes to work dressed in the uniform of the profession -- that is, wearing a jacket and tie. And it really was unusual for me to come downtown without both.

But that was then.

If this tieless look among professional men is a trend, and I think it is, what accounts for it?

I remember noticing years ago that Israeli politicians frequently sported an open-necked look. But I figured that was probably a consequence of the warm climate in that country. Who likes to wear a tie when it's hot out? But I only noticed the look because it was unusual. Out of the ordinary.

A few years back, I noticed that President Obama didn't always wear a tie, even while giving speeches. In the 2016 presidential primaries, it occurred to me that a lot of candidates were campaigning without neckties. I guess the idea was to appear more a 'Man of the People.'

Donald Trump, on the other hand, always seems to be wearing a necktie. Tied too long, but always on.

Oh, Lord, this can't be a political thing can it?

Please tell me that the disappearing necktie is an American phenomenon -- not just a Blue State thing....

Curmudgeon vents about laboring in obscurity -- even when he's out in the open

As I've mentioned here before, I also write a blog under my given name.

It's actually fairly popular -- a thousand page views a day is not uncommon these days, sometimes more. This week, lots more. I've won awards for the blog, and prominent people have told me it provides a genuine service. It recently was mentioned in a news article in a genuine newspaper. You know, a major metropolitan daily.

But no one in my family, and no one among my close friends, actually reads the damned thing.

A friend of 40 years told me not long ago that he did stumble across an article on my real-life blog -- he was researching a particular topic, and my article came up. What's more, he told me, he agreed with the position I took. And, yes, he did look shocked about it. I'll have to look at your blog again, he told me.

I don't know whether he has or hasn't. But judging by everyone else in my immediate acquaintance, I doubt it.

I wonder if this happens to writers who make a living from what they publish.

I kind of doubt it, don't you?

Can you imagine J.K. Rowling at a Rowling family reunion, making small talk with a cousin? J.K. makes some offhand reference to Harry Potter and Cousin Reginald just gives her a blank look. Harry who? he asks.

Of course that couldn't happen. J.K. could show up at that reunion in a limo the size of Luxembourg (whether she does or doesn't is irrelevant -- she could if she wanted to). All her friends and relations (including all sorts of relations she probably didn't know she had 25 years ago) would cheerfully follow her around anywhere she cared to lead, all waving wands and slurping pumpkin juice, if she asked them to.

Why? Because J.K. Rowling has made tens, if not hundreds, of millions from her writing.

Me? I've made tens, and maybe even a few hundreds of dollars from my blog. Not quite the same thing.

But, for cryin' out loud, if you can't get friends and family to read what you write, how can you hope to turn those tens or hundreds into tens or hundreds of thousands?

Yeah, I can't figure that out either.

Curmudgeon finds automotive vindication, of a sort, but only after 10 years

One of the few posts I still remember from my long-abandoned first blog (which is how this blog got named, get it?) concerned the demise of our 1991 Plymouth Grand Voyager.

It was maroon in color and we drove it, literally, to death. At the end, even the automobile service representative said attempting to fix it would be a complete waste of time. Think about that for a moment: A guy selling auto repairs saying further repairs would be futile. He may have had some vestigial remnants of a conscience.

Small wonder, then, when the auto industry collapsed early in the Great Recession, his dealership was one that did not survive. How could a dealership that allowed such people to remain employed possibly hope to compete in today's world?

Anyway, we replaced that maroon van with a silver one. We did buy it from that dealership. It wasn't that we particularly wanted a silver car; it's just what they had on the floor. The type of van was essentially unchanged in form and function from what we'd had before. The new one had power door locks; that was pretty spiffy for many years -- I can't remember now, though, how many years ago the power locks stopped working -- and the vehicle was no longer labeled as a "Plymouth." The Plymouth nameplate had been retired. In 2005, then (I'm pretty sure it was 2005), we became the proud owners of a Dodge Grand Caravan.

The van now has over 116,000 miles on it and it is looking a little haggard. In addition to the no-longer-functional power locks, there are visible rust spots creeping up from the undercarriage and a hole in our plastic front bumper. I think the hole was caused by a recent encounter with a particularly deep, and well-hidden, pothole in our neighborhood, but I might be mistaken.

I am not mistaken about a particular quirk this van has had since we acquired it: When we fill it up with gas, it has a tendency to stall out on the way back from the gas station. Over the years, particularly early on in the life of this vehicle, I would take the van in and complain. But I am not a "car guy" (as the linked post will illustrate). So the various service departments into which I've taken the van for repair could -- and did -- dismiss my complaints with attitudes ranging from condescending to patronizing to dismissive. We could find nothing wrong, they would tell me, as they presented yet another bill. You are ignorant in matters mechanical. You are wrong.

Well, I know when I'm licked. So I developed, over time, coping strategies: One of the best strategies was to time my gasoline purchases for early Saturday morning, when there were few cars on the road, so I could keep giving the van gas. If I could accelerate smoothly enough there might be a bucking bronco moment or two but, after the shudders ceased, I'd be home-free. If a light changed to red unexpectedly, or if I otherwise had to apply the brakes, however, the car would certainly die. However, when there were few cars on the road, this was not nearly so dangerous as it was during rush hour.

But we can't always time these things -- when kids borrow a car it's a cinch it will come back needing gas -- and my Long Suffering Spouse began letting me 'handle' the gas purchases as often as possible because she didn't like to fight to keep it from stalling on the way back from gas station.

