Wednesday, May 26, 2010

3 teenage boys + A dog = Laws of Physics will be broken. (3 Good Things From Whenever I Last Posted This Until Today)

I'm back from my trial; the jury came back yesterday and now I'm back at work and there's not even all that much mail and junk waiting for me, plus it's almost summer, so it's not like I need my 3 Good Things. But I know you can't start your day without them, so here they are:

1. We won! Two days of trial led to 40 minutes of jury deliberations led to yet-another-victory for me in yet-another-jury trial. Which made for a great 1 and 1/2 hour drive home; that's a mighty long drive if you lose, and a might fun drive if you win.

Actually, it's pretty scenic and twisting roads and I listen to good music, so it's a pretty fun drive even if you lose -- but it's way better when you win. Plus, walking into the office and having everyone ask "How'd the trial go?" and getting to say "We won" and them tell them the highlights is great.

2. Mr F and I invented "Windowball." If you've ever wondered what big-time jury-trial winning lawyers do in between days on jury trials, I'll tell you: We go swimming on our back patio with our 3-year-olds (as shown in the pictures here) and we take those 3-year-olds to pick up The Boy from his job at Panera, where we arrive 15 minutes early and have time to kill -- which is the spot I found myself in on Monday night, waiting for The Boy to be done working and having Mr F and Mr Bunches in the back seat getting restless. Also, they were wearing only diapers because it was about 120 degrees out, so they couldn't just get out and start playing or something.

Luckily for me, Mr Bunches had brought along his large (about 2' in diameter) red ball to play with in the car. He got bored with it and threw it out the window, and I got out and picked it up and tossed it back in Mr F's window -- and he started laughing and threw it out, beginning the world's newest craze, Windowball: I would stand about 7 feet away and try to get the ball through the window, with Mr F playing defense. I even got a picture:


Which is possibly the worst sport picture ever -- but it does show the ball going into Mr F's window (point for me!).

3. The Boy is OKAY! (And possibly lying?)(And making us money, so I shouldn't complain.)
The reason we had to go pick The Boy up from work is that The Boy has now gone through his third car - - this time wrecking up the Jeep that he'd only recently gotten the use of.

Our rule with the kids is that they get a car to use if (a) we can afford to buy them a used car and (b) they're doing good in school. So The Boy previously had a beat-up old red convertible that about 30 days after getting it got the door knocked off in an accident The Boy swore wasn't his fault.

The insurance company paid us $1,070 for that car -- a $70 profit on the $1000 purchase price.

After we got the payoff for that car, we used the money to put towards the purchase of a 1999 Jeep from our mechanic, a Jeep Middle was using until she recently lost the use of the Jeep for "Not Going To UW-Oshkosh" related reasons.

Middle
got The Boy's old car, our old blue car we call "Bluey," a car which The Boy had had to pay to get repaired not long ago when he was in another accident he swore wasn't his fault, only it turned out it was his fault if you define "fault" as "trying to do Tokyo-drifting-type stunts in a snowy parking lot and hitting the curb." The Boy had to pay for those repairs -- he's paying us back at $50 every two weeks, at which rate he'll finish paying for the repairs around the date when time stops completely and the universe ends.

The Boy then, with Bluey repaired, took over The Jeep, only to come home this Sunday and report that he'd been in another accident which totally wasn't his fault -- he was passing a car that "
was going like 10 miles per hour," only then the car sped up, and "there was a semi coming at him in the other lane," AND "there was a car blocking him from getting back into the right lane," and he had no choice but to go off into the ditch and get the car towed and come back home to complain that we never answer our cell phones.

That happened on Sunday afternoon -- and also I think
that exact accident happened in an episode of Magnum PI. I didn't believe The Boy about what happened (and neither did our mechanic, who asked Sweetie if The Boy had told us "the real story" yet.) I assumed that The Boy was up to no good -- especially because The Boy had two friends and a friend's dog in the car, and if you put three teenage boys and a dog into a car, you're guaranteed at some point that the laws of physics are going to be tested -- if not broken.

But it's irrelevant because everyone in the car is okay, and Today the insurance adjuster called and said we'll be getting a check for $4,700 -- or $200 more than we paid our mechanic for the car in the first place.

I think The Boy may have found himself a calling.


133 Down, 10,870 to go: Here's Mariella from Kate Nash. I don't know why. I was going to put up "Lanlaire" by La Vent Du Nord but the only videos for that song are live ones, and I hate live videos, and then I couldn't think of a single other song, and then this one popped into my head, so why fight fate, I figure?

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