I wonder if I need to notify OSHA about this (I Get Paid For Doing This)

This my home office:

And while it's a great place to work, it faces south. This means that in winter, the sun is low on the horizon and there are no trees to block the glare. Since my window doesn't have blinds (and since blinds would block out all the sun entirely and I would be working in a dark cavern all day), I use a picture of Frankenstein Mr Bunches made. Periodically I have to stop what I'm doing, stand up, and move the picture a bit to the right in order to keep blocking the sun.

Some shots from my trip to Merrill, Wisconsin, for that big trial which did I mention we won? WE WON.

Above is the courtroom on Monday morning before the trial began.  That's my laptop there, and the file of the things I needed that morning.  Not pictured is the box of documents I also lugged in and out each day; that's behind me.  By the time I'd taken this picture, I'd been up for 3 1/2 hours and had driven 160 miles to get there.  I spent the next four days in this courtroom or very near it.

I never eat much during trials -- to focused on other stuff, which gets hard during a four-day trial like this.  At lunch on the first day I took a walk to think about things and clear my head from the morning, which had been amazing in the number of issue thrown at me.  If you want to know what it's like to be in a trial, consider this: Imagine the hardest class you ever took, one you're good at, but still was challenging.  Now imagine that you are going to have to give an oral report in that class on what you've learned in it, to prove to a group of people that you truly understand the material.  Now imagine that during that entire exam, a couple of people are attempting to interrupt you and prove that you don't understand a single thing about it, and that they are doing so by attempting to get you to explain not the class materials, but a bunch of different subjects entirely.

That's what a trial is like, or at least the best I can explain it.  This was a malpractice trial: we were suing a lawyer for screwing up and almost costing my clients their house.  By noon on the first day I had argued about the need for expert witnesses in that type of case, about the level of evidence needed to prove emotional distress, about whether the ethical rules governing lawyers required a mistrial to be granted based on claims made by an opposing lawyer, and had had to question 21 total strangers about their attitudes towards lawyers, lawsuits, debt, foreclosures, and other matters.

We hadn't even called the first witness by the time I took a walk up and down the street in front of the courthouse, eating an "Uncrustable," and drinking a Coke Zero.  

That sign above caught my eye.  It was on a garage, but the cite to Romans 12:2 was what made me wonder about it.  I didn't look it up until later that night, at the hotel.  This is what it said:

Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is—his good, pleasing and perfect will.

I like that. I'm a fairly religious guy, but even if I wasn't, I think I'd like it. I think that nearly every day I am transformed by the renewing of my mind.

This is the view from underneath that sign, looking back at the Courthouse:

And this is a dance studio along that walk.  I liked the sign (so did Sweetie, when we looked at the pictures):

And this is the Courthouse itself, a picture I took when I first pulled up in my comically tiny car that morning about 7:30:

Maybe more pics in the future.

Didja ever get the feeling you were being watched? (I Get Paid For Doing This)

Scenes from my office.

My Office Got 1,000,000% Awesomer This Weekend... (I Get Paid For Doing This)

...when I found THIS:

...which someone was just throwing away outside of Middle Daughter's apartment building! Can you believe it?

I call him "Edgar."

"Edgar" because Edgar Allan Poe wrote this:

Eldorado

Gaily bedight,
A gallant knight,
In sunshine and in shadow,
Had journeyed long,
Singing a song,
In search of Eldorado.

But he grew old-
This knight so bold-
And o'er his heart a shadow
Fell as he found
No spot of ground
That looked like Eldorado.

And, as his strength
Failed him at length,
He met a pilgrim shadow-
"Shadow," said he,
"Where can it be-
This land of Eldorado?"

"Over the Mountains
Of the Moon,
Down the Valley of the Shadow,
Ride, boldly ride,"
The shade replied-
"If you seek for Eldorado!"

If killing a grizzly is so hard, how did Davy Crockett do it when he was only three? (I Get Paid For Doing This)

There has been a lot of talk about grizzly bears this morning in the office, which isn't so unusual, if you work with me.  OR, as I put it to one of my associates who was waiting to ask me a question:

"You pretty much have to expect, when you come into my office, that at some point you are going to end up talking about a grizzly bear walking a tightrope over the Grand Canyon."

This is how it started.  I assigned the Associate to give some information at our weekly meeting next week.  The Associate then came to me to say that while he was more than willing to do that, he would in fact be in Yellowstone next week, camping.

At that point, Some Guy At Work came in and told the Associate that there are a "higher than usual" number of grizzly bear attacks in Yellowstone, which I pointed out assumed that there is a usual number of grizzly bear attacks per capita in the United States, something I do not take for granted.