So I devised other strategies. I noticed how cab drivers would sometimes put their cars in neutral and gun them at intersections. I think some of them may do it just to scare pedestrians crossing in front of them... but it gave me an idea. If I could put the van in neutral and gun it before it stalled, I might get through the rough patch without incident.

The years went by. I learned. I coped.

Now we come to yesterday. I was sorting through the day's collection of catalogs and bills when I came across a letter from Chrysler. "Important Warranty Information," the envelope said. Well, my van has been out of warranty since before Mr. Obama went to Washington. Even the people hawking extended warranties don't bother with me anymore.

So I opened the envelope. I read:

This letter is to inform you that the warranty period (3 years or 36,000 miles) on your vehicle's fuel tank has been extended to a period of 15 years/unlimited miles. This extended fuel tank warranty coverage applies to certain 2004-2005 model year Chrysler Town and Country and Dodge Caravan / Grand Caravan minivans. * * * We are extending the fuel tank warranty period because some of the affected vehicle population may experience a condition where the fuel shut-off float, in the multifunction control valve sticks, which may result in the vehicle stalling after refueling.

That's when I laughed out loud. Youngest Son happened to be in the room when I whooped. He looked at me quizzically. I read him what I just quoted.

But, no, that's not the punch line. The letter continued: "If you are experiencing this condition now or in the future, simply contact your dealer to have the appropriate repairs performed."

Really? Do you believe that they really know now how to fix what they had so long denied was even a problem?

Me neither. But if I take it in to give them a chance, I'm sure they'll say they made an attempt -- and find a thousand dollars worth of non-covered stuff to fix, too. (Go back to the link for details.)

TGIF? Maybe long ago....

Actually, I used to love Fridays, just like we're supposed to.

The week was over, the weekend was nigh... the Eagle flies on Friday, right? Flush with cash, we could head to our favorite gin mill and commune with our fellows, try possibly to meet a few persons who were not fellows, preferably of the friendly variety, and not worry about having to answer the alarm clock in the morning.

Friday was pinball night, if nothing else. Listening to live music....

In law school I used to get up to Rogers Park in the mid-afternoon, around the time Ron the Bartender (I loved the man, but never did learn his last name) was opening up his place on Sheridan Road. I could down a couple of scotches at a leisurely pace while others in my group drifted in. We'd eventually fire up the jukebox. Ron would go out to get his dinner and I'd cover the bar in his absence. No, I was never employed there.

Ron cashed my checks. (This was in the days before ATMs made life so much more dangerous.) Until a few years ago I had a collection of three consecutively numbered checks, written to Cash, all presented to Ron. My signature was firm and forceful on the first of these... a little crooked on the next... unrecognizable on the third.

Ron had live music at his place every night, but that didn't start up until 9:00 or so. If I liked the solo performer, or the band, maybe I'd stay. If not, maybe I'd go off in search of further adventures. Or home to sleep it off. For awhile there, I didn't go home at all. I stayed in an office in the basement of the student union on the campus which I'd attended as an undergraduate. The security guards knew me. If I couldn't get in on my own, they'd admit me. I had keys to the office. I had a couch there, a table lamp, and a phone. I could use the sauna in the gym next door, and I often did, going there to sweat out the poisons I'd so willingly ingested the night before. I had no one's permission to do any of this.

Those were the days.

Today, I'd probably be shot.

When I got out of law school, Fridays quickly became just another damn day.

Mandatory Saturdays immediately took the happy glow off Friday nights. But my bosses at my first firm were insistent on it. Not that they came in themselves, of course. Not often. They had lives. But they might come in. And we'd better be there, in good functioning order, if they did. So there I was, working, or pretending to....

Marriage and children put the final nail in the coffin of Friday night nightclubbing. We might visit other couples similarly situated... that was a substitute for our former whoop-dee-doo for awhile... but we soon found that visits worked better on Saturdays than Fridays, because on Fridays we were all tired.

We didn't know the half of it.

I remember Cub Scout Pack Nights on Fridays. There were times when I'd have to drive straight there from work because I'd been to court in the suburbs or something and had to go into the office after -- so I'd have to brave the outbound Kennedy during Friday evening rush hour.

Friday evening rush hour then, and now, lasts well into the night. There was no way to get home first -- I would have to leave by mid-afternoon to have any chance -- so I'd just head straight for the school.

My last nerve would be frayed to the breaking point and I'd stumble into a room filled with screaming boys between the ages of 6 and 11, and most of their equally noisy siblings, and the Pack Leader would ask all the adults to put up the Cub Scout sign for quiet -- and I was always afraid I'd make the wrong hand gesture....

And we were still young.

Now, Long Suffering Spouse and I stagger to the finish on Fridays. We have pizza. We fall asleep. If Younger Daughter and Olaf and Granddaughter No. 1 call to say good night -- you know, toddlers are supposed to go to be early? -- like as not, they'll wake us up. Asleep in our chairs.

No clients ever call on Friday because they like what you're doing and want to thank you for your efforts. No, they call because they're mad about something, or they've just received something in the mail -- emergency motions emerge like toxic spills late on Friday afternoons. If there is to be a crisis in the office during the week, it will almost surely erupt on Friday. If there are problems with the kids, or their insurance, or their jobs, or their spouses or in-laws -- they all converge on Fridays.

I've got three crises brewing already this morning.

But I'm going to try and adjust my attitude today. It's almost Christmas. We're going to put up our tree tonight. Allegedly. I'm going to try and work efficiently this morning -- at least as soon as I'm through stalling by writing this post -- and head home in the mid-afternoon.
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No, I don't really think it will work either. But, what the heck? I'll give it a shot.