Home now.

In bed.

Update(s) tomorrow.

Our plan was to leave from home yesterday to arrive here last night. That plan was in place until Tuesday when our friends in Indianapolis wound up needing a ride. SO we drove three hours from Chicago to Indianapolis on Wednesday, then hung out while the friends got packed. Slept about three hours before driving 12 hours (including stops for food and gas and restrooms and such; one of which netted me a cute hat) Drove for 12 hours before arriving at our hotel. Actually, if you're here and want to say hi, look for the pink cowboy hat

I had called ahead to have an electric scooter delivered, and it was sitting in the office behind the front desk. Smartest thing I've done in a while. After driving all that way with so little rest, my legs were about dead, my back was about dead, my left arm was about dead. Scooter is very nice in spite of no one getting out of your way and people staring at the weirdo on wheels.

The room is frickin huge, the shower is so big I could have slept in it comfortably if it were upholstered. The rest of the room is done in scale to the shower, the room is designed to be comfortable for someone in a wheelchair, so there's plenty of space around every piece of furniture. The room could comfortably fit three of the king-size beds it comes equipped with. Even better the Hampton Inn is half a block from the convention center.

We ran over and did registration, then met up with some other friends at "the Zoo" where they had milk and cookies for everyone lounging. Got to hang out with  cyberhorn_the_dragon for a while, then went off for a concert from Tom Smith (if you haven't seen him, you should, google Filker Tom to find him ;)

Ten o' Clock was bedtime, probably past bedtime, but that's when the concert was out. Came back, Tin and I took the King bed in the room and some time later our friends came back and set up an air mattress they brought while the other took the sofa bed.

Got a new icon done by  liquid36 at a very reasonable price. Thought I'd say thanks by way of pointing out her nifty nifty work.

• Where are you staying?
Hampton Inn

• How long are you going?
Arriving Thursday, leaving Sunday.

• Who will you be with?
 tincrash slyford and a couple others

• What is your gender?
Female

• How old are you?
32?

• How tall are you?
6'2"

• Do you have an artist table?
Nope!

• Do you do trades?
Yes! Though, being a writer and all, I doubt I'll be able to get any done by the end of con :p

• Do you do free art?
Sure! If you really want art of the quality anyone can produce :p

• Do you do commissions?
I do! In theory, at least. That is to say no one has ever commissioned me, even though my offer for commissions stands.

• Do you have prints/ CDs ?
Nope :p

• How can I find you?
I'll probably be the blond girl on the scooter or wheelchair.

• Can I touch you?
Eh, I am seldom adverse to hugs, though I would prefer to be asked first since sometimes my Fibromyalgia makes it painful to be touched.

• Can I talk to you?
Please do! Otherwise it's going to be a rather lonely con :p

• Can I buy you lots of drinks?
If you like, though I don't drink as much as I used to.

• Can I give you lots of money?
There are very few cases where I would refuse money ;)

• Can I hang out with you?
At the con? Sure! Elsewhere? (out for lunch or whatever) Probably! At our room? Most likely not.

• Can I hug or snuggle with you?
Only if I know you personally, you draw awesome pictures, and have a raccoon for your 'sona :p

• Are you nice?
Nice? Probably. I don't know. At the very least I get along with almost everyone.

• Are you cliquey?
I don't think I am.

• Can I stalk you?
I suppose if you must I really couldn't stop you for the length of the con, but don't get too creepy about it please.

• Do you like parties?
Sure!

Any other questions?

The bad news is that the other half of my big check is late getting here. I was told to expect it today, but it hasn't arrived. I'm hoping it'll arrive around the 16th, like the original check was supposed to two months ago.

The good news is that a 17" MacBook is a lot bigger in person than it looks online, and I am officially registered for AnthroCon :)

Good lord, as I sat contemplating this journal I realized I've nursed this poor little laptop along for almost two years since a rather nasty virus removal gutted my Windows XP registry. It has limped haphazardly through my failed attempts to settle on a number of different Linux distros, a couple problematic Hackintosh conversions, and Beta OS versions of Windows 7 that didn't quite support the old thing. As frustrating as all that was, it seems a little nostalgic on this end.

