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o hack up a long while the hygenist is stabbing at my gums i wish everyone could stay healthy and then i wake up posted by the curmudgeon at 11 22 am no comments email this blogthis share to x share to facebook share to pinterest labels family grandchildren thursday january 16 2025 trust your gut and your bladder curmudgeon makes an alarming decision this isn t the alarm clock on my nightstand but it s very much like the one i have had for gosh 30 years at least maybe 40 more the volume control on my radio is shot erratically going louder or softer but not everyday and i m not too certain how well the tuner would work were i ever to try and change stations which i haven t tried for years anyway the darn thing is old but it works well enough for our purposes the first alarm goes off at 5 00 a m wbbm newsradio comes on the am station not that fm upstart which i would occasionally tune into for traffic updates while downtown because am never worked in the shadow of skyscrapers and long suffering spouse and i respond by 5 30 or so she gets moving first as long as i don t blink i m only five minutes or so behind of course one is expected to blink when taking one s glaucoma drops in the morning which i do i resisted for years but i have run out of excuses in retirement but i am mortified on those few mornings when my blinks extend our radio has a 6 00 a m alarm setting as well the news goes off for a minute at 5 59 and that silence if i haven t already gotten out of bed will jumpstart me into frantic action that s enough detail about our regular routine for this story which concerns granddaughter four she is having her adenoids removed today they re probably already out as i type this actually given her surgery time but we didn t know what time her surgery was scheduled for until quite late yesterday evening this was not the fault of younger daughter and olaf four s parents the hospital is supposed to call them the day before the schedued surgery and tell them what time the surgery is set and what much earlier time they are to arrive there was a question whether i would be pressed into service getting grandsons seven and nine off to their respective schools granddaughter one takes the bus to middle school and so does not need my transportation services i know what time the boys have to leave but when would their parents be leaving with four because that would be when i would need to arrive older daughter works evenings these days she was already at work by the time the hospital got around to calling olaf let me know that the surgery was set for 8 50 a m i did some quick ciphering the hospital usually wants check in at least an hour before the procedure they were supposed to specify this when they called olaf but did not and the hospital is a good half hour away from their home build in a little cushion i figured they d be fine if they left by 7 00 but to get to younger daughter s by 7 00 i d have to drop off long suffering spouse at school by 6 30 she s still teaching the 5 00 alarm would have to be advanced to 4 30 at least maybe 4 00 i communicated most of this to olaf hang on he texted back you don t think i actually spoke with a millennial on the phone do you there are complications granddaughter one had a pulmonologist s appointment that apparently could not be rescheduled and their new puppy long story had her first appointment with the vet so olaf and younger daughter would be playing a game of divide and conquer he would handle the appointments for one and the puppy while younger daugher got four to the hospital if he did these things he would be able to drop off the boys too honestly my grandchildren all of them or darn near all have each had more doctor s appointments and procedures and surgeries than i ever had and i ve had cancer and a heart attack i don t want to go all maha on you so soon after coming back here but gosh one can t help but at least wonder anyway olaf concluded i should plan on being there at 7 00 but maybe that would change and all i d have to do would be to pick up nine from pre school around noon he said there should be a message on my phone by morning as to my final instructions that s when i texted that i d have to advance the alarm a bit to make it there by 7 00 and he said he d get back to me as soon as he could meaning when younger daughter was through with work so they could finalize their own allocation of labor i promptly fell asleep in my chair watching tv long suffering spouse eventually did too there was no further direction on my phone when we woke up to go upstairs but it sounded at least to me like i would be spared early morning duty i told long suffering spouse that i would not advance the alarm we d improvise if necessary this is what passes for risk taking by grandparents right but it all worked out through a happy combination of old man bladder and catholic guilt i was up at 4 00 a m anyway i checked the phone sure enough a message had come in while i was off in the land of nod excusing me from early morning duty so i have time to tell this story and maybe do some other stuff too before i have to go out in the cold posted by the curmudgeon at 10 26 am no comments email this blogthis share to