July 20, 2010

A whole month flies by!

Well, its been exactly a month since my last update.  Obviously I have lost my blogging skills.  But it has been a very very busy month both at work and leisurely so this shall be a rather long update me thinks!

The busiest month in my firm's entire history, which is about 12 years or more I think, is finally over.  June was definitely the busiest month that many real estate law firms saw.  Everyone trying to beat the HST.  Which I guess is a good move, beating the tax on legal fees and commissions.  It's only about $80 if the HST doesn't apply to the commission because the agreement of purchase and sale was signed and firm long before the June 30 deadline.  Can you imagine rushing and stressing and forcing a closing to save $80?  Insane if you ask me.  Now that HST will be applying to commissions it will add more extra fees but still!  When you are buying a $400,000 really, whats another $1,000 in taxes?  I guess my brain doesn't work the same way as others.

Overall, we had over 150 transactions in June, more than half of them in the span of three days - June 25, June 28 and June 30.  Absolute insanity in the office!  But we got a nice little bonus from the bossman as a thank you for all the hard work and stress we all had to put up with.

Now July has been rather slow.  Things have slowed right down, which I guess none of us can complain about.  The other girls are able to catch up on things that got put off all of June such as bank reports and entering discharges and filing them away.  The discharges I think have actually been building up for about a year!!  One a sale, if there is a mortgage still on the property when the person is selling it, we need to pay out that mortgage.  Once it is paid out, it can be discharged.  So the bank has to apply to the Land Registry office and have the mortgage discharged.  This can take up to several months.  So we get discharges directly from the banks on our sales, and then we have to enter them into our system and let the other lawyer's office know that it has been discharged.  We also get them from the other lawyer's office on our purchases.  On closing they provide us with an undertaking that they will get the discharge of the mortgage and forward it to us.  It's a very important item but it's a tedious task, especially when they have been building up for months!

Since things are so slow, there arent very many transactions, and I have been given a lot of free reign.  I have been working on a lot of purchases whether they be houses or condos, new or resale.  I am getting a lot of practice and it's going pretty well.  I of course miss a couple of things, but I am still on the learning side of things and so I get a lot more slack.

Several crazy folks in the wood work lately but I can't come up with anything exciting to come up with right now.  I'll have to start taking better notes at work when I encounter a good story.

Things outside of work:

- Bridal shower - Maxine had her bridal shower at the Hilton in Brantford.  For those of you with really good memories, we had her stag and doe three weeks prior to that and we stayed at the scary scary "Grand" Motel.  It was a nice affair with tons of food of course.
- The boyfriend's dad's birthday - We went to Emma's Backporch restaurant on the Burlington Waterfront.  I ordered the Chicken Tostito salad and its super good.  You get to eat the bowl!!
- My birthday dinner - We went to Frankie Tomattos for my birthday dinner.  It's a spectacular Italian buffet with something like 14 eating stations.  Unfortunately, it was a Monday and apparently Mondays are kids eat free nights.  Plus, it was the end of June which means there were several groups of teeny boppers celebrating their graduations.  Oy!

- Whittamores - Did some strawberry, raspberry, snow peas and red skinned potato picking and digging.  The potatoes tasted so good when they are so fresh.  Froze a bunch of the raspberries so that I can enjoy them all year long!
- Strawberry Fest in Stouffville
- Blue Jays v. Red Sox at SkyDome - the game was so long.  Not sure how long exactly but it was over four hours.  I think we were still in the fourth inning after two hours!  High scoring.  We ended up winning.  There was a bunch of Americans behind us who wouldn't shut up.  They thankfully left around the sixth inning to go up the CN Tower.  Hopefully the fence gave out.
- Celtic Fest in Unionville and the Unionville Farmer's Market where I got a big bunch of kettle corn.  Super yummy!!  Im already planning on going back just for the popcorn.
- Drive in - Went to see Inception and Jonah Hex at the North York drive in in Sharon.  Inception was absolutely fantastic and I recommend seeing it.  Keeps you on the edge of your seat the whole time.  And it doesn't feel anything near the two and a half hours that it is.  Jonah Hex on the otherhand can be missed.  And then thrown in the garbage or burned.  Quite awful,  Not sure how Josh Brolin or Megan Fox got roped into that flick.  After the two movies I discovered that I had put the key into the wrong position and the car battery died.  Which was really fun at 2 in the morning.  So we had to get a boost from the guy that ran the place. Lucky for us since the place cleared out by the time I figured out the battery had been zapped.  First the alarm and locks malfunctioned.  Then the radio and lights and I finally realized what was happening.  Uncool.  But thankfully easily fixed!
- Lots of lounging by the pool since the weather has been splendidly hot and sunny!
- Many movies watched on the weekends with the boy toy and several episodes of Six Feet Under with the mumsy!