In the mail I have a refurbished MacBook Pro 2.66GHz Intel Core 2 Duo with a 17-inch antiglare widescreen display, and 4GB memory. I plan to dual boot Windows 7 on it as well, just to have access to a couple Windows-specific programs I like. I *may* see about installing Linux as a third option, see if I can get off the need for a commercial OS altogether. Would be nice. Reminds me I need to figure out where my O'Reilly programming books have gone...

On another front, I am sorely tempted to go out and buy a car this weekend. Specifically a used Jeep Liberty, or maybe a Honda CRV. Might go for a minivan instead, but I'll need to test drive them first. Problem is, I don't know if I'm being too impulsive, or if I just want to make sure I get the things I need before I get too impulsive and burn a bunch of money on commissions and Xbox Live DLC... Maybe a new TV and a bluray player... PS3... You get the idea :p

Just upgraded the CPU on my fiancee's laptop. Had to take the entire thing apart to get to the little bugger, took two hours, but I got it back together and didn't even have a screw left over.

Best part is how happy he is. Went from an AMD Athlon™ 64 Single-Core TF-20 @ 1.6 GHz to a AMD Turion™ 64 X2 Dual-Core Mobile Technology TL-58 1.9 GHz. Bit of a step up. Now I just need to get him four gigs of fast ram...

Last night my fiancee buffered the new episode of Family Guy, Quagmire's Dad, on Hulu. That is, he started the episode and paused it so the whole thing would be loaded before he started watching it. This morning he started watching it while I was engaged in my morning web-checking next to him on the couch. Eight minutes or so in to the episode, Dan Quagmire, the father of the recurring character Glen Quagmire, comes out as being transgendered and two minutes later is done with gender reassignment surgery. The remainder of the show is one trannie-bashing joke after another.

Now, I hold no illusions that transgendered folk are held in high regard by the majority of people, but this episode displayed marginally-better-than-the-worst of what transgendered people endure. That, in itself is OK, but at no time are the characters called to task for their behavior. Even when Stewie and Brian have a conversation, Stewie, who is usually written as if he were gay and therefore the most likely to identify with someone who is sexually off the norm, is unapologetically hostile toward transfolk and the idea of gender reassignment. I sat through most of the episode, becoming more and more upset as the seconds ticked past, waiting for the turn around. As vile and vitriolic as the episode was towards its transgendered character, I found myself expecting the big reveal that the way the Griffin Family and their friends were treating this woman was wrong. Turned out my expectations were not met.

When South Park took a swing at the LDS faith, they bashed the religion the entire way through the show only to have their Mormon character turn around and blast their entire argument to shreds with a few simple lines. This was some unexpected elegance in a show I haven't ever really enjoyed. Apparently I was wrong to look for a similar redeeming moment in a Seth MacFarlane show, even though the opportunities for such a moment were plentiful. Have Stewie call Brian out during their talk. Brian thought enough about the woman to take her to bed, instead of vomiting for thirty seconds after finding out she was transgendered, let him defend the woman he found charming the night before. Glen Quagmire, Ida's son, could have taken the Griffins to task over the way they treated his father and her cooking when they came to dinner. No, the best MacFarlane could do was a puke gag and a fight.

The sad thing is, even though I wasn't watching the episode directly, it upset me enough that I had to leave the room. I love getting to spend the morning with my fiancee before he heads to work, it's a great way to start the day. This was offensive enough to take that from me, and on the subject it tries to take a whole lot more. Because the Griffins are a family who've been on the air for eight seasons; because audiences have had that kind of time to identify with and and enjoy the company of these characters; because their collected reactions to, opinions on, and attitudes toward the transgendered character and to transgenderism in general are in complete harmony with one another; because of all this and because I am transgendered myself, my future interactions with fans of the series are diminished.

It could be argued that Ida Quagmire, being a decorated member of the US Navy as well as being an OK person for the minuscule amount of time she's on screen, displays that transgendered people are more or less normal people beyond one fairly large quirk. Transgendered people are more or less normal people when you set aside the issue of gender, but because her role is so incredibly understated in the shadow of such antics as a thirty second puke-take, it would be nigh impossible to show that the point came across. Beyond that thin representation I can't see how Seth MacFarlane can think that this episode might "... make the transsexual community very, very happy."

