cellini's Diaryland Diary

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I have taken on a case

Out of nowhere, yesterday I got a phone call from an attorney. I was offered an exp3rt witness gig.

I used to do these every so often, but it has been about five or six years. Resulting from my former career as a professional hunter, I am also an expert on hunt3r safety. I actually ran the state agency program for hunter safety for a region about the size of New Jersey for about a year. This actually sucked, and mostly consisted of a ridiculous amount of paperwork and hanging out with cops and rednecks all the time. I left the job for many reasons as my work writing for the Washington Post picked up, and my career went into a much more interesting direction as a result.

Anyway, I get these gigs every now and then. It happens when there is a a hunting accident and a lawsuit results and the attorneys need someone to sort out exactly who screwed up and how.

This is one of those situations where my background having worked in insurance before being a professional hunter or journalist came into play. The very experienced attorney thought that the hunt club's insurance policy would only apply if it explicitly said that it covered an accidental shooting, and was worried that he could only hire me if there was a way that an insurance policy could apply and cover the damages.

I spent a few hours reading over the policy. He had it all backwards. The policy covers liability for any sort of bodily injury unless it is specifically excluded. Which it isn't in this case.

Last night I wrote up a detailed analysis as to why and how the insurance policy is in force and would have to pay out in this case. This morning he sent me an email asking for the address to send a check for my retainer. Honestly, what I just did for him just saved his entire case and everything else that I do on this is gravy.

This is good timing. I am buying a new car on Saturday with a $3k down payment and this case will cover at least most of it, and perhaps more.

The $300 monthly car payment is scary. I avoid mandatory monthly payments. Bad things happen. There are lean times. I've been making pretty good money for the last year and a half, but it is hard to trust it.

My shoulders ache so much. I wish there was someone dependably in my life to rub them.

The nice thing about this new case is that the victim (for whom I am working) survived. I worked on one in which the victim was killed and it was heartbreaking. I read through the incident reports and the witness statements and even though I knew that he died, I kept thinking that he might make it. He was standing, he was talking, he had to lie down, he was still ok, and then he just died because an artery had been nicked by a bit of bird shot.

I'm on my fourth round of edits to my 2/3 completed manuscript of my book. It is very tempting to push ahead and write more chapters -- I have the timeline and notes to do that right away. But I'm trying to make what I have as perfect as possible so I can sell it. Martin Scorsese is currently selling a TV series based on his film, "G@ngs of New York," which is in turn based on a book which is such bullshit that it should be labeled as fiction. But my book has new stories and details about characters from that book and film. It would be a very good idea to sell this book in time for it to be published at the same time as Scorsese's new series launches.

I do not know whether my book is brilliant and wonderful, or if it is a lurching mess of anecdotes. I don't know of anyone I can ask to read it who could provide useful feedback. Nobody but myself has read it. Alex asked to read it, and borrowed a bound print-out of it for several months, but she has given me no reason to believe that she ever read a word of it.

There is a certain romance to my current situation. My day job is writing about quantum computing and cryptography; on the side I am investigating an accidental shooting; all while I work on writing a history of the H0boken Turtl3 Club. It certainly *sounds* good. But as usual, I'm a bit much to deal with in real life. Women may think that this sounds cool up front, but the reality of dealing with my kind of chaos and activity is not what any woman wants after the first month.

My shoulders hurt so much.

I'm not right for anyone. I go thrift shopping a lot, I go fishing a few times a week, I collect art, I write a lot, I go to a lot of concerts, I reproduce 19th century recipes, I travel, I watch BBC documentaries, I collect fine silver tableware and hunt for Bunnykins china.

I'm too odd to be a good fit for anyone. There are not other people like me. There is no woman out there collecting art and going to post-punk or gothy concerts and going crabbing who wants to spend a weekend with me, let alone a lifetime.

2:06 a.m. - 2022-12-02

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