Some Guy At Work then said that if there is even ONE grizzly bear attack that was too many, which I objected to on the grounds that one grizzly bear attack per year seems about right, given that we're encroaching on their grounds and all, and so perhaps humans should expect to be attacked on average about one time per year by grizzly bears, but Some Guy At Work maintained that even one is too high, at which point I informed him that his zero tolerance policy towards grizzly bear attacks was holding our schools back from providing a quality education, which is my platform in case I ever run for Governor: I plan on dealing with every question and every attack by pointing out that the questioner's attitude is what's holding our schools back from providing a quality education.

As in:

REPORTER:  "Mr. Pagel, would you agree with your opponent that you are grossly unqualified to hold any position, let along governor?"

ME:  "It's that kind of attitude that is holding our schools back from providing a quality education.  I don't know why my opponent and you don't want our kids to get a quality education, but I won't stand for it.  I want our kids educated!"

CROWD: *cheers wildly, elects me, fails to notice when I then take four consecutive years off for vacation.*

THAT in turn of course led to Associate saying that he was taking a gun and wasn't worried about grizzly bear attacks AT ALL, which led Some Guy At Work to say, AND I QUOTE:

"It's not as easy as you think to kill a grizzly bear."

WHICH meant that I had to interrupt -- had to!-- to point out that his sentence implied that someone thought it was easy, period, to kill a grizzly bear, since his claim was that killing a grizzly bear wasn't as easy as we all thought, and I considered that NOBODY in the room thought it was "easy" to kill a grizzly bear.

So I asked Associate:

"On a scale of 1 to 10, 10 being the hardest possible thing to do, how easy do you think it is to kill a grizzly bear," and he said:

"Do I have a gun?"

And then we got into a discussion of whether you would have a gun, how far off you might hear the bear coming, whether the bear was wearing sneakers or his work shoes, whether he had just come from a job interview, for example, and hadn't had time to change his clothes before going to attack campers.  I mean, you can't exactly expect the bear to continue to want to make a living attacking campers, if EVERY BEAR IN YELLOWSTONE is getting into that field; he may want something quieter, like accounting, and you have to take that into account, so we finished up with this: I asked this hypothetical:

Q: "A grizzly bear attacks you, and you have a gun.  What is the first thing you do?" and NOBODY got the answer right, because the answer is:

A: "You shoot the rifle out of his hand!"

I mean, if you DON'T do that, you're just asking for trouble. A grizzly bear with a rifle? I'm not messing with that.

Also, that was how I spent the first half-hour of my day.

I would go back to Church if this happened. (I Get Paid For Doing This)

So today I am oddly fascinated with the fact that there is going to be a new Pope in town, and that resulted in the last few minutes' conversation with Paralegal and Clerk in which I told them that I was oddly fascinated with this process.

And so we had a bit of a discussion, briefly, in which I mentioned that it really doesn't matter because all the new Popes are pretty much indistinguishable from the old Popes, and then Clerk asked whether any Popes had ever come from outside of Europe, and I said I was pretty sure that all prior Popes had been EuroPopes.

And Clerk then said it would be great if we had an African Pope named, or perhaps a Canadian Pope, and I said that a Canadian Pope would be "the politest Pope ever," and that perhaps maple syrup would be served at Mass, and then congratulated myself aloud for reducing a religion and a country to the most obvious stereotypes all in one sentence.

At which point Clerk said that would be a great thing, to have a Canadian Pope, because:

"You could have Silver Dollar Pancakes for communion and syrup instead of wine and dip the pancakes into it."

That is so incredible that we stopped the conversation and I told Clerk she won the day.

Monty The Mountain gets a job! (I Get Paid For Doing This)

In between updating my calendar and reading my email and learning how to try class action lawsuits this morning, I did this:

It's actually for a legitimate business thing.  Monty is the official symbol of a new program we're starting that will give bonuses to employees more frequently and reward the best workers.  But the important thing is that Monty has broken out into the real world.  There's no stopping him now.  I expect the stop-motion animation Christmas special people to come calling any day now.

Oh, and while I was hanging Monty and his Mountain of Bonuses, Mr Bunches and Mr F were playing in the closet:

"All blues go together. That's a rule." (I Get Paid For Doing This.)

This is what I am wearing today:

That serious expression is not because I'm working on anything particularly important (I never am) but because I was trying to focus the camera and avoid any kind of unflattering photo, which is very difficult to do when you look unflattering, as I do.

(I've given up on trying to look good in pictures.  To look good in pictures I would have to look good in real life, and I do not.  I look, in real life, about like you would expect a 43-year-old guy to look if that 43-year-old guy was someone who this morning ate leftover pizza for breakfast and whose biggest goal in life in October was to find "Candy Corn Oreos."  In a word, I look "unflattering.")