I want my happy morning with my fiance back. I want returned the three hours I've spent researching, writing, and revising this. I feel as though I've been robbed of what might have been a productive day researching, writing, or revising one of my works of fiction. I fear that this event on top of more stress at work might distract my fiance enough that he could be injured at his job working around trains all day. I fear that this event might be added to the list of things he has to deal with just because he fell in love with a girl whose gender doesn't match her genitalia. Most of all I fear that the ripples from this episode could do irreparable harm to an unknown number of individual lives within the transgendered community as their friends and family seize upon The Griffin's examples and redouble their efforts to talk them out of procedures organizations on the order of the AMA have deemed medically prudent.

It's rather like burning hair.

So. I have all sorts of crap going on with my body that makes walking difficult (and standing, and sitting, and...). To date I've compensated by sitting cross-legged, even in chairs, walking with a cane, and avoiding long lines whenever possible.

At my last doctor visit we discussed trying "occupational therapy". I don't really understand what it is yet, but it sounds a lot like "physical therapy", of which I don't have [strike]m[/strike]any fond memories.

HOWEVER, in the interest of getting things started on the right foot, I spent a bit of the day shopping for shoes online. Right now I own a pair of nifty winter boots and a pair of Birkenstocks that upset The Rapist (That's 'Therapist', Mr. Connery) when I wore them to PT.

The shoes I'm really interested in are the Vibram Five Fingers, but they don't make them in my size, and according to their sizing info my second toe is too much longer than my big toe to get a satisfactory fit anyway. Bummer.

That leaves my old favorite, New Balance, who has a new shoe, the WX1210. Looks snazzy, and it appears to have a whole bunch of tech and features and stuff to help my foot function more like a foot ought to than if it were just barefoot. Seems counter-intuitive, but then my intuition tells me I have one too many toes and the proper four should be encased in a hard keratin opalescent hoof, so what does it know. Maybe my problem this whole time is that I just didn't have a shoe that was more intelligent than my foot.

Late Tuesday night, Tin found out he had Thursday and Friday off. We threw together a trip to visit a couple of our friends in Indianapolis and get my hair done. The plans were spur-of-the-moment and not a little little slapdash.

Wednesday we leave the house early to move money between banks for convenience for the trip, then I drop him at work and head home to get the car cleaned inside and out, do laundry, pack, and load the car. I barely managed to sneak in a shower before heading to pick Tin up. After he clocked out we drove, pretty much straight through to Indianapolis. We arrived around 1:30am, say hello, and a run was made for a nice big air mattress. At this point I am so exhausted I gathered my pillows and sort of fell asleep on the floor.

Ryn, one of our friends took ill while I was quasi-asleep, I became slightly more alert when Tin and Slyford got back with and inflated the air bed, but pretty much dropped out once Tin and I were comfortable. 4am, Slyford roused us enough to let us know she needed to take Ryn to the ER. 7am Tin and I are startled awake by a wannabe cop-knock on the front door (cop-knock = door knocking that could be heard over even the loudest parties). One of the neighbors had their fireman's license plate stolen the night before we arrived and his girlfriend wanted to know if Sly or Ryn, had heard the ruckus raised by the ones she suspected had done it; we find out that Sly and her room mate haven't gotten back from the ER yet.

I text Slyford to see how things are going, it looks like Ryn is going to need to have her gallbladder removed. This morning, in the next two or three hours. Tin and I run some of Ryn's things over to the hospital, and everyone is a little ragged. While she goes under the laparoscope, Ryn wants me to keep the hair appointment Slyford was kind enough to make for me, so Tin and I rush to get my hair done while Sly catches three hours of sleep. About half way through the three hour appointment Ryn's father calls to let me know she's out of the operation and doing fine.

