Got a call yesterday from one of the other paralegals here in our firm. The firm has let go still another of our paralegals! We are down now to, I think, four. And three of us are specialists, not litigation paralegals. Just a year or two back there were 15 of us!
But so many of the litigation cases have ended, and LSU is cutting back on as much of their expenses as possible as well -- including legal issues. I'll tell you what, we had BETTER get rid of Bobby Jindal in the next election or LSU is going to be in even more financial difficulty. Our firm has always handled most of LSU's legal work, but LSU's finances have been cut back so far by Jindal that they've been forced to cut back quite a bit on us! NOT good. Fortunately for me, they DO still want to file patent applications. If they expect to make any money down the road by licensing their inventions, they're going to need to hang in there on that. What's also fortunate for us is that it generally takes quite a while - more than a couple years, generally - to go from a request to file a patent application to getting one issued. The best thing about that is that we SHOULD be able to hang in there until the 2015 election!
But on the plus side, Wendy's life is currently great -- she had another FINE weekend up in Buffalo. I cannot begin to express how happy I am that her life has finally turned a corner! I do SO want her to be happy. And if anyone deserves that, she does!
Oh - I finally (after months of searching) found a company that will install security cameras! FINALLY! I've been wanting to put cameras in the barn and around the house for quite a while, but everyone I checked with only installs them if you hire them for monthly security. No thanks. Between the dogs and our guns, I don't think we really need any external security company. I just want to be able to see the horses and dogs from inside AND on our computers and phones -- especially when we are away and someone is pet sitting. Given the number of animals we have -- and the variety! -- I really want to keep an eye on things for a while until I'm confident that they're doing a good job with everyone.
Anyway, Security Enterprises has been in business up in Memphis for a long time. Then the daughter of the Memphis CEO got married and she and her husband, Dan Joliff, opened the Baton Rouge version in 2012. So once Mark gets home, Dan himself and one of his employees will be coming by to give us a bid on putting up the cameras and getting them working on our computers and phones for us. Hope it's not mega-bucks because I'm really looking forward to having them deal with it!
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Just finished renewing Duke's insurance and noticed that the company specifies the age of horses they are insuring must be between 91 days and 15 years. Duke was born in 1999. I sure hope they don't cancel his insurance at the end of next year!
But if they do, I guess I'll just put him on the same SmartDigest Ultra that Lizzie is on. When they take that each day, they are covered with $7500 in colic surgery costs. And colic IS the thing that most concerns me about Duke -- not because he's ever had it (he hasn't), but because he's the only one we have who insists upon eating virtually EVERYTHING he can get to . . . holly bushes (complete with thorns!), the magnolia trees in the front yard, the bottom branches of the trees in the back pasture -- even though he has to stand up on his back legs to get to them! -- any unusual weeds that grow up along the fence line . . . literally ANYTHING!
Duke is 14 years old now, and has never had a single medical issue in his entire life! Still . . . those habits of his really DO make me nervous.
Good news! Got an e-mail from the horse insurance company (Markel) telling me that Duke WILL continue to be insured. They just require any horse older than 15 to have a vet exam before being insured. And I think that's just for new insurance applications. But no problem regardless. Duke has an exam each year anyway. Of course, the rate IS going to go up each year. I can't say I understand exactly how that will affect his policy, but here's how they say it's calculated:
Right now, his mortality rate is 3.25%. When he turns 16 in 2015, the rate will increase to 5.0%, at 17, 7.0%, and at 18, 9.0%. At least these are what the rates are at this time. The Medical/Surgical premium typically increases by 3.0% to 5.0% each year as well to keep up with the increasing costs of veterinary medicine.
At the moment his insurance coverage is 25% higher than Lizzie's colic insurance AND it covers ANYTHING that might happen to Duke while the cost is actually less than the cost of that colic supplement Lizzie is on! So I'm glad he's still going to be insured with regular insurance at least for a while. I have to say, though, when she sent me that rate increase information the first thing I thought of was that there would be NO way Bob Manns could insure his currently-46-year-old Arabian, Magic (here's an article about her from back in 2010: http://www.utsandiego.com/news/2010/Jul/10/still-hot-to-trot/ ) unless he was a billionaire! ;-D
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