what the well-dressed Barrister and Solicitor wears to work...

I know... the photo is a bit blurry. It was taken by JJ, who is not used to the new camera yet. It's a photo of me wearing barrister robes (which a colleague of mine left behind at our training day... of course I had to prance around in the apartment wearing them. I don't have my own).

And here is the Loch Ness Lawyer!


(I can't blame the blurriness on JJ this time. And I don't think I'll convince him to pose for another photo wearing the robes and a See Ya Jimmy Wig. Sigh.)

This is actually what I wore to the legal conference today:

Everyone loved the dress. And a couple of people actually tried to steal the River Rock scarf right off me. These lawyers have no shame, I can tell you!

The training, as these things go, was very productive indeed.

See the little orange marker? I knitted all the amount above that today while at the conference. (My boss was very impressed, by the way).

Should finish it tonight (the SOTSii must wait... I've been having beverages with the colleagues and I believe in the adage "don't drink and knit lace", frankly).

I bought this little tote bag at the conference:

The plan is to put freeform pieces on it around the circle - so that I will actually use it! Stay tuned...

And - I decided to drop by the laundry room when I got home this evening - look what I found!

A Misty Mountain all-weather jacket, and:
A black fleece! Both in my size! hee hee.

The legal seminar was surprisingly good. I learned that my ancestors still have a lot of influence in the legal process in Ontario:
(This is the guy who was "a bugger for the bottle", according to the Three Bruces.

Obviously I'm a direct descendant...!)

And - the best part of the training was seeing Eugene Meehan, a litigator from Ottawa who is into plain writing. His goal is to banish legalese. Gotta like that. I like the plain writing myself, as you might have gathered - but you may well see improvements on the writing style in this blog after his presentation!

Eugene happens to be Scottish, like JJ (although they don't know one another - I checked with JJ). I never, ever thought I would go to a legal training and see footnotes like:

* or, as my grandfather would say when I tried to reply to my mother with any sentence beginning with "But" - "Save yeer breath tae blaw on yeer pooridge".

Very, very educational.

So, it's been a guid couple of days... but back to the grind today. And they're calling for a storm. Just this past Sunday, they called for lovely balmy (8 celsius) weather today. I don't know why I bother watching the weather, actually...

Happy mid-week!

pretty thing and rant

Having said to myself that I would have a knit-free evening last evening, I did however make a start on this beauty:


This will be my new travel project - so simple! The only thing complicated is the yarn - Fleece Artist Goldiehair (silk/mohair/nylon blend). The end result should be a large triangular shawl - all in garter stitch!!

So, why did I need cheering up? Because yesterday I did a fill in shift as "lawyer of last resort" at my old workplace (and the place I'm slotted to go back to in a couple of months' time, goddess help us all!), the Eviction Factory Landlord and Tenant Board.

(I'm going to preface this little rant by saying that it is written entirely in my personal capacity and on my own time. )

This job involves advising tenants on the day of their eviction hearings before the Board. In this regard, I had the mind-numbing, headache-inducing, rage-inspiring experience pleasure of reviewing at least five "tenant ledger" printouts prepared by one particular MegaLandLord in Toronto (and much of the rest of Ontario, and Montreal, for that matter!) who shall remain nameless (all I'll say is that their name begins with M, ends with P has less than seven letters and is a contracted form of their previous name). After more than a year away I had forgotten what a supreme joy this task is.

(A joy that is heightened, mind you, by having some landlord agent standing directly outside the door to my office bellowing into a cell phone to a tenant along the lines of:

I keep telling you, if you leave without giving 60 days' notice in WRITING, that is PUNISHABLE by one's month's rent? Do you hear me?...

Buddy, s/he could have heard you without the cellphone - even if she lived at the other end of the city!!!

You're not listening - I told you it's PUNISHABLE BY ONE MONTH'S RENT!!!

Punishable?? Who was this guy, the Lord High Executioner? Makes me wonder what non-payment for two months is punishable by: being hung by the neck until you are dead? Public flogging and humiliation?

But I didn't have time to mull this over and I couldn't actually hear what my client was saying to me over this racket. So, I stepped into the hallway, took the guy's phone out of his hand, and closed it, cutting off the call. I'm serious. I then advised him that bellowing on mobile phones outside the Duty Counsel office was punishable by having said mobile phone inserted where the sun don't shine.

WANKER: (whining) But this is the only place I can get reception in this $#(@*$&#(@* place.

ME: No it's not - the reception is just fine... OUTSIDE. Take the elevator to the first floor and walk out the front door.

WANKER: bla bla bla... my taxes pay your salary... bla bla bla... lazy evil tenants... yak yak yak.... I'll sue you...

ME: SECURITY!!!!

WANKER then apparently decided that the reception might well be better outside, after all. Another one for the good guys.)

But I digress, as usual.... Anyway, I simply cannot understand how a major landlord commanding millions of dollars of rent money in any given month cannot employ people who can keep a set of books properly. I am trained in this area and it is almost impossible to make sense of their byzantine charge system - I don't know how any tenant can manage, actually.

Not to mention the following even more serious issues:

• crediting other tenants' payments to your ledger by accident and crediting your payments goddess alone knows where.

• sticking little charges onto the ledger which are illegal under the statute. Yesterday's example: a "skip fee" (actually itemised as "MC#483259259823457235 skipfee-nonoticegiven") of $150.00. This is not a legal charge - and this landlord knows that they cannot use the Board to collect it for them. However, that doesn't stop them from hitting tenants up for it anyway... and if the tenant doesn't know their rights they might well shell out for it.
  

(The most ridiculous example I've seen of this [and I've seen a lot] was the stunt another major landlord [whose name begins and ends with R and has eight letters] tried to pull a couple three years back - sticking a clause in the standard form tenancy agreement to the effect of "if the tenant gets a pet, the tenant will be responsible for a $250.00/month charge over and above the rent." Call it what you like, I call that rent for pets. And THAT is illegal... and $250.00!!! How much hydro does my goldfish use in any given month, anyway? Must be all that water to fill the bowl... anyone, some disgruntled tenant phoned the Toronto Star who published a story on it - and hey presto, no more pet charge!!!)

• Putting a Landlord and Tenant Board filing fee onto the ledger a full two months before filing the application and paying the fee. Now, my forte is not accounting. However, if anyone can tell me what bookkeeping principles allow for charging an expense fee before it is incurred, there's a case of Keith's IPA in it for you.
  

Now - what I would like to see is an accounting of how much Large Nameless Corporate Landlords take in on an annual basis resulting from ... well, such practices that have the distinct appearance of fiddles. Actually, there's a lot of financial info I'd love to see from these landlords. Not enough, I guess, that in Ontario they are not subject to rent controls on vacant units and also get annual increases based on the CPI if they want them... my little comic strip is not as offbase as one might think. And I thought I was exaggerating!

Well, when I'm

(or is it...

... things are going to change. A great deal. Wait for it.

In the meantime, perhaps this is all a big cosmic sign that I should be getting back to my Modern Feudalism project? (I've been hacking away at it page by page. The inspirational juices are newly flowing, however.)

Well, now it's time to start the working day... I gather that surfing while working is punishable by... hmm, I don't know what. Probably firing, then ensuing penury, I guess - just like in the Landlord scheme.

SIGH.