Nothing But Love :: golf blogger

So, I want to tell you that Friday sucked big time, personally and professionally.

A hearing was scheduled on a criminal case of the guy who stained our deck as a part of his fee, and I was hoping to get a couple bathrooms painted in the process. I'll get to him later.

First, there was a little marital misunderstanding, if you know what I mean, a little "I told you that -- No, you didn't, you ...."

So, the marital thing would have been resolved much more quickly if I didn't have to be in court with the painter dude. And if my cell phone had not been confiscated by the wise-ass homeland security woman at the front door of the court house. And if my damn text-messaging pager didn't run out of battery power after I sent a couple e-mails. I can't send anything out without power. That much is obvious, but I don't know what happens to e-mails that get sent to my pager with the little keyboard when the batteries die. I think they are lost in the ether, never to be recovered again. To the rescue, though, unbeknownst to him, came the bailiff, who was kind enough to let me use the phone in the court room -- where there were several people sitting in the gallery.

Now, getting back to the painter dude, he led the police on a high-speed chase in the middle of winter driving his full-size van on snowy side streets for 10 blocks, careening off a couple parked cars and hitting a pole while coked up after shoplifting $100 worth of stuff from a suburban mall.

He went through drug rehab and was doing the out-patient thing and going to AA meetings and was working with the hope of staying out of prison. He had a prior robbery on his record and a drug conviction and a failure to support charge. I was hoping to convince the judge, who worked for me a few years ago, that the painter dude should get probation, especially since I needed those bathrooms done; but she didn't like him barreling down the streets of the suburb where she lived at one time.

She told me she'd give him a year, and when I asked her about referring him for a presentence report and probation, she said, "Do you really want me to read about this guy's criminal history before I sentence him?"

So, there I was in the court room on the phone. The judge walked into the court room. Everyone stood up. She looked at me. Not smiling. Bad move, especially when my client was being sentenced. Do not piss off the judge. But I was already standing; so, that was one good thing.

So, I said, "Judge, I'm sorry. I'm on the phone with my wife."

And that was the second good thing brilliant legal maneuver because she said, "Let me know when you're ready," smiled, and went out the door.

And I finished the call, which was another good thing, and then the painter dude got his year in prison, which, thinking back on how he could have gotten five years on the fleeing and 18 months on the coke charge, which was dropped, was a good thing.

Well, ... umm ... maybe not for him; but in a couple years, he'll think so.

I made my way back home, hoping to get wireless on the deck by the pool, catch some rays, and try to move stuff from my old, new site to nothingbutlove.net to save a little dough because the good fellas at TypePad were going to start charging soon, unless I misunderstood the e-mail that I got. It takes a damn lawyer to interpret that kind of stuff, and the day they taught that stuff in law school, I was absent. So, I was fiddling about with the old, new site and didn't realize that stuff would be lost in oblivion if I hit a button that said "Yes." Or was it "No?" Well, poof! That was bad. I don't think I did anything at all wrong, and it was really a CIA covert domestic operation inasmuch as I criticized George Bush the Lesser in my last post. So, I'm back on the DOJ hit list, apparently. And you know what? That's a good thing.

And here I am --