Saturday, July 30, 2011

May I tell you a story?

This is a story of a heart attack that nearly was.

This past week I went to drop off the final payment for the immigration lawyer we've been working with.   You know- the immigration lawyer that currently has all 600 pages of evidence and has just about total control of the applications we turn in to the department of immigrations?  Yep, same one.

So this week, I drove downtown to his office to drop off the final payment check and check how things are going.  Though there is only so much that you can check on when the government is involved and gives you a window of a 5 month wait time for a response.   It's kind of like the cable guy telling you he'll be there sometime between 8am and 6pm.  Thanks, cable guy...that's extremely helpful.  And thanks to you too, department of immigrations, you're specificity is simply meritorious.

Back to the story.   So I drove straight to the lawyer's office, parallel parked my Kia Sportage like a champ (p.s. I'm getting back into the groove of parallel parking), and got out of the car to walk up to the converted Victorian house that the lawyer's office occupies.

At this point, there are only 3 things wrong with this.

1.  There is Caution tape stretched across the gate.

2.  There is absolutely no furniture inside the house.  How do I know this?  There are no window treatments which give me a complete view into the entirely empty house.

3.  There is a large "For Rent" sign very thoroughly attached to the ground.

Enter the near heart attack.

A long string of words that I shouldn't say and certainly cannot type out on this blog immediately entered my head.  If my thoughts had subtitles... you would have seen a lot of this:  #*!&%**@!!!!!!

Now, I don't have a lot of experience with gypsies but at this point, I was pretty sure I had just had my first encounter with one, and my lawyer was currently dancing around a gypsy campfire in the forest with his gypsy wagon posse, celebrating their latest victory.     Either that, or my lawyer was wearing a Hawaiian shirt  and swinging peacefully in a hammock, sipping a very large fruity cocktail with all sorts of paper umbrellas in it somewhere off the coast of Bora Bora and smugly thinking about how he ripped off another one.

I probably should mention at this point that he technically hadn't charged enough to escape to Bora Bora or to buy a gypsy wagon and posse, but my imagination wanders.  I can't help it.

Somewhere in all this, a brief second of rational thinking peeked through, and I decided to call the main number.  I was so relieved when someone answered, and even more relieved when they answered with the name of the law firm.  

I casually asked "so where's your new office located?"   And the receptionist casually gave me the address of a building about 3 blocks away.  

I drove over to the new location, parallel parked like a champ again, and got my heart rate back down to normal once I saw the sign on the front door.  Silly lawyers.  They might be really good at complex interpretations of the law; however, they're pretty terrible at spreading the word to their clients about minor things...like when their entire office changes locations.

And that my friends, is the heart attack that NEARLY was.