Monday, August 31, 2009

On We Go!

All is well in the best of all possible worlds! While I won’t suggest that I actually alighted from my virginal bed this morning - far too seraphim-like to be plausible - I can at least report that within minutes after the clock having struck the hour at 6:00 a.m., I was dressed and on my trusty Electra bicycle, happily bouncing on my balloon tires towards the Village of Appleton. The sun was barely breaking on the horizon. The cool air made the morning mists in the gullies and ditches look like winding water courses. The cows were let out already, vapidly chewing the grasses and looking stupidly in my direction as I sailed by.

Sunday, August 30, 2009

Renewal

Well, that's it! Summer's over! This is the last day of the last weekend of August, and I can't see that there's any turning back. In my mind I have already begun to formulate the transformations I wish to make in my life, yet another of those new beginnings. September 1st will be the springboard of providence. The Fall I find is generally a time of refreshment anyway. It lends itself with impunity to reflection and taking stock, sitting by fires, wrapped in wool blankets, dozing and gazing out of patio windows onto cedar decks, watching the decline of life in earthen flower pots and surrounding trees as it prepares for Winter and reawakening in the Spring.

Thursday, August 27, 2009

The Missing Assistant

There are many reasons one may miss one’s Assistant. Several days ago, my Assistant was pulled from her home, family and me by an urgent medical need, from which thankfully she is now recovering (though not without some unhappy consequences, namely the possible need for a kidney transplant).

Tuesday, August 25, 2009

Here’s to the Moose!

There really are some things in life worth repeating, and one of them is a meal at Ralph’s cabin. About a week ago we received a telephone call from Ralph inviting us to join him once again this year for a late summer luncheon at his cabin on the Indian River in the Township of Ramsay. As it turns out, the day was perfect from start to finish, complemented by invigorating weather, with clear blue skies and a fresh breeze reminiscent of the autumnal weather that is coming.

Monday, August 24, 2009

Monday Morning

I don’t know about you, but for my entire life, Monday mornings have spooked me. Having been obliged for the same period of time to go - uninterrupted I may add - to school, university or work, I can never get it out of my head that I should be preparing myself to do something constructive. Relaxing on a weekend simply doesn’t qualify in my books. So, as much as I enjoy an easy Saturday morning at the golf club for breakfast and like to imagine that I can suppress the need for the entire weekend, by Sunday evening the obsession to get back to it is pretty much galloping along at full speed. By the wee hours of Monday morning (when I invariably wake with a bit of a jolt from my honest slumber) the panic has firmly taken root. I needn’t tell you how messy those early morning thoughts can be, half-baked, disconnected and surreal as they usually are. While it’s all very well to pooh-pooh such witless preoccupation, the fact remains that the contemplation of one’s agenda for the coming week is not without its gravity.

Sunday, August 23, 2009

It All Adds Up

I don’t know what it is, whether we’re just very good at what we do, or whether my capable Assistant, Miss N..., gives so much valuable and unaccustomed service, or whether after all these years I’ve finally learned how to run my office, or maybe a combination of all of the above, but whatever it is, things have gone along so swimmingly today, to the point where, after a mere five and a half hours of intensive labour, I told Miss N... that I was exhausted by it all, and that whatever we had to do could wait until tomorrow, though in fairness to my apparent laziness and avoidance, we together accomplished a good deal this morning and early afternoon, and in the process I even went so far as to tackle the essence of what awaits us on our agenda, which in itself is very relieving, an undertaking which clearly obviates the pain I might otherwise suffer in mere idle contemplation of our upcoming duties.

Walk It Off!

For one as fastidious as I, and who is seemingly intolerant of any disorder whatsoever, I find I have adjusted remarkably well to my many failings, weaknesses, short-comings, lapses and other general disappointments in life. I suppose it should come as no surprise. After all, there is no misfortune (or fortune, for that matter) in life which we have any option other than to accommodate. So much of life (indeed almost all of it) is simply beyond our control, random as some prefer to moralize. There are perhaps those who seek to resist imperfection, but we are powerless to do so in the end. This is a good thing, for recognizing the inherent lack of accomplishment in each of us (and here of course I am speaking for the miserable majority, not those very special souls who needn't bother with these singularly unhelpful observations), recognizing as I say these foibles we each have, enables us to stand taller in the morning or at the end of the day, on the heels of one source of dissatisfaction or another. After all, what profit is there is bludgeoning oneself needlessly? Pshaw! We are surely assured a far more prosperous outcome if we, like the clever oyster, coat life's rough spots with a bit of lacquer.

