Category: Newsletter (Page 4 of 23)

In the last six months, my brother has moved back to Kentucky from south Florida and a new nonstop service has launched from Raleigh/Durham to Louisville. It is one of the new air carriers and so only offers a couple of flights per week, but it allows for a Friday to Monday stay. This helped create momentum for a short family bourbon trail trip. Illness again affected the plans as a few members of the family had to stay home. That wasn’t good, but everyone else decided to proceed with the trip given that tickets had been purchased and reservations made. It did lead to a few tweaks though, as I suspect we would not have gone to a brewery on Friday for dinner had everyone been there.

Saturday was the big tour day as we visited two of the major distilleries in the central part of the state. All distilleries have similarities, but these two showed different sides of the industry as Woodford Reserve is a much smaller facility than Buffalo Trace. Since it was the weekend, neither was actively bottling and as many of the warehouses aren’t on site with the distilleries, we didn’t get the full scale of how large the operations really are during either visit. I’d toured both facilities before, but the smell of the angels’ share is always pleasant in short bursts. The tastings aren’t bad either. I prefer the standards more than the variations that were on offer, but that isn’t likely a surprise. We then drove back into Louisville for dinner and a calm evening, followed by a lazy Sunday with brunch and a pleasant walk on a pedestrian bridge over the Ohio River (and a fast-moving squall line storm that took out the power for a while during the night while I was working to finalize a transaction).

On the descent during my return flight, we came down into a yellow-green fog as it is the time of year when the trees release all of their pollen in central North Carolina. Carwash owners rejoice. I haven’t been outside enough for any allergies to flare up, but it will happen at some point during the spring. It always does.

This weekend was the club spiel at Triangle Curling Club, an internal championship of sorts. This year, the rules required more experienced players to pair with less experienced players in an over-under format. Just like last year I somehow missed the signup email, was late to get on the list of people looking for a team, mentally wrote off the idea of even participating, was contacted right before the event to form a team with the last people left on the list, and then played skip since I was the only one who had played the position before. For the second year in a row, I was the least experienced skip on the least experienced team (we were all “unders” and I didn’t even meet two of my three teammates until just before our first game).

Objectively, things went better than a pundit might have predicted. In our first game on Friday, we were overmatched yet led after four ends before the wheels fell off. In our second game, on Saturday morning, we gave up five in the first end and it was over before it ever got started. This team wasn’t capable of making a big comeback. The third game was the best for my front end players and we steadily built a big lead. Then the same dynamic that I wrote about a few weeks ago played out and I very nearly found a way to choke the game away. My last shot was just good enough, though, and we held on. That surprise win meant that we played a third game on Saturday night. That was a bridge too far for us and I was left trying to play hero shots in almost every end. They didn’t come off and we were soundly beaten, ending our journey.

After our fourth and final game, I helped move some tables and chairs back inside to help close down for the night. One of the organizers of the event and someone I’ve played under during multiple seasons was also moving the tables and leveled with me about my behavior towards my teammates. I had let my frustration show too much and the criticism was merited. They are new curlers and were just trying to enjoy themselves; I enjoy competing and can be very hard on myself when I don’t execute as I intend. They didn’t always understand what I was asking them to do or why I was asking them to do it, resulting in more than one confused situation that led to bad outcomes. I cannot fairly blame the losses on these mishaps as I missed shots that I know I can make, but they didn’t help. I don’t expect that they would ever want to play under me again after this weekend, and that is an area where I’ve got to improve.

After a day off, I returned for my normal Monday league. I focused on staying calm above all else and proceeded to have the best game I’ve ever played both in terms of accuracy and weight control. I’m not entirely sure what to make of that, but it’s hard to argue with results.

Daytime high temperatures were unseasonably warm this week. Some of the flowers and trees are already blooming and with the exception of a stormy Sunday the skies have been blue and clear. It is one of my favorite times during the year. On Saturday, I went to a new area to hike in Duke Forest. This was actually my second new trail in the past few weeks, but this one was more enjoyable. I scouted a little online, checked some maps of the roads through the forest, and took off in my car. Had I done a little more research, I would have parked at a different entrance gate that would have trimmed the worse parts of the walk but I didn’t want to let perfect be the enemy of accomplished. For the first quarter mile or so of the hike there was quite a bit of road noise, but beyond that the walk was quiet save the crunch of gravel under my feet and the conversation of the few other hikers I came across. After winding along the gravel track for a while, I descended down a gentle slope to a bridge. I couldn’t resist a detour off of the gravel path and along a rougher trail beside the flowing creek when presented with the opportunity. It wasn’t the route I had originally mapped out, a route that would have taken me on a loop further north, but flowing water is nature therapy in the best way.

