Fortunately, the pool here is nicely heated, so the question is not how I could swim in an outdoor pool at 7:00 a.m. on the last day of November, but why on earth I was stupid enough to get out of the pool. At least the dash to the jacuzzi wasn’t too long.

Turkey, family, and Native Americans. It’s a thanksgiving tale to warm hearts for the ages. Need a feel-good story? Read on.
(more…)

I’m thankful for many things every day, even if I don’t express it much or well. This has been a difficult year, mostly medically but certainly professionally and financially as well (they’re all related). But throughout it all, I’ve been consistently reminded that there are some very kind, considerate, generous, and quite simply just wonderful people around me, a fact for which I am very thankful. That and the puppy licks.

Come Thursday I’ll be giving thanks that a certain motion that’s been a real pain will either have been filed or become moot on Wednesday.

Big Go Bears being yelled this morning for Cal football. They won. They beat Stanford at the Big Game. They’re going to an undetermined bowl game. And within minutes of the victory the alumni association e-mailed me an offer to by tickets for the undetermined bowl game at a price to be established later. But I’ve gotta rush to get my request in (yeah, right), and although the e-mail doesn’t say so, even loyal alums must face reality: Cal doesn’t go to bowl games that often.

Not only won’t I be going to the game (unless it comes to San Diego and Santa puts the tickets in my stocking), but I have to admit I still haven’t even seen Cal football play this season. The only Cal teams I’ve caught so far this year were Crew and Water Polo. Crew races in the spring, and Cal Water Polo lost to Stanford yesterday.

There are lots of things I should be doing this morning. Billing some clients, finishing a Memorandum of Points and Authorities in Support of Blah Blah Blah, chasing down a couple of clients so some discovery requests can be timely answered are all at the top of the list. Working on some CLE content for beachlaw dot info, my work blog/forum/site, is up there too. Not officially on the list but imminent nonetheless is swimming some laps, probably in about an hour. Yep, I love California and year-round outdoor lapswimming, and I can claim with a straight face that it will be good for me.

But there are so many distractions. Michael Jackson and the mug shot from hell. The newly released Civ Conquests expansion pack. And, of course, Pongo. Sometimes it’s a miracle I get any work done at all.

Nothing new at casa today, but California has a new governor and Massachusetts has some new law.

Not doing much this weekend. Not doing much at all these days, and this weekend is no exception. After reading through my recent babbling, I noticed the posts (or at least my posts) here tend to sound a bit down, but really the treatment is actually going better than I expected. I still swim, and can blame the reduced yardage on either the radiation or my wimpiness in the face of the California winter. I’m still working, even if I’m forced to use my time a bit more efficiently now. I’m still posting, though some days I just don’t have much to say.

The journal part of this has been up for two and one half years now. Yep, we debuted this little feature on the predecessor domain in May 2001. Feel free to scroll through the roadmap and check out where we’ve been.

Lots in the morning media blitz on health care and health care costs today. This is definitely an issue that’s important to me, even if I freely admit that I have no idea what could be done to fix the problems. Good interview with the CEO of Kaiser Permanente at the S.F.Gate. Nice article on the impact of health insurance costs at the N.Y.Times also. For those of you who are wondering, if BorgHealth sounds a lot like Kaiser when the background music is blaring too loud, it’s just a coincidence. Yep, that’s the ticket. Despite any misgivings I may have about BorgHealthKaiser iteself, I do like Halvorson’s comments about the profit incentives of the pharmaceutical industry though. I’ve made this point a few times in conversation: the drug manufacturers have no real financial desire to cure disease – it’s much, much better for them in long run to have a population of drug-addicted chronically ill people out there. If a big drug company can clear $X per year off a sick person to alleviate his symptoms, why would they want to develop a cure, unless they can figure out a way to clear about 20 times X for that cure (or more if the disease hits young people)? If I remember right, Star Trek: TNG did an episode on this and depicted the drug-producing culture as fairly evil. Just another coincidence, I’m sure.

I needed a good laugh, and found it at Fark. [via Ipse Dixit]

OK, it was the frantic work schedule the last few days that resulted in Tuesday’s post. Of course the witch said she was melting. Maybe it was the pain of my own burning that blinded me from making a simple cinematic reference. Or at least from making it competently.

Yesterday marked a rare congruence of events here in San Diego. Serious rain, or at least rain serious enough to muck up traffic came to town. Of course it didn’t come on a day I could sit around and watch, but on the day of one of my rare court appearances. The hearing was simple work after dealing with rain-confused San Diegans at rush hour for nearly an hour. Fortunately today I can get back to research and drafting, with intermittant Pongo-prescribed napping.