Dreams and Friday in BookThree: Flight Log 2016

Last night, not surprisingly, I had some dreams.
In one, I was working with CPS and trying to contact my client. Apparently, I had been named Attorney for a child that was alleged to be abused. The parents were very hostile and violent but the child genuinely appeared to want help. I broke in to the house in the evening hours and had a fairly extreme altercation with the parents.
That dream shifted into one of House Hunting. I was looking for a house with (1) multiple bathrooms; (2) a functioning basement; and (3) enough kitchen space. But I wasn’t simply house hunting… I had made a deal with every seller that I would rent the place for approximately 3 days, live there/sleep there/cook there… in order to get a better understanding of if I wanted to buy. In the dream, I was on house 3 of 8 that I had made this arrangement for.
That dream shifted into one of High School Reunions. An old acquaintance had just become inebriated and stumbled over to ask why I never seemed to have any trouble speaking in public.
That’s when I woke up.

As for work.... meh. It is awful because I know I need to do well for myself, my sense of honor, my hopes for the future, and my wife. But honestly? This county is so broken, enjoys being broken, and is so poor and underpopulated… I kind of keep thinking why bother? Seriously. Last night, I received a report. A woman on probation for Drunk Driving has not been attending her required probation meetings. That’s all I receive. The report of non-compliance. No request for probation revocation, no request for a contempt hearing… just the information that the Defendant has decided not to conform to the requirements of her criminal deal. I e-mail my boss with the information and ask for direction. Instead of saying, “Here’s what you do in this situation”… instead of saying “Here’s a few option for what you could do”… she sends me “You could file on the case that she isn’t doing what she should; but we can’t really put her in jail. I mean; the agreement she signed said if she didn’t comply, she would spend a year in jail but to make that happen we’d have to transport her out of the county and pay for her to stay somewhere. And I’m sure the county doesn’t want to incur those kinds of expenses.” That’s the response I get. Which, unless I’m wrong, translates as… there are things we could do maybe but I don’t recommend doing them. Tear. My hair. Out. What is the point of enforcing criminal statutes if there are no penalties?

I have to admit… of all the frustrating things about this county and about this job… the thing that just riles me up is the fact that the County Attorney works in a different city, a different office, and has terribly shitty communication skills. OFTEN we don’t know who is taking what case, or where that case may be in its progression. VERY simple, very fundamental things when it comes to running a firm of any kind (and a Prosecutor’s Office can easily be seen as its own firm). Because… yeah. So many things would be taken care of so much better if (1) the lead attorney could communicate effectively; and/or (2) she worked in the same office/city as her staff. Bah. Humbug.

Gr. I got maybe 5 hours of sleep last night. And it shows. I’m having a really tough time staying awake at my desk. My body is getting super fidgety and uncomfortable. I’m finding it difficult to focus on anything. Too bad adult nap time isn’t a thing. For real. If I still feel this way after lunch, it would be nice to put up a sign that says “1 Hour Recharge, come back later”… and then have a mat, a blankie, a stuffed animal, and curl up on the floor of my office asleep for an hour. And yes, I tried to make that visual as much like a kid’s perspective as possible. lol

Take all of that and add in our “IT” department is trying to fix more computer glitches through our system… because, in order to have an IT department 100 miles away, we need to be “synched to the cloud” but they can’t synch my computer.... I’ve spent some of this afternoon trying to understand my Pathfinder Core Rule Book. Yeah, Cecilia might walk in and get pissed that I’m “screwing around” but… what else am I going to do at this point?

Bigger thing? I am confusing myself ALL over the place with Pathfinder. Granted, my DM and Crew don’t adhere to the strict rules of the game… but that bugs me because I want to learn the game. I’m reading about “Concentration Effects to Spell Casting” and thinking, they’ve never required I make a concentration throw. I’m reading about Base Attack Bonuses and Combat Maneuver Defense and… getting lost in all of it. Which leads me to a few thoughts.

(1) Maybe I’m not just not as intelligent as people think I am, something I’ve always assumed. Maybe I’m fully mentally inept but have become so good at playing a part that I’ve convinced myself I’m capable.
(2) Apparently, I’m a blank slate in the Universe. If taught thoroughly, excellent. If not, I’ll have no idea. In everything from jobs, to fun, to social life. Odd that I seem to have no innate ability to “learn on the fly.”
(3) As much as I love my friends and appreciate them; I would love to discover a Rule Abiding Game whose members are patient enough to teach me the proper way. I’d love to learn the “This is how it is supposed to be played but it sucks and kills fun” way… so that the individual modifications made by each different DM will make more sense.
(4) Ideally, even this far into the game… I could re-build from scratch my character to understand how to do it better. But it is something I really don’t want to try on my own for fear of just fucking the whole thing up SO MUCH MORE!

Bah!
I shall publish this, grab lunch, and continue with my day.