I am a lawyer

Today dawned with three things I really had to get done.

This wasn't one of them but it provided early morning (well 8:30 or so) entertainment.  The city crews arrived to finish the repair of our street sink hole.

It maybe goes without saying that it was a really pretty morning in Roseville today.

Pretty shortly after that I was on to my three tasks.

One is the title of the post.  I decided rather belatedly in the three year term in which I must achieve continuing legal education credits if I want to retain my license that I did in fact really like the feeling of walking around with that plastic license card in my billfold, I like it enough to make me willing to pay some money for having the plastic card.

This morning began with me having 43.25 credits of 45 required during the three year term which ends on, can you guess, June 30?  Not to worry, there was a 2.0 credit webcast from Minnesota CLE beginning at 9am.  Today's subject was the Business Case for Diversity.  There are lots and lots of good business reasons for promoting diversity in one's legal practice.

Mostly I was there, I logged on, I watched or listened to almost the entire broadcast.  I am a lawyer.

At the very end I was listening but also watching and listening to the start of the TV coverage of France v. Nigeria.  I am a futbol nerd.

The second of today's important tasks is bicycle related.  Today is the final day of the month and as happens on the last day of just about every month from March to November I had some totally artificial but significant to me nonetheless mileage goal that I really wanted to reach.

At an exact minimum no matter what I needed six miles.

I watched the futbol while at the same time keeping track of the radar weather on the intertubes.

At the final whistle of the France 2:0 Nigeria I checked both my driveway and the intertubes.  My driveway seemed benign but I wasn't willing to start without radar confirmation.  I am able to get a live radar from a couple of sources.  One of them has google earth maps behind the radar image.  Looking at that one in extreme close up I could see that it was not raining at my house.  It was, however, raining on Prior Avenue which is the opposite side of the field from where I live and the north end of the field was also experiencing precipitation.

I briefly doubted the accuracy of all of that until I went back up to find that it was just then beginning to rain in my driveway.

I almost always surrender in a situation like that but today I really wanted those 6 miles.  I waited it out and by about 2:30 it seemed like if I was lucky I could make a loop and get my 6 miles.  I went for it.

See how pathetic I am?

Eventually I got 18.

At the end I was sprinting for home to try to beat what I felt was the onset of more rain.  I got home, settled down to watch the end of Deutschland v. Algeria (Deutschland uber alles) and outside it turned nice.

Wow.  Really nice evening.

But my third was still to come.

I am a lawyer.  Which means that I am almost automatically really not very handy.  Want to hear the story of unscrewing the faucet handle?  I did nothing beyond that but I immediately had to shut off the house water supply and pay some fellow $700 to fix the plumbing.

I don't do plumbing.

We have an issue with the switch on one of our TWO sump pumps.  I convinced TOPWLH to call our handyman to ask for help with this.  He replied that he is really busy right now and that this is such a simple repair that certainly I could handle it.

Well, I have assembled the parts and tools and I have spent more time than I care to reveal sitting on that mini-step ladder looking at it and . . .

Maybe he is right.

All I have to do now is saw off that black pipe on the right sump pump (at the right level), pull that whole thing out of there, insert the new sump pump (the one with the white pipe), and then cut the black to the correct level so that it will line up with the clamp on the top of the white.

Tinkertoys.  Put A together with B and tighten the clamp and then go on with my life.

I sit on the mini-step ladder and I am traumatized.

I am, after all, a lawyer.