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May 2013

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May. 24th, 2013

Tossed Salad Friday

~~Last week, my son graduated (with honors) from college! I am so proud of him, and wanted to share a couple of photos:
Sam's graduation May 18 2013 b

Sam's graduation May 18 2013 a

~~ If you know of any job opportunities in broadcasting, please let me know. He’s looking for a job!

~~ After the graduation, we visited Niagara Falls. I’ve been there before, but it doesn’t get any less breathtaking:

Niagara Falls May, 2013 c
Niagara Falls May, 2013 a

~~ You know that awkward moment when you think your shirt is black, and then you step outside and it’s clearly navy? Yes, I do, too.

~~ I just passed my 15-year anniversary as a vegan. Nothing special occurred, which is precisely my point. Being vegan is a conscious choice to respect and refrain from harming other creatures, but it isn’t difficult. Or special. It just is.

~~ My daughter and I were laughing about this Great Gatsby shirt,970564_10201312014382184_1209436448_n agreeing that it wasn’t wrong but it still missed the point.   Then I wondered what kind of shirts there might be for a favorite book, The Catcher in the Rye. And besides a lot of Pencey Prep tees, this one was a hit!  http://caetywithac.tumblr.com/

Happy Memorial Day weekend!
LET’S GO RANGERS & METS!

Posted at 07:30 am | | Leave a comment | Add to Memories | Share

May. 23rd, 2013

Knocking On Death’s Door

The caller wanted a bit of advice on, shall we say, timing. It seems one of his neighbors is dying, and the two have discussed selling/buying the house before he passes away. But the neighbor is about to enter hospice, and the caller is concerned that the “heirs or whatever they are called when the guy kicks” won’t do the deal with him, so “how do we make this happen?”

I explain that the estate is obligated to comply with a proper contract if the buyer fulfills all the terms, and he feels a bit better, but one thing still troubles him. “Can those heirs knock me out of the deal if their dad was on morphine when he signs the contract?”

I believed that they could invalidate such a transaction if they wished to do so, and he believed he didn’t like my answer. Since he didn’t hire me, I hope the neighbor made a miraculous recovery!

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May. 22nd, 2013

Your Fee’s Under the Table

My recent post about a possible notary entrapment elicited this story from a colleague:

I was positive I was being lured by a man who wanted to retain me for “various business deals” plus representation of his son in a criminal matter.  I quoted a fee (well in excess of $10,000 for all the facets) and he responded, “It’s such a hassle moving money from bank to bank to cover the fee. Is cash OK?”

I don’t know this guy from anyone, he can’t remember who referred him, and he doesn’t ask me about my credentials and experience. But he wants me to commit to accepting cash? I said, “No, sir. I’ll be happy to accept checks from different accounts so you’re not inconvenienced.”

The guy said he’ll get back to me, and never did! I figure he either wanted to launder money through me or somehow get me for accepting such a large sum of cash— maybe figuring that I wasn't going to report it?   No matter. My wife says that I can smell a dirty diaper from two rooms away, so you can be sure I smelled a rat on the phone.

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May. 21st, 2013

That New-Buyer Smell

The creepy attorney wanted to chat about the deal we just had, even though I thought that I was being fairly obvious about my desire to duck into the rest room.

“I love first-time buyers!” he enthused. “Don’t you just love them? They don’t know enough to ask questions, and they believe everything you tell them!”

Excuse me? Now he’d challenged me to a race to see if my sense of outrage could be contained longer than my bladder could hang in. I banked on my bladder winning out, I looked him semi-squarely in the eye (sorry, he really was creepy): “First time or tenth time, I find that it’s best not to B.S. any client. I’d say to you, ‘Let me know if these people ever hire you again,’ but I’m guessing one of us will be out of this business before that happens.”
With that, I made a dramatic exit into the loo. I lingered a long, long time to be sure that he wouldn’t still be around when I left.

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May. 20th, 2013

A Pregnant Pause

Today my son turns 22.  And besides being excited for him, you know that such an occasion reminds me of a story.

When I was about eight months pregnant, I walked into a closing attorney’s office, lost in my own thoughts. Upon spying me, the receptionist let out an audible gasp as all the color drained from her face.

I thought that such a response had to be meant for someone else. Frightened, I turned around, expecting that a masked man with a gun had come in at the same time as me. Nope; I was alone in the doorway.

By the time I turned around again, there were three people grabbing my arms and propelling me towards a lobby chair. What the hell was going on?

Amidst the murmurings of concern for me and the panicky asides between of the people around me, I figured out that a pregnant woman’s water had broken at a closing in the office just half an hour prior to my arrival. The paramedics whisked her out while she was wailing, “My baby can’t come now. I’m not ready!”

After that unsettling experience, no one was ready to see another pregnant woman arrive. When the hubbub lessened, I reassured them that I felt fine. However, if they wanted to get me out before my son arrived, how about they streamline the closing and get us out in under an hour?  

