I am frequently an expert witness in civil cases. Most people think that I’m frequently sitting in the witness seat in a courtroom, or getting deposed by antagonistic opposing counsels. Nope. Most of what I do is provide reports and exhibits to attorneys and forensic engineers.
The most common conclusion to a case (by far) is that the attorney calls me and says, “We’ve settled. Make sure to send your final bill as soon as possible.” If I ask what the outcome is, I’ll be told, “Sorry, Can’t disclose.” It’s satisfying to finish a case, but frustrating not to know what impact I had or to what extent my work affected the outcome.
But…this morning I talked to a defendant’s attorney who had some new work for me. I had worked for him on several cases previously, all of which were now closed. Out of the blue, he said, “Yeah, we wanted to get you on this case because of the phenomenal work you did on the XXXX case last year. We showed the plaintiff your report and they just dropped the lawsuit.”
I found a plug-in to automate a task in WordPress that I really, really wasn’t looking forward to doing manually. Yesss! Such a time and boredom saver.
Mom (91 yrs old) has been fostering a dog for 3 weeks now. Jackie O is a 10 year old Corgi whose prior owners passed away. Until today, she’s been a very reserved dog; maybe depressed and anxious about all the changes? I drive over and walk her when I can. Today, she was very excited to see me. She seems like a whole new dog—did more running than walking. Warms my heart.
We have some rough grass around the back of the house that we allow to grow long to encourage wildflowers and wildlife in general; we cut it twice a year (mid July and sometime in autumn) - I decided not to cut down a specimen of ragwort (Jacobea vulgaris) in the hope that we would get cinnabar moth caterpillars on it. The caterpillars have arrived! (I don’t have a linkable picture I can post here, but they are spectacularly yellow and black striped things.
When the news of the day gets me down, I pick a bio to read about a recipient of the Cross of Valour, Canada’s second-highest honour, for acts of extreme bravery, civilian or military. There have only been 20 awarded, since it was instituted 50 years ago.
I’ve got a neighbor with thin walls who rehearses 50s jazz standards in full voice. Luckily I’m a huge jazz fan since all the people in my family are singers. Last night she was doing her Billie Holiday set - so awesome!
I was at a library skimming the new ones this evening. My older neighbor, a very busy teacher, came up behind me and invited me to her book club. I imagine some of you get openings like that and truly wish it for anyone else.
I was in New Brunswick earlier in the week with my sisters for a family get-together. The last several generations of the family were New Brunswickers, but my great-grandfather moved from Prince Edward Island, where the original immigrants of the family had landed. One of my cousins was now living in PEI and invited us over, and took us to the graveyard where my several greats-grandfather and his brother were buried (just down the road from the house great-grandfather was born in and still owned by a descendant). A couple of hundred tombstones in the graveyard, and every second or third one had my family name on it somewhere. It made us feel very much connected with our history. My cousin said there were parts of the island where you couldn’t throw a stone without hitting someone related to us.
I’m at my happy place for the weekend, the cottage. We got here a little later than planned as we stopped to visit some people, but I got a nice little paddle in on the kayak and I’m watching the sun set with a rum and coke.
There’s a lot going on in life, but right now, this is pretty awesome.
I am happy that the shortcuts work exactly as expected. As a Linux user, there are a number of things you can customize if you know how. So after lots of searching and a little bit of prior knowledge I was able to set up keyboard shortcuts to change the resolution and the scaling of my tv so that I can play games or watch 4K video as desired.
A silly little accomplishment but it makes me feel like I am smart, at least until the next tweak I need to figure out.
OMG! I can hardly breathe! My wife made a hilarious faux pas this morning: our favorite diner just started offering a particular Philly Cheesesteak; she is already enamored of their chili and I guess dessert was on her mind — she was thinking of ordering a Chili Cheesecake for lunch today! That bounced around in my head for a bit (like a BB in a tuna fish can) before exiting my mouth in a constant stream of laughter. I’ll be this way the next couple days, so just ignore me. Thanx for the hysterics, my wife.
I work with an outside vendor that collaborates with a city department. The technicians who work for the city invited me to go out with them for a beer after work. It was really nice because my work environment is otherwise very split off as a company. The work partnership does make me want to work with them.
