On the occasion of Mr. Buehrle's departure?

(Photo obtained from the Chicago Sun-Times)

I hope that Buehrle's not gone -- please understand -- but I'm very much afraid that Adam Dunn and Alex Rios have sucked up all the money that should have been available for Mark Buehrle's new contract with the White Sox.

If he is gone, it seems appropriate to recall some of Buehrle's White Sox career highlights. There have been many. I didn't watch his perfect game live -- it was a day game and, believe it or not, I was at the Undisclosed Location, working diligently at my desk.

Well... not really working. Long Suffering Spouse was relaying the play-by-play over the phone during the last couple of innings. People who don't live in big cities may not realize it, but we can't get an AM signal in any of the skyscrapers downtown -- so we can't listen to the ballgame on the radio at work.

Anyway, the perfecto was Buehrle's second no hitter. Second Effort covered the first. From April 19, 2007, here's an excerpt from "Buerhle's doing very well tonight, isn't he?" (and, yes, that link will take you to the complete post):

That's what Long Suffering Spouse said when the line score came up as the Sox broadcast went into a commercial break.

I looked up. I see what you mean, I thought -- but all I dared say was, "Yes, he is. I hadn't noticed."

And I hadn't noticed.

I'd gotten home late and didn't turn on the game until the 5th inning -- in time to see Jermaine Dye's grand slam. Dye's been hitting poorly of late and Youngest Son was threatening to cut Dye from his fantasy team. (Yeah, that'll teach him.) When Dye hit the home run I wondered if Youngest Son had made good on this threat -- making a mental note to tell him to cut all the White Sox from his team if he had. We could use the offense.

So I did not notice just how well Buehrle was doing -- until Long Suffering Spouse pointed it out.

Without saying any more than I've already said she said, of course. Because even in our den we might jinx it.

So we said nothing -- and, for that reason alone, no doubt, Buehrle was able to accomplish the near-impossible.

No, that's silly.

Actually, Buehrle was doing his best, that night, to jinx himself. While the other players shunned him in the dugout, in keeping with the best traditions of baseball, lest they disrupt whatever magic he had channeled into, he would sidle up to a group of teammates and say, "Did you know I'm throwing a no-hitter?" He did stuff like that all night. And he completed the no-no anyway. He must have been channeling contrary karma that night.

Anyway, Buerhle has long been one of my favorites -- long a favorite of most Sox fans -- maybe not of the beer vendors, since he works so quickly and his games tend to be a lot shorter than most -- and, if Buerhle has to go, I hope he knows he'll be sorely missed.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Let me add here that I'll miss Ozzie Guillen, too, but I'll save my favorite Ozzie story for the next time the Marlins meet the Sox in interleague play. Assuming Ozzie is still their manager then.

I can't understand why anyone would voluntarily go work for Jeffrey Loria. Joe Girardi managed the Marlins in 2006, was named the NL Manager of the Year, and was fired. From Wikipedia:

Girardi was nearly fired in early August when he got into a vocal (and visible) argument with Marlins owner Jeffrey Loria during a game. According to witnesses and video footage, the Marlins owner was heckling homeplate umpire Larry Vanover. When the umpire warned Girardi about the harassment, Girardi and his bench coach Gary Tuck then turned to Loria and told him to stop. Loria had to be talked out of firing Girardi immediately after the game.

On October 3, 2006, the Marlins announced that they had fired Girardi, despite him winning manager of the year. Girardi said only that he appreciated the opportunity to manage the club, a move that was seen as classy across the Major Leagues and kept him at the top of many teams' list of manager candidates.

Girardi has done well since, of course. Then again, he was smart enough to use the Cubs' managerial vacancy last year as leverage for a contract extension with the Yankees. He didn't push his way out of New York because there might be more dough in Chicago.

Things were not ideal for Ozzie in Chicago the last couple of years. If his kids didn't cause the rift with Guillen's boss, Sox GM Kenny Williams, they sure exposed it. Ozzie was expected to win it all this year, but Adam Dunn was a huge disappointment. Dunn was supposed to drive in runs. But by mid-season, fans reckoned a Dunn at-bat successful if he merely struck out and did not hit into a double play. Alex Rios was a hazard to navigation in the outfield and spent much of the year with his batting average hovering near the Mendoza line. And Rios' batting average looked good compared to Dunn's. Gordon Beckham regressed at the plate. I could go on... but this is painful.

Ozzie was underpaid in Chicago -- managers with far less seniority were making far more than he was here. And he wasn't the one who put Dunn and Rios in uniform. And he'll get a lot more money in Miami... but at what cost? Ozzie may soon regret that he pushed his way out of town.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Programming note: Now that baseball season is over in Chicago, I need to do a football post. I'd like to do my fearless baseball playoffs predictions post, too, but I make no promises. Besides, I don't want to test Bee's patience by doing too many sports-related posts.

Still, the football post should be next. I don't know that I'll get it done by the end of the week, however. I'm on trial Friday supposedly and I have stuff to do in anticipation of same.

Curmudgeon wasn't the only one miffed at missing out on a MacArthur Grant

It appears recovering lawyer Stephan Pastis is disappointed as well, judging by yesterday's Pearls Before Swine strip.

I only mentioned my disappointment in passing this year:

[O]nce again, I've been denied a MacArthur Genius Grant. If you follow the link, you'll see that a local architect, Jeanne Gang, who has won awards for "green" designs, was among this year's honorees. I can understand that -- but, I've studied the complete list now and found not a single anonymous blogger among the lot. How about a little love for us anonymous bloggers? We're struggling to make the world a better place, too, you know -- and/or secure a book contract, whichever comes first.

Losing out on the MacArthur Grants has become an annual disappointment for yours truly. But I don't think I really whined about it here on the blog since September 2007.

I think I've suffered in silence long enough: I hereby announce my candidacy for one of next years MacArthur grants. Want to join me in this quest, Mr. Pastis?

Reading a successful visit to the eye doctor's office

I don't mean the little chart

20 V C H K N O

(Blogger won't let me space the letters like the chart does anyway.)

I always guess one or two letters, but decades of reading fine print have made me a pretty fine guesser. And when they ask me to read the same line for the (weaker) left eye that I just read with the right eye -- well, my short term memory isn't completely shot. Not yet.

Today was my visit to the doctor who treats my glaucoma. I'm not his favorite patient. I entirely understand. I've decided how to take my eye drops, never mind the directions, and my vision has been pretty stable for 15 years or so. An eye surgeon can't put his kids through college on routine office visits.

"I've got so many interesting patients this morning," he told me as he walked in. His tone and manner made clear that I was not among these.

"Nice of you to take time out from all that, then, to come see me," I said.

He was a little embarrassed. "You don't want to be interesting," he said, maybe to me, maybe to himself.

"Not really." (Not to doctors, anyway. I still hope to be interesting to blog readers.)

The doctor's assistant had already taken my pressures and made observations of my frayed optic nerves. The doctor did have to sign the new prescription the assistant had written out for him, and he did so, then riffed through the chart indifferently. He turned on the little bright light and held a magnifier in front of his own eye and took his own quick look at my optic nerves. He made a notation on the chart: Stable again, darn it! (I'm reasonably certain that those weren't his exact words although I didn't actually check.)

But that's not why my visit this morning was successful.

I was actually on time -- a few minutes before my scheduled appointment time, in fact. That can happen in the morning, though hardly ever in the afternoon.

So that was good.

Better still, there was a reasonably recent edition of The New Yorker magazine in the waiting room rack.

As a life-long Chicagoan, I am deeply prejudiced against all things New York. But The New Yorker has long been one of my guiltier pleasures, even if I wouldn't let it in my house.

It's not just the cartoons. It strikes me that the long-form articles in magazines like The New Yorker are perfect for a doctor's office. It makes the inevitable delay much easier to tolerate.

