One Task Semi-Accomplished - A Quick Drive to the County Courthouse

I found myself with a window of open time yesterday, and decided to drive to the County Courthouse and see about getting papers filed for my name change. For those who may not know, I'm trying to eliminate my given first name which I haven't used since I was twelve, so that there are only three names that I need to deal with - my preferred name, my last name and my married name. That's quite enough, thank you. I've never been fond of my given name, and I haven't voluntarily used it since I entered 7th grade. Getting rid of it seems much more sensible and will allow me to get a "Real ID" and the other myriad official ID things without difficulty. 

This two-story+ high marble statue called "Vision of Peace" is 
the centerpiece of the Ramsey County Court House. It's truly 
stunning. I was walking towards the entry from the car park, and 
was on the second floor passing it. It still was taller than my level. 
It's a great building - tons of stuff to see and perfect post-Depression 
era architecture with art-deco decor. 

It was a good thing I had been there so many times for Jury Duty more than a year ago, I knew just where I wanted to park, and knew the way through the skyways to get to the courthouse. I filled out the paperwork, gave them my credit card for the $350 fee (ouch!) and my case has now been assigned to Judge Leonardo Castro. I don't have a date yet, but it will be a Zoom call instead of in-person. I'll get in touch with my two "witnesses" later today and let them know what's happening. I wish I had a date - that would be even easier - but at least I'll be able to be scheduled onto the calendar. Baby steps. 

The actual court hearing will take about 30 minutes on Zoom. 
My two witnesses will also need to be available on Zoom. I'll 
speak to Chickie about whether her Mom is comfortable with 
that format. I'm sure my eldest niece is. If not, since it's a Zoom 
meeting, I can call upon other people who aren't local to 
be my witnesses. Sharon comes to mind. 

I'm feeling rather uninspired for my daily post today, however, and will cut it short here. You don't need paragraphs about normality, and I'm looking at a desk full of paperwork that has to be dealt with. *sigh* I hope all of you have a truly fabulous weekend and I'll be back on Monday. Slava Ukraini. 

Salud and Thanks

All of the positive thoughts, good wishes and luck must have worked because the City Council approved my case and I actually had a rather pleasant time. I have always enjoyed the law and it was very interesting to me to sit in chambers and listen to the six or so cases that were heard ahead of me. Most of us were there for the basic same thing - abatement of charges, zoning changes, and updates on previously assigned dates for upkeep and repairs. It was fun listening to the head of the Council. She was point-on in her assessments and I felt she was quite competent both legally and within the confines of the cases that were scheduled to come before her.

St Paul City Hall is a large, multi-storied building in art-deco style.

There are several chambers used by the Council. I wasn't in

this specific one, but mine was similar in appearance.

One of the best things was that a friend of mine was unexpectedly there. Leanna Shaff, the head of the Fire Inspections Department was a member of the Council. Leanna and I had gotten to know each other when she did fire inspections for my shop many years ago. We clicked right away. She's a straight shooter, as the term goes, and she doesn't mince words. But she also understands that people do the best that they can do. It was really nice to see her again and at the end of the hearing she acknowledged me by name and said how nice it was to see me again. In turn I told her that she should phone me and we'd get together for coffee. I hope she takes me up on it.

I like honest people and Leanna has always been straight with me.

I have a tremendous amount of respect for her.

I also hit stride on my NaNo this morning. I was cruising through the words, unlike yesterday when it felt like pulling teeth to get the words down. The secondary characters who cropped up a few days ago are turning into really interesting characters and good guides for my main historical character. I'm in the beginning of the Rockies now and heading deeper into the mountains tomorrow. I've got 34,000+ words down now and I'm nowhere close to being finished so I know I'll be writing more than 50,000, although I can be a little kinder with my personal schedule once I have reached my initial goal. I'll do the Desktop Meme tomorrow...

Court and Contracts

Tomorrow I have to go to court and plead my case in front of the City Council. This is NOT the way that I wanted to spend my Tuesday afternoon. It became necessary because of hoops, bells and whistles that the city has instituted to fight abandoned houses that just become tawdry run-down properties and often can lead to lowered property values and increased crime. However, that's not our house. Our house is dearly loved and we've been working on renovating and fixing it up to put onto the market in the summer of 2013.

When I moved up to Minnesota in the late 1970's (yes, I'm that old *sigh*), my DH and I moved into his grandmother's home. She was a feisty German woman who, along with her husband, had moved to Minnesota in the late 19-teens. They purchased this little house from the carpenter who had built it and who had lived in it for two years while he built another home for himself. It's a beautiful house - very small but sturdy. It is a typical arts and crafts house, 1-1/2 stories high with a full, unfinished basement of poured concrete walls. It has outstanding hand-finished woodwork - hardwood floors, solid doors, wide moldings, and built-ins all over the place.

The city has decided that since we have not lived in the house for many years, nor had tenants that we were renting it to, it is a vacant house. This means that we have to pay an additional $1100 tax to the city for the property. But, more than that, it means that to be able to put it on the market in 2013 (which is our intention) we now would have to have a series of inspectors come through and certify that the house is properly cared for, totally up to code, etc. I understand where the city is coming from, but we went through this earlier and were assigned a class 1 status meaning we just needed to keep the property up and all would be well. But, someone new came into the Fire Inspections department, determined to impress her new employers, and my file was one that was pulled. So, because of her push, we've been dropped to class 2 status and that's not good. Tomorrow I get to state my case in front of the City Council and try to convince them to allow us to resume our class 1 status. If that happens, I'll have that house ready to go on the market in the summer and it will be sold before the end of 2013. It's a dog and pony show.

I've also been reviewing my contract for my short story "Dragon Seeks a Wife". I already had them change the few things that were actually germane to the document, and so I will sign it (with the certain knowledge that I will NOT be getting rich on this story - LOL). But there are typos, dropped punctuation, etc. that also exists in the contract, even though this is a second run-through. So I'll also tell them about those even though they won't have to change the contract to reflect those changes. But it would be really, really nice if they did change it one more time...just saying...