Up since three, after a weekend of doing not much else besides trial preparation and sneaking off to eat oysters with an old friend. I need to be in court in less than two hours. Time to boil my mouthpiece and get ready to play this game I'm so, so tired of playing. It's going to be a long week. Here we go.

Each time I see a little girl Of five, or six, or seven I can't resist the joyous urge To smile and say Thank Heaven for little girls For little girls Get bigger everyday Thank Heaven for little girls They grow up In the most delightful way -Maurice Chevalier Back at my computer doing trial prep as the sun rises out there. Feeling a little better than yesterday, when I told P I was as exhausted as I'd ever been in peacetime. Trial is a young man's game, and I'm sure as hell n

I've been running wide open since I rolled out of bed at 5 a.m., and never got around to posting. Pretrial conference begins in four minutes. Here's a nice view of the bay right now.

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. - We'll Never Tell Them, Fitzrovia Chorus Taking my coffee upstair

" There are old pilots, and there are bold pilots, but there are no old, bold pilots." -Col. Patrick Bowman, USAF It's looking pretty bad out there, sports fans. A winter wonderland if you're not going anywhere. A nightmare if you need to fly yourself to Florida in a few hours. Yesterday's forecast for today called for a respite in the snow and ice, and maybe a window to fly back to Florida to prepare for this trial in a few days. Apparently someone's still working at the NWS

Keep Ithaka always in your mind. Arriving there is what you’re destined for. But don’t hurry the journey at all. Better if it lasts for years, so you’re old by the time you reach the island, wealthy with all you’ve gained on the way, not expecting Ithaka to make you rich. -Ithaka, by C.P. Cavafy In between hearings and trial prep today, so this basically amounts to an entry to avoid posting nothing today. The snow has arrived, finally. Just a dusting, and barely cold enough t

"Delicious autumn! My very soul is wedded to it, and if I were a bird I would fly about the earth seeking the successive autumns." -George Eliot, Letter to Miss Lewis , Oct. 1, 1841 Back in Corning after a very long, nonstop flight from Panama City yesterday. It takes an extra twenty minutes getting here from ECP, compared with Perry-Foley, which means both fuel quantity tapes were very much in the yellow when I landed. A fierce headwind that cropped up over Pennsylvania had

Homeward bound I wish I was Homeward bound Home, where my thought’s escaping Home, where my music’s playing Home ,where my love lies waiting Silently for me -Paul Simon Today around 3:30 the court granted my motion to appear remotely on the 10th. So I get to go home. And it is home, isn't it? I look around and our posse here in PC has grown rather small. I would've gone to the yacht club tonight for supper and socializing, but I've done that several times before and found mys

I am a fugitive and a vagabond, a sojourner seeking signs. - Annie Dillard Quite a morning out there, after an uneventful two hopper down here from NY after lunch yesterday. I have about three-and-a-half hours to finish prepping for a fairly major hearing after lunch. The clients are coming to the office late morning, and I need to have my schtick perfected and in the can by the time they show up. I find the whole exercise exhausting. It's started to dawn on me that we've los

“I cannot endure to waste anything so precious as autumnal sunshine by staying in the house." ― Nathaniel Hawthorne, October 10, 1842 We have a surfeit of autumnal sunshine out there over the valley of the Chemung. And yet, such gloom around this grand home, for both of us. The obvious source seems to lie with the fact that I'm crawling back into the Columbia to fly back to Florida for an injunction hearing tomorrow, an event that could surely be done just as well by Zoom but

Come, my friends, 'T is not too late to seek a newer world. Push off, and sitting well in order smite The sounding furrows; for my purpose holds To sail beyond the sunset, and the baths Of all the western stars, until I die. It may be that the gulfs will wash us down: It may be we shall touch the Happy Isles, And see the great Achilles, whom we knew. Tho' much is taken, much abides; and tho' We are not now that strength which in old days Moved earth and heaven, that which we

" I belong to a group of men who fly alone. There is only one seat in the cockpit of a fighter airplane. There is no space alotted for another pilot to tune the radios in the weather or make the calls to air traffic control centers or to help with the emergency procedures or to call off the airspeed down final approach. There is no one else to break the solitude of a long cross-country flight. There is no one else to make decisions. " - Richard Bach It's Friday, and I have a

“A cornmeal porridge infused with rich, piggy goodness.” -Anon It's definitely getting that late fall look out there. The day before Halloween. Sun below the horizon until 7:30. I reckon all that changes in two days when we "fall back" an hour. I love the change, maybe going back to my early days as a lawyer when I worked all the time. Panama City sits almost on the line between central and eastern time, so deep winter sunsets came at 4:30 or so, even that far south. Some pri

“You have to give this much to the Luftwaffe—when it knocked down our buildings, it didn’t replace them with anything more offensive than rubble.” -Prince Charles, regarding the modern London skyline Not much to see out there on this frozen, foggy Corning morning. That ice fog hung around yesterday morning as well, causing me a little concern as I flew across Virginia in a Columbia frosted over with ice like a beer mug fresh out of the freezer. The cats are taking the weather

Another brief one. Our weekend was truncated by an unavoidable trip back to the Panhandle to testify as an expert witness with regard to a fee claim. The whole thing could've been resolved for maybe $25,000.00, but we live in an age when everyone is angry and nothing is resolved amicably, especially in the South. So we'll spend that much on this silly exercise. I flew into KFPY because the weather yesterday afternoon in Bay County didn't allow for a safe flight into KECP. My

Another quick entry because I'm about to start a deposition from the office Issac and Olivia set up for me at their place in Andover. We arrived yesterday, and it's been a steady stream of legal badness from the moment I sat down. I've grown weary of this profession and all the nastiness. Last night we attended the Boston Arts Academy's annual dinner and fundraiser with the Reeves. Olivia's mom was the presenter over the course of a fairly remarkable evening--you don't genera

Running hopelessly late today as we try to bumble out to the plane for a quick flight over to KLWM to see the kids and go to a charity event near Fenway. Low ceilings over the Catskills, turbulence, a little ice here and there--a typical fall flying day in the northeast. Pretty view out the window, though. We're at peak color near as I can tell.

Lord won't you tell us tell us what does it mean Still at the end of every hard earned day people find some reason to believe - Bruce Springsteen, Reason to Believe Starting here with a little different view out the window, looking to the northwest. It's beginning to look a lot like fall out there, with the morning gloom gradually giving way to blue skies. Wishing I could emulate that, but it's one of those mornings. I'll stay away from the current political disaster or my ow

"The autumn trees, ravaged as they are, take on the flash of tattered flags kindling in the gloom of cool cathedral caves where gold letters on marble pages describe death in battle and how bones bleach and burn far away in Indian sands." — Virginia Woolf Gloomy and dark here in the Corning home office this morning. This is the first photo posted here from the new iPhone, after I dropped the old one on Saturday and shattered the face, leaving it alive but flashing lime green

I'd like to stay but I might have to go to start over again I might go back down to Texas I might go somewhere that I never been And get up in the morning and go out at night And I won't have to go home Get used to being alone Change the words to this song And start singing again I'm tired of running round Looking for answers to questions that I already know I could build me a castle of memories Just to have somewhere to go Count the days and the nights that it takes To get b