Early release

In any right state of the world I should not get home from work at 2:00am and think, "Wow, it's so early!  What am I going to do with the rest of the day?"  But each of us must live the life we have, and that's where I am -- so I'll take it.  After a week and a half of getting home closer to 4am or 5am, leaving at 2am feels like a half day.  If this continues, I might mistake myself for being on vacation.

At long last, the log-jam started to break in the negotiations today.  Rather than turning (and returning) heavy, labor-intensive drafts of the transaction documents in which each side simply rejected the other side's proposal and reiterated its own former positions -- which is what we've been doing -- we've finally to the point where we're making targeted revisions to specific provisions; exhibits and attachments are coming together; the business people are anxious to get things done.  Anxious enough to realize that if they kept driving their lawyers to the brink of exhaustion, it might actually slow things down instead of moving things along.  So instead of calling it a night and leaving the lawyers with a list of "to dos" (as they've been doing), tonight they said that everyone (including lawyers) could go home early (2am!) and get some sleep in preparation for the (hopefully) final slog toward signing this thing up. 

If all goes well (and there's no reason to think it will, given the track record, but I'll maintain some nominal hope in the interest of not being a Grinch), we'll be done with the deal sometime in the wee hours Friday morning.

 

Snorting milk at 4:00am

Okay, so the great thing about working from 8:30am-4:00am is that, by the time you get back to your hotel, you are STARVING (like, Donner Party starving) and completely slap-happy -- so you feel zero qualms about settling down with a $25 box (well, boxes) of cold cereal from room service to read a few funny blog posts before going to sleep.  Only you have to be really careful to coordinate your reading and your eating, because if you accidentally read blog posts like this one or this one in the middle of a bite, you could very well end up snorting skim milk and low-fat raisins out of your nose.

Because of course a $25 bowl of cold cereal doesn't come with anything to drink.

Livin' the dream

It has been nine days since I flew to New York on a last-minute trip for an urgent client matter with a suitcase packed for two nights.  In the seven days that followed, I billed 115 hours, including two consecutive days of over 20 billable hours each and only four hours in between.  That means that in two days I worked the equivalent of a normal person's entire workweek, and in one week the equivalent of nearly three such workweeks.  In the last two days I have worked an additional 30 hours, bringing the overall total to over 140 billable hours since this trip began.  This is the most I have ever worked in such a short period of time.

How do I feel?  Weird.  It's surreal how time passes when you're in a conference room for that many hours in a row.  I'm tired.  I feel physically icky due to poor diet and irregular mealtimes.  I'm on edge with the febrile energy of the mentally overstimulated and physically sedentary.  My hair is too long (I'm practically Rapunzel by now) and I'm sick of wearing the two outfits I brought.  I regret missing the play tonight. 

But mostly I feel lonely.  I spend day and night in a conference room full of people, but, aside from my colleagues, they're people I don't know and with whom I have no relationship beyond this deal.  As for my two colleagues, our relationship is still very professional -- we're here to work, not play or socialize, and though some socializing occurs in the margins, it's not much or particularly meaningful.  So I surface from time to time and see that the days have rolled by without me -- past Christmas parties and dance classes and church meetings and dinner groups with friends at restaurants where I want to eat and Sunday afternoons when I normally would call family and friends -- past all those things that make me feel connected and appreciated and not irrelevant or invisible.

Things could be worse (I could have black lung disease, for example, or a wonky eye, or be stuck in Lafayette, Indiana, instead of New York) and I'm grateful that they're not.  I also appreciate this chance to see inside a crazy and chaotic negotiation and work with, and learn from, two very smart and skilled colleagues.  But still.  The party is over and I want to go home.

Oh the irony

How many times have I sat in Washington, DC, looking at the New York theatre offerings and wishing I were there so that I could see a play?  Lots.  And now here I am sitting in New York, wishing I was in DC so I could see Theatre de l'Atelier's production of Les Liaisons Dangeureuses.  Of all the plays this season in DC, there are two that I really wanted to see -- this is one of them -- but as of now there's basically a zero percent chance that I'll see it.  I had a ticket for last night's performance; I moved it to tonight.  This morning, when it was clear that I wasn't going to be able to go home, I exchanged the ticket for tomorrow night's performance; but still there's no sign of my being able to leave anytime soon.  No doubt by this time tomorrow night I'll still be in a conference room at Davis Polk either working away madly or -- quite as possibly -- sitting around in my hotel room while everyone at the client is taking a break with their families or friends. 