Now my hair looks awesome, Sly has had a catnap, and we all meet up for a quick meal at Downtown Olly's. The food is, as always, awesome, and we're all recharged a bit. By the time the meal is done it's a little after 5pm. We run back home to consolidate cars and take meds I should have had in the morning. Oops. Traffic is awful, so the drive I've made in fifteen minutes takes an extra hour. We call Ryn to see how she's doing, and she'd like visitors, we get there about 7:30.

Much fun is had in the tiny semi-private room, then the nurse arrives and lets her know she's going home. Tin and I run ahead to pick up her meds, and we all meet back home before he and Slyford run back out for some quick dinner. Now it's 11:42pm local time, I've just finished my Steak n Shake burger, and I'm going to sleep. Hard. And hope that we can just rest for the rest of the impromptu vacation.

NAF (http://www.jarlidium.com/naf.html) is an APA/zine: that is, it is an APA (Amateur Press Association) that also sells to the public to cover copying and mailing so that members don't have to bear those costs. Or at least, that is what their website says. Essentially, it's a 'fanzine' (the size of a coffee table book) that currently has a mix of THIRTY SEVEN really great artists and writers. The member copy of #23, the first in which I participated, was 320 pages of art, poetry, prose, and comics. I missed #24 due to some of my legal issues taking all my time, but #25 will hold the second part of my Door in the Mountain story. (http://www.furaffinity.net/view/2105672)

Even better than all that, they're always accepting applications for membership, so you can get your art printed alongside artists like: (in no particular order)
 tincrash  dustmeat  flinters
 steamfox  portzebie  gafoxtaur
 mikefurry  beiro  ebonyleopard
 terminotaur  ironbadger  tegerio
 summerjackel  stylewager  foxyfennec
 touchmybadger  buckywhitetale13  immortalpanda
 white-dragon-nl  redadillio  babsbunny (http://www.furaffinity.net/user/babsbunny/ since I can't get her icon to show up :p )
And myself, plus more whose FA pages I haven't found yet :p

I am SO tired of porn. I watch so many AMAZING artists, and it's just getting annoying to me that every day my inbox is jammed full of SUCH COOL ART that also has a bunch of wieners and ... fluids and crap, and it's just got me so ... ANNOYED that all that talent is spent on spooge.

Now, I'm not anti-sex or anything, there's are several reasons my adult filter is off, but I get so tired of pictures of overly-endowed women with wanton expressions covered in spunk, or overly-endowed men spraying ejaculate like it was room freshener. You can do hot without ever showing nudity. Gimme her look when they first met in the bar or the produce aisle, at the theme park or coffee shop, at the book store or the gym. WHEREVER they met, show me the look on his face as he's considering the good times they might have that night. Bring the tender stuff that leads to the act of coitus, make it so real that I don't need to see his doo-dah in her hoo-hah to know that they enjoy each other's company.

Sex can really be great, but it's not the end-all-be-all. I'd much rather see snuggling on the couch while they watch a movie, or while one plays a game and the other reads a book, or whatever. Show me the couple in the kitchen trying to make breakfast together. Let me see them stealing time for a picnic in the park before they have to go back to their jobs. There are so many WONDERFUL moments that lead up to the bedroom olympics, I'd much rather see those and leave the rest to the imagination of they that wonder what goes on behind the doors.

So here is my challenge: Give give your audience back wistful daydreams of what couples might do; leave the out-and-out porn to the headspace of those who wish to imagine or commission it.

Today is the day of the Boobquake!

In a nutshell:
"Iranian cleric says women who wear revealing clothing and behave promiscuously are to blame for earthquakes."
http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5inJDPJiXU9k0tYQetNGUhTCNqAcgD9F66BTO0[/right]

A blogger "Offers her boobs in the name of science"
[right]http://www.blaghag.com/2010/04/in-name-of-science-i-offer-my-boobs.html

And enlists the power of Facebook to expand the event
http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=116336578385346

Which leads me to don my chestbearingest top and post a titpic of the girls
http://twitpic.com/1inz3n

And post this journal to see if anyone else wants to join in the fun!

