Thursday, February 11, 2016

Day 2249

I had a strange experience today. I received an official looking letter from a law firm addressed to somebody I'd never heard of in my life living at my address. Only three people have ever lived in this house since it was built in 1955, so I knew something was fishy. I Googled the name of the law firm and discovered a laundry list of complaints, saying that these people were scammers and to never pay them. There were an almost equal number of comments saying that the firm was a legitimate collection agency often hired by municipalities to collect unpaid traffic tickets, toll road tolls, and court judgements.

I opened the letter and sure enough it was an order demanding the mysterious recipient immediately pay a local Justice of the Peace court $800. I called the court and sure enough, the man named in the letter was real and had a case file. They didn't know how my address had become associated with the case and told me that they had sent the collection agency a different address several years ago. They didn't seem very concerned and told me to call the law firm that sent me the letter if I still had questions. I called the law firm, expecting a lot of trouble because of all the bad Yelp reviews, but they were quite nice and told me they would take my address out of their database and I wouldn't be getting any more threatening letters. When I asked how my address had become associated with the person they were actually trying to reach, they didn't have a clue. Both the court and the law firm were so casual about this mix-up that I got the impression that it happens everyday. They just didn't seem to care. This unusual civics lesson certainly didn't inspire much confidence in either our legal system or bureaucracies in general.

The cancer center called today with Dot's initial lab results. It appears that her kidneys and liver are still functioning normally, but they still want to see her again next week. I tried to get a blood pressure reading while Dot was at her therapy session this morning but the clinic's blood pressure monitor was malfunctioning. I'll have to schedule weekly blood pressure monitoring at the cancer center instead. One more vet appointment in a long list of ongoing vet appointments. Dot did quite well in the underwater treadmill today. She seemed to have more energy than I did.

When I was preparing dinner tonight, Dot looked like she was getting ready to poop. I rushed to get her outside and quickly pushed all the food to the back of the kitchen counter so Dash wouldn't eat it while I was outside. When I returned a few minutes later, I was surprised to discover that one of the stove-top burners was on and had partially melted a nearby bottle of mayonnaise. Yikes! When I pushed the food to the back of the counter, I must have inadvertently turned on one of the burners. This just goes to show that there are very few scenarios where something can't go horribly wrong. Luckily, no harm was done, but the incident reminded me of the dangers of being in a hurry. I am so slow and methodical that it drives people crazy, but apparently I should have acted a bit slower in this situation.

I have a photoshoot this weekend where my client is actually a committee of people. I think I will have to multiply the amount of time I think the job should take by the number of people in the committee to find out complicated this assignment really is. The fewer the people the better has always been my motto, but I'll do the best I can. One of the people on the committee is another photographer, which ought to make things even more interesting. Anybody who works with ad agencies would find this situation completely normal, but I haven't dealt with agencies for quite a while. I'm going to have to be on my best behavior so these people won't think I'm a grumpy old man. Who am I kidding? I am a grumpy old man.

Laday Gogh is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day