I think that I got hooked on The New Yorker when I was a kid -- the magazine was available in the pediatrician's office. It was in the pediatrician's waiting room, in a back issue of The New Yorker, that I read my first Woody Allen essay.

Yes, I was a strange child.

I was so early this morning, and the doctor's other patients so interesting, that I just about finished a feature article on the Egyptian Revolution. I even got to study the pictures that accompanied the article and read all the embedded cartoons. That, I submit, was a successful visit to the eye doctor.

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And, because this is a full service blog, I'll even link to a 2010 Woody Allen essay from The New Yorker, "Udder Madness."

There's a mouse in the house

Long Suffering Spouse harbors no animus toward any living creature, so long as said creature stays out of her house.

Thus, we enjoyed watching a number of skunks parading through our backyard at dusk almost every evening during the summer months now ending. They were on that side of the sliding glass door; we were on this side. We have also seen possums and raccoons and coyotes in our backyard. A deer was supposedly spotted in a neighbor's backyard, just around the corner from us. We saw a fox one night, too, crossing the street in front of the local hospital. All of these observations were made within the corporate limits of the fair City of Chicago and all of these were just fine, thank you, with Long Suffering Spouse.

Long Suffering Spouse even defends the rights of spiders and ants and other creepy-crawlies to exist in their own sphere. When she was on playground duty recently at her school, she chided kids who were seeking out and stomping on spiders in the bushes by the school building. "Leave them alone," she scolded, "they have a right to be in their home undisturbed by us. Just as we have a right," she added, "to be left alone in our homes undisturbed by them."

The kids looked at her funny. She'd gotten so intense, all of a sudden, and was staring off into the distance.

But you see where my wife draws the line. And it is a bright line, admitting of no fine distinctions. A spider, an ant, or any other bug is toast if it comes within my bride's line of sight inside the confines of our home. If she sees a centipede, she will scream before dispatching it. If I am available, she will summon me to do the honors instead. Particularly if the centipede is fat and furry.

"And wipe the stain off the wall," my wife will call, from as far away as she can get and still stay in the house. Centipedes leave a distinctive purple smear when they are squished. And -- here I share my hard-won expertise with you -- they are best approached at a right angle. Coming in ahead or behind the creature will send it scurrying -- and some of them can jump -- but, for some reason, a centipede never detects the approach from directly above it (directly beneath it if it is on the ceiling) until it is too late.

As you would certainly expect, given this description, creatures larger than a centipede -- and most mice are larger than even some of the megacentipedes I've dispatched in our basement -- are absolutely intolerable to Long Suffering Spouse.

When we were first married, living in an apartment in Rogers Park, my wife and I had a mouse problem. We had a mouse population explosion, more like, with seemingly endless brigades of little field mice. But until we were married, and the then-not-yet Long Suffering Spouse moved into the apartment I formerly shared with my friend Steve, I had no idea we had any mice at all.

But Long Suffering Spouse knew instantly. She could sense them. She didn't have to see them to know they were there.

And, ever since, on those occasions every so many years when a mouse does get in the house, Long Suffering Spouse has known immediately. She gets unbelievably tense, and the tension is contagious, I assure you. And this is before the little varmint is actually sighted.

Except for this time.

I was home Thursday morning. I'd had an errand out at the Rolling Meadows Courthouse and I'd stopped home on the way in. (It's on the way. And traffic was still miserable heading inbound on the Kennedy.) I walked into the kitchen to get a glass of water... and out of the corner of my eye I thought I saw something tiny and dark dart from behind the wastebasket (the one we've dedicated to recycling) and scurry underneath the refrigerator.

I have glaucoma. The corner of my eye, particularly my left one, doesn't pick up as much as most people's eyes are supposed to. And I wasn't entirely sure I saw what I thought I saw.

So I said nothing.

Long Suffering Spouse was in the kitchen Friday night making pizza. Younger Daughter had come over, with her faithful chauffeur Olaf, to eat the pizza. Then, after Olaf was sent on his way (Younger Daughter having elected to stay the night so she'd be better positioned to go out to breakfast in the morning with her Abuela), Younger Daughter and Long Suffering Spouse made cookies. I figured my wife's keen mouse-sense would pick up on the little bugger if indeed it was there.

But nothing happened.

On Saturday Long Suffering Spouse and I went up to the place I'm calling South Janesville College to visit Youngest Son and see his baseball team perform in its annual fall intrasquad game. But on Sunday Long Suffering Spouse was back in the kitchen, making cupcakes this time, because Younger Daughter's birthday is tomorrow. Younger Daughter came over, with Olaf, and we all had a pleasant time.

And Long Suffering Spouse heard nothing, saw nothing, intuited nothing.

I'd begun to think I'd imagined that little blur on Thursday.

But, then, this morning, as I walked into the kitchen to refill my coffee, I saw it again. The same blur, going the same way, right under the refrigerator. I exclaimed something. I don't believe I screamed like a little girl, but even if I did, this is my blog and I don't have to admit anything. I think I said something, however, like Pshaw! or Fiddlesticks! or perhaps something slightly more pungent. Whatever I said was sufficient to attract the attention of Long Suffering Spouse. "What did you say?" she asked.

"We have a mouse."

"What?" The tension level in the house spiked. I could feel my wife's cringing from several feet away.

"We have a mouse," I repeated. I explained what I saw.

For the next half hour or so I was treated to a monolog about how the mouse might have gotten in. Younger Daughter was named as a suspect; perhaps she'd left the front door open too long over the weekend. My wife's theory, clearly, was that the mouse must be a brand new arrival. After all, she'd not perceived it. Finally I had to break down and confess: I thought I'd seen something Thursday.

She may, eventually, forgive me for not having told her sooner about this. In the meantime, however, there will be no peace in my home until that wee beastie is destroyed.

All the experts are wrong (again)

If you've been following the news in the last couple of days you've no doubt heard the financial wizards debating whether the current market setbacks portend the start of a "new" recession. Some insist a "new" recession is underway; others insist that the latest Wall Street panic is merely a speed-bump on the road to recovery. (Some of these call this a "low trajectory" recovery, as if it were an aimed cannon ball or something.)

Rubbish.

All of these experts are totally off base. How can we start a "new" recession when the one we've been struggling with lo these past several years still hasn't ended?

The large law firm and the ant hill compared

You're looking at an ant colony here, the queen ant being tended by her faithful, anonymous, fungible worker ants.

A partner in a large law firm is much like a queen ant. Or, depending on the annual bonuses, a queen termite.

It's not a pretty sight -- but it's efficient as all get out.

The queen in the termite mound -- or ant colony -- or beehive -- has only one function: Lay eggs. But, then, there's usually only one queen in a termite mound, etc.

There can be lots of partners in a law firm. Partners in large law firms have only two functions: Bill time or generate business. The really big partners generate business; the lesser partners bill time. Either way, they must be surrounded by faithful, anonymous and largely fungible minions whose sole purpose in life is to maximize the productivity of their assigned partner.

The partner in a large law firm never has to clear a paper jam from a printer or copier. In a really large firm, the partners may not know where the copiers are located. A large firm partner never spends an afternoon filing. S/he has people who write checks, look up cases, locate witnesses -- whatever the partner needs to keep productive, and whenever the partner needs it.

Another key difference between the ant hill and the large law firm is that, in a law firm, some of the workers may someday become partners themselves. Not the clerical help, of course, but the associates, with their fancy Ivy League degrees. They may start out legal life as props, something that the business-generating queen, er, partner, can brag on to prospective clients ("we just hired the editor of the Yale Law Journal; we turned the editor of the Harvard Law Review down flat"). However, with sheer determination, tireless struggle, the occasional sacrifice of principle (sure, we can justify ignoring those oil rig safety standards), incessant brown-nosing and false bonhomie, at least a few of the associates can some day rise to the top of the anthill.