(I also never did get those Candy Corn Oreos, either.  I am now like that guy who roamed the earth, carrying a lantern, looking for an honest man.  Diostehenes? Was that his name? Is that a name? I think it was him.)

(It was Diogenes.  I just checked.  So I am like Diogenes, if instead of "honest man" you substitute "Candy Corn Oreos" and instead of "lantern" you substitute "cold pizza" and instead of "wandering the world" you substitute "mostly sitting motionless.")

Anyway, I am wearing that tie today because tonight the Buffalo Bills play on "national" TV in a game that doesn't matter much but technically speaking the Bills still could make the playoffs if every other team in the NFL suffered some sort of catastrophic loss of personnel, like they were all spirited away in a rapture that took only NFL players that are good, leaving just the Buffalo Bills, Kansas City Chiefs, and Jacksonville Jaguars to play out the season.

(So I am not going to watch the game; I will likely be watching the rest of Brave on DVD with Mr Bunches and sometimes Mr F, who pops in and out of those things.)

And in wearing that tie, I have come to realize that (A) My staff does not think the tie goes with my blue shirt and darker-blue pants and (B) My staff is not shy about telling me that.

In discussing this matter because we honestly really don't have anything more important to do, I gave the Rule of Matching that I give to Sweetie whenever I get the boys dressed, too, which is:

"A given color matches all other shades of that given color."

Which is: Blue matches all other blues, red matches all other reds, and black and white match anything.

That's the rules.

I didn't make them up.  I don't know who did -- Diogenes, probably -- but those are the Rules I live by and much like the Rules for How Much Things Should Cost, my rules make sense and are easy to live by whereas the rules that everyone else thinks exist and should be followed are stupid.

To settle this debate, I googled "How To Match A Tie," and the number one result is a site called "The Art of Manliness," which has a ridiculously lengthy article on how to match a tie to things, and that article includes such ridiculously stupid things as these actual quotes:

"Match your tie to your clothing, not your clothing to your tie."

WHICH IS JUST STUPID. That is not advice.  Advice is not "take the question and rephrase it."  

Q: How can I eat healthier?
A: Match your food to your health, not your health to your food.

See what I mean?  Then Art Of Ridiculousness goes on to say:

Coordinating your tie, dress shirt, and suit isn’t rocket science.  All it requires is a basic understanding of proportion, pattern, and color which can be used to build an interchangeable wardrobe.  Start with easy to match shirts and suits–then add a range of flexible neckties that accent and enhance the outfits you put together.

About which: "a basic understanding of proportion, pattern and color?" That IS rocket science.  If I had a basic understanding of those things, I would not need to Google "How to match a tie."

The site then goes on to discuss "The Art of Matching," so while Matching is not a science (or at least not a rocket science) it is an art, and the first part of the Artistry is a discussion of "Necktie proportion" which I skipped over entirely because I don't care but I did see this gem:

If you find yourself shopping for ties and need a quick way to measure the width, pull out a dollar bill.  If the tie is close to Washington’s nose, you’re safe. 

There's a picture that goes with it:

In case you are not clear on what a dollar bill looks like.  That made me wonder: am I required to carry a tape measure with me when I shop for ties? And also it made me wonder: Who shops for ties?  Not me.  I can't remember the last time I shopped for a tie.  Most of my ties are hand-me-downs from my dad or ties people have bought me, so really I should forward this article to Sweetie and remind her to either carry a tape measure or a dollar bill with her when she shops for ties because Sweetie is probably woefully unprepared and might find herself needing to measure a tie... quickly... with no idea how to do that.

Then the site moves on to "Color" of the tie and starts with this helpful bit:

There is not a perfect answer to which color goes best with any given outfit.  

 I've been using that to tell my staff they're wrong and strongly hinting that they ought to go get some work done but then distracting them by telling them what people in England use as a mnemonic device to remember the colors of the spectrum.

(They say "Richard Of York Gave Battle In Vain." They don't know who "Roy G. Biv." is.  Fair enough. I don't know who Richard of York is.)

After telling me not to worry about the color of the tie, which is how I interpreted that sentence, Art Of Men or whatever goes on to immediately say:

Two factors that determine the right color for a man include the message he is trying to signal and the color combination that works best with the natural colors of his complexion.

The message I am trying to signal today is "The Bills are playing a football game tonight." MISSION ACCOMPLISHED.  I am also trying to send, as a secondary message "I do not want to have to worry about what colors work best with my complexion."

