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Update:

There's a hole in the (bucket?) fence! Dear 'Liza, dear liza! Eureka! I've found it! Ok, so it took a lot more looking than I thought to locate the culprit (hole). Naturally, said hole is behind a bush, and not easily noticed. Betsy apparently squeezed through the bush, dug only a little bit, and pushed out the chain link. Solution: One big (for Betsy) rock outside fence, one big rock inside fence, voila! Maybe things can get back to normal! (more or less)

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Original post:

Ok, so vacations' over, Company has left, and Betsy and I are once again settling into our regular routine, with a couple additional hassles. Betsy escaped again, so I had to make another trip to the pound to bail her out. And, I've been doing battle with my swamp cooler every weekend. (You know, the thing the plumbers were supposed to fix...)

For those of you unfamiliar with Out West, most private homes are cooled with evaporative (swamp) coolers. These are box-type devices that perch on the roof of your house, a pump pumps water to the top of the box, where it trickles over pads, and then a fan blows air from outside, through the wet pads and into your house. Thus, cooling your house (in theory). Well, the plumbers did replace the pump, the float, and some tubing (that takes water to the cooler), and fixed the fan. However, they failed to affix the float tightly enough, so it did not, in fact, float. Rather it filled with water and sank. (The purpose of the float is that when the bottom of the cooler has enough water in it, the float reaches a certain height. This float is attached to a shut-off valve for the water. If the float does not float, the water does not turn off, and thus spills all over my roof.) So after solving that problem last weekend, I then had to determine why the cooler was not cooling as well as it had previously, but was cooling a little. Answer, the pads were not becoming saturated with water because they were in the wrong place. (I had gotten a size too small, and they were at the bottom, rather than the top and so were not catching all the water that was meant to be running over them.) Strangely, the plumbers did not apparently notice this. So, I fixed the pads. Then this weekend, I noticed the thing was not cooling at all. I go to investigate and discover that the hose that's supposed to be taking the water from the pump to the top of the cooler had fallen off its fixture. Don't ask me how this happened. I just hope this won't be a regular occurrence. I'm getting kind of tired of climbing onto my roof all the time!

In addition, Betsy somehow escaped this week, and I had to go bail her out again. I have scrutinized the fence for the past 2 days, and still have no idea how this could have happened. (Adagio's family and I have plugged up all the holes under the fence because they're trying to landscape their back yard.) There are no new holes under the fences, and the shortest fence is about 4 feet. And she doesn't even jump the baby gate in my house, and that's only about 3 feet. The only thing I can think of is that someone must have let her out and then closed the gate behind. There were kids playing near the gate at that point. The last couple times she escaped were because she went next door and the neighbors had left their gate open.

In other news, I am patiently (or not so patiently) awaiting my socks-of-the-every-other-month-club yarn. My throw has not been progressing, due to my swamp cooler problem, and I had to start my lacy scarf over. It's going much faster this time around, though.

Well, that's about the news. Work is, well, work.

More on Pollyanna

So, it's been a whole week back, and I'm still in an unbelievably good mood. There's still some nonsensical junior high stuff going on at the office, but strangely, I don't care. I mean, I do, but it seems not to bother me at all. I am perfectly capable of avoiding people I wish to, and being civil to them when I'm unable to avoid them.

Even my issue with a certain private attorney, which upset me for the entire two weeks before I left, isn't affecting me much. The issue is this: I received a fax from this attorney a couple weeks before I left saying that he'd raised competency on one of his private clients and wished me to handle the competency portion of his case. (The cover sheet simply said "FAX" in at least 20-point font, as if he was the sole possessor of this new technology.) After speaking with my supervisor to confirm that we do not represent clients who already have private attorneys (duh!), I called the attorney's secretary to inform her that under the public defender enabling statute, we cannot represent clients who have already retained counsel, unless that counsel withdraws and the person qualifies as indigent. Upon my return to the office, I received another FAX from this attorney with another letter telling me if I would handle the competency portion of the case, he would take the case back if he was found competent. Now I have already had experience with this attorney's dealings with competency issues. There have been several cases I know of in which he raised competency with no basis whatsoever, and even tried to raise competency in a couple of mine. (I leave it to your imagination why he might do this.) In any case, my supervisor then emails this attorney informing him that the case is either a pd case or this attorney's case, but cannot be both. If the client wants a pd, he applies, and we enter our appearance, and we handle the case as we see fit. Otherwise, he's stuck with it. So our application person goes over to the jail to see if the guy wants to do an application for a pd. The guy says (quite sensibly) that he doesn't need a pd, he hired privately! My supervisor then emails the attorney again, telling him of this. Hah! I haven't received any further FAXes, and this attorney had better figure out how to handle competency cases, or kiss all that money goodbye!

In other happy news, I finished my happy green lace socks! They're really, really comfortable to wear. I did get my next installment of socks-of-the-every-other-month club, but I was less enthused with them. The yarn's nice, but the pattern is altogether too fancy for footwear. There are 2 cables running up the sides, in addition to a whole lot of lace. I think I'll save the yarn and do something else with it. Meanwhile, I am stalwartly avoiding buying this nifty self-striping sock yarn that is on sale. I should probably finish this lace scarf I've been dealing with on-and-off for around a year. I need to take out a few rows, because Betsy stole it a while ago, which is why I've been avoiding it.

In yet more happy news, Betsy loved her vacation at least as much as I did. She went to this great kennel, where instead of locking the dogs in crates, they split them up in 3 groups by size and temperament and just let them romp about. And believe me, there's nothing Betsy likes better than a good romp! She'll be thrilled to discover that she gets to go back this weekend.

Gotta Love Vacations!

So, I got back Monday from a whole week away. There were no judges, prosecutors, clients, or courtrooms! It was wonderful! The best part is that the coming back thing wasn't nearly as horrendous as I thought it would be. I'd originally had 5 trials set for this week, but all except one went away, and the last is probably going to. The State lost their complaining witness, and it will be impossible for them to proceed without her. They just haven't figured that out yet. One pled (which she said she would two weeks ago, but didn't then); one got dismissed, as it is the exact same case as is set for trial at the end of the month it just got filed twice, for some reason; and two got continued because the cops are out of town (of course why it took this long for them to figure that out, I don't know).

So I am currently at leisure (somewhat) to wait for the silly plumbers to get back here with their plumbing parts. Apparently the part they were trying to put into the swamp cooler needed additional parts to attach it to the thing, which they had not had the foresight to bring with them in the first place. I must say I'm on my way to losing patience with these guys. They were supposed to come yesterday at 3. However, I got a call at 5 that they were "running a little late," and could they come tomorrow at 8:30? A little late? I got a call this morning at 9, saying (surprise) that they were again running late, but were on their way. At 9:30, they finally showed up, putzed around for an hour, and then came to this discovery about the parts they did not have. They've now been gone over an hour! I'm in a fairly generous mood, as a result of my vacation, but come on, guys! I can't indefinitely with this waiting around for them to get themselves together! Wait a minute...oh good, they're back. Hopefully they have everything they need, this time.

Vacation clearly worked. I'm not even mad at them! I really think I should be. But I seem to be in some strange pollyanna mood, whereby nothing can upset me too much. Such a pleasant change from pre-vacation, when everything drove me crazy. I just hope this mood lasts a while! It's kind of fun.