On the other hand, in the anthill, the young and fresh worker ants tend the queen and the next generation of workers. Then, when they're older, they join foraging parties. When the survivors of these adventures get too old for that, they become the nest's guardians, rushing out to absorb the attack of any invading predator. It is difficult for a worker ant to die of old age. Of course, ulcers and heart attacks claim a lot of law firm support personnel as well; others may be fired for failing to adequately serve or protect their partner.

The National Geographic website mentions that there is a third class of honeybee, the drone. "Several hundred drones live in each hive during the spring and summer, but they are expelled for the winter months when the hive goes into a lean survival mode." This is similar to the way that associates and non-equity partners -- and the least productive partners -- are expelled from law firms whenever economic conditions warrant.

Social insects, like honeybees, are considered more 'advanced' than their solitary cousins. There are bees, wasps, and even ants who do not live in colonies, but who try and do everything themselves. In other words, solo practitioners. Like me.

I remember when Blackberries first burst on the techno-scene. All the big firm partners had them -- increased efficiency, you know -- and each email received from the device proudly bore the legend, "Sent From My Blackberry."

Of course, if the message was spelled correctly and punctuated, chances are the message was typed by a worker ant.

The big firms were behind the efiling movement that has swept the federal courts -- and is gathering momentum in the state courts as well. And why not? The partners in the big firms did nothing different from what they'd done before. They waved their hands (billing 4.5 hours for the task) and minions crafted a brief. That the brief was filed differently than heretofore would not have registered on the big firm partner -- he or she had never filed anything before either.

The problem is, I can change an ink cartridge -- even in the postage meter -- and solve paper jams deep within the copier. Given enough time (we know, now, it takes a month) I can figure out why my office Internet died. I know where all the courthouses are and how to file papers in each. But, sadly, these hard-won skills are not valued.

Gosh, I wish I had minions.

The Internet returns to the Undisclosed Location!

I am pleased to announce that, for the first time since August 23, I am blogging to you live from the Undisclosed Location. My Internet is back.

But regular programming will not resume this morning for two reasons.

First, I have to put my creative energies into a hate letter to my soon-to-be-former ISP.

Second, I'm still too bummed that, once again, I've been denied a MacArthur Genius Grant. If you follow the link, you'll see that a local architect, Jeanne Gang, who has won awards for "green" designs, was among this year's honorees. I can understand that -- but, I've studied the complete list now and found not a single anonymous blogger among the lot. How about a little love for us anonymous bloggers? We're struggling to make the world a better place, too, you know -- and/or secure a book contract, whichever comes first.

Actually, for a MacArthur Grant, I'd drop my cloak of anonymity. Which sounds ever so much more refined than saying I'd reveal my secret identity.

Meanwhile, on to the hate letter....

Curmudgeon turns down some business

Still no Internet at the Undisclosed Location -- three weeks now. I think I figured out the problem -- no thanks to our alleged ISP. Which P has provided neither I nor S. I think we'll be changing providers in the next day or so. Someday, when I have the Internet back, maybe I will tell this story. But, meanwhile, this quick post from home:

The phone rang at the Undisclosed Location. I didn't recognize the name or number on the caller ID, but -- one never knows -- this could be the elusive million dollar case. I answered the phone.

"You the lawyer?" It was a woman's voice. Not a young voice. A smoky, raspy voice.

"I am," I said.

"You sound too sexy to be a lawyer."

I like to think this is a true statement. I've been told I have a pretty fair announcer's voice. Years ago, a female attorney told me I "gave good phone." But my vocal abilities were not the issue here. "How did you get my name?"

This is a question I ask any caller I don't know. I suppose that makes me sound like the old-time ward committeeman who told a young Abner Mikva, "We don't want nobody that nobody sent," but there is -- I hope -- a valid reason for my standard inquiry. A lot of my business comes by referral from other lawyers. I call the direct contact business "retail" -- and I'm wary of it. I've been burned on referral cases, too, but I almost always lose on retail clients.

"I got you from 411," the woman said.

"411?"

"I asked Directory Assistance for the names of lawyers in your building," she said. "I used to work there."

"Really?" I said. "I didn't know the operators were looking out for me so well." (I work in a building in which there may be 500 lawyers. Maybe more.) "Tell me about your case."

The woman recounted a sad story about a fall on the Labor Day weekend. She'd gone to a restaurant on the West Side of Chicago. She walked in and tripped, or slipped, and fell, hitting her head. "What happened to you? How were you injured?"

"I had a skull fracture," she said, "and tore the ligaments in my leg."

"Really," I said. "What did the doctors say?"

"I didn't see the doctors yet," the woman said. "I got some names from the emergency room, but I'm not going to them until I get me a lawyer."

"I see," I said, and I did. I reached for my office diary. "I don't think I can help you, ma'am, but let me give you a number you might call. The Chicago Bar Association has a Lawyer Referral Service. You call them and they will match you up with a lawyer who handles this kind of case."

"I think somebody already gave me this number."

I'll just bet, I thought. But aloud I said only, "Let me give you the number anyway. I think that might be the best for you."

"Alright," she said -- and I gave her the number.

I need business. And I know I'm a bad businessman. But I really don't think I need this kind of business.

Old as the Dickens -- or -- Curmudgeon learns to read

(Still blogging surreptitiously -- and quickly -- from home because my office Internet is still down. Yes, I am screaming, OK? You don't realize how hooked you've become on this Internet-thingy until you are deprived of same.)

Older Daughter -- the nurse in Indianapolis -- was, you may recall, an English major in college. Yes, English... not the most commonly trod path to a nursing career.

Anyway, on the bookshelves in the room that she shared with Younger Daughter are some paperbacks that, I would like to think, are souvenirs of her college classes. On the other hand, now that I think about it, given that these are books by DWG's, it is entirely possible that these paperbacks were assigned at the girls' traditional Catholic high school.

DWG's, as you may know, have been in bad odor for some time among college English professors.

Is the acronym putting you off? DWG stands for Dead White Guy. You know, like Shakespeare. Or Milton. Not the sort of thing that modern English students are encouraged to read at all.

Among the titles on my daughters' bookshelves were Sir Walter Scott's Ivanhoe and Charles Dickens' Great Expectations. I'd never read either. I'd seen the movie version of Ivanhoe somewhere along the way. I was never an Elizabeth Taylor fan, for some reason, but I liked her in that role.

Well, I read Ivanhoe and enjoyed it. So I decided to try Great Expectations next.

Now I realize that, as a supposedly educated person, I'm supposed to love Dickens. But I couldn't stand him.

My attitude may stem from an incident in childhood. I think it was in 5th grade, while I was a participant in the Junior Great Books program, that I was assigned to read A Christmas Carol. Oh, did I hate it. I was bored to distraction. Every page weighed a hundred pounds. I got through it somehow -- but I could never read anything by Dickens again.

I found out later that Dickens got paid by the word and also that his books were typically serialized in magazines -- and he had to structure his prose to refresh the reader's recollection from issue to issue. That explained a lot. But I still couldn't slog through one of his books. And, over the years, from time to time, I've tried.

And, now, recently, I tried again with Great Expectations. My own expectations were as modest as could be -- but I found that, with patience, I actually could read, and even enjoy, the book. I'm not saying I'm going to go out and look for David Copperfield next, but somehow I feel as though I've accomplished something here.

Resting from our labors on Labor Day

There's still no Internet at the Undisclosed Location. It's enough to drive me buggy. I have 90% of everything I need at home, 90% of everything I need at work -- and, wherever I am, whatever I need is in that absent 10%.

We had a very busy weekend, Long Suffering Spouse and I, involving all sorts of family stuff. On Saturday, for instance, our van, our cooler, and one of our tables got to go tailgating at the Notre Dame game. My wife and I did not go tailgating. We did get to drive Younger Daughter to babysit Oldest Son's dog. And at midnight -- after the weather-related delay -- when Oldest Son and his wife, Abby, and Abby's sister and one of their girlfriends from Texas all finally returned, and when Oldest Son finished unloading our van and sat down in his chair, asleep before his cheeks hit the upholstery -- we got to drive into Yuppieville again to bring Younger Daughter back to our place.