There were several bits of the creekside trail that required scrambling over rocks but there was no scree so the footing was always sure once you got through the fallen leaves. It wouldn’t be a walk that everyone could do though. At one point, there was a pair of Mallards foraging in the creek moving in the same direction as I was walking. Such was the terrain that we moved at roughly the same pace, not that I minded given the beauty of what was around me. It was a lovely scene with the creek set below some low rises maybe forty feet above the water on each side, plenty of tree cover, and sunlight sprinkling through to the floor. Overall, it was a very pleasant walk. I just wish I’d worn shorts.

The Durham Performing Arts Center punches well above its weight, both as a venue and as a draw for events and performances. It also helps that I can walk to DPAC, which I did twice in the past week. My first visit was to see Shucked, a touring Boadway musical comedy. My second visit was to listen to a lecture from Dr. Jordan Peterson as part of his current tour.

My Shucked visit was not as originally intended. Illness forced a change in plans as my expected guests were unable to come and my weekend plans were scuttled. In an era of digital tickets, I was still able to go and managed to find a home for one of the others. I knew very little about the show going into it, which was probably for the best. The premise bordered on the ridiculous but that was deliberate and the writers leaned in hard to the corn motif with what is surely the highest concentration of corny jokes in the history of musical theater. One of the minor character’s monologues were the piece de resistance of this corny humor and he got the biggest laugh of the evening with a joke about how politicians are like diapers. I haven’t seen Book of Mormon but a few people said Shucked was like a toned-down version of that show. It had some vulgarity but wasn’t blasphemous. I’m glad I didn’t travel to New York to see it (especially after seeing Hamilton when I was in New York in January), but it was a nice change of pace on a Thursday evening.

Dr. Peterson’s lecture was much more what I anticipated it would be and more impactful. It was a solo trip and the second time I’ve seen him give a lecture. And while I wish he (and everyone else) would refrain from Twitter/X, his writings and his recorded lectures have been of great value to me during the past few years. The lecture focused on conscience through the lens of the stories of Elijah, Jacob, and Jonah and how those Old Testament stories offered a preemptive repost to Nietscheze’s idea that man would be able to reconstruct a value system after the death of God, how the existence of conscience itself points to problems with Nietscheze’s claims. The lecture paralleled the thoughts contained in the prologue to his latest book, which I started reading just this weekend so it was almost like spaced repetition of the ideas as you might study flashcards in order for the content to seep deeper into memory. These two exposures to a particular passage of scripture aren’t even the only ones I’ve had recently as one came up in my church small group as well a few weeks ago. It has all left me thinking about creating still and quiet instead of crowding it out with noise and stimulation at all times since that quiet is where the best things come from.

In my Sunday night curling league, I skip. That means I’m something like the team captain. I am the one who calls the shots for the first three team members and the one who throws the final two rocks of each end. It is still new for me and presents a number of additional mental challenges that are not present when I play any of the other three positions on a team. It is part of my continued growth as a player and I enjoy it, except when I don’t.

In each of the last two weeks, my team has had the lead with the hammer (meaning we throw second each time) into the final end (think of an end like an inning in baseball). Both weeks, the last end has not gone according to plan. Last week, we won in overtime when I threw my tiebreaker stone closer to the button than the other team’s skip. This week, I executed a draw with my last rock and we scored one to win the game. Neither should have been that close.

I’ve decided that the cause is that in both games I changed my approach in the final end. I played defensively and called different types of shots, shots that I’d not asked my teammates to play in earlier ends.  This has caused a few misses and those misses have led to problems. In other words, I went away from what was working in favor of a different approach at the end and nearly cost my team wins both times as a result.

I’ve been thinking about this issue, sticking with what’s working and continuing to do more of that rather than change things, in relation to the law firm this week as well. Shiny object syndrome is a real thing and it’s hard not to chase after every new opportunity, especially after going through lean times like we have in the past few years. That said, we are getting better at sticking to our core strengths. Even this morning we turned down an incorporation-type project that was a regular part of our practice a few years ago to stay focused on what we do best.