Saturday, August 22, 2009

Appleton Side Road

For the purposes of my circumscribed universe, the Appleton Side Road is the straight ribbon of country road between the roundabout in the Town of Almonte and the Women's Institute and Tea Room on the edge of the sleepy Village of Appleton (though it does stretch several miles further towards the Town of Carleton Place). Two years ago I adopted this portion of the road as my road of choice for bicycling. It serves several needs. Foremost, it is largely flat, though the Village end is the crown of land affording the most sweeping views of the fields beyond and to the adjacent Mississippi River. On a good day, with the wind in the right direction, I can bicycle in top gear from almost one end to the other, with the exception of the rising hill towards the Village. The road is also essentially quiet, except during the morning and evening work traffic, but weekends are a charm. There is nothing on either side of the entire boulevard but fields, farms and severed lots for residential dwellings (many of them quite large). Several of the farm houses are ancient stone buildings. Some of the outbuildings are decidedly dilapidated, either rotten old wooden structures or steel buildings with sagging roofs, now almost hidden behind tall weeds. By perfect coincidence the distance between the roundabout and the Village is almost exactly ten miles, which means I am able to accomplish the hike in about an hour.

Friday, August 21, 2009

The Perfect Business Model

With an education in philosophy and law, I am hardly well positioned to run a business. However, like most entrepreneurs, I never tire of talking about business. Surprising as it may seem, it was only recently that I discovered that having a business model (a term I never would have dreamed of using thirty-three years ago when I began my practice) is as important as the business one does. I understand a business model to be a framework for creating economic value. To enlarge somewhat, as our good friends at Wikipedia have stated, "The term business model is thus used for a broad range of informal and formal descriptions to represent core aspects of a business, including purpose, offerings, strategies, infrastructure, organizational structures, trading practices, and operational processes and policies." Well, I hardly need observe that such a definition expands the desirability of having a business model far beyond my scope and imagination. Nonetheless, I have in my own way developed certain theses which I feel are useful for a small business.

Thursday, August 20, 2009

Back to School

As I lay prone this morning in the dental hygienist’s exceedingly padded chair, my mouth agape, legs crossed (as though to regain some dignity), I overheard on the radio (one of those dreadful AM stations where the commentators are always laughing) something about going back to school, likely a sale’s pitch directed to the parents of young children. It reminded me that for the longest time after I graduated from university, the routine of returning to school in September continued to linger. The ceremony which had been repeated for so many years in my life was seemingly impossible to abandon. Then - suddenly - it was gone. The ship had at last sailed on that particular connection. As I developed my working career, the end of August and the beginning of September took on new meaning and associations.

Tuesday, August 18, 2009

Draw the Line

In the practice of law it is difficult to know where to draw the line. A good deal of what we as lawyers do involves other people, whether as sources of information (when conducting "due diligence" or settling an estate, for example), as other Parties to a commercial agreement, as co-operating or opposing Counsel, as the object of a claim, or as our own Client. While communicating with other people is greatly facilitated by telecopiers and email, there remains the problem of getting a response to those immediate appeals, for communication is by definition a two-way street. Getting a response is furthermore the lubrication to the wheels of commerce, without which things quickly deteriorate. Additionally, the failure to obtain a timely response can precipitate some very unwelcome last-minute attendances, corollary amendments and in certain instances the equivalent of professional negligence (where a loss may have been suffered as a result). The difficulty, as I say, is to know where to draw the line; when, that is, does one become perturbed enough to begin pestering the other person for an answer?

Monday, August 17, 2009

The Recession is Over!