That's kind of what happened tonight.  We worked all day to get a set of documents ready for a discussion with the client tonight.  The documents were ready on schedule, only the client canceled the meeting -- everyone had other plans and were happy enough with where things stood -- we could go home.  For the first time in a week I found myself free at 9:30pm with nothing to do.  It was too late to see a play or opera; I didn't want to sit around the hotel, so I went for a walk to see the pretty display windows at Bergdorf Goodman and Tiffany on Fifth Avenue.  


Every year Bergdorf does fantastical life-sized holiday windows.
This year's theme is the Follies

This was my favorite -- an aerial view of an all-woman jazz band

A giant crystal star hanging above an intersection surrounded by the top jewelers in the city

Giant jewelly snakes on the Bulgari store front

Tiffany has tiny, jewel-box-like windows;
these evoked elegant interiors

 

 

Now I'm back at the hotel watching an upsetting and increasingly frightening Joan Crawford movie that appears to be a 1950s effort at grappling with issues of loneliness and the need for love and affection, age differences in a relationship (where the woman is significantly older than the man) and mental illness (both the challenge of the illness itself and the stigma and limitations of psychiatric treatment).  We'll see how long I last before I fall asleep.

If it isn't one thing, it'll be another . . .

So I come home (and by "home" I mean my hotel room) after work today and walk into a cloud of cigarette smoke.  Sickening cigarette smoke permeating the room, pouring out of the ceiling vent.  Instantly I had a headache and hated whoever was smoking on the other side of the vent. 

For about five minutes I resolved to just push ahead and go to bed -- after all, it was only 12:45am, practically the middle of the afternoon, and I wanted to get a head-start on my beauty sleep.  But the smell didn't relent and my headache worsened, so I called the manager, who, in a dazzling fit of helpfulness reminded me that this is a non-smoking hotel (oh really? someone may have missed the memo), sent a security guard to confirm the smoke ("yep, I can smell it too"), and then offered to have housekeeping come "spray something to freshen up the room".  Well, last I checked, "spraying something" wasn't going to do anything to stop more smoke from coming into the room; at most, it would just add more fumes to aggravate my already aching head.  So I proposed that he put me in a new room and send someone to move my things because there's no reason to be staying at a JW Marriott and tolerate a cigarette-smoke-filled nap at the end of a 90+ hour workweek. 

Now here I am, an hour later, settling into my fresh new room, stuffing the pillow-chocolates into my pockets in preparation for tomorrow, and getting ready for bed.  It's annoying to have lost that hour of sleep but so much more pleasant to breathe clean air than smoke.  Plus, meetings don't start until 10am tomorrow, so I'll actually be able to get some sleep.

Oh, and whatever positive energy (and/or SWAT teams) you can send my way would be much appreciated -- there's talk of pushing back the Friday deadline and working through the weekend.  I really, REALLY want to go home for at least a little while this weekend.  Just give me Saturday afternoon and Sunday morning at home and I'll be happy to come back up here and keep plugging away.

Glory be

We got the message late last night that the client's business team would be meeting with senior management in the morning to discuss key terms of the deal.  This meant two things for the lawyers:  First, it meant that we suddenly had a pile of new work to do in preparation for those early meetings -- because naturally the business folks wanted to present something coherent and useful to their bosses, and the task of creating those documents fell to the lawyers.  Sigh.  Second, it meant that there would be little for the lawyers to do during the morning hours while the business team was in meetings -- and for the first time since we got here Saturday morning, they decided that it was okay for us to stay at the hotel and sleep rather than sit in the conference room and wait for them.  YAY!

So I slept like a dead person for eight hours straight.  Then got up, ate a pillow chocolate because I was starving, got dressed for the day and had brunch at Le Pain Quotidien across the street.  Now, feeling like a civilized human being again, I'm heading back over to the war rooms for the next round of adventure. 

It sure does feel good to have had a break!  The key now will be to keep this thing moving enough during the next two days to permit us to go back home to DC for at least part of the weekend...

Think of these as my hotel-dwelling emergency food storage.

Quiche lorraine with lentil soup and lemonade

 

And another

Let's see, I think the hours were 6am until about 1:15am.  I can't wait to tally my billables this week; I'm confident I'll easily break my current record of 86 hours worked in a week.