I’ve been thinking about a book’s cover art this week. The book is Effortless if you want the visual for yourself, but the cover art is two arrows pointed upward albeit with one basically straight and the other a mess of scribbles and circles before finally pointing in the right direction. My working life has definitely felt like the crazy scribble since I returned from Morocco, and on more than one evening I’ve questioned whether I’m even pointing in the right direction at all.

While I eat meals in such a way that I eat a little of this and a little of that so that I finish each item within a couple of bites of the others, that is not how I work. When working, I like to do one thing at a time and drive it to completion before attending to the next task. Given the nature of some of my current projects, that hasn’t been possible in these last few weeks. I’m able to do a little bit, but then I have to wait on something external to be able to proceed to the next step. That means there are several things active and nothing has been completed.

This feeling has only been compounded by the success we’re starting to see. We’ve talked to a lot of prospective clients this month, so many that I’ve limited the number of meeting slots available each day as a stopgap measure. A champagne problem for sure, but it comes with prep work, scheduling and rescheduling emails, follow ups, etc. And for better or worse, we’re simultaneously building systems for which the need became glaringly obvious during our January travels. There are a few other areas in a similar situation. The net net has been fading back into some old, unsustainable work habits. It will only be for a season (I tell myself) and work and life will be better on the other side, but right now isn’t the most fun. That said, we are making progress. Paso a paso, no?

My big souvenirs from my Morocco trip were two rugs. They are different from each other, different from the rest of my décor—much busier than anything else in my apartment and with pops of color. I was attracted to them by a similar compulsion that attracts me to the works of Jackson Pollack in a white museum gallery, order within chaos within a larger order. They are also hand-woven antiques with slight asymmetries that add to their charm. Computers aren’t very good at recreating those slight imperfections, at least not yet, so that makes the human touch stand out even more. 

One of the rugs is a long runner. It fits nicely in the hallway connecting the entry to my apartment with the main living space. I enjoy its yellows and blacks and greens and reds and crazy interwoven patterns each time I return as there is so much going on that I see something new each time and so it still hasn’t become familiar. Having it has also produced a side of benefit of me taking off dirty shoes at the door so that my whole living space stays that little bit cleaner. 

The other, roughly 7×10 feet, is even more special. It’s also older and was much more expensive, but as my maternal grandmother loved to quip money only makes you happy when you spend it (not that I fully agree with that statement, but there have been many more times in my life when I’ve regretted not purchasing things when I travel than times when I’ve regretted making such purchases). It is reds and blues and different patterns in rectangles of threes and multiple focal points as well with different textures for the borders. I won’t attempt a detailed visual description because, selfishly, doing that might strip some of the magic for me. 

One day, it will be a floor centerpiece in my home office/study. As I sit here writing this, however, the floor of my office is largely taken up by the bed in what is also my guest bedroom. That presents a slight conundrum. The rug is currently straddling different spaces in the main living area so that I can enjoy it, but it doesn’t quite fit there. I don’t think there will be a solution to this dilemma while I’m living in this apartment, but that won’t be forever even though I have no present intention to move.

Over the past few weeks, I’ve worked my way through Blue Eye Samurai. It is an animated show set in late medieval Japan. I haven’t watched anime since I watched Pokémon as a child so this was not a show that the algorithms would have chosen for me. I never would have even found the show if not for YouTube. Via that platform, I’ve found two different movie review channels that I watch that are very different from each other. One is highbrow and analyzes the technical aspects and artistry of filmmaking and storytelling (Thomas Flight). The other is more widely known and most of its videos are takedowns of Hollywood blockbusters (The Critical Drinker). I heard about this show via the series “The Drinker Recommends,” a series I find more helpful since it is about what I should watch instead of what I shouldn’t (though the positive videos get fewer views and so the series is sporadic at best).

I have not yet watched the final episode. That said, I’ve enjoyed it thus far. All of the characters have depth. The hero is also part antihero, the villains have redeeming or at least ameliorating qualities. Even the minor characters contain multiple facets and competing emotions and goals. The animation is sharp and the shots well-constructed, but as I’m no connoisseur of anime I don’t have the most educated opinion on those technical items. It is on the graphic side so this is yet another item I’ve included in these missives that isn’t for the children.

