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.
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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.
I visited with a good friend on Sunday. It had been too long since we’d gotten together, which is almost entirely my fault since I’m not the one with a newborn. I sent a text in the morning asking if he’d be home and made the visit in the mid-afternoon.
At one point in the conversation my friend suggested that he’d expected me to tell him I’d be moving in the new year. That was a stinging indictment, and I don’t have current plans to relocate (though in fairness to him I did leave Raleigh on January 1 a few years ago to mark an end to that chapter of my life). Instead, I just wanted to spend some time with him. That was my only agenda item. It was refreshing. We sat in the living room for about an hour and talked while the baby slept. Then I took my normal Sunday walk on the American Tobacco Trail before sunset and a nice dinner of home-cooked, farm-raised lamb chops that I’d brought from Kentucky when I visited for Thanksgiving. It was one of the better Sundays I’ve had in a while.
So if this can serve as a note, take the opportunity this Christmas season to reach out to the friend you haven’t talked to in too long. The small effort will be good for both of your souls.
I haven’t participated in fantasy sports in nearly a decade now. I was kicked out of a fantasy football league that I was in with some people from college once they found out I’d be forced to auto-draft again because I would be in the desert in Namibia without internet access. They tried to get me to rejoin that league a couple of years later, which I declined, and that league no longer exists. After stopping fantasy football, I found my overall enjoyment increased. I could just cheer for my team and let that be that. This year, I hardly watched football at all. That is what happens when the team you support is terrible.
One of the methods of doing a fantasy football draft is to have a player auction. Each owner has the same total amount of money they can spend compiling their roster. Each player is drawn at random (within the relevant position group), and then the bidding starts. Allocating players this way creates many more dynamics for you as the fantasy owner. Do you spend big on a certain player? Do you bid in order to get others to use up more of their money on a player they particularly like? Do you just accept that you are going to be weak in one area of the team? I’ve always thought it would be more fun than the more traditional snake draft, though I’ve never been a part of such a fantasy league.
But what if I told you that the auction dynamic is actually used by a major professional sports league? It’s a league most Americans haven’t heard of, but it is watched by tens of millions of people every night for something like two months—the Indian Premier League. It is a T20 cricket league, which isn’t important for this post. What this post is about is that the league had its annual auction earlier this week. While it doesn’t rise to the circus that is the NFL draft, they hosted the auction in Dubai this year and with some fanfare. This year’s was a so-called mini-auction as there were fewer players up for bid. Every few years, though, there is a mega-auction before which teams are only able to retain a small number of players. It can lead to some wild resets of the competitive balance.
The players come in sets based on what positions they play and their status of whether they have played for their national teams. Each player sets a minimum price for themselves, and when their name is drawn the bidding starts. There are more complications than that, but even the order in which people are drawn within their set can mean a difference of hundreds of thousands of dollars given the way the auction dynamics unfold. There were also players this year who received no bids the first time their names came up and then saw a bidding war unfold when their name came up again during the accelerated portion of the auction later. I find it all fascinating to review.
If you want to listen to an in-depth story of the league’s history (and have around four hours in which to do so), you can find an episode of the Acquired podcast from earlier this year. Since it involves big business and Bollywood, there are some twists in the tale.
I read fiction in the evenings before bed. It is something I started doing during my Biglaw days in an attempt to help myself mentally unplug from the day and go to sleep. It hasn’t always been effective. Long books with chapters of around 10-12 pages are ideal. The Count of Monte Cristo was an early success and now sits on the bookshelf to my right as I sit typing this, but not everything has been a hit and I’ve become much more willing to give up on a book in the time since I began this habit. There’s something about slogging through War and Peace that will do that to a person.