But Monday -- Labor Day -- was something else again. We didn't do anything. We had our coffee. We watched movies. We watched the Sox games. I worked on a post for the blog I put my real name on. Later, I played computer games. Long Suffering Spouse graded some papers and read a little. It was like a sick day without the inconvenience of being ill. I didn't feel a bit guilty about doing nothing. It was, after all, a holiday.

Now... why can't Christmas be like that?

Reuters says two of the ugliest public sculptures located right here in Chicago

This link to Yahoo! Travel will get you the Reuters article. Reuters, in turn, lays the blame for this list on an outfit called Virtual Tourist. I can neither confirm nor deny this assertion. I noodled around the Virtual Tourist site for awhile this morning and could not find the source list. But that's not to say that it's not there: The British press might hack your cellphone, but they wouldn't make up a list like this... would they? I figure it's more probable that my Internet skills have rapidly deteriorated in this now 9 days and counting of no office Internet.

But back to our story.

Two of the pieces of public art on the aforementioned list are situated right here in Chicago. One is temporary; the other is a permanent blot on the landscape.

The temporary piece is the Marilyn sculpture on North Michigan Avenue, in Pioneer Court, just south of the Tribune Tower.


My readers are likely to remember the inspiration for this statue, namely, Marilyn's performance, opposite rodent-faced Tom Ewell, in the Billy Wilder comedy, The Seven Year Itch.



This statue was put on display quite recently and has been controversial from the start. A few days back, your crusty correspondent decided to wander over to the North Bridge area to see for himself what all the fuss was about. (It's a healthy walk from the Undisclosed Location, but I will bear any burden for the sake of a possible post.)

Having now seen for myself, I can truthfully report that the statue rather creeps me out. As Tribune columnist Mary Schmich wrote in a July 15 column, "The original image is coy. Marilyn on the Mag Mile is crude."

It is all a matter of scale. In the movie, Tom Ewell can almost see what he should not; in the posters, we see only a glimpse. But when Marilyn is 26 feet tall, we get this sort of thing:

Marilyn will be on display -- and I do mean on display -- until some time next year.

Our other nominee for most ugly piece of public art is not going away any time soon. It is called "Monument with Standing Beast," something I never knew before the Reuters article (and something I am likely to forget shortly after I publish this post), even though I walk past this thing almost every day.

This piece is located on the plaza outside the State of Illinois Building, 100 W. Randolph, kitty corner from the Daley Center, at the northwest corner of Clark and Randolph.

I can't say I share the strongly negative views reported in the Reuters article ("This ten-tonne behemoth is said to represent an animal, a portal, a tree, and an architectural form, but to some it just represents bad taste"). But I would believe it if you told me that this piece arose from a misunderstanding. I can just see Helmut Jahn, the architect of the State of Illinois building, displaying a three dimensional model of the building he had yet to build. I can see him crumpling up a piece of paper, putting it on the southeast corner of his model and saying, yes, we should have a work of public art there -- and, somehow, that crumpled piece of paper was mistaken for the design of the piece to be placed there. You be the judge.



I think my explanation is as plausible as any other. Do you?

Still no #$@%! Internet at the Undisclosed Location

My Internet has been out at work since Wednesday last. Tomorrow being Wednesday next, that's an unacceptably long time, particularly in this day and age, to be unconnected.

How can I send or receive emails from clients? How can I do online research? Where will I see videos of water-skiing squirrels?

Well, I suppose I really shouldn't be searching for water-skiing squirrels during business hours.

How dependent we've become on the Internet! I had a project to work on Thursday, Friday and yesterday, so I really could stay home. (I went in yesterday just long enough to be certain that I'm still unplugged. And to call someone who might do something about it. But who hasn't so far.) Today I had to go to court, so I had to go in -- but I've snuck home since. I'm waiting for a phone call now on one of my nightmare cases. This will make a fine 'war story' some day -- if I don't get killed in the meantime.

Anyway, regular programming here is only one of the things disrupted by this unsettled shuttle between home and office.

Meanwhile, I keep looking at my phone, willing it to ring. I need to resolve this nightmare case soon (mainly because the court in question has put me on an extremely short leash in this regard) -- but it won't happen; it can't happen without the phone ringing.

I can think of two ways to make the phone ring, but neither of them are very professional. One involves taking a nap. The other involves taking the newspaper to the reading room. I sure hope that phone rings soon....

Empty nesters? Well, not exactly....

With Youngest Son off at South Janesville College and Younger Daughter packing up the van yesterday to move into her dorm, you might think that Long Suffering Spouse and I were joining the ranks of empty nesters.

I found out yesterday that Younger Daughter's room this year is only on the second floor of her dorm -- only one flight of stairs, a departure from our children's usual practice of lighting on the highest available perch -- but about a mile and a half from the one stairway which we were allowed to use. At least that's what it felt like.

Younger Daughter's plan for yesterday was to pack, then visit with her Abuela (grandmother) for a little while, then load the van and then take the van to school, unpack, and be at her job by 4:00pm when (she thought) she was supposed to start her shift.

Imagine, if you can, the precision timing that would have been involved in this enterprise. Younger Daughter was counting on her mother's assistance in unpacking the van at school; Long Suffering Spouse was to bring the van home. But Long Suffering Spouse can not leave her post before 3:15pm. It takes a half hour in optimal traffic conditions to reach Younger Daughter's nearby school. At best, then, Younger Daughter built in all of 15 minutes to unload, deposit her stuff in her room, and get to her job -- at a satellite campus of the college, a mile or so away.

Surprisingly, things did not work out according to this plan. The first problem arose when the school changed Younger Daughter's work hours -- moving up her start time to noon. Younger Daughter swears no one told her about this. She only found out when she decided that 15 minutes might not be enough time to accomplish all that needed to be accomplished and that she might be a minute or two late by the time she got to work. She called in -- and got called out.

And Younger Daughter's visit with Abuela took longer than planned. Not a single sock had been loaded in the van when Younger Daughter finally returned home, about 2:00pm. I was home, working (no Internet at the Undisclosed Location, remember?) and so I volunteered to use the other car to pick up Long Suffering Spouse at school. That gave Younger Daughter at least 10 more minutes to pack.

Long Suffering Spouse was ready to go at 3:15 -- and she was not entirely surprised to find that Younger Daughter was not.

But we were on the road shortly after 3:30. So, too, however, was an enormous freight train, coming from points unknown in the west, heading directly across our intended path at a rate of speed that was more than glacial, but less than a snail's.

Oh, yes, I was on this expedition. I had no intention of going. I was actually productive yesterday, working on a big project, and anticipating at least an hour or two of additional productivity while Long Suffering Spouse and Younger Daughter enjoyed their special bonding time. They figured things differently, however.

The good news is that, huffing and puffing, we emptied the van and filled Younger Daughter's tiny dorm room from floor to ceiling. I don't know where she'll fit in there, but that's not my problem. We dropped off Younger Daughter at work and by 5:15 or so and at that moment, technically, we might have been considered empty nesters. We arrived at the newly emptied nest about 5:45. Abuela called by 6:00.

It must be very lonely, Abuela said to her daughter, with only you and your husband at home. We haven't had much chance to notice, said Long Suffering Spouse in reply. And Younger Daughter will be home tomorrow. She has a dentist's appointment -- and she plans to pack and somehow squeeze still more stuff into her dorm room. Somehow.

Other than working: Curmudgeon does not know where to roost

A frequent visitor to this blog, Dave, an Atlanta lawyer, calls his blog "Rather Than Working." The title suggests that, when the spirit moves him, he'd rather blog than work. Based on matters in the last couple of weeks, I could retitle my blog, "Other Than Working." This title would suggest that, whatever my preferences, I'm not actually working. I haven't gotten a darn thing done, business-wise, in a couple of weeks.

