Author: James David (Page 1 of 25)

I like to take miles-long walks on weekend afternoons. I have for many years, and in all seasons. Not too long ago, I wrote one of these short posts about taking such a walk in the snow for the first time in a few years. Barring a substantial deviation from current trends, that won’t happen again in this part of North Carolina for a while.

This week, for the first time in months, I took my Sunday afternoon walk comfortably in shorts and a T-shirt. Now, I would not have been able to do the same on Monday or yesterday, but the forecast for the rest of the week suggests that I will be able to do so should I find the time for an afternoon walk (though the temperatures will drop to more normal levels next week). The trail was not as crowded as I expected it to be, but I didn’t start until after 4:00 so perhaps I was just later than most.

There are already a few trees along roadsides in full bloom, which seems premature but I suppose the pollinators are already active and so it won’t be in vain, and several others that are starting to bud. The birdsong is also increasing in the mornings. The only regular wildlife along the trail I was walking on is squirrels, but there was also a hawk perched on a limb over the trail right at the little connector I take to a park where I start and stop by out-and-back stroll. The turf soccer fields in the park were certainly getting some use, but the grass still hasn’t come in on the baseball fields so those are still closed.

Otherwise, it was a very calm weekend and I’ve had little activity during the week that was unplanned. I’ll start to get busier again in the coming weeks, but for now it’s head down to get transactions closed for clients.

On Saturday, I took a trip to a movie theater downtown for a matinee. I don’t go to the movies often, but it’s awards season. And awards season in films means that there is a crop of short films nominated for the Oscars. There are categories for animated short films and live action short films. I watched the live action shorts, something I started doing in law school and have kept up in many of the years since. Not every movie theater shows these films, but living in a city does have certain benefits.

It was a very diverse set of short films this year in terms of theme, language, and geography. The most politically charged was Butcher’s Stain, but it is set in Israel and not in the United States. The filmmakers tried to do too much and left too much unresolved (though they’d probably respond by saying that was the point). Two films drew the strongest audience reactions. One was Jane Austen’s Period Drama, which drew laughter from the audience and was short and punchy even if teetering over the line into absurdity by the end. The other was Two People Exchanging Saliva. It was the most unique of the set. French. Black and white. Crazy premises but against the backdrop of contemporary Paris. And it was my favorite, though that opinion was not widely shared. Of the others, A Friend of Dorothy was well-executed but I wasn’t in the mood for a sentimental, poignant sort of film and The Singers was both vulgar and ridiculous in the sort of way that only something based on an old Russian short story could be.

It is the variety of these five films, which collectively lasted about two hours, that makes the short films so appealing to me. Not only are they more experimental and novel than the slop coming from the big studios, but if you don’t like one then you only need to wait a few minutes and a new one will begin.

Basketball was a large part of my childhood and youth, so much so that I’ve had a complicated relationship with the sport for about two decades. Part of conditioning for basketball was running suicides. You run from the baseline to the foul line, then back. You run from the baseline to the half court line, then back. You run from the baseline to the other foul line, then back. You run from the baseline to the opposite baseline, then back. And that is one suicide. To be faster overall, I always planted and turned on my left foot. Now, I wish I hadn’t done so. I had a few ankle problems then, but nothing catastrophic. My left ankle has just been weak ever since.

This winter, I signed up for church basketball. I hadn’t played in several years and I missed the game. I knew I wouldn’t shoot very well, especially at the start, but I wanted to feel the ball in my hands again. My team’s attendance record has been abysmal and more than once we’ve had zero subs available. We even played one game 4 vs 5 because that was how many people showed up. That wasn’t fun for anybody, but we still walked and jogged our way through it and called it getting some exercise.

During the most recent game, though, my left ankle gave out on me. I didn’t step on someone else’s foot and roll it. I just planted the foot to go up for a layup and my body said no. All I could do was to hobble over to the bench. It was a dejecting feeling, and it was prolonged by limited mobility over the subsequent days. I’ve known for a while that I should have been doing ankle-specific exercises and prehab type work given my earlier history. Now though, it appears that that’s not going to be optional if I’m going to make my way back onto the court. Suffice it to say, it’s not been the basketball comeback that I wanted thus far.

With the winter Olympics on currently, I’ve had more than one conversation about curling. Some of those conversations were at the curling club, so those were expected and much more educated about the competition. After all, the people who are there for my Monday night league have chosen to be there and to participate in the sport. The others have been much more varied.

