Bell Ringing
We are only two weeks away from starting the official holiday season. I know I have discussed how much the season gets pushed forward on us by commercial interests and that’s all fine since we can each choose to ignore it if it offends us. But during Thanksgiving week, there is no avoiding the advent of Advent. We have our favorite holiday movies, which do not count the countless Hallmark movies that Kim will soon start watching with their highly successful formulaic approach to feel-good. Our official family Holiday line-up, which is always subject to addition on any given year, but never gets subjected to deletions. Getting tenured onto our list is a lifetime gig, just like joining the Supreme Court. I suppose a movie could do something to have a Clarence Moment (not Clarence the Angel Second Class, but Clarence the reprobate senior Supreme Court Associate Justice) and be eligible for impeachment, but it would take a lot for that to happen. Our starting line-up is Miracle on 42nd Street (the colorized is OK, but it has to be the original, not the remake). Since we are going to be in New York City again from December 8th – 13th, I’m sure we will be feeling the full effect of Christmastime in the City, especially after Carolyn, John and the grandkids tell us all about going to the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade with the tickets Kim got them several years ago.
We already have a box in the study with our 250 holiday cards. We thought to sit down and design these personalized annual events, to update the addressee spreadsheet and send all that off to the card company for the personalized cards and envelopes. We no longer have to address any of the cards except for the last minute additions or address changes. I can whip through a stack of 150 cards that I send out in a few hours given that it only requires a moment or two to send a holiday actuation that anybody will care about reading. Those who really do want to keep up with our goings on can do so with the pre-printed update and pictures we have on the inside of the card. The card theme this year is our Hobbit House with added pics of our Neptune Pool swim at Hearst Castle and our motorcycle trip to the north of Spain. If I say any more, I might as well not send the damn thing out. My cards will be done by Thanksgiving weekend and Kim’s will drag out to Christmas itself since she has other holiday priorities (especially those Hallmark movies).
We have our house decorating protocol down to a science at this point, having done this here onsite for the past three years all by ourselves. I spent years having people decorate my houses in Utah for the holidays for me and then seven or eight years having Jeff and Lisa do it for us here at Casa Moonstruck when we didn’t live here. Now we have streamlined that since Kim and I share a similar view about keeping it fairly simple. We have Mexican tin Christmas tree that is both colorful and typico for the area we live in. Kim has a card rack that she likes. I have a pair of lighted trees for the entry gate that are attached to the timer on the gate lights. I will buy a few small pine trees for the Cecil Garden and put some timed battery lights on them. There are a few other items to make the place look and feel festive, but its all pretty civilized and easy to take down after Christmas (the key criteria for making our list).
And that should remind us all of lots of bell-ringing in the sense of the Salvation Army Santa’s on each corner of Manhattan. But that is not the bell-ringing I had in mind when I titled this story. I’m sure you have extrapolated to my holiday movie theme and jumped to the conclusion that I must be talking about ZuZu and her petals. You know, “Teacher says that every time a bell rings, an angel gets its wings.” Well as cute as ZuZu is and as wry the smile on Jimmy Stewart’s face is at the end of It’s A Wonderful Life, the same face as Fred Galley (John Payne) has when he says to Maureen O’Hara, “And maybe I didn’t do such a great thing after all…” as he sees the Kris Kringle cane in the corner of Natalie Wood’s dream Junior Partner Cape Cod in Manhasset. So you think we know these movies?
I should also mention that in mid-December, Kim has signed us up for a live symphonic performance at the Reidy Shell on San Diego Bay where they will be playing the complete score of our latest holiday movie list addition, Love Actually. That should be fun in all its bell-ringing best. But that is not the bell-ringing I had in mind either.
What brought the whole subject to mind is a far less lofty thought. You see, I currently have five expert witness cases in play. They each stop and start at various times, so they are not all full-throttle at the same time, or so I hope. One of the five is dormant until early next year. Three others, however, are in full swing right now. I have one which has a 40-page report in near final draft form. It would be finished if the lawyers weren’t inclined to tweak it more and more before I go back to New York in December and then again in early January for depositions and testimony. Its a big case with a wealthy corporate client and a lot at stake reputationally, so there is still lots of work to be done. The one that is gearing up is one with no limiting budget since it is a billion dollar case and it has enough complexity to require lots and lots of research and prep work. Luckily, it is in an arena where I have a particularly deep knowledge base and lots of friends still in the game that can fill in any gaps in my knowledge. That one has some serious hours ahead to be worked. And I launch the next one on a Tuesday with a kick-off meeting. I don’t have a good estimate on the amount of time required, but I’m sure there will be lots of work to do.
It’s all getting piled up in a way that made me put a spreadsheet together to keep track of hours and billing and billing rates. You see, every case is different and that means in every way. Not only are the subject matter and the circumstances different, but so is my billing rate and the agreed split with my team. It is worthy of a simple spreadsheet, and I have just enough Scrooge McDuck in me that I project out the hours and the billing expectations and start getting into the cash flow assumptions. THAT is the bell ringing that I am starting to hear.
You see, I may be retired, but I still know the difference between earning some extra money and just having the flow go one way…out. While my teaching pays me only enough to keep me in pocket change, my expert witness work is much more substantive, especially when I start stacking up five different cases at the same time. What can I say? I worked too long not to appreciate the sense of accomplishment that comes from ringing the cash register once in a while or ringing the big sales bell in the bullpen. It feels good. So, while I am watching and listening to our holiday favorites, I will also be rebuilding my workflow and filling up my own little red holiday tin bucket on the snowy street corner of Retirement Avenue and Stay-Relevant Parkway.