The world is reportedly pulling out of the global recession, at least if one can rely upon the conjectures of the likes of those who are regularly paraded about the BBC and CNN. It is nonetheless undeniable that there are still a great number of people who are seriously smarting from the collapse of the financial industry and the capital markets that once supported it. In addition, the event has unquestionably caused a lot of suspicion about what’s going on. Yet the bitter truth is that few if any have any better idea about where to invest money, a dilemma made all the more tortuous when one recalls that money doesn’t disappear, it just changes hands. So where indeed did all that money go?

Friday, August 14, 2009

Everyone Has One!

Whether I have joined the ranks of the "with-it" people, or merely succumbed to what is a cheap and ineffective shot at grandstanding, I care not. Thanks to the clever Mr. Google (one wonders how he gets paid for his efforts!), I am now afforded what I consider a rather slick mechanism - a blog - by which to broadcast my humble literary endeavours (though it remains to be seen whether the casting is any broader than my formerly targeted email audience). But that doesn’t matter either, for the interesting shift which this new forum has precipitated is one away from the specific, and more to the general, a progression I view as a type of literary graduation. One might imagine that such generalization would in effect dilute an otherwise interesting account, but I don’t think it is so. Besides, where necessary or desirable, fictional names may be employed. Nonetheless, the deeper sense is a shift not so much from fact to fiction as from personal to universal. What I have hitherto written throughout my entire life is largely journalistic in nature, which everyone knows means the grimey details of one’s uninteresting life. The time has perhaps come to distance myself from the admittedly tedious and repetitious accounts of my recurring personal tragedies, and to engage in a broader and more philosophical view of the human condition. I accept as well that after six decades of climbing up and down the hills of life one is qualified to cast a remote (and dare I say discerning?) eye upon the proceedings.

Cutting Back

With the turbid affairs of the office having now moderately settled, I am able to surface, at least momentarily, from the torrent of what has been an exceptionally busy time in the past little while. Much of the bustling commotion was due to nothing more than the urgency of two Clients to complete transactions by tomorrow, in both instances a case of the Seller wanting to unload what has effectively become an unwelcome encumbrance, not an unusual occurrence these days especially for the aging members of the population. Like so many, these Clients were looking for ways to simplify life, and that often means shedding superfluous investments. As I have long known only too well, property management is not to be undertaken lightly. Whenever I feel the need to sanctify what has otherwise been a profligate life-style, I have but to remind myself how attentive I have been over the years to every need of my own little real estate portfolio. Indeed, while I am wont to consider that I have never saved a penny in my life, it expiates my guilt not inconsiderably to recall the amounts I have poured into the maintenance of these properties. As a result of the recent global downturn, I have the added pleasure of being able to wake up each morning to see the entire buildings still intact, rather than miraculously sliced in half and evaporated, admittedly a gloating observation on my part (but somehow delicious retribution for all those nasty things people said of my spendthrift ways).

The Church Wedding

When I told my father that Robert and I were going to my Assistant's wedding this afternoon, he asked, "Is it a church wedding?". Uninitiated as I am to the mysteries of matrimony in general, I wasn't entirely sure what the significance of a church wedding was in particular, except to divine that it captured the more traditional aspect of the affair. In any event, I was able to report that indeed it was to be a church wedding, and in most respects traditional as far as I knew. Robert and I had previously visited the site of the wedding, since it was in the hinterland of the Township of Bathurst, and we wanted to ensure we found our way there on time on the appointed day. The church is located in the hamlet of Stanleyville, which likely houses little more than the very church in which the ceremony was conducted.

Thursday, August 13, 2009

The Walking Stick

A walking stick is not a common accessory for the majority. Of those who are in need of one, it is equally probable that only a minority of them own a stick which qualifies as anything more than a support device, often as painfully shabby as the legs they are meant to assist. Yet there are those for whom a walking stick is far more than a functional apparatus. Indeed, a walking stick can be a weapon of singular virtue when properly employed. As much as one's first instincts might be to limit the demographics of people to whom a stick might appeal, in fact there is pretty much a stick for everyone, young or old. Of course the use of a stick (apart from decapitating weeds while walking the dog, for example) is predicated upon some degree of physical infirmity, otherwise it is little more plausible than a nosegay. The extent of one's disability need not, however, be great, as even a slight sprain or touch of arthritis admits to the use of one without apology.