One was a conversation with some people at the gym. We were watching one of the skiing events and someone asked what people thought was the most boring of the winter Olympic sports. While there is a range of correct answers here, none of the curling disciplines are among them. And sometimes you need to let people know. This was one of those times.

Then yesterday, I had a conversation with someone who acknowledged going down a YouTube rabbit hole after hearing me mention curling the prior week. You’re welcome, but know that it’s not nearly as easy to execute shots as they make it look on TV. You should also know that you’ll look more like the Kelce family and their recent video of trying curling than you will the people competing at the Olympics, at least during your initial period of acclimating to the sport and the ice.

I welcome these sorts of conversations. I expect I’ll have a few more during this Olympics cycle. After all, watching it on television during the Olympics was how I first became aware of the sport that I’ve now played for several years. If you think that somehow you’ve found your ticket to gold you’re dreaming, but if you live somewhere close enough to a curling club now is a great time to try it out as most clubs conduct plenty of events for new curlers around this time.

Saturday evening into Sunday morning we received 3-4 inches of powdery snow, not good for sledding or snow cream but the neighborhood kids found it good enough for snowballs and snowmen after some compaction. It is mostly gone now, but it made for a nice scene on Sunday morning. It was certainly better than the half inch of ice we received the prior Saturday evening. I opted not go anywhere, not that I felt up to going far anyway. By the afternoon, though, with it sunny and with the temperature hovering in the mid-thirties, I took a short walk on some of the paths that wind through the neighborhood. It was a flashback of sorts, hearing the crunch of snow under my boots. It was a much more familiar sound when I was in law school trudging off to the grocery store (or even to class). I cannot say I miss the winters in Boston. The temperatures were okay, but it was so gray for so long.

This particular walk was one of the shortest loops available to me. It was not nearly as long as the several miles I often walk on a Sunday afternoon. I was still feeling the effects of what robbed me of the early part of the week, but it was the first time that I felt well enough to venture forth for the sake of venturing and not for some express purpose like picking up groceries. And while I’m still metaphorically digging out from having missed those days last week, I am mostly recovered now.

I was more or less unable to work on Monday and Tuesday this week, and not because I’m on vacation. I’ll be fine and things are under control, but it’s not been a great start to the week. People have been understanding when I’ve needed to cancel meetings, but I must admit to a gnawing sense of anticipation and anxiety as more and more things have piled up. I’ll start chipping away at them as soon as I finish writing this short post, but my to-do list is currently sitting at 24 items. It’s called a focus list in the software tool we use, but nothing with 24 things on it as a focus list. Oh well. This is one of the times when it’s great to have an assistant team I trust and to be in a partnership instead of being a solo practitioner. For the couple of items that have been most pressing, my partner has stepped in. I’ve done the same for him. As for any current clients reading this, I appreciate you bearing with me.

Last week, my parents visited. There wasn’t a particular reason for the visit, but they’re retired and so can travel when they wish. While it was still a normal workweek for me, I made sure to schedule some nicer dinners while they were here.

For the first, we went to a French bistro in Chapel Hill. This marked my third visit to that restaurant, and I’ve yet to walk away disappointed. I also get the same main dish every time, so maybe that has something to do with it. And not that anyone’s asking, but I have varied the other aspects of the meal. On my two prior visits, I dined alone. This time not only was I joined by my parents but also by a gentleman who lives locally, shares a connection with the town where I grew up, and with whom we’ve gone on multiple trips through the years. The time flew in easy conversation and the meal was delightful again.

For the second, we went to a steakhouse in downtown Durham. This is not just any steakhouse either, but the one connected with the theater where it is normally impossible to get a reservation before 8:30. For whatever reason, though, there wasn’t a performance that evening so I was able to reserve a table in the 6:30 slot with the few weeks’ notice that I had. Dad and I split one of the steak specials and Mom got her own so that hers would be cooked more to her liking. We did not order French fries like some of the other tables did, and that may have been a missed trick as the quantity of fries was impressive. The Brussels sprouts were good though. In truth, everything about the meal was very good in the way a classic steakhouse should be, most of all the beef.

I normally eat out for only dinner per week, and this week that number might be zero if the weather forecast proves accurate, but it was nice to double dip last week. It’s also always nice when I can add a positive review to my restaurant spreadsheet.

