Fifth Blogiversary: Timing could be better....

I love old movies, comedies and musicals mostly, and one of the reasons is that I love the timing. Things are said, crisp rejoinders follow; there's a song cue and an orchestra springs into action and everyone in the frame falls into a choreographed routine.

Timing.

I love Jack Benny. He could say something -- or, more likely, nothing -- and get a huge laugh. Then he'd extend the laugh with a perfectly timed "Well!"

Timing.

I only wish that timing could be so precise in real life.

I return to blogging today only momentarily: I still have a massive pile of stuff on my desk that is screaming for attention. Some of this stuff has been screaming since before I immersed myself in the appellate brief that I turned in to my co-counsel yesterday morning. After an all-nighter.

I didn't hear from her again yesterday. Either the brief was acceptable to her and the trial attorneys who engaged her -- or I won't be involved in the scramble to do something different or additional and the desperate motion for leave to file instanter that would have to follow. Because yesterday was the last and final, double-secret probation filing deadline.

Timing?

I did pick up a check yesterday that I can deposit today. And pay my November mortgage. We got the November office rent paid on the 30th. The check was dated November 3rd. November 03, if you will. "You won't believe it's simply because I'm dyslexic?" I asked the landlord. At least she smiled.

And forget about bill collectors. Their calls are never welcome, though they're increasingly frequent. But isn't it always the way that the guy you don't want to hear from calls just before you can do something about the matter he's calling about?

Absent from my office on Friday and almost all of yesterday, I missed two calls from a retail client out in California who's wondering about a motion he hired me to write.

It's one of the top items on my to-do list -- but the appellate brief -- the norovirus -- the rule to show cause from the 7th Circuit -- all these have crowded his piece of business to one side. And he sent in a retainer, too, which I dearly need and can not touch because I haven't done the work. Yet.

Today for sure, though.

Except....

I've already had a call from my best client asking about the status of an opinion letter that I should have done two weeks ago.

So that makes items 1A and 1B on my agenda for today... and, yet, it's my Fifth Blogiversary and I wanted to post something.

The last few weeks have provided a surplus of material, really, for the blogging mill. But I'll have to find the time to get to it. I do have another appellate brief coming due in a month.

Timing for sure.

Yesterday, after racing into the office to scan some pages that needed to be included in the Appendix to the brief I'd finally finished -- after using Adobe to put the page numbers on (I felt so techno-competent!) -- I hopped into the family van and began to race home toward my couch and some overdue shuteye.

Racing here being the operative word.

I'd just gotten out the express lanes on the Kennedy when I notice a State trooper behind me. He was right on my bumper so I slowed down and moved over a lane (using my turn signal and everything) because I thought maybe he wanted to pass me.

He didn't.

He moved over, too.

I correctly interpreted this as a bad sign.

I slowed some more.

Just before the Accident Investigation Site at Lawrence, he put on his gumballs.

Timing, again.

So focused was I on getting home that I apparently breezed by him in the express lanes at 78mph. Really bad timing on my part. But he let me off with a warning... for which I'm grateful if (I acknowledge) not entirely deserving... and I got home and got some sleep.

Now, before fatigue sets in again (it's always the day after the day after that fatigue hits hardest, at least for me), I've got to move on to 1A and 1B. Timing, after all.