Who’s the Boss?

Our Fabrication Manager has been gone for a week on vacation and now he is absent for fortnight visiting vendors in Asia. Gnorm moved into his office today in a bloodless coup. Don’t worry, because he is the boss, he’ll be taking next week so he can go to Seattle with us.

I’m still burning my CD collection and I’m almost done with row #5. I just came across a CD I have no recollection buying and I can not even think of what anything on it sounds like: Pourquoi Quebec? by Tony McManus. I may have to give it a listen.

I used to read quite a bit of science fiction as youngster and as I entered my twenties, horror became my choice of escapist “literature.” Used to read a lot of fellow FRS fan, Stephen King’s books, but quit about the time he started writing them thick enough to be used as nightstands. Now I’m into pulp stuff about private eyes and disgraced cops that save the world from criminals ans serial killers. I’m also a sucker for lawyer slash courtroom drama books. My latest read has been a real pleasant surprise, I picked it up thinking I was getting a typical lawyer saves a wrongly accused book, and it is that (at least I think he saves him, I’m not finished yet) but it also mixes in a very convincing horror plot. For the icing on this cake it is also told with some biting humor in places. The following is a snippet from Lost Girls by Andrew Pyper:

The next day is passed by explanations of DNA identification technology delivered by the google-eyed lab rat the Crown has brought up from Toronto. I feel for the poor bastard, though, trying to teach a remedial science lesson to the jury, who look back at him as though auditioning for the chorus in Deliverance: The Musical. It gives me a chance to doze off for five-second hits of sleep. A tricky business that involves holding your head up with one hand and positioning it so that your closed eyes will be hidden from the bench. This part is essential. Judges are universally intolerant of sleeping lawyers, mostly because their own seating arrangement prevents them from indulging in the same pleasure themselves.

Each time my eyelids spring back open it’s with the terrible image of Bert Gederov and Graham Lyle having kittens all over the boardroom floor two hundred miles to the south because I haven’t yet returned their calls. The reason is simple: despite my best efforts I haven’t come up with a resonable explanantion for my remarks to the press of the other day. By the time the court is adjourned in the afternoon (the DNA dweeb having just finished his “introductory remarks”), I know that it can no longer be avoided.

Donna was out at a business dinner with a couple bishops from the Vatican (ASCO HQ in NJ) and some vendors, so I was left to my own devices. A 6″ Italian Sub (Ham, Salami, Pepperoni & Provalone) from Sub Station II that I brought home and ate over the sink pretending I was a bachelor. All that was missing was a bottle of beer to wash it down. I substituted a Sprite Zero.