During this month when so many choose not to partake of any alcohol in Dry January, I’ll reflect on my own chosen abstinence. I didn’t turn on my television in December. It just sat upon its table in my living room, blocking the fireplace that I’ll never use. This isn’t the first time I’ve done something like this with the television. I’ve done it a couple of times in the past, every time with the same goal of a reset when I’ve felt too many hours slipping away. It’s not that I went the month without screens or without video; there were still plenty of hours spent on Zoom and typing away. But I did opt for other things in my hours of recreation.

I have watched a couple of things so far in January. This began with the first movie in The Lord of the Rings trilogy, which I watched once I completed that portion of the book. I’ll do the same with the other two movies as I progress, but it will be at least another week before I start watching the second movie. I’ve also watched a few other things, but my default has been to read in the evening instead of watching something on Netflix. It helps that I’ve been uninterested in watching football this season given just how awful the Titans were, but it might have helped even more that December saw its normal spike in the quantity of work I needed to get through.

Those caveats aside, though, I don’t feel as if I missed much and it’s not like I’ve had a tremendous desire to binge watch something now that the television is an option again. I expect it will stay that way for a while at least, and having the television be something that I only do on occasion makes it more of an event. It will also make me even less tolerant of filler content since I won’t want to waste the little time I devote to watching things. Has anyone else done a similar experiment? Or perhaps taken things even further and done away with their television entirely? If you have, I’m curious what results you saw.

Last night, I took my third visit to the theater this season to see a Broadway show. Unless I decide to spring for a ticket to Hamilton or otherwise decide to watch something else, it will be my last trip to DPAC for a while.

This show was Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, nostalgia bait for my generation. And fair enough, I read the series twice and am familiar enough with the story that I listened to and read much of the first book in Spanish as I made a concerted effort to improve in that language. There were plenty of children wearing Gryffindor attire. There were plenty of adults wearing Gryffindor attire too. There were not as many people wearing colors of the other houses, but there were a few who acknowledged openly that the Sorting Hat would have placed them in Slytherin. I didn’t have it on my 2026 bingo card that I would hear a gentleman of about sixty tell his wife to be careful with her wand as they made their way to their seats, much less that statement would be literal and that both of them were carrying wands to go along with their wizarding robes. Not that I had a problem with any of this, but I would have had I gotten poked in the head.

Since I expected that the production value and special effects would be such a large part of the entertainment on offer, I decided that this show would be my first foray into the lowest level of seating in the triple-deck venue. I don’t know that I’ll want to be where I was at every show, but it certainly made this one better. The flames, sparks, smoke, and swooping people filled up more of my field of vision and the sound effects were more visceral being closer to the speakers. It really added to the spectacle. I won’t dwell on the plot at all as I have a no-spoilers policy, but I splurged on dinner beforehand too. Steak frites at a French bistro downtown. It was very good, though on balance I wish I hadn’t ordered any dessert as it didn’t uphold the same standard. I was also several years younger than any of the other patrons and the wait staff seemed a little confused as to why I was there at all. Had I told them that I was going to the theater, I expect it would have made much more sense to them. Regardless, it was nice to have an evening of activities that I chose at the start of this new year.

New Year’s resolutions aren’t my thing. I prefer to reflect on what actually happened over the previous year and go from there. Once the craziness that is the end of the year for an M&A legal practice subsides, I’ll sit down and take some time to review this year. I’ll look at my work hours, meeting allocations, conferences, etc. and reflect on what worked, what didn’t work, and what should be tweaked. As a simple example, we went to a lot of conferences this year. We’ll cut over half of that volume next year. I’ll look at my social/recreational activities and conduct a similar exercise. I’ll also spend some time thinking about things I’d like to do more in 2026.

One thing I have enjoyed in the last few months is more regularly scheduled dinners at restaurants. I cook most of my meals, but I’ve been trying a new place on either Friday or Saturday most weeks. I won’t visit several of them again, but others are options. Most of these dinners have been solo trips (I got over any trepidation about eating alone long ago), but having more group dinners is one of my priorities in the new year after the reflection that I’ve already begun.

I’m also planning my winter 2026 trip. This year, I spent a few weeks in Morocco and worked very little while I was away. Next year, I’m looking at more of a work-from-somewhere-else trip than one where I’d completely unplug. That is the difference a year makes. We’ve made a lot of process improvements this year, but there are still major strides to make next year as we continue to ramp up efficiency as our business continues to grow. Also, it’s been a couple of years since either of us took a working residence trip like this and I’m curious about the viability of such a trip currently. My hope is that this will be successful and that I’ll take another more ambitious trip later in the year along similar lines.