Winter Blahs

"Look round and round upon this bare bleak plain, and see even here, upon a winter's day, how beautiful the shadows are! Alas! It is the nature of their kind to be so. The loveliest things in life... are but shadows; and they come and go, and change and fade away, as rapidly as these."

-Charles Dickens

It's in the upper 30s out there, with higher temps forecast for the balance of the week.

The snow is mostly gone, leaving barren hills under slate grey skies.

This is shaping up to be a bad knee day, throbbing as I write this. Yesterday left me feeling optimistic about the tear maybe getting better on its own, with the pain subsiding a bit, but we seem to be right back where we were as I wriggle around at my desk trying to find a posture that doesn't hurt. Meanwhile, the cheerful person at the insurance company told me over the phone that a determination was right around the corner on whether they'll pay for the MRI that is a condition precedent to permission for a knee scope.

All this means I'll likely carry this disability into the NYU adventure that begins in eight days. Part of the plan there is to walk the mile each way from apartment to class. You'll be able to spot me easily on those crowded sidewalks each day, the guy hobbling like he's been shot in the leg.

This might lead to a rant about our awful healthcare system, and how socialized medicine would eliminate this whole arrangement of an investor class effectively practicing medicine by telling us what procedures are "medically necessary", but in fact a single payor system would almost certainly mean having to wait months for the knee repair. There's no right answer, except to accept with grace this tumbledown body I carry into my years of decline. It's just going to hurt a little; that's the way.

In an effort to clear out the mass of leftovers from Peg's New Year's Eve Blowout, I determined to eat for breakfast a slice of some sort of spice cake sitting under a clear plastic lid in the fridge. With the first mouthful, I regretted the decision. The icing-to-actual-cake ratio was roughly 1:1, and the icing was that awful buttercream so sweet it makes the roof of one's mouth ache with each bite. About halfway through the exercise, I gave up and tossed it in the trash.

Today's calendar cleared after a case settled late yesterday. I'm convinced the reason for the resolution was that both sides were out of money, a predicament I'm encountering more-and-more these days. It's worrisome, given that I experienced during the Great Recession the consequences of clients being forced to choose between paying their lawyer and making a mortgage or car payment. The barrister always loses.

Despite the apparently empty day, I'll be very busy trying to finish an appellate brief and preparing for a pretrial conference tomorrow in a case set for trial on the 26th. The former is a challenge because I didn't try the underlying case, and am immersed in struggling to learn a large, complicated file so I can argue what I think the trial judge got wrong. As for the latter, the trial is going to entail me taking a week off from classes to fly from LaGuardia to ECP for a week sitting in a courtroom. Not the best timing, and it could get me in trouble with the school. I just don't see a way around it if the case doesn't settle, and that's not going to happen unless the other side gets off their wallet, something they haven't been inclined to do in the nearly six years since we filed suit.

So, after going over three years without a jury trial, I'll endure two in a little over three months, both horribly ill-timed. Sometimes the universe is unkind.

That awful "ring" whenever an email hits my inbox is becoming a steady rhythm as folks wake up and start banging on my digital door for attention. No rest for the wicked.