I've addressed some of the distractions with you in prior posts: My wife's house painting efforts (lots of links within links there) and taking Youngest Son to college, for example. I didn't mention the latest crash of my home computer, a week ago Wednesday. I've written about computer problems too many times. Suffice it to say, I talked to India and the Philippines for hours on end and got the thing running again. I haven't talked much about my work concerns, although two cases in particular are driving me to distraction -- and my relationship with my best client may be in jeopardy because, well, I keep losing things, like motions and appeals. You can't win 'em all -- sophisticated corporate clients understand this -- but they can't help but get a little touchy when it seems like you've lost the ability to win any.

If I'm out of the office attending to family matters, I'm not making money. If I'm repairing the computer, I'm not making money. If I'm in the office fretting about non-billable, file-related crises of one sort or another, I'm not making money. If I'm trying to figure out how to pay at least the minimums on all bills due when I have no money, I'm not making money. At the moment... I'm not making money.

And things really started to get interesting last week. Our phones went out last week. I don't mean "our" as in the royal "we," I mean everyone in my whole darned building. I think construction work a block or two away may have resulted in a cable being cut -- but I'll never know for sure. All I know is, last Thursday, having returned to work, freed from my painting obligations, the phones died. I was making office calls on Wells Street because I couldn't get a signal in my Undisclosed Location when a guy tapped me on the shoulder. "Do you work in this building?" he asked. I nodded. "And your phones are out?" I nodded again. "Well, whaddaya know? Mine too."

My suite-mate reported my main number and my fax number to the Almighty Telephone Company on his cell phone -- and, within a day, these were restored. But my main number has a rollover number, in case two clients should call at once. That line, not having been specifically reported, was not restored until Friday, hours after I discovered this and called it in.

Then, Tuesday, around noon, I was working in my office -- and the lights went out. My computer went out. Everything went out. The whole building lost power. We thought initially that it was related to a fire in a ComEd vault between City Hall and the Daley Center, but later reports said it was not. At least three Loop buildings lost all power in the event, however, and the ones identified were at seemingly random locations. Of course this knocked out my phones again -- and my cell phone was not fully charged. I was able to ascertain however that the trains were still running (although the vault fire would interrupt service later that afternoon) and I went home. The building manager called me at home Tuesday evening after dinner to advise that power was restored (though I found out it went out again later). The building manager cautioned, however, that elevator service had not yet been restored.

I had to go in yesterday, even if that meant climbing all the stairs. (That could well have been my doom: I tend to the three flights and you're out school of stair climbing.) But the elevators were working.

On the other hand, my Internet was out.

I spent the morning trying all the tricks I knew to get it back. These all failed. Our tenant found out that we weren't the only ones who were having Internet troubles -- but our tenant was not among these. Believe it our not, she has her Internet through the Almighty Telephone Company and it was working. Can you imagine how bad a service must be if it is bested by the Almighty Telephone Company's alternative? We think -- working hypothesis this -- that only those who subscribed to the service provided by the building were knocked out. But I'm not going downtown today to test this theory. I'll work from home today and brave the Undisclosed Location again tomorrow.

And maybe I'll even be able to work there, too.

American Bar Association looking for best legal blogs

The American Bar Association is soliciting nominations for its annual list of the 100 best legal blogs (a/k/a "blawgs" -- as in law + blogs, get it?), said list to be published in an upcoming issue of the ABA Journal.

Per an email from the ABA Journal, the linked Blawg 100 Amici form may be used to nominate a blog "that you read regularly [and] that you think other lawyers should know about." Persons are encouraged to nominate more than one blog. But -- of course -- there is some fine print that must be taken into account:

[P]lease know that we disregard amici from:

• Blawggers who nominate their own blawgs or blawgs to which they have previously contributed posts.
• Wives and husbands who nominate their spouses’ blawgs.
• Employees of law firms who nominate blawgs with their own firm’s branding.
• Public relations professionals in the employ of lawyers or law firms who nominate their clients’ blawgs.
• Pairs of blawggers who have clearly entered into a gentlemen’s agreement to nominate each other.

The Amici form asks for comments about the nominated blogs. There is a 500-character limit -- and this may pose the ultimate challenge for actual practicing lawyers. How can we hope to say much of anything in only 500 characters?

The ABA asks nominators to keep these criteria in mind:

• We’re only interested in blawgs in which the author is recognizable as a lawyer or law student in the vast majority of his or her posts.
• The blawg should be written with an audience of lawyers or law students—rather than potential clients or potential law students—in mind.
• The majority of the blawg’s content should be unique to the blawg and not cross-posted or cut and pasted from other publications.
• We are not interested in blawgs that more or less exist to promote the author’s products and services.

While Second Effort boasts a lot of original content, I don't know that I am "recognizable" as a lawyer in the majority of my posts. This blog aims for a general readership, rather than being 'pitched' specifically to lawyers or law students. But some of these have happened by anyway, from time to time. So I pass the information along.

Blawg nominations are due by September 9.

The Magic Book -- or -- A room with a view

We took Youngest Son up to school yesterday at a place I'll call South Janesville College in North Rockton, Wisconsin. Don't bother looking either up in Wikipedia. Plausible deniability is one of the great traditions of serious anonymous blogging.

South Janesville College is situated near the Rock River in southern Wisconsin, convenient to the Interstate, which is certainly a tribute to the foresight of the college's founders. In the 1840's most folks did not make plans with the Interstate in mind.

The college is old and enrollment is small, particularly when compared to the powerhouse educational conglomerates of the Big 10 (which now has 12 schools -- and they wonder why Americans are failing at math!). Still, the school has a large campus, and it dominates the small town around it. At a place like SJC, the liberal arts still flourish. Quincy Adams Wagstaff might not look too out of place striding across the campus -- except for the cigar, of course. The serious scholars of SJC would no doubt be horrified at the death penalty, but they might be willing to overcome their horror were someone to light up a stogie in their midst. This is 2011, after all. We did not take the boy back in time.

I'm predisposed to like the place. In four years I hope I can say I that I did like the place. But Youngest Son, I fear, is off to a rocky start.

From the time he sent in an acceptance (and after I sent in $500 as a pledge of good faith), Youngest Son was deluged with mail from South Janesville College -- big envelopes, small envelopes, chatty postcards. He'd get phone calls and emails, too. Some of the SJC correspondence was addressed to Long Suffering Spouse and myself, but these were all solicitations to buy something or other and these were all promptly tossed. We relied on Youngest Son to tell us what we needed to know to get him properly prepared for the semester.

Now, as a rule, 18-year old males don't talk much to their parents, and our Youngest Son has proved no exception. He'd occasionally share bits of information from his college mailings -- bits as in bits and bytes, the teeny-tiny units of data that are regularly used by computer geeks. We knew that the phone calls were from his baseball coach, for example. But we did not know whether his dorm room would have a dresser or a closet or a desk or shelves or some combination of these dorm-room basics. Would the room be air conditioned? (We assumed not, given the age of most of the buildings on campus.) He did let us know when roommates were assigned, and he informed us that he'd opened channels of communication with said roommates -- both of whom, apparently, were (1) planning to play baseball also and (2) equally ignorant on the likely contents of their dorm room.

Recently, Long Suffering Spouse tried to wheedle information out of the boy concerning the academic calendar. We knew he moved in on August 22. The first day of class is next Monday; registration and orientation fills out this week. But was there a Fall Break? How many days did he have for Thanksgiving? When would he have to leave campus after first semester finals? My wife likes to know these things. She has, I think, good reasons for asking. Does she have to plan another day off? (She missed the first day of school yesterday.) She keeps the family calendar. She'd like to know what's ahead.

Long Suffering Spouse, in fact, had a host of questions for Youngest Son, and he was equally uncommunicative with regard to all of them. Nevertheless, somehow, Youngest Son packed, making piles of stuff in the living room. He even made it to Indianapolis, finally, to pick up the refrigerator that his sister was keeping for him.

