Read My Lips - the blog

The day that wouldn't end

Well, today started off pretty well when I awoke on time. I even read my horrorscope and it said somethin' about some surprise romantic thing happenin' today. Then off I went on the 30 minute drive to court in the neighborin' town for what was supposed to be a five minute hearin' to allow me to withdraw off a case so that another attorney could be appointed to handle the appeal. Actually, the hearin' didn't last that long, but I had to wait about an hour for the judge to get on the bench. Of course, such is not that rare, as judges have probably more to do than I have to do on a daily basis. Hearin' is over and I am on my way back to town. It is just a little after 11:00 am when I the edge of town. I stopped by my favorite store to refill my cup with DP, chatted with the clerk about a situation I will be postin' about later, then ran by the post office to check my mail, go through it, threw about 3/4 of it in the trash, opened all the rest of it just to make sure there was nothin' tellin' me I missed somethin' I was supposed to do last week, then stopped by the office and got all the messages off of my answerin' machine.

It was almost noon, so out the front door I went and down the block to eat lunch, as today was the Lion's Club meeting. The meetin' was alright, the food was not all that great. Oh, well, at least I finally got somethin' to eat, a sandwich, or really two halves of a sandwich, one with roast beef and another with ham, two really small bags of potato chips and a bowl of soup, plus a styrofoam cup of iced tea. The soup was good, the sandwiches were alright, potato chips are potato chips, iced tea was not instant so it was about as good as you can get. I did not bring anything to donate to the CPS Rainbow Room, were the community can donate items that might be needed for children who had to be removed from their homes because of abuse or neglect, so I just donated $20 and told them to get whatever they needed. Meetin' over, so off I go back to the office, intendin' to start returnin' some of those calls and other things.

As soon as I walked in I saw the answerin' machine flashin'. I check the message and it was one of our local Sheriff's Department investigators, one that I am pretty friendly with since I handled his divorce and such. I called back and he was tellin' me these people were there with this large sum of money I had been awaitin' them to raise so as to get their relative released from jail. I told him to have them come by my office and I would take care of the matter. While I was waitin', I booted up my computer, luckily caught a good connection and downloaded my email. I posted the previous message while awaitin' for all if it to download. Thankfully all the email successfully downloaded before the connection died, then it began that connect, disconnect, reconnect, disconnect thing that occurs quite frequently on my office line.

My friend Matt just got cable installed in his office and I had gotten the installer's card from him, so I am talkin' to the installer when the people with the big bundle of money comes in. I conclude the call, with some assurance I will have cable installed by Friday or Monday at the latest, at supposedly 15 times my current download rate. Yeah, 15x nothin' is still nothin' but I am assumin' they think I am gettin' at least 36kps and 15x 36kps is much better than what I get when I can even get a stable connection.

Well back to the story -- so this lady counts out $1500 in mostly $50's and $20's and I write her a receipt. I call the DA in the next town, the one where I was just this mornin' to make sure the deal is still on that we pay this amount of money and they reinstate my guy on probation and release him from jail. Deal confirmed, so I tell the people I will take care of it and am just tellin' them to go when the phone rings.

It is the County Attorney's Office and the pseudo-County Attorney asks me is I am busy. I say "yes."

"Oh well, then never mind."

"No, Debbie, I am always busy, what do you need?"

"Well, we have some juveniles scheduled for detention hearin's at 3:30 and was wonderin' if you were available to represent one of them."

"Sure, no problem, Debbie, I will be there." I then leave the office and walk over to the County Probation Office, luckily catchin' out County Probation Officer in his office. "Hey Todd, I got the money for [name of client]. It's all in cash, do you need me to go get a cashier's check?"

"You have to take it to Cleburne. I don't have the facilities to take payments here."

Damn, I been here four years and thought that when you were on probation here, you met your probation officer here and paid all your fees and crap to you probation officer here. I guess not. So, I go into the County Attorney's Office and tell them I have to go to Cleburne to pay some money to the probation department there to get someone out of jail here and asked if it was possible that my hearin' could be delayed to 4:00 p.m. "Sure," they said, and off I went. I paid the fees, took the receipt to the DA, he had already prepared the Motion to Withdraw the Motion to Revoke Probation. I agreed to go get the judge to sign it so it could be forwarded to the District Clerk in my county who would then prepare an Information to Jailer requestin' that my client be released from jail. I get all this done and head back to my little town.

I hit the edge of town at 3:20 p.m. I stop again and refill my cup with DP and head to the office to get ready to go do this hearin'. I pull up in front of the office and there is a guy sittin' on the hood of his car. "Were you waitin' for me?" "Are you the attorney?" "Yes, what can I help ya with?" I unlock the door and escort him in as he explains that he needs me to prepare a Release of Lien for the bank to sign now that he had fully paid off the note on some real estate he had bought a few years ago. No problem, I still had a little bit of time, so I start my document compiler and start goin' through the information needed to prepare the form. Well, he does not have everythin' we need, so I sent him to go to the bank to get the name and position of the person authorized to sign on behalf of the bank intendin' to go to the Clerk's office to search the property records for the other info.

He is back like lickety-split, so I head toward the court, it gettin' near time for the hearin' and the two of us stop by the Clerk's office, locate the needed info in less than a minute, I write it down and tell him to meet me back at my office at about 4:30. I walk into the court about 3:50 p.m. and the judge is not even sittin' on the bench. Seems that not one of the three hearin's scheduled has even taken place. I get the quick take on my client, and then speak with her three more times before we finally have our hearin' resultin' in her bein' placed in juvenile detention for 15 days until we either have another detention hearin' or we reach some disposition of her case. I get out of court at 5:05 p.m., and see the guy waitin' for me on the bench in front of the courthouse. I had told him if my car was still sittin' in front of the office, I would be comin' back there eventually. He decided to wait. I finished up his matter, collected too little money but more than most people likely think 30 minutes of my time is worth. I spent the next 20 minutes finally returnin' all those calls that had been waitin' for me when I got back from court this mornin'. I am done for the day, finally, and I drop by my favorite store and refill my cup with DP.

I am sittin' talkin' with my friend about gettin' cable and the cell phone plan we are goin' in together on and it is gettin' near 6:00 p.m. when I remember I had made plans to meet with the outgoin' Adjutant of our local American Legion to relieve him of some of the items for which the Adjutant has responsibility. Thankfully, he was still there and understood why I was late. Of course, he had plans at 7:00, as he had advised me when we had scheduled the meetin' so the meetin' was short and sweet. I went by the local taco shack and bought two bean burritos which I ate as I was composin' this post.

Posted by notGeorge at November 19, 2003 08:16 PM | TrackBack