This is another actual quote:

Men with light colored hair and fair skin have low contrast and should stick with pastel and monochromatic color combinations.  Men with dark hair and light skin are high contrast and will look best selecting color combinations which have clearly defined lines between them.  If you have dark hair and medium to dark colored skin, you can pull off both low and high contrast tie and shirt/suit combinations.  Your difficulty in this case will be separating acceptable suit/shirt/tie combinations from great looking suit/shirt/tie combinations.  It’s a small distinction, and one best made by taking the clothing in your wardrobe and experimenting with various shades.

WHAT?  I tried three times to read that whole paragraph and each time my mind just slid away from it like butter off a knife; I am completely unable to read that paragraph.  If you handed me that paragraph and said "read it or everybody in the world dies in 1 minute," I would feel really really bad for humanity and try to read it but end up losing focus and thinking about Oreos again.  That's why I can't worry about my "complexion," whatever that is: I can't even focus long enough to read about what a complexion is.

Apparently you also have to worry about how colors within the necktie work with each other, so now I have that to lose sleep about, too: Are my neckties combative within their own boundaries? Look, I already cannot match a tie to a shirt.  Now I have to match a tie to a tie? Isn't that the manufacturer's job? DO I HAVE TO DO EVERYTHING MYSELF? We can put a man on the moon but I need a three page article to decide if my tie's colors complement each other?

Here is a sample of something the site says "Matches okay."

Specifically, from top to bottom those are "okay" to "best."

I would not have matched any of them.  But I would have worn a blue tie with any of them.  Maybe I'd have done the middle. I don't know.

Here is where I gave up on the site:  When it used the word "foulard."

I don't know what that word means.  I looked it up.  Wikipedia says it is:

a lightweight fabric, either twill or plain-woven, made of silk or a mix of silk and cotton. Foulards usually have a small printed design of various colors. Foulard can also refer by metonymy to articles of clothing, such as scarves and neckties, made from this fabric.

 So now, to match a tie to clothing, you need to have a background in literary criticism, because how many people know what a metonymy is?

(I do, but just barely and I get it confused with synechdoche, but the fact that I remember them at all, let alone that one or the other of them is used in "The Love Song Of J. Alfred Prufrock" is amazing to me and should be amazing to you.)

In closing: I am going to eat my lunch.  My lunch that, sadly, has no Candy Cane Oreos in it.


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I call him "Monty." You know, because he's a mountain.

So yesterday we were sitting around and talking about my law firm and how maybe we needed a logo, because this is what passes for fun among lawyers.

Our firm's motto is "We Help Quickly," and being something of a marketing genius, I undertook on the spot to come up with a logo that emphasized both the speed with which we help our clients, as well as the stability that our firm has demonstrated over the decades we've been around.

And hence I came up with this, which demonstrates speed and stability:

It's a mountain, running down another mountain.

Classy, right? 

On my drive to Eau Claire, I saw this.. (I Get Paid For Doing This)

 

I thought it kind of looked like Dumbo.

I'm sittin' in style!(I Get Paid For Doing This)

New office chair!

My old chair had lost the ability to have that back part (known in Chair Scientist circles as "that back part") lock to stay up and down -- so I essentially had a combination stool/recliner, but nothing in between.

Now, though, I am able to be fully upright, and hench much more productive:

And by "productive" I mean "interrupting my conversation with another lawyer about whether the fact that bad things happen means God is either not omnipotent or He doesn't care", a conversation that started when I pointed out to him that Donald Driver had thanked God for making him (Donald, not God) a lifetime Packer) ... to take pictures of myself in my new chair and post them.

ALSO: That's a recent haircut I'm sporting.

These are the things that came up in conversation during employee reviews this week.

As a newly-appointed owner of my firm, this was the first year I got to review other employees instead of being reviewed.  So this was the first time I've sat through other people's reviews, and the experience was enlightening, by which I mean it was anything but, at times.

There was, for example, much more cursing than I had anticipated.  We run a pretty loose shop, apparently.  Also, we discussed, at times:

Kant's categorical imperative.

Bourbon.

Whether I am a young guy or old guy

About which, on that last one, the two oldest people in our firm were talking and agreeing that they were the oldest people in our firm, and then the second-oldest person in our firm said to me: "Well, you type all your stuff and you type it fast, but these younger people, they don't know how to do that."

To which I responded that up until that very moment I'd considered myself one of the younger people.

(She still got a raise.)

Also, I drew a pirate ship:

It's sort of a space-ghost-futuristic-pirate ship, which really I think highlights the kind of boss I am.

The opposite situation would also be weird. (I Get Paid For Doing This)

Last night, I had to talk with a guy who sounded exactly like Norm MacDonald, but who looked nothing like Norm MacDonald.

Do you have any idea how disconcerting that can be?

I don't think you do.

Here is an artist's rendition of what the man sounded like: