Brush with law

I spent last Wednesday through Friday in hearings at the California Public Utilities Commission. It was pretty interesting really. Well, sometimes. I mean, it is a regulatory hearing still. But it was much better than expected. I thought going in that it would have approximately the same effect as horse tranquilizers on me. (Not that I've done those in years.)

It actually made me think of lawyers in a new light. It kinda even made me want to be a lawyer...errr attorney. I used to think of lawyers as people who used knowledge of the law and case history to convince judges to act on their side. But now I see it as a big debate. I love debates. I have places I go on the Internet to debate occasionally on politics or sports. It's fun to dissect your opponents arguments, expose his inflated figures, dig up research out of the blue that makes him stutter a bit. Well, this is sort of the same thing...only with rules. Rules like not being able to "testify" as an attorney, but rather having to make your point by getting the witness to admit what you want them to. Phrasing of questions is amazingly important. It's very strategic. And unlike on the Internet, they can't change the subject when you've got them cornered...at least easily.

I could go on, but you get the point. It was fun watching our attorney pick apart the opposition. He's very good really. The weird part was, I'm kinda rooting for the competition, at least partly. The competition is in this case, solar companies and organizations. Now, I don't think the power company is this big bad evil corporation in this case, and honestly they have a very reasonable position. But I believe heavily in solar's future, and this is a good opportunity for it.

So it's kinda weird to hear our attorney make a good point, quietly cheer him on, and also think to myself that I hope we don't win too much, because I believe in many of the things that the opposition believes.

Anyway, this weekend we cleaned our downstairs floors. I should clarify. Saturday, we cleaned our downstairs floors...the whole day. But my they are clean! After steam cleaning the carpet, I recommended to Kat that we completely strip and scrub the floors. It was getting to the point where we'd sweep and mop and it didn't look like we had done anything. So I ran around town looking for a place to rent one of those industrial floor scrubbers and used it to take off the top layer of tile. Hey, they were dirty! Then we put on 3 coats of wax and shined it up good with the buffing pad.

See, guys don't mind doing house work, you just gotta find a way to work industrial-strength power tools into the mix:-) That night we managed to get the floor dry in time to host some friends for a strenuous evening of Super Monkey Ball Deluxe (dont' ask) and Sunday we went wine tasting with our neighbors. It was quite enjoyable, and their palates preferred sweeter wines, giving us some insight into potential gifts for some of our friends when we visit Missouri again. We topped it all off with home made cherry pie from the season's first cherries, for which I risked life and limb of everyone in the car to purchase...but that's another story.