Smoking. I'm quitting smoking :p

Got notification that I should have a backpay check from Social Security soon. Scheduled an operation in Thailand for February 17, though they expect 2-3 people to reschedule each month so I can hope to get in much sooner. Thing is, if you're going to have surgery it greatly improves the healing rate and reduces the chance for complications if you haven't smoked for at least a month.

Unfortunately I'm finding that quitting smoking is something like trying to stop a runaway train. It's difficult to do, and stopping suddenly fast places undue stress on the train. I'm going to try and cut back to about three cigarettes each day and then drop it.

For those that don't know and might be interested, I've been on Twitter for a while (LadyLeasara) and now I'm on Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/Shannon.Leasara.Robertson

I did, in fact, just hear a colossal *BANG* so check outside, the world may indeed be coming to an end.

So. A Fibro-flare is when your fibromyalgia symptoms get amped up to OVERDRIVE. I've been in this state for a couple weeks now, but instead of taking things easy I decided to take a (really amazingly fun) trip for a week. The thing is, if I hadn't taken that trip I wouldn't have had the impetus to research Fibromyalgia, I wouldn't know what FM really was, and I wouldn't know anything about Fibro-flares, so it's a bit of a mixed blessing.

My "baseline", the way I'm feeling on a "normal" day, is pain and weakness in my left side, a pressure headache where it feels like my brain is too large for my noggin, and general fatigue. The past several weeks it's more like these have all had a hair trigger, if I do things just wrong, they all drop off the deep end.

Yesterday, after four hours of sleep I went with my friend to court, where she was granted the legal use of her name. We had planed a day out, but wound up going home because I forgot my Soma there, and she napped while I played videogames. Had I slept, I would not have been able to get up for the bus ride home. The bus ride was as nice as it could be, it was a double-decker rig, so the bottom had two tables available where two chairs had been turned around so that four chairs could be facing these small tables. This let me stretch out my leg, since I have trouble sitting with my feet on the floor. The road was not so accommodating, and the last twenty minutes or so of the ride were pretty painful.

Once we arrived, I found that the temperature had dropped somewhat more than I was expecting, so I was out in the cold, then I realized that Tin, who was coming to pick me up, gets off from work a half hour later than I had thought when I was buying the ticket, and the bus driver had managed to get us to Chicago almost half an hour ahead of schedule. Thus I wound up sitting on the cold concrete of a planter wall for about an hour. Today I read that cold is a really bad thing for FMers, it causes our muscles to stiffen and makes more problems. The practical application of this is that, once my muscles had warmed up, I dropped into exquisite pain. That's pain so bad that your body dopes you up on endorphins so you become euphoric, but no less in pain. I was unable to move for about forty minutes before it tripped the switch and dumped the endorphins, but at least at that point I was able to sit up enough to take a double dose of my Soma, and once they took effect dropped off to double doped dormancy.

Today my plan is to try and work hard on resting :p

I'm on my way home from Indianapolis where I had a wonderful week with my friend, and her roommate.

I met the most fabulous hair stylist, Dan, who decided I needed highlights and wouldn't let me leave without them. Amazing how five foils can improve how I feel and look. Went to my first drag show, which was much too loud and a bunch of fun in spite of my ringing ears and people deciding they needed to stand infront of my chair. Got two meals throught the week at my favorite spot downtown, Olie's (I'm probably misspelling that.) One of those was a tastey salad with my other good friend, Becca. Let's see... Last night was a girl's nigt in, watching Hugh Grant movies and smoking shisha, but the perfect cap to the weekend was getting to watch my friend get her name, Austen Renee.

It was a lot more excitement than I'm used to, and I'm hurting pretty bad from all the fibromyalgia stuff, but I find I'm already looking forward to the thought of another visit <3

EDIT: Can't believe I forgot to mention the talant show at the school for the deaf, which was really cool, and I got to see the Hocca!

I learned some stuff the last couple days, specifically about Fibromyalgia. Seems that one of the symptoms can be what they call "FibroFog" which can be as subtle as forgetting names and transposing numbers or as bad as what is more-or-less a kernel panic (Blue Screen of Death, sudden reboot) in my brain. Essentially a dump of my short-term memory.

