"If you don't know where you are going, you might wind up someplace else." -Yogi Berra Back to this view, after months away. I spent the morning cleaning, after P expressed her general displeasure at the dustiness and veneer of cat hair and dander we encountered when we got back. I wonder if she'll notice. All in all, sort of a gloomy day. I miss Manhattan. I'll admit it. I miss getting up with a goal, walking with P to campus and back, the conversations and the energy all ar

"Where we love is home - home that our feet may leave, but not our hearts." -Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. Back home after some exciting flying last week--Perry to Milledgeville for lunch with a high school buddy to discuss a new business venture, then to Cape May, New Jersey just to see it, then to Andover to visit the kids (JFK Approach amended my flight plan four times in the incredibly busy airspace over NYC, which was the opposite of fun), then departing to the west in gale

Dear Mr. Blanche, Allow me to introduce myself--Michael Dickey, of the Yalobusha County Dickeys. It has come to my attention in recent days that you've created a small fund in the amount of $1.776 billion (I see what you did there--you MAGA guys are the cleverest!) that will largely be devoted to compensating those who, labeled as "insurrectionists", were subjected to "lawfare" by the federal government. On behalf of myself and hills full of similarly damaged cousins, I respe

'The main purpose of the stock market is to make fools of as many men as possible." -Bernard Baruch Over a year ago now, I pretty much pulled out of the stock market. I held a firm conviction that the new administration would be incompetent in its fiscal policy, profligate in its tax cuts, reckless overseas, and derisive of the rule of law at home. Check. Check. Check. Check. And yet, our household has left a lot of money on the table by pushing away from the roulette wheel j

And when they ask us, How dangerous it was. Oh! We’ll never tell them, No, we’ll never tell them. We spent our pay in some cafe. And fought wild women night and day, T’was the cushiest job we ever had. And when they ask us, And they’re certainly going to ask us. The reason why we didn’t win the Croix de Guerre. Oh! We’ll never tell them, No! We’ll never tell them. There was a front but damned if we knew where. In years past, I tried to make a point of remembering them all, th

You say, "Goodbye" and I say, "Hello, hello, hello" I don't know why you say, "Goodbye", I say, "Hello, hello, hello" I don't know why you say, "Goodbye", I say, "Hello, hello, hello" I don't know why you say, "Goodbye", I say, "Hello, hello, hello" Hello-ooh! -Paul McCartney An elegaic feel to the morning. Tomorrow will be the last time we awaken to this view. Four months and one week. Where did the time go? Adding to the sense of endings and transitions, we stayed up late (

"And I could find another dream One that keeps me warm and clean But I ain't dreaming anymore, girl, I'm waking up" -Jason Isbell One thing about being laser focused on school these last four months: I've not had time to really ponder what's going on in this political moment. So now I'm sort of like a prairie dog poking his head out of his hole, rubbing his eyes, and looking astonished at what's going on around me. Or maybe Rip Van Winkle, twenty years asleep in the beautiful

"Every new beginning comes from some other beginning's end." -Seneca Funny how time rushes past. On my firm webpage, my bio includes the detail that I was the youngest flight lead in the 27th Tactical Fighter Squadron during Desert Shield/Storm. That was 1990, and I turned 26 less than a month before Iraq invaded Kuwait. Hard to believe they trusted me in that role, looking back on it. Fast forward thirty-six years. Yesterday I walked the stage at Madison Square Garden, a new

There's a time a for joy A time for tears A time we'll treasure through the years We'll remember always Graduation day -The Beach Boys Well, I've checked my email every few minutes for the last couple hours, waiting for the message that I failed one of my finals and could stay home today. No such message has arrived, and we're three hours from go time, so I reckon this is actually going to happen. About to be an NYU Law grad. What an adventure. We started the day with a trip

"When I'm back in New York... I eat a lot more really, really good food than perhaps I'd like to. So many of my friends are really good chefs. It's kind of like being in the Mafia." -Anthony Bourdain Tomorrow is graduation. Damn. We spent the weekend goofing off with friends, and mostly just eating. Georgian food and wine in an lovely courtyard at Old Tblisi. The best chopped liver and borscht on the planet at Russ & Daughters. PEI raw oysters and fried zucchini so light it w