The car was loaded Sunday night. Monday morning we tried to get out of the house before the height of the rush hour (in Chicago, rush hour traffic goes from as much as to the city). But the boy couldn't find his wallet. It was left in the other car when he and Younger Sister went to pick up a new pair of hair clippers from a 24-hour Walgreen's in the wee small hours of Monday morning. (Younger Daughter was giving her brother a haircut when the old clipper failed.)

Though the wallet crisis was successfully resolved, Long Suffering Spouse had to practically lead the boy out of the house, if only to stop his seemingly aimless wandering from room to room.

The four of us (yours truly, Long Suffering Spouse, Youngest Son, and Younger Daughter -- she wanted to see what SJC looked like) made it to North Rockton without incident and, after some confusion, found a legal place to park within arguable walking distance of Youngest Son's dorm.

Youngest Son's two roommates and their respective families also arrived at the same time. We got everything from the car into the dorm -- why are my kids always on the top floor? -- also without serious incident.

But conflict was predictable as all of these strangers converged on the dorm room and, in this case, the conflict involved a pair of shorts. A pair of short, form-fitting shorts worn by the mother of one of Youngest Son's new roommates.

America is an increasingly casual country, and it shows in what some people will wear in public. Our politicians are no longer obliged to wear ties, especially on the stump. (As recent events have shown, we still expect our politicians to wear shirts. And pants.) Even fancy restaurants will seat patrons without ties -- or even jackets. Americans have Casual Fridays all year round and Summer Casual all summer long. Even lawyers will come to work in 'business casual' on days when they will not appear in court. And stop at any grocery or Wal-Mart and you're likely to see people, usually women, parading about unselfconsciously in stretchy materials that leave little to the imagination.

When a female parades about in a form-fitting costume, all males are obliged to look. This is not because we are all dirty old men, or dirty old men in training, and certainly not because we are seeking to commit infidelity at the slightest opportunity. Rather, this is an illustration of evolution in action; it is an undeniable instinct that harkens to the earliest origins of the human race. If this were a PG-13 blog I might make some sort of snickering reference to how it's no accident that homo erectus was a direct ancestor of homo sapiens -- but I'll leave that sort of humor to prime-time television.

The usual male response to seeing a female in stretchy garb is shock, horror, and revulsion -- not because we are such prudes, you understand, but because, all too often, the person wearing the garment really shouldn't. It's like looking a train wreck: You know you should turn away, but you can't. The sight of rippling folds of flesh, held in place beneath the stretchy stuff like waves on a lake that froze on a windy day, burns the retinas of your eyes, and still you stare, unblinking, wondering what was she thinking going out like that?

On the other hand, the woman in the crowded dorm room at SJC actually could wear short tight shorts. Whether or not the occasion was appropriate for such a costume, her derriere was. She was tall, thin, tanned and had long legs that nicely complimented the aforementioned shorts. With a son starting college, she must have been in the neighborhood of 40 -- but it was obvious she lived in the good part of that neighborhood. Her hair was of that blond, brown, and every-shade-in-between variety that Younger Daughter could explain very easily -- there's a name for that -- but I don't know it. What I did know was that Long Suffering Spouse took an instant dislike to this woman. I thought that was what made the room seem chilly, but it turned out that it was actually air conditioned.

The room also turned out to have beds and dressers and bookshelves and desks and closets for each of the boys. But the beds seemed to be blocking all the available electrical outlets. Major furniture moving was in order and I was all for letting the boys work this out themselves -- but if that woman was staying, Long Suffering Spouse was not budging. Since that woman stayed, Long Suffering Spouse did, too.

Believe it or not, I removed myself to the lounge just down the hall from the boys' room and checked my messages at the office.

Later, Long Suffering Spouse would have conversation with Younger Daughter about that woman. At one point I overheard her harrumphing about how she did not see that woman's husband; she would bet that that woman was divorced. "Does she think she's going to find a new husband here?" Long Suffering Spouse asked. Younger Daughter must have interjected something at this point because Long Suffering Spouse responded, "I don't care how pretty she is." Younger Daughter must have said something else. "Creepy. Yes," said Long Suffering Spouse, "that's exactly the right word for it."

I managed to avoid becoming embroiled in that conversation.

But I'm not certain that I would have agreed that that woman was being creepy. And if she was trying to be provocative, it was probably in vain. Although there have been any number of recent references in popular culture to "cougars" and so forth, I suspect that, for most 18-year olds, anyone north of 35 would be unimaginably ancient. I concede that I enjoyed the view... but I was merely looking, not looking for trouble. My best guess is that that woman only dressed that way because it was warm out.

Eventually, though, enough furniture was moved that the ladies felt it possible to leave the kids to set up their room, and their schedules, on their own. Long Suffering Spouse, Younger Daughter and I made it home -- and it was when we were cleaning out the van from the trip that the discovery was made.

It was a small book, maybe 4" x 6" -- and no more than 30 pages long. It was entitled Everything You Need to Know Before Arriving at South Janesville College. Long Suffering Spouse remembered seeing that book before; she'd actually seen Youngest Son consult it before, on one of their few shopping expeditions. She knew, therefore, that it contained some useful information. She took it inside.

After dinner, Long Suffering Spouse began reading the book -- and I could see her becoming increasingly agitated with each turn of the page.

Every question she'd asked the boy in the last month was answered in this book. I know this because she read it aloud to me off and on all night long. She'd remember some other question she'd asked Youngest Son, then she'd remind me of her prior query, and then she'd read me the answer the boy could have given her -- had he looked at the book -- but did not. I think I was quite patient until she read me the part that says that Visa cards could not be used for tuition payments. I'm still mad about that. And even the magic answer book didn't explain why Visa would not be accepted. Or why college students don't read.

Who knew that simplifying your life could be so complicated?

I've not mentioned my wife's house painting project for a while (prior mentions here, here, and here, if you're interested).

Long Suffering Spouse finished painting the house last Tuesday. And just in time, too: She's had school meetings this week; classes start Monday.

But what's the use of painting the house if you put the same dust-gathering piles of stuff right back where they were?

We tend to accumulate stuff. I'm certainly the worst offender. I had cancelled checks going back to 1980. The oldest were in a desk drawer. There was also a bag full of bank statements and cancelled checks that my wife had assembled when she couldn't stand looking at them stuffed into a bookshelf in the den. These probably went up to 2007 or 2008. The only reason we didn't have a pile of more recent cancelled checks was that, at some point, the bank stopped sending them.

I had books everywhere and magazines, too. I seldom threw out magazines. I mean, who ever threw out the National Geographic, right? And when I'd work up the intestinal fortitude to discard some other magazine, Long Suffering Spouse would say, "Wait! I want to see if there are pictures in there that I can use for class." Of course, that shouldn't have stopped me from throwing out the decades of back issues of the Wilson Quarterly -- not a lot of pictures that she'd want in there -- but the magazine is so good, I just couldn't bring myself to do it. So the shelves in the basement groaned under the weight of magazines and books and we also had bags and boxes of books and magazines piled up here, there and everywhere.

I had every t-shirt I'd gotten in college stuffed in a dresser drawer. I couldn't possibly wear them now, not even at home. I do not mean to imply that I am grossly obese, but I was a pretty skinny little runt 35 years ago and I have since thickened as males do when they leave behind their callow youth and embrace the full flower of maturity. But, darn it, I designed some of those shirts. On the other hand, the pants I wear every day that I can avoid wearing a suit were stacked up on a chair because there was no other place to put them. All the shoes I actually wear were in the middle of my bedroom floor because I couldn't bring myself to throw out the old shoes in the closet.

I had papers everywhere. Stuff I'd done. Stuff I was going to do. Manuals for appliances long since replaced.

There were piles of CD's everywhere, too -- old computer programs -- CD's or DVD's on which the kids might have recorded music or TV shows, or tried to. None of these CD's or DVD's were labeled; no one admitted to knowing what they were.

