Elevenses

[captainsblog]

That word does not mean what you think it means. Not entirely, anyway.

For the first Saturday afternoon in months, I'm not racing to get access to a new episode. The TARDIS is dark, replaced by a HIATUS.

Though my postings here might suggest otherwise, I don't get all gaga about all that much televised stuff. Jacks, as noted earlier; Dexter, in season (but even that's almost a full three months away from a new season); the occasional Met game (including one an hour from now where we will finally face the messianic Strasburg). That's really about it. Even our DVD backlog gets caught-up-with in summer; I've resorted to Mommie Dearest, and even ordered the bad Sci-Fi adaptation of Eric Garcia's Anonymous Rex, if only to see Faye Dunaway's career sink even further into oblivion than the wire hangers dragged her. I'd rather be reading, mowing the lawn, listening to podcasts or exercising. Who am I and what have I done with myself?

The Doctor Who eps were different, though. More of a shared experience with friends, plus this quasi-expatriate Englishman's feeling of it being almost a mandatory civic duty to watch the thing every week.  Now that's passed. All packed away inside the police call box, neat and tidied, until 2011. (Are there at least Christmas episodes?)

I deleted my download link from my toolbar, then thought to put it back at the bottom of favorites until the time comes again. Because, thanks to last week's finale, it will.

----

The other meaning to that header is a bit more obscure, but just as easy to get mushy about:

I successfully finished my last Chapter 11 bankruptcy case on Wednesday, and the case closed. For the first time in recent memory, and for one of relatively few moments in my career, I don't have a client to reorganize. All confirmed, completed, closed.

Elevens are quite unlike the smaller and more garden-variety bankruptcies I handle. While all bankruptcy cases are very front loaded in the activity they generate- you fill out the exact same forms in both the corporate Enron bankruptcy and the Some Guy Named Ron Chapter 7 case- once the smaller ones are filed, they're generally done with my active attention within a month or two of the filing date. One, at most two, court appearances (and the two, if there are two, are often on the same day). Wham, nudge, thank you Judge. But a Chapter 11 is more of a long-term relationship. There may be more than the fill-out of those same forms to do at the beginning, but for more than a year in many cases, there's something to do every month, and toward the end, if it's successful (and sometimes even if it isn't), there's a flurry of activity. For this last one to be completed, one of my Rochester filings, that flurry took place mostly in February and March. We got our court approval in April, did our final housekeeping mostly in May, and I then filed the "final report" papers in mid-June as soon as everything else was cleaned up.

At various times, I've had as many as four or five of these beasts in varying states of active-ity. Two or three pending cases is more the norm, but always, during my time on my own at this, there's been one. I could get three calls in the next two weeks to replace them. Or not.  It's a weird feeling, and a somewhat unsettling one, because that time is paid for at full hourly rates and I've been quite blessed in recent years not to have any of it go down the write-off tube. There's other stuff to be done, certainly, but having the challenge with a specific company name and client face and court case number always helped. Also, these are smaller companies, with real people running them, most of whom are, or become, friends with me beyond the work and the fees paid. I care about them, but in most cases they don't have the kinds of legal needs I can fill once the fires have been put out by my now-completed work.

Still, as at least one expert on reorganization has stated, "Everything's going to be fine."

Comments

[platypus]

Yeah, there will be a Christmas special, but just the one. Then we'll be waiting for Easter again :/.

[liddle-oldman.livejournal.com]

This has nothing to do with anything, but my brother ended up marrying his bankruptcy lawyer.

(He and his first wife had a pet-supply store in New Hampshire -- about three miles from where a pet big box store opened. Trying to keep the store going, they started putting things on their personal charge cards...

Of course, they were also getting divorced at the time, so their attention might have been diverted. In any case, when he filed, he apparently hit it off with his lawyer really well.)