I went hiking yesterday on the Billy Goat Trail, which clambers along the Maryland banks of the Potomac River for several miles below the Great Falls. It’s a crowded but lovely hike. The weather was gorgeous and the leaves, although just past their peak color, were still spectacular. The profusion of fall color and the extended […]
Ammon is in town this week for a conference/training. I took advantage of my presently non-soul-crushing work schedule and invited him out to dinner. Anticipating his capacity to eat large quantities of food, I took him to Hill Country, where we ate approximately three small to mid-sized farm animals. With our hands. Delicious, yes, but not for the […]
Here I am at the end of my second highest billable month ever, which itself comes at the end of a sustained period (since early August) of intense work. Just a few days ago I wrote about how frazzled I felt and how much I needed a break. Well, I’ve had a break: Since last Wednesday, I’ve only […]
Since it’s a competition, I just want to point out that Colorado wasn’t the only place to have it’s first big winter storm this week. Today, right in the middle of my planting, we were clobbered with SNOWTOBER 2011!!! See that? Wintry mix all over my arm. This is precisely the extreme weather that the weather […]
My summer pots were wonderful, but now that the subtropical heat and humidity of the DC summer had ceded to the chilly fall, they were looking a little tired. So guess what? Today was fall planting day! I headed out early to the Merrifield Garden Center and, when I got there, discoverd I had the place to myself. That’s because […]
Tonight was the first concert in my subscription to the Kennedy Center’s contemporary dance season. The Beijing Dance Theatre performed Haze. Here’s a snippet from a performance earlier this summer: Tonight’s performance, overall, was very beautiful, and there were some striking moments. The themes of alienation and falling, however, became tiresome after a while — by […]
Fall is in full swing here. The leaves are changing beautifully, the air is chilly, and I got in the mood for a good hearty soup. With the amount of hours I’ve been putting in at work lately, I’ve been eating out a lot (not only do I not have time to cook, I also […]
I sing with a group called Collegium Cantorum, a small, eclectic group of singers led by a man with a Tolkien-esque beard and a remarkable passion for Renaissance polyphonie (i.e., sacred music from 12th through 15th centuries). The music is beautiful and, like yoga, deceptively difficult — it requires enormous concentration and control to do well. […]
I don’t think of myself as a wearer of bow ties. And yet, when I think about it, bow ties have marked some important stages in my life. First, I was a cute little kid, wearing a McKay plaid clip-on number with blue and white seersucker shorts. Then I was a penguin with a red-and-yellow polka-dotted bow tie, […]
When first started at the law firm, I was asked to fill out a form indicating the type of work I wanted to do. I checked a few of the boxes and, in the “comments” area, wrote that I wanted to do the media-related transactional work that two of the partners (I’ll call them EDG and […]
A More Gentlemanlike Manner 