x share to facebook share to pinterest labels family thursday january 09 2025 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 posted by the curmudgeon at 11 44 am no comments email this blogthis share to x share to facebook share to pinterest labels legal personal thursday september 01 2022 just another unexpected problem of contemporary life the device at left will be familiar to many of you a roku remote you may not have something exactly like this i wouldn t have had this one if the kids hadn t gotten it for me but you may have something similar a small device just right for getting wedged in the recliner or buried in the couch cushions small and light enough to be carried by even an unsteady toddler and deposited in any number of places including the garbage can in the kitchen i m pretty sure that the kitchen garbage was the final destination of at least one of our tv remotes we had a vizio remote a little shorter than the roku remote a trifle wider but still light and very portable then one day a couple of years back we were watching granddaughter no 6 but not closely enough and the vizio remote was never seen again i thought i was vigilant before about keeping remotes remote from curious grandchildren but that incident redoubled my resolve as evidenced by the roku remote herein shown it is the same remote that we received with our roku device some christmases back not a replacement the exact same one i stress this because it is apparently a signal achievement these remotes are made to be lost i have occasion to babysit at younger daughter s house on a recurring basis when i arrive and something horrible is playing on the tv i didn t like my little ponies when my kids were young and i like the latest incarnation no better i always inquire as to the whereabouts of the remote it had been months since they ve been able to find one until tonight that is younger daughter was a little vague on where it had been found regardless the one she handed me this evening was by no means the original but things getting lost in the couch cushions is nothing new even in my youth couches were notorious for swallowing wallets keys or eyeglasses so losing a remote would not be a particularly unique problem of contemporary life and inasmuch as i can show you this picture my problem is not losing the remote anyway we recently cut the cord actually we had subscribed to directv for the last few years which we used after ousting comcast cable and so have been using the roku remote quite frequently now quite frequently and in the natural course of things given the increased usage the remote stopped working entirely just this afternoon this happens i assumed that the batteries must have died nothing new about batteries failing replacing the batteries in this device was difficult there was no little fabric strap to facilitate pulling out the old ones but i perservered i achieved i got the replacement batteries from a brand new package too and yes before you ask just as younger daughter asked i did make sure i put the and ends of each battery where they were supposed to go i had to put my glasses on and turn on the lamp on a bright sunny day to ensure that i did this but i did do it and then nothing the remote with the new batteries properly installed was just as dead as it was with the old batteries we re flush with batteries at this time so there was still another unopened package of aaa batteries i could open and make another attempt which i did and then still nothing younger daughter knew about my troubles because she happened to call whilst i was engaged in this ultimately futile effort she wanted to engage long suffering spouse and me for babysitting duty tonight so i asked have you ever had a remote fail has one ever stopped transmitting i should have known these were foolish questions before i asked them we weren t speaking by video this afternoon but i could at least in my mind s eye see her give me a pitying look no she said of course we haven t she might have added but did not we ve never been able to hold onto one long enough replacement remotes are plentiful on amazon younger daughter assured me and in the meantime or in the alternative roku has an app that turns any mobile phone into a remote immediate problem solved but it s got me wondering do remotes burn out do they lose the ability to transmit over time why what is the life expectancy i promise that is a problem we never had to address back in the day certainly i never have the tv or vcr or dvd player would burn out before any remote ever failed this was something new just what i needed a new annoyance posted by the curmudgeon at 9 10 pm no comments email this blogthis share to x share to facebook share to pinterest labels technophobia tuesday august 23 2022 culture war nonsense is the least of the problems with the new disney pixar lightyear movie the premise or conceit of the new disney pixar movie lightyear now showing on disney is kind of cute wrong but cute the idea and this is not a spoiler since it is shown before anything happens in the movie is that lightyear is the movie that andy saw in 1995 launching his desire for space toys buzz lightyear in particular and ultimately jeopardizing woody s primacy among the toys in andy s be...