I didn't want to do it, but there was no choice: We had to simplify -- or we'd wind up like one of those hoarder families on a horrifying-reality TV show.

I inhaled deeply and threw out the shoes and the t-shirts. And still the world kept spinning. All those old checks got shredded. Out went the unknown discs. Out went the old computer programs. Out went boxes of 3.5 inch floppy discs -- and more than a few 5.25 inch floppies, too. I asked Oldest Son whether there might be a market for some of the educational games he and his siblings played as kids. He's got connections to eBay power-sellers; he would know. No, he told us, there's no market for Windows95 programs on 3.5 inch floppies that can't be loaded on any current computer -- so Reader Rabbit, Math Rabbit, and Treasure Mountain all went into the trash.

"Kids," I said at one point, "you don't know what a favor I'm doing for you. I'm saving you the cost of at least one dumpster after I'm dead."

Younger Daughter said her college library would take some of the old children's books that we'd resolved to discard (don't worry -- we saved Dr. Suess and the other really good stuff for the grandchildren yet unborn) and that helped us with the painful necessity of clearing shelf space. But no library would take the magazine collections -- not even the National Geographics. (I've got over a hundred years of the magazine on disc. That helps salve the wound somewhat. But it's just not the same.)

The school's recycling bins were happy. I was sad.

Sunday, I went through 10 years of homeowner and auto insurance policies and kept only the forms and endorsements actually in force -- a foot of paper reduced to a half-inch. But there are still piles of stuff that must be reviewed. I'm not looking forward to going through the mound of cords trying to figure out whether some, or any, of these actually are needed by any appliance we currently have. Eventually, I'll rearrange those bookshelves. Next year -- maybe -- we'll rebuild them so they don't sag so.

I know, on one level, we are so much better off for having undertaken this process. Still... I'm deathly afraid we're tossing out something that would have made our fortune on next season's Antiques Roadshow....

Everything I need to know I get from the comics, part 4,790

I can't help it; this struck me as extremely funny.
From the webcomic Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal.

Visa not the passport to college savings that I'd hoped for

It is a measure of how far I've fallen in the world that I have begun to pay careful attention to the interest rates on credit cards. Very careful attention.

The problem is this: While I've made reasonably good money most years (there have been some exceptions) I never make enough money to pay the mortgage, utilities, groceries and all my tuition obligations. I went through my savings, and my parents' inheritance. I borrowed to the max against my life insurance policies. A surprise bequest bailed me out last year.

(I've been deficit spending for so long, I've been named an honorary government. If only I could raise taxes.)

In 2007 I had to put several college and high school tuition payments on a credit card -- and they've never really been cleared off. Oh, I've cleared those cards -- but ran up new debt on others in the process. Recently I moved the balances on three cards to one that won't charge any interest on the now huge balance until January. Of course, there was a rather hefty convenience fee, but my son the accountant thought this was a good idea anyway. (It'd be a great idea if I could pay it down by then -- but this year is shaping up to be another one of those exceptions, doggone it.)

Anyway, knowing I was going to have to start charging tuition again this Fall I started sifting through my cards seeing which one had the lowest rate. One had 29%, another 25%, another 21%. Still another had 12% -- but the winner, by far, was a Visa card with a 4% rate. I'd been using this card in the business and it has a balance. But I figured I could clear that soon enough and have it ready to switch back to personal use by Fall. Even with the year I'm having, I still might be able to do this.

As those of you with kids in college know, the bills are coming due about... now. Youngest Son's was due yesterday. Younger Daughter's is coming up fast. But Younger Daughter's school had a payment plan -- I'd used this before, but mostly to pay from my checking account -- it was just like having two mortgage payments every... single... month -- and I saw that Youngest Son's school had a relationship with the same company that financed my payment of his high school tuition.

I had my 4% Visa card at the ready. I logged onto the site. I made all the pertinent disclosures. I agreed to all the terms of service. I then tried to charge the enrollment fee and the first tuition installment.

It wouldn't take.

The screen said something about payment being limited to fees only. From this I thought that I must pay my enrollment fee first -- then pay the first installment. Sure enough, the enrollment fee went through.

But the first installment stalled.

I tried again. And again. I pushed the button right-handed. I pushed it left-handed. I tried it with one eye closed. But it would not work.

Well, I thought, reaching out for some desperate strand of hope, maybe it's because the bill is due today and the computer won't take it on the actual due date. Maybe you have to call the payment in -- I've seen that before.

So I called the 800 number. I went through the phone menu with extraordinary patience, pushing 1 or 2 or 3 whenever prompted. Then it asked for my account number. And I had my brand new account number, right in front of me, on the receipt that I'd just printed out when the computer accepted my enrollment fee. I entered it -- and the phone menu said it did not recognize the number.

I tried again. The phone menu did not recognize the number.

I tried again. The phone menu did not recognize the number.

I tried and tried and tried until the phone menu offered me the rare gift of speaking with a human. I greedily accepted. There were clicks and buzzes and then the sound of a line ringing and a woman with a decidedly southern accent answered, "Customer Service. Christie Lee speaking. How may I help you?"

I began to tell my sad tale. But I was barely begun when the young lady on the other end of the line said, "Customer Service. Christie Lee speaking. How may I help you?"

"Can you hear me now?" I shouted into the phone. (I still can't believe that Verizon was able to turn that frustrating question into a sales pitch.) "Can you hear me?"

"Customer Service. Christie Lee speaking. How may I help you?"

"Please," I said, at the top of my lungs, "I'm screaming now into the phone. Can't you hear me?"

"There being no response, I am releasing the call," said Christie Lee. And she did.

My reservoir of patience, never much deeper than Carlos Zambrano's, was now drier than an unwatered lawn in Dallas. I stabbed out the 800 number. As soon as the phone menu began, I began punching zero, zero, zero, zero. The phone menu was more stubborn that most; it came back many times. But I was equally persistent: Zero! Zero! Zero! Finally, a line began ringing. Another woman answered. I had reached the corporate office.

She got me back to a customer service representative. But this was one of those special two-way lines where I could hear the customer service representative and she could hear me.

I told her my story. It may have come out in something of a manic rush.

"What school did you say your son will be attending?" she asked when she could get a word in. I told her. "That school charges a convenience fee of 2.99%," she said.

"Yes," I acknowledged. I'd seen that on the bill. It's all part of the high cost of being poor in this country: You can get discounts for cash, but if you can't afford something you'll pay interest and a little extra juice besides, that being whatever fee the provider of the good or service you hope to acquire finds it convenient to take from you.

"Well, Visa has chosen not to participate in that convenience fee," she said, "so we can't accept Visa."

I would have thought that the "convenience" fee was what Visa took off the top and the school was just passing the cost through. But this was not the time or place to debate the issue. I put the first installment on a MasterCard -- which has an interest rate of over 20%. But my options were limited at this point. I have a lot of Visa cards.

Thoroughly shaken now, I went to log into my daughter's school site so I could pay her first installment. The convenience fee there was 6%. Surely, if the problem was that Visa wasn't getting enough, there'd be enough juice in that for even a greedy credit card company.

Younger Daughter's school always sends the bill directly (and electronically) to Younger Daughter -- as if she were going to pay it. But I've gotten over this. I just log in as my daughter. This satisfies the school's concerns about privacy. Funny thing is, logged in as my daughter, the site has no trouble taking my bank account information or my credit card information. Obviously, privacy stops where the wallet starts.

Anyway, I re-enrolled in the payment plan (the school gets a little something extra each semester this way) and reached for my magic 4% Visa card.

And then I looked at the list of acceptable credit cards. I looked again. MasterCard. Discover. American Express. Dogpatch Stormdoor and Banking Enterprises. But no Visa.

Sometimes I think the world is out to get me. Othertimes I just know.

The origins of Irish dancing explained

I have some cousins who are seriously into step-dancing and they may dispute this.

On the other hand, they have large families and come from large families... so maybe they won't.