For examples, the last several weeks I would have days where I had "lost my nouns" and couldn't recall the names of anything; the shopping mall, or the term 'shopping mall' for that matter, the gas cap, even my friends. I have apparently asked the same question over and over again thought a two day span. I'll be talking about something and in mid-sentence I will suddenly have no idea what we were discussing. Worst of all, I was driving a few days back and suddenly was very confused, had no idea what street I was on, which direction we were traveling, or even why we were in the car. It cleared up fast, but that really scared me.

I've also run into this problem fairly frequently while writing. I'll be going along at a good pace, then suddenly have no idea what I was trying to communicate in the story, or sometimes even what the story is about. It is very frustrating, even infuriating, but it's also strangely comforting to know the cause behind those stops.

Reading about it all put me in a weird place yesterday. I was scared for the first time in a long while until I talked to my friend who alerted me to the phrase FibroFog and whose mother has dealt with it since the year I was born. Her mother is still quite functional, though she doesn't go anywhere without her husband or her daughter, she uses a lot of lists, and she doesn't cook without someone in the house.

I'm still a bit rattled, but today I'm feeling better. I even submitted an application to a freelance Content Mill to see if I can write short articles for some extra money.

Did this on 's journal, so now I post it here! Respond to my journal with your answers, then repost this so I can answer it in yours ;)

01) Are you currently in a serious relationship?
02) What was your dream growing up?
03) What talent do you wish you had?
04) If I bought you a drink what would it be?
05) Favorite vegetable?
06) What was the last book you read?
07) What zodiac sign are you?
08) Any tattoos and/or piercings? Explain where.
09) Worst habit?
10) If you saw me walking down the street would you offer me a ride?
11) What is your favorite sport?
12) Do you have a pessimistic or optimistic attitude?
13) What would you do if you were stuck in an elevator with me?
14) Worst thing to ever happen to you?
15) Tell me one weird fact about you.
16) Do you have any pets?
17) What if I showed up at your house unexpectedly?
18) What was your first impression of me?
19) Do you think clowns are cute or scary?
20) If you could change one thing about how you look, what would it be?
21) Would you be my crime partner or my conscience?
22) What eye colour do you have?
23) Ever been arrested?
24) Bottle or can soda?
25) If you won $10,000 today, what would you do with it?
26) What's your favorite place to hang out?
27) Do you believe in ghosts?
28) Favorite thing to do in your spare time?
29) Do you swear a lot?
30) Biggest pet peeve?
31) In one word, how would you describe yourself?
32) Do you believe/appreciate romance?
33) Favorite and least favorite food?
34) Do you believe in God?
35) Will you repost this so I can fill it out and do the same for you?

thus this sounds really, really cool: http://bit.ly/cMZe4f

I would love to get some Louisiana wetlands off the Mississippi river and make a go of this sort of thing.


(Incidentally, I totally stole the link from  SSJ3Mewtwo (thanks!) I'm now on Twitter as LadyLeasara if anyone is interested in following me :p )

Awesome movie! Not for children, there were several bits that squicked me, and I am generally unsquickable at movies. It's also a lot darker than I expect from Tim Burton. I really enjoyed it.

So. I got my first disability check yesterday, and decided I needed a Nook, the e-reader Barnes and Noble is pitting against the Kindle. The biggest selling point for me was that I can back-up all of my eBooks locally, so there's less risk of losing my investment. The other unique feature is that I can "lend" any eBbook I've bought through the Barnes and Noble store to anyone that has a nook or uses the Barnes and Noble e-reader software on their computer or iPhone or whatever. As I understand it, a note is sent to the lendee, once they accept the lend-iness the eBook becomes unavailable on my Nook and available on their Nook or B&N reader software for two weeks until it is automagically returned to my inventory. I think that's kinda neat. Then I found out that it's based on Google's Droid OS, which opens the possibility (if not the promise) of new apps and the like, now I'm stoaked.