Today was better than yesterday, in the sense that we were super busy all day -- no sense of twiddling my thumbs.  It was also harder because of the cumulative fatigue.  The whole day was an exercise in not curling up to take a nap on the floor. 

The weird thing is that the business team of the client seems (for the most part) to be loving this.  Think slumber party on steroids -- like, $7 billion worth of steroids.

Another day at the grindstone

We've finished the fourth full day of no-holds-barred negotiations and I sense the honeymoon phase is ending.  Overall I'm still enjoying the experience -- it's different from any other deal I've worked on; it's quite an adventure -- but the pace is starting to wear.  I'm tired of being stuck with only one suit and two shirts, needing a haircut (I was supposed to have it cut on Saturday), and not being able to exercise or eat properly (sitting for sixteen hours at a time with nothing to eat but cookies, honeydew and Diet Coke is not a recipe for health and happiness). 

Mostly I'm just tired.  Today was better than yesterday in the sense that it was a 9am-to-2am workday.  But worse in the sense that most of those hours were wasted through inefficient project-management by the client.  Plus, although I'm getting to bed three hours earlier than I did last night, I also have to be back in the conference room three hours earlier tomorrow morning:  The first meeting kicks off at 6am. 

So, without further ado, I'm going to bed.

But first let me just say that I have a growing horror of a baby-faced little man on the client's in-house legal team whose nose is the only thing in his face that moves when he speaks.  Makes me think of a cross between an expressionless twelve-year-old and a gerbil.

A 9 to 5 job

I just worked a 9 to 5 day. Note that both times were "A.M." (Technically I should say 7 to 5, since I put in a couple if hours at the hotel before the first meeting.) Everything starts again at 9 tomorrow, er, this morning, so I'm off to bed.

New York - A sudden change in plans

At 5:20am I received the following email:  "We're a go.  See you at the airport."  In just over an hour, I was showered, packed and en route to the airport, simultaneously directing the cabbie and leaving messages to cancel my haircut and let Amy know that I wouldn't make it to ballet class.  By 9:30am I was in New York City, sitting in a conference room in one of the major New York law firms. 

Depending on how the next few days go, I'll write more about what I actually did in that conference room later.  For now, you can just click here for some context.

By the time we hit 6:30pm, everyone else in the room was too exhausted to think straight (they were going on 30 hours without sleep), so we adjourned for the day.  My colleagues and I checked into our hotel; we all agreed it was time for dinner and that I should be in charge.  Because that is always the right answer.

By this time it was late enough that most of the best places were already booked for the night.  But I managed to find a Japanese restaurant called Sugiyama that was listed in the Michelin Guide and scored highly in every other food review I found, and which happened to have room for three at 8:15pm.  Did I want to make a reservation?  Yes, please. 

The place is charming and tiny and reminded me very much of Soji down in the Village and Azabu in Paris.  As any civilized restaurant should do, Sugiyama cabined our menu selection to a few pre-fixe dinners.  The others didn't feel strongly, so I ordered the 8-course dinner for all three of us.  Three hours and ten courses later, we stumbled home happy and full and delighted with the delicacies we had enjoyed.

Sakizuke -- tofu appetizer

Zensai -- delicate arrangement of seasonal Japanese fish and vegetable
(I ate that ENTIRE CRAB in one bite. Possibly the bravest thing I've done.)



Takuri -- assorted sashimi
(one of the best overall selections of sashimi I've had)

Suimono -- seasonal clear soup



Ishiyaki -- tenderloin cooked on a hot stone
with mushrooms, a pepper, and garlic chips

Oshinogi -- oshisushi
(The tofu on the left was delicious;
as was the persimmon stuffed with jelly-fish, cucumbers and sesame cream)



I can't remember this one, and it's not on the online menu

 

Sticky rice with vegetables wrapped in a leaf
with miso soup and pickles

Grapefruit wine jelly with cream
(a definite highlight of the evening)

 

Tonight: Modern dance and surprise packing

So.  Lar Lubovitch.  His dance company performed at the Kennedy Center tonight, and I saw it.  This was my first time seeing his work, and I really liked it.  The choreography was beautiful and fun, fairly intense.  Not quite transcendant in the way that Mark Morris was, but still a wonderful artistic treat.

With our season's tickets, Amy and I were ideally placed
to get the full effect of the "dance poster" moments in the
choreography.  Sadly, this is the only photo I could find of a
piece that was on tonight's program.