When the other parties to the closing arrived (I’d been early), they all marveled at how fast the closing sped along. I didn’t take a bow at the end (I was too thick around the middle), but I certainly should have!

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May. 17th, 2013

Tossed Salad Friday

~~ I've heard so many people express trepidation about trips to the dentist. That’s usually no big deal for me, because the visit is just a part of one day, twice a year. But an eye exam is much more stressful, in my book. “Is it better this way or better this way?” is hard, people! I’m sometimes unsure, as they both look about the same to me, even after asking for do-overs, yet answering incorrectly means that I’ll have to live with the wrong contact lenses for a year or more. Photo by noir imp on Flickr

~~Maybe I committed to a “better that way” when I should have said “better this way” last time I visited the eye doctor, because this time around, I was told that my eyesight improved! At my age, I was convinced that nothing gets better, so that was a shocker.  But it was welcome news, nevertheless.

~~ I call the number on the business card I’m provided and leave a message for my client’s mortgage rep. Then I leave another the next day.  When I receive no response, I tell my client, who apparently berates her rep. The rep calls me and says, “Oh, I never check that inbox. You’re best off calling XXX-WWW-ZZZZ. It’s just not on my card because I don’t give that number out to everybody.” Raise your hand if you think this guy will last long in the business.

~~I heard from a client that his real estate agent “preferred” that he not hire me because I “take way too much time going over contracts.” He’d said he was already looking forward to working with me, and now he was even more certain that he’d made the correct choice. It’s so ridiculous to get a bum rap for doing the right thing, but it’s certainly a criticism that I can easily live with.

~~My smart phone is often nothing more than a pain-in-the-ass.  Since a lot of my daily work is writing, editing, revising, and reading, it’s very difficult to actually do that work on a phone.  However, that doesn’t stop my phone from repeatedly heralding the arrival of more work. Ba, bum, new e-mail! Ba-bum, new voicemail! Ba-bum, ba-bum, ba-bum, more work, more work, more work!

Happy birthday Shari and Gary! Have a great weekend everyone!
LET’S GO RANGERS, KNICKS & METS!

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May. 16th, 2013

What If?

Yesterday’s blog reminded me of a story I shared long ago; I went searching through the archives until I found it in my July, 2009 entries.

I had a call from a potential new client, who said she had some “hypothetical” questions to ask me.

1. Could I guarantee she’d get her downpayment back if she changed her mind and decided to back out of a contract?
No!

2. Did I have a good enough relationship with any bank or mortgage lender so I could guarantee she would get turned down for a mortgage if she didn’t want to go through with a deal?

No!
And then after discussing my fee, which is paid half at contract and half at closing, she asked a third question:

3. Was I willing to wait until closing to receive my full fee?

I declined. How crazy did she think that I was, after asking me the first two questions?

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May. 15th, 2013

He Rings, But Doesn’t Want To Bring

The phone rang, and when I answered, a man inquired how much I charged to notarize.  I told him that I can’t quote a fee, as I only notarize documents for clients in the context of their transactions.

“Oh, I see,” he says. “What’s the minimum to hire you?”

I told him my consultation fee, and he asked to make an appointment. After setting it up, he asks, “Do I have to bring the person I want notarized, too?” When I said that was required, he asked if he could just show me a copy of a passport and then I could talk to the person on the phone. When I refused to entertain that, he abruptly canceled the appointment and hung up.

As I put the phone receiver down, I had the fleeting suspicion that this was some sort of a notary (or lawyer) sting. But nobody does that, do they?

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May. 14th, 2013

Ass, Bitten

A former client wants to hire me to represent her in a real estate transaction with her former spouse.  She outlines the deal and I say, “That won’t work at all.  You can’t get someone to agree to that before you put up the money.”

I’m told that there’ll be no problems, and neither she nor her ex object to the unorthodoxy of the deal.  I take one more stab at advising her that if there’s another attorney involved, her imagined transaction will be DOA.

“There’s no other attorney and there absolutely won’t be a hitch,” she reassures me. Since it’s neither illegal nor unethical, I take the e-mail address of her ex and send along straightforward directions for how and where documents must be executed and delivered.

Two days later, two e-mails arrive. One is from the attorney for the ex, who blasts me, full-force, for my audacity in improperly proposing such a preposterous deal. And the other? It’s from the woman who hired me to make the deal happen, despite my counsel to the contrary. She’s angry that I “scared off” the ex and screwed up her master plan.

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May. 13th, 2013

Wax On, Wax Off

The closing is in a storefront office, and the store next door is a waxing establishment (I don’t know what to call it— a salon, an emporium?). Just a few minutes into the closing, we hear a very high-pitched screech.

Without hesitation, the attorney whose office we’re in stands up, places his elbow against the side wall, and bangs it a few times. Almost immediately, the music of Flo Rida bursts forth: “You spin my head right round, right round…”

“Sorry,” says the lawyer, apparently nonplussed about the whole episode. “Sometimes we hear the newbies getting waxed.”

I sure hope the lawyer's rent is very cheap!

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