Not only can’t you sue an empty pocket, invoicing them is kinda rough too.  Hence the necessity for some flexibility in ideology.

Diego’s eating his normal dog food for the first time in a week.  I guess the fact that he isn’t expecting more ham, or roast beef, or quiche, or bacon, or some other buttery/greasy food to ‘accidentally’ fall in front of him shows his acceptance of a return to the status quo.

It was a great holiday season, incredibly busy this year, but I’m happy things have slowed back down.  I’ve got things I need to get done, and really need to take a look at the practice and make some changes for an economy that looks bleaker and bleaker by the day.  Too many projects became involuntary pro bono this year.  Sorry folks, but I decide where I volunteer my time, not you.

At least it will be a short work week as I ease back into some kind of a pattern.  Spinner goes back to work on the fifth, so I won’t get much done until then, except maybe a little mental health roadtrip.  And, weather permitting, our local little

Still enthralled with Spinner’s Christmas gift to me, a shiney new iPod Touch. On top of finally having a player with a battery life again, I’m getting spoiled by the wifi and dowloading way too many of the apps.  

ould use some help though.  We need a name for my new dependent/dependency.  For context, the old iPod was named Spike and Spinner’s is named Hiro.  Neither comes close to Howley though (my precious little Black Berry).  Any suggestions?

[A] powerful special district with the task of clearing the air in four smoggy Southern California counties, including Riverside, is going to make builders stop framing tract homes with wood-burning fireplaces. As of March 9, all new homes in heavily populated areas of Riverside, Orange, Los Angeles and San Bernardino counties will have to have gas-log fireplaces —- or no fireplaces at all.

Then, in fall 2011, the South Coast Air Quality Management District will begin issuing orders for people with traditional fireplaces to avoid lighting fires on days when soot pollution is high. The agency says those temporary bans on fires will occur, on average, 10 to 20 days each winter.

I suppose this could be purely an altruistic move to make Santa’s big night safer, but in reality I guesss it’s just that some government agencies and their minions have nothing better to do than micromanage how people live in their own homes.  Kinda makes one wonder if there was more to San Diego’s attempt to remove all the beach fire pits under the guise of “budget cuts.”

The ghost of Christmas Present has me in my comfy robe blogging while the husband makes himself more presentable.  The ghost of  Christmas Future has us going out to fawn over decorations and finish up the shopping.  The ghost of Christmas Past has me feeling like an unrepentent glutton about to burst at the seams.  And now Tiny Diego’s going to find a big bag of treats in his stocking Thursday morning.

Fighting for rights by the light of the full moon.  [via]  Amazing the amount of damage a simple word can cause, isn’t it?

Happily back in San Diego after a couple of days up the coast in Ventura.  The little roadtrip was planned back in September as a pre-Christmas shopping trip scheduled around a billable court appearance but ended up just being a rain-drenched driving nightmare sandwiching an otherwise successful little hearing.  

There was some anxiety about the scheduled trial, because the judge at our September settlement conference seemed skeptical of some of our legal arguments.  Even more anxiety when I showed up at the courthouse and found there were fifteen cases on our particular judge’s calendar for that afternoon, and began to worry if I had enough clean socks and undies to deal with a continuance.  Then when checking in the clerk let me know that because of the scheduling crunch we were being transferred to a different department down the hall.  The new judge, my new most favorite judge, loved our legal arguments, and the hearing was a breeze.  And easily the best part of the trip.

The rest of the trip was simply a rain-soaked disaster.  Most Californians simply can’t drive safely in the rain, and despite a major storm with high winds most Angelenos still seemed to be trying to navigate the highways with a cell phone in one hand and a latte in the other.  The 170 mile trip took 4 1/2 hours to make.  I lost count of the number of totalled cars on the sides of the highways, but loved the semi on the 5 in Los Angeles that managed to block all four southbound lanes after it hit the center divider.  Too bad the camera was in the trunk.  Fortunately his debris only blocked one of the northbound lanes I was using.  

Even walking around Ventura this morning there was snow visible on the nearby hillsides and I almost killed myself sliding on the frozen timbers of the Ventura Pier.  

This isn’t the way a trip up the California coast is supposed to go, even in December.  This wasn’t even Central California.  This is the weather I abandoned in DC and Idaho, and now it’s followed me here.  Maybe I should have tried for a restraining order while I was at the courthouse.

Interesting article at S.F. Gate on the Top 10 searches on the various search engines for the first part of 2008.  For what it’s worth, I don’t think any of those searches would have brought you here, no matter how far down the list of hits you browsed.

Out of curiosity, I checked Google Analytics to see what did bring you here.  Excluding things like variations on the name of the sites, the top 10 for Howling Point for the first part of 2008 are:

1. cal poly
2. cdpuvbhfzz
3. pornanimal
4. pongo
5. pongo dog
6. chuck hartley
7. pongo point
8. red shirt school of photography
9. pongo the dog
10. smoritos

The list was a bit different over at the photo gallery.

1. la jolla rough water swim 2008
2. naked bartenders
3. jason fung water polo
4. ombac rugby
5. stefan partelow
6. james cracknell
7. santa barbara
8. water polo
9. displayimage.php add your comment
10. triton invitational water polo

Yes, the comment spammers’ search for a certain former exploit was the #9 search on the photo gallery.  Now you know why comments were turned off before I switched to a different gallery package in July.

While I’d like to think that the continuing interest in Pongo is due to, well, him, and being the site muse for five years, I suspect it has more to do with being named after a Disney character and sharing a name with a defunct Latin American social networking site (pongo point).

Wind and pouring rain in SoCal are turning Monday morning into a horrendous commute for many.  Spinner just called from the northbound 15 to let me know the southbound was at a standstill.  Not me though.  Putting on the metaphorical fuzzy slippers to go from the bedroom to the office, via the kitchen coffee pot, is still the extent of my commuting effort most mornings.  

Wednesday will be rougher though – 170 miles north by northwest for a trial in Ventura.  Probably in the second half of this same storm, which will nearly double the drive time.   And if that weren’t bad enough, there’s that whole putting-on-pants thing, which always tends to ruin the morning ambiance.  I kinda wish there was a way to teleappear for this thing, but I like Ventura too much.

Pandas at half price, courtesy of our Chinese overlords.