Definitely time to go back to school

Youngest Son will move into his college dorm a week from Monday.

It won't be a minute too soon.

He's basically a good kid -- but he's getting on my nerves big time these days. He's been "grounded" since an incident a couple of weeks ago wherein we thought he'd taken the family van to a graduation party in a nearby suburb but -- it turned out -- he'd actually taken the van to a neighboring state. Complications ensued. (I wrote about it here.) We've begun letting him out of the house again -- and he's coming home earlier, at our insistence, and with less complaint -- but he's not driving. He's forfeited that privilege.

Youngest Son has been more hindrance than help to my wife's house-painting project. I think that's why Long Suffering Spouse started letting him out of the house at night; it got him out of her way. He's still sleeping every day until early afternoon -- waking only because my wife, having done a good morning's work, can no longer stand the thought of him still abed. He'll grudgingly arise, shlump down to the den, turn on ESPN, and watch SportsCenter. Sometimes, just to change things up, he'll put on the MLB network. Occasionally my wife has been able to persuade him to interrupt his viewing long enough to move a box here or carry a bag there. (The other day, after being asked to undertake one of these 12 Labors of Hercules, he ranted to his sister, "I'm sick and tired of having to do everything around here!")

Youngest Son really got on my nerves when I stayed home Friday, Monday and Tuesday and helped Long Suffering Spouse finish the painting. After four days of trying to keep up with my bride -- who, remember, has been doing this for a month -- I was ready to die. I had come to resent the lumpen mass watching sports on the couch. (My wife says it was envy, not resentment; she may have a point.)

The strange thing is that Youngest Son is, believe it or not, an athlete. He voluntarily suspends his television viewing nearly every afternoon to run a few miles or lift weights or long toss. At this point, he's strong as an ox, only less cooperative.

I was discoursing along these lines to Long Suffering Spouse this morning -- not to so great an extent of course; my wife knows all these things that I've just told you. Besides, she cut me off quickly. "You act like this is the first time this has happened," she scolded.

"Um," I said.

"Oh, come off it. Every one of the kids has done this before going off to college. Not the same way, of course, but they've all been perfect beasts just before they leave for school."

"Um," I said, now feeling chastened.

Long Suffering Spouse put on a falsetto voice: "I need to be with my friends. We'll never be all together again!"

Yes, I admitted, every one of them has had a phase like this. "But they're more connected now than ever," I protested. When I went to college we could only write letters to our high school friends. (I have a bundle of papyrus scrolls up in the attic somewhere.) And when Older Daughter went off to school (nine years ago!) a lot of kids had actual limits on their cell phone minutes (we got Older Daughter an unlimited plan -- which she exceeded in the first month). There was no texting. No Facebook. They could chat on AIM, but they had to be logged onto their computer. "They're really not going to be apart at all," I concluded.

Long Suffering Spouse began tapping her foot at me. She tolerates a lot of my foolishness, but I could see I was approaching her limit. "That's not the way they feel," she said slowly and evenly, the way one instructs a slightly dense child.

They won't be able to hang out at together at someone's house every night, I silently conceded.

"Well, there's one good thing that comes of this behavior," I said, reversing course quickly. "You were worried that you'd be a little sentimental as the little guy" -- he's 6'3" -- "heads out of the house. Now, you'll just be relieved. Maybe this is just nature's way of making it easier to let the fledglings leave the nest."

Long Suffering Spouse stopped tapping her foot. "You might be on to something," she said.

What I wished I could have said: Science and religion can be complimentary

Regular readers will recall that I'm a church-going Catholic. That doesn't make me a good Catholic, much less a good person, but it does make me different from many who are out here in the Internet, standing on our digital soapboxes, shouting at passersby.

Regular readers will also recall that I am a big fan of the comics. I read a lot of the comics that appear (or used to appear) in the Chicago newspapers on line (they're often rendered in color, even on weekdays, and bigger than they are in print) and a lot of webcomics besides. A lot of times the webcomics are crude, vulgar, tasteless and offensive, but I enjoy some, like Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal, xkcd, Tree Lobsters!, or Scenes from a Multiverse (to name just a handful), often enough to keep me coming back. No one hits a home run every time. Good grief, Charlie Brown never hit one in 60 years.

Fair warning: Each of these above-listed comics can be just as crude and tasteless as webcomics generally. Don't blame me if you follow a link and are offended. But my point today is that, a lot of times, these comics can also be downright anti-religious. These webcomics have a geek following (engineers, mathematicians, scientists). It is apparently the fashion among these folks in particular to be actually hostile to religion, organized or otherwise.

Younger Daughter's boyfriend, Olaf, comes to mind in this regard. Olaf fits the demographic profile: He's a math major. And to hear Younger Daughter tell the story, his folks are hard-core Creationists. They reject evolution. Their universe was created in six days, just as Genesis says. Like a lot of kids, Olaf has reacted to his parents' views by forming equal and opposite views of his own.

Olaf is cautious in expressing his views around Long Suffering Spouse and me, but he made a passing reference recently to the Flying Spaghetti Monster. He must have thought only Younger Daughter would catch his drift; he was surprised when I did. I'm not a Pastafarian, I assured him, but I try and pay attention.

Last Sunday afternoon, Younger Daughter and Olaf were out shopping -- but none of us had yet been to Mass. She promised to be home in time for the 6:00pm 'last chance' Mass that our parish offers.

But you know how these things go... time passed, they were having an enjoyable afternoon, and Younger Daughter called to ask if she could skip Mass just this once and go out to dinner with Olaf and his parents.

Long Suffering Spouse was still painting Sunday. This project had been ongoing for a month already but the finish was in sight. I was assisting (for a change). So neither of us answered Younger Daughter when she called her mother's cell phone. Youngest Son did. And, in the time-honored tradition of little brothers everywhere, he translated my "ask your mother what she thinks" into "no way, you better meet us at Mass or else you're toast."

After I actually did confer with Long Suffering Spouse, we agreed that Youngest Daughter could stay out -- but we instructed her brother to tell her. Who knows what he actually said? Thus it came to pass that Younger Daughter did show up at church. With Olaf.

Youngest Son spotted them first. They were standing way in the back, although there were plenty of available pews. They stayed there, too.

After Mass, Long Suffering Spouse was prepared to just wave in their general direction and walk past, but I said I must greet our guest. I heard later from Younger Daughter that Olaf was a little concerned about the big sappy grin on my face when I said hello. "I hope your father doesn't think that I'm converting," he told her.

Actually, I didn't think that. I was happy, though, that Olaf was willing to accommodate his girlfriend -- and us -- in something that we think important.

And there is something else I wish I could explain to him, and to all the anti-religious webcomic artists, too: Religion and science are not mortal enemies; rather, they should compliment each other. Both are concerned with searching for the truth. Science is concerned with what can be known; religion is concerned with what is not known (what can't be known). As time goes on, the domain of science increases as we know more and more of the universe around us -- and yet the domain of religion remains infinite.

Remember back in high school math, when you had to plot an asymptotic curve? The line of the curve comes ever closer to, but never intersects, the axis of the graph. Science is like this: It pushes religion ever closer to the border of irrelevance, but it will, presumably, never quite push religion over the edge.

There will always be Questions that science can not answer satisfactorily. Why are we here? What is our purpose? Does our consciousness expire with our bodies, or does it go on? Where? How? The answers to these questions are not likely to be found in a lab. And it is just as willfully ignorant for devotees of science to assert that these Questions are unimportant because they can not be answered as it is for Creationists to deny the evidence of the fossil record because it is incomplete.

I like this explanation by a Chicago Catholic priest, Fr. Robert Barron:

The basic principle is this: All truth comes from God. God is One. And, therefore, there can't be a contradiction, finally, between the truth discoverable through Reason and the truth discoverable through Faith, properly articulated. And so the unity of God -- the unity of Creation -- gives rise to this ultimate compatibility between Faith and Science.

The trick is not to get too dogmatic about either religion... or science.