I just completed my third of Dostoyevsky’s longer works, The Idiot. I read Crime and Punishment in high school and The Brothers Karamazov a couple of years ago, both of which found me at the right times in my life to be impactful. This one didn’t. Perhaps it was bound not to do so since the main character’s most salient features are his complete innocence and naivety. It left him a little flat on my reading, especially in comparison to Alyosha, a similarly angelic figure in Brothers K. Dostoyevsky wrote The Idiot earlier, though, so perhaps it isn’t a fair comparison. Regardless, the ending didn’t hit very hard when I read it. I actually suspect it will mean more once some time has passed as the deeper undercurrents of meaning which I enjoy so much in Dostoyevsky are very much present.
I’ve not always limited myself to the classic tomes of fiction (I read and enjoyed Trust a few months back), but there is something to be said for allowing the Lindy Effect to take its course. I’ve now started The Lord of the Rings. I expect to enjoy it more; at a minimum, the characters’ names will be consistent throughout. That is one quirk of Russian literature that can be difficult to follow.
One of the members of my church small group is currently a 1L. His first law school exam is tomorrow. I’d been trying for weeks to meet him for dinner but our schedules hadn’t lined up. Due to my early Thanksgiving celebrations and his returning early from Thanksgiving in order to study for exams, we were able to go out for dinner on Friday. It also marked a rare trip to Raleigh for me.
We talked about plenty of things as it had been a while since we’d gotten together, but the focus of the conversation was on his upcoming exams. Sitting there trying to remember what I did successfully and what I wished I could change about my own law school exam preparations, I can’t say that it surfaced the fondest memories. I habitually buried myself in the recesses of the international law library, a place without natural light and that could only be accessed by navigating the labyrinth of interconnected buildings of Harvard Law School. It was (and presumably still is) the sort of place where you could set a very sad horror movie. At least I wasn’t disturbed much down there; my only human contact would be with a confused janitor. That first semester, though, I tried to study alongside classmates. I did not recommend it to him. I also gave him permission, repeatedly for emphasis, that it is okay to not go back to studying on the same day when you have an exam in the morning. The goal is to be empty when you finish the test, especially with the way many law school exams encourage word vomit and continuing to type more and more until the allotted time is complete, and you need to recharge after that. Beating yourself up over not immediately going back to studying won’t help. I hope he takes at least that message to heart.
The restaurant itself was also very good, a mixed cuisine place with influences from across the Levant and the southern Mediterranean. It will be a recommended spot on the always in-progress restaurant spreadsheet I maintain. Going with another person was nice too because it allowed us to get multiple things and share them instead of me having to commit to a single choice per course. That, though, wasn’t the main point of the evening. The point was to give some encouragement to a young man who is now in the final stages of the marathon that is the first semester of law school and needs to kick hard to the finish.
I celebrated Thanksgiving with my family this weekend, with our big meal on Saturday evening. My immediate family converged on my parents’ home and the house I grew up in for the occasion. This timing was the result of two things, namely the work schedules of my brother and sister-in-law and the end of the modern firearm deer season in Kentucky.
We aren’t a family with deep Thanksgiving traditions. Dynamics and life seasons have meant shifts every couple of years to prevent any traditions taking root. To the extent there is such a tradition, it is that we have both turkey and ham as part of the Thanksgiving meal. There was also both a pie and a cake this year, and neither was chocolate so that I was able to partake in both. We can go ahead and make that a tradition if people would like, especially since my only contribution to the festivities was to be present.
This trip’s timing had a few advantages. For one thing, traffic was at normal levels so I made good time both going and coming. Second, I was able to stop and see my little cousins for a few hours on the way since they weren’t yet on a break from school. This benefit was much more important to me than the first. I arrived in time to have a few minutes with the youngest and then to greet the older ones as they got off the school bus. Now I have some new artwork with which to decorate my house and more positive memories with them. I did not, however, take any updated school pictures with me as the children looked rather too old in those pictures for my liking.
I cannot say it was a restful few days as I awoke early on two of the three mornings in order to be in a deer stand before daybreak, but it was a nice change to be amongst family and nature and to leave my computer off for a few days. That made for a chaotic Tuesday when I was back at work, but that was always going to be the case. Now it’s head down until Christmas week.
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