I’ve always liked an outsider story too, and the premise undergirding the show is the main character’s blue eyes and what those blue eyes mean in a time when foreigners were banned from Japan. I’ve never dealt with anything like the ostracism the show portrays but have felt an outsider at many points in my life. Addressing those internal feelings has compelled and continues to compel me to try new things in search of belonging, here more than in any place I’ve lived since I left for college. Lest anyone be too concerned, though, I’m not at risk of going on the sort of quest for revenge that Mizu embarks on in the show.

While in New York City for the Acquiror Summit, I finally had the opportunity to see Hamilton. The show has been going for almost a decade now and has even been here in the Triangle while I’ve lived here, but I hadn’t seen it before Saturday. Mom and Dad joined me at the show as part of a long weekend in New York City.

I’ve seen six shows on Broadway now and several others off-Broadway, and Hamilton is right there with The Lion King with the two hard to compare as I saw them at different points in my life. None of us listened to the music beforehand, which I would advise anyone who doesn’t regularly listen to hip-hop to do so that you can understand more of the lyrics. I read the Chernow biography in college, though, and I was able to understand the words in all of the songs. The place was packed and the energy was high even for a Saturday matinee.

King George was hilarious with his short vignettes during the performance even if fans of John Adams might be upset by the treatment he received from the British monarch. Thomas Jefferson was also cast in a soft villain role, which worked from the perspective of Alexander Hamilton but is not a universal view. The real villain of the story was Aaron Burr, the man who shot and killed Hamilton on the dueling ground. His character received little development, a deliberate and well-executed choice given Hamilton’s perspective that Burr lacked any real beliefs. The play accentuated Hamilton’s immigrant status and the actions and life of his wife, but it wasn’t done in the beat-you-over-the-head-with-my-ideology sort of manner preferred by lesser writers. In summation, I left the theater without wondering why the show has seen such a long run.

I’m now back from my vacation and have jumped right back into the swing of work. This week, I’ll record a few of my favorite parts of the trip. You’ll note that the motorbikes in Marrakech will not be on this list.

My favorite places of the trip were the areas away from the cities and where I was either alone or with only my guide. There is something enchanting about large sand dunes in a moonlight glow. And a little off roading during hikes to waterfalls or up narrow slot canyons gives a walk a little more sense of adventure. I opted for a more physically demanding tour than most would choose, but even if you aren’t interested in hiking you will need to be ready for stairs when visiting most places in the country.

On the trip, I purchased a couple of Berber rugs. I saw a few that I liked and so I decided to buy them. Then it was a matter of agreeing to a price. It wasn’t the usual sort of dynamic with wild differences in valuation and I wasn’t eager to make it such due to the nature of the business as a cooperative. There was still some back and forth, though, done by writing numbers as a means of limiting the possibility of confusion. Then the call to prayer rang out from the mosque in the village. And that was that, with the price already more or less in the middle of where we’d started the discussions and the owner of the co-op making reference to the transaction being divinely ordained. We shook hands and that was that. I chuckle a little thinking about how the whole thing played out.

The two most memorable and enjoyable meals on the trip were the two meals where I did the least. In both instances, I just went exactly where the guide told me, sat down, and let the guide order for me. One was near the main square of Marrakech. The place was unassuming and I probably would have just walked past it, but Salam stopped and told me this was where I needed to eat lunch. The oven was actually built into the ground, and there were several lambs being cooked. I had both some lamb meat from this kiln style oven and tangia, a beef dish slow-cooked in a covered clay pot with all kinds of spices. I ate at a single communal table in the back of the restaurant stall alongside people of multiple nationalities and sprinkled the lamb with the mix of salt and cumin that was on the table in front of me. It was great, and the tangia was even better. The other was on the drive back into Marrakech on the last day when we stopped at a roadside food hall of sorts. There was one stall for the butcher and another stall for the cook, running two different businesses. It was Friday so other stalls were closed, but on any other day there would have been a place for drinks open and a pharmacy too. I had meatballs and Moroccan salad, but what made it special was sitting there on the plastic chairs being the only white person surrounded by people eating, drinking tea, and having a pleasant if late lunch.

My guide was also a celebrity in Morocco. Everywhere we went people came up to him and spoke with him or asked to take a picture with him. He started publishing videos during COVID and now has a few hundred thousand followers on the various platforms. It was funniest at police checkpoints, where the police would often stop him but only to talk; there was only one time where the officer even asked for his ID. The videos are all in Moroccan Arabic, but I actually took or recorded some of his most recent content. Links if anyone is curious: Facebook; Instagram; TikTok; and YouTube.