"There is something in the New York air that makes sleep useless." — Simone de Beauvoir Late and a little bleary-eyed this morning after the HUD housing neighbors decided to allow their autistic three-year-old to blow off a little steam in the hall outside our door between 3:30 and 5:30. It seems Dad, the guy who lit their apartment on fire after getting into it with Mom two weeks ago, needed his beauty rest, so Mom took Junior outside, where he went fully feral and started

'Now, at last I fall before The Fountain of Lamneth I thought I would be singing But I'm tired... out of breath Many journeys end here But, the secret's told the same Life is just a candle and a dream Must give it flame' -Rush, The Fountain of Lamneth (1975) Day Two of life after finals. Not great. Yesterday we decided to go to Coney Island to eat a hot dog at Nathan's, which has sat at the foot of the boardwalk there for over a century. We should have noticed that we were mo

Yesterday I hit "send" on my take home exam answer about an hour after finishing my last in-class exam, which ended with a flash of drama when Exam4 crashed on my computer as I was submitting an answer that took over three hours to write. All's well that ends well, I guess. So a day of rest and recreation today. Peg's taking me to Coney Island to partake of a Nathan's hot dog or three. She's obviously trying to be a good wife. Slane looks as worn out with the last couple week

"Their god is their belly" -Philippians 3:19 Behold the visage of a very bad cat. His yowling usually starts at 4:30, but last night he was feeling like an overacheiver and started at 3. Peg chased him into the extra bedroom and shut the door, and I could hear him in there continuing to serenade the building. A little before six I woke up and let him out of cat jail. He had pooped on the floor. He had pooped on the bed. He vomited in front of his litter box. Apparently he's n

There's a new world coming And it's just around the bend There's a new world coming This one's coming to an end -Cass Elliot Fifty-five, gray and damp out there. Twelve more wakeups and it'll all be over. Makes me a little sad. It can't happen soon enough for Slane, however. He screams and howls every morning at exactly 4:30, I chase him into the guest room and close the door, and when I let him out as I'm making coffee a couple hours later he starts it again. I just ran him

"No man ever believes that the Bible means what it says: He is always convinced that it says what he means." -George Bernard Shaw Another short post. I was out of bed at 6:30, after I awakened outlining my answer to the take-home final for Tax Planning for Real Estate Transactions in my head in the early morning stillness. I got it all sketched out in my horrible handwriting on a legal pad before I forgot what I was thinking, and will write out my actual answer tomorrow morni

Man in Black: “You’re that smart?” Vizzini: “Let me put it this way. Have you ever heard of Plato, Aristotle, Socrates?” Man in Black: “Yes.” Vizzini: “Morons.” -The Princess Bride Again, the need for brevity. I'm falling behind in my final exams regimen, and have paying work I must attend to before diving back into my studies. Sleeping until 7:30 is not helping at all, but when Peg's not working we don't set an alarm. She's been getting up at 5:30 or so for most of her life.

"Time it was, and what a time it was, it was A time of innocence, A time of confidences Long ago, it must be, I have a photograph Preserve your memories; They're all that's left you" -Paul Simon Two finals down, two to go. And these first couple were likely the most difficult of the lot. The next final is in six days, and the other is a take-home that needs to be turned in by a week from today. I'll try to finish a working draft by the weekend, so it's just a matter of clean

"It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education." -Albert Einstein Well, International Tax I is in the rear view. A very, very challenging exam. We'll see how it went. Partnership Tax is in about six hours. I'll walk in with 152 pages of outline, and charts mapping out how to perform any of the myriad calculations likely to appear on the test. I've got maybe twenty hours of study time on the books for this one exam, and still feel grossly underprepared. Meanwhile,

First exam in about fifteen minutes. Exam prep was complicated a bit on Saturday by a neighbor disabling their smoke alarm and trying to set the apartment on fire while doing something inappropriate with their stove, but we recovered and I'm about as ready as I'm going to be. Peg's birthday is today. We'll carve out some time to mark the occasion. The hardest of the finals in tomorrow. Now, as my late, great squadron commander Karbo Kline used to say as we'd leave the life su