Browsing the store is pretty easy from the Nook, and it's always connected via free AT&T cellular niftyness. They boast over one million books, but I was still a little disappointed in their selection. Three or four years back I had to sell off my library, and I was looking forward to acquiring new digital copies of some of those old books. They had all the Douglas Adams I'm looking for, J.R.R. Tolkien was well represented, as were Anne McCaffrey (Pern, Acorna) and Marion Zimmer Bradley (Mists of Avalon), but their selection of Stephen R. Donaldson (Specifically the first six books of the Chronicles of Thomas Covenant The Unbeliever series) was lacking, and Jean M. Auel (Clan of the Cave Bear series) is nowhere to be found. I'm a bit let down with their stock.

Playing with the device is interesting, and I'm enjoying it quite a bit, would even recommend it to others, I just miss my old books.

Edit: Incidentally, if you are reading this and had some form of Barnes and Noble reader, I would totally recommend or lend you the books/authors I mentioned above ;)

At a time to be determined later, a certain raccoon and I will be married, probably at a ceremony held during a furry con.

He wanted to wait until he got a ring and made our engagement official before we announced anything, but I'm so excited about the whole thing we decided it wouldn't hurt to announce it early.

I just can't wait to be Mrs. Shannon "Leasara" Melendez.

This morning in room 1102 of the Daley building in Chicago, the law suit I was involved in was scheduled to be heard. I arrived an hour and a half early. The lawyer for the plaintiff informed me that he could not produce a witness, so he was going to move to dismiss the case. I was a little let down at this, since I was eager to argue my case in front of a judge. (I mean, who else besides lawyers gets to argue a case in front of a judge? That's like getting to argue before the king of arguers!)

I think there was something like an arraignment, the judge asked if I was ready to present my defense, (I was) then he asked if the plaintiff's lawyer was ready to make his case, he wasn't because he lacked a witness. The judge found that I had not been given proper notice before the hearing, and so held the matter over for trial. We sat back down and the judge continued down his line.

The lawyer for the plaintiff informed me he didn't want me to have to wait around the several hours it would take to get to trial, so he offered me a different kind of dismissal of the case. I asked for some explanations about this dismissal, and he decided to offer me a third kind of dismissal, this one "with prejudice". I agreed to that, we had the order signed and the lawsuit was over.

Simple, at least on the surface.

First, I don't doubt the lawyer's claim that his witness couldn't show. To prove his case he would have to have a notarized affidavit from Chase Manhattan Bank stating how the debt was incurred, their actions in attempting to collect, and how the debt was sold. He would then need a notarized affidavit from each of the subsequent debt-buyers stating how they acquired the debt, their actions in attempting to collect the debt, and how they sold the debt. All of this would be needed to prove the collection's agency's claim on the debt is valid and legal. Much more often than not, according to the lawyers I've spoken to through various legal aid agencies, this paperwork goes missing somewhere along the line. It is my speculation then, that his witness couldn't show because they had better things to do than waste their time in court on a case they knew they would lose. It is my further speculation that the judge knew this and held us over for trial for the case to be decided on its merits.

The lawyer for the plaintiff explained to me as I was leaving, a "Dismissal with prejudice" just means their law firm can't bring the suit against me again, it does not prevent the suit from coming back altogether. I believe that means that if we had gone to trial, the case would likely have been ruled in my favor, thus eliminating the debt forever. As this would be a worst case scenario for his client, getting the case dismissed, even with prejudice, he managed to preserve the debt if the debt buyers want to hire another lawyer and go through all this again.

This is all just fine with me because Time will take care of the rest. I've demonstrated to them that I'm fairly together in the legal arena, and the Statute of Limitations on my debt is up in four months. That's four months for them to comb through the loose bureaucracies of credit card companies and debt buying firms (some of which may not exist anymore considering how the economic climate has changed in the last five years) and gather their proof before filing another lawsuit against me. If they try, I think I'm pretty ready.

ALSO. After that was all done, I found out that the place we often go for sushi (the supermarket across the street) has both imitation crab sticks AND crab salad. I'm a big fan of the crab salad for my Shannon Rolls (yes, I have a specialized roll I named after myself :p) but to date I was only aware of them having the imitation crab sticks. (which are still good, but the crab salad is better).

So I had a win in the legal system (more or less) and a tastey, tastey lunch. Good day.