 
The other thing that happened tonight went as follows (and I paraphrase):

Partner: [calling at 5:30pm on Friday]  Hi.  Do you have time to help on a high-profile project that may be the biggest deal of its sort ever done?  It would entail flying to New York tomorrow morning first thing.

Me:  Umm, okay.

Partner:  Great.  We won't know if we're going until 3:00am.  But you should buy a plane ticket and pack for several days just in case.  If we go, I'll fill you in on the details during the flight.

Thus work resumes its usual pace.  Weekend plans are all now potentially on hold and I'm debating whether I pack everything now, or just pack quickly at 5:30am when the partner will give the yay/nay signal.  The upside is that this this project actually sounds super interesting -- it's the sort of sports media work that I like doing, and it's with one of the more prominent lawyers in the firm.  And with the other deal having just died on Thursday, I seem to have that rare alignment of the stars where I can actually take on a big new project without absolutely killing myself. 

Stay tuned...


 

Three things of note

I.

I got my teeth sanded today.  Didn't bother me too much while it was happening, but now it's totally weirding me out -- first time in my life that I've had space between my bottom teeth* and been a vampire at the same time.  How do I know I'm a vampire?  Because (a) I was bitten by vampire pajamas two months ago and didn't die, and (b) my teeth are now sharp and things get stuck between them.  Seriously, I'm starting to think that the vampire's traditional all-liquid diet may have more to do with oral hygiene than monstrosity.

* It's so the teeth will have room to move when I get Invisalign next month.

II.

The M&A deal that I had been working on -- and which had so effectively shut down my personal life and disrupted my vacation the past couple of weeks -- died a quick and decisive death.  Ding dong, the witch deal is dead!  Which means my life instantly became more sane.  I get to catch up on the other work projects that had been pushed to the margins, and I can start restoring some of my extracurricular activities.  Yay!

III.

I learned that mud-wrestling women, even in the context of a play as delightful as A Midsummer Night's Dream, is a baffling and unpleasant thing.  Such a mess!  Why do guys think it's a turn-on?  The rest of the play, which was put on by the Shakespeare Theatre Company, was excellent.  Puck (played by one of my favorite local actors) was properly impish, and Bottom (a newcomer to the STC, I think) was one of the strongest and most hilarious actors I've seen in that role -- in fact, the whole ragtag theatre troupe of workmen really stole the show.  How nice to see a show without feeling guilty for skipping out on work or fearing a slew of demanding emails waiting for me back at the office afterwards!

Inaugural concert of the Rubenstein Family Organ

Q:  What did the billionnaire philanthropist call himself after giving an incredibly expensive organ to the Kennedy Center?

A:  An organ donor [chuckle, chuckle]

Said organ was unveiled today for its debut public performance.  My friend Jennifer (another Kennedy Center alum) managed to get special tickets and brought me as her plus one (her husband is in Afghanistan).   The program featured the National Symphony Orchestra (and members of the orchestra playing solo or in small ensembles) and, as you might imagine, everything involved the organ somehow.

The concert opened, inevitably, with Bach's Toccata and Fugue in D minor (BWV 565).  It's the first time I've heard it performed live on an organ this size, and it was awesome -- those pedal notes will shake your bones every time.  Of course, I couldn't help thinking of the orchestral arrangement that the Philadelphia Orchestra played for Disney's Fantasia (though the original organ-only version is much better, as far as I'm concerned).



The middle of the concert had a random trombone/organ duet (snooze) and an organ/brass choir ensemble number (rad), and concluded, as inevitably as it began, with the Sain-Saens Symphony No. 3, which is called the "Organ Symphony" because it incorporates the organ into the full 90-piece orchestra. 

Now, I say that the Toccata and Fugue and the Organ Symphony were "inevitable" because they're some of the best known organ repertoire out there.  They're wonderful pieces of music and everyone knows them -- so it made perfect sense to me that they would be featured in a concert that was open to the public and designed to get people excited about the instrument.  Apparently not everyone appreciated this populist gesture, however.  Here's my favorite exchange of the evening:

Me: [happily] Oh look, they're playing the Organ Symphony!

Jennifer: [sarcastically] That's because it's the only thing there is for organ and orchestra.

Random eavesdropping guy sitting next to us: [very emotionally] That is NOT TRUE!  There is SO MUCH MORE organ music out there, and it is MUCH better than the Saint-Saens. [sniff] Believe me, the Saint-Saens is SUCH a cliche.

Seriously, dude needed to get a grip -- I couldn't tell if he was about to cry or smack us, or both!  So I played into it and admiringly asked him if he was an organist (no, just an enthusiast) and if he could please educate us on what all the best organ music was.  The concert soon started and he spent the whole time playing with his iPhone (apparently recording the concert and sending recordings to people in real time), so I returned the favor and spent the rest of the concert judging him for being an organ enthusiast with extremely poor concert etiquette.  What goes around comes around, mon ami.

In any event, the concert was nice and blessedly short (only an hour!).  Afterwards Jennifer and I went upstairs to the fancy reception that was thrown in honor of the Rubensteins and other major donors, so I got to hobnob with the rich and (not very) famous as well as see a bunch of my friends who still work at the Kennedy Center.  A fun excursion on a worknight!

Mr. Organ Donor himself, with the NSO and the organ behind him.

Las Vegas - Ash Meadows National Wildlife Refuge

One of the best parts about visiting Las Vegas is having the chance to see firsthand some of the natural marvels of the southeastern United States.  Last year we visited Death Valley, with its geographic superlatives (lowest, driest, hottest point in North America); this year we set our sights on Ash Meadow National Wildlife Refuge, a biological rockstar in a neighboring valley. 
 

Biological rockstar?  I admit I was skeptical at first, too.  I mean, at first glance, the place appeared to be as desolate and barren as the rest of the terrain we'd passed on the two-hour drive from Las Vegas.  But as improbable as it seemed, the place turned out to be teeming with crazy, unusual life.  Starting out 10,000 years ago as a region of large lakes and rivers, this part of Nevada gradually dried out into the desert we know today.  During that process, the creatures that lived in those lakes and rivers had to adapt to a new life in the harsh environtment of rock crevices and quick-drying streams.  The result?  Pretty cool:

Ash Meadows has the greatest concentration of endemic life [i.e., species that are found here and nowhere else on earth] in the United States and second greatest of all in North America.  At least 26 endemic species have adapted to live in and around the waters of Ash Meadows. (From the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service brochure)

The most famous of these species are four varieties of pupfish that live in the handful of pools and springs that dot the valley.  After a quick stop at the visitors' center to get a map and a friendly explanation, we set out to find these special fish.

CRYSTAL SPRINGS

Crystal Springs was our first stop, and there we caught our first glimpse of Ash Meadows Amargosa pupfish.  They swam in the shallows of the streambed, feeding on the dark-green algae.  We could see them flashing green and blue from our perch on a stream-side boardwalk, but the distance was too great to get any clear photos.  What you can gather from these photos is the lovely shock of stunning, crystal-clear springwater bubbling so refreshingly to the surface of an otherwise inhospitable land.

A mistletoe-like parasitic plant growing on a mesquite tree.

The head of the spring -- crystal clear water welled up from below.

 

DEVILS HOLE

Devils Hole is a tiny (smaller than my apartment) body of water that lies at the bottom of a deep crevasse and is the only place on earth where the Devils Hole pupfish lives.  The fish are extremely endangered (there are only 90 of them left) and became famous in the 1970s when they were the subject of a Supreme Court decision (Cappaert v. United States) that prevented commercial development of the neighboring land  in order to preserve sufficient water levels in Devils Hole to prevent the fish's extinction.

The place was cordoned off
like Fort Knox, so here's a stock
photo of the fish.

Also, in the "it's a small world" department, would you believe that an earthquake in Mexico could have dramatic effects on this pool?  Turns out the answer is yes, and scientists just happened to be on-site to capture the tsunami event on video. 



(Sadly, as cool as this is from a seismological perspective, the disruption caused by the waves is believed to have hurt the fishes' feeding and spawning -- their population is down from before.)


KING'S POOL AT POINT OF ROCKS

King's Pool is another spring not far from Devils Hole.  The paths here allowed us to get right to the edge of the water, which permitted great viewing of the fish.

There they are!  The males are blue, the females green.

An ash tree, for which the meadows are named.

In these holes Native American women ground the seeds
of the screwbean mesquite tree into flour.

CASA DON JUAN

In keeping with the day's southwestern theme, we went to Casa Don Juan's for a delicious dinner of authentic Mexican food.

Flautas de pollo con arroz, frijoles, guacamole y crema

Las Vegas - Happy Thanksgiving

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone!  We had a great, low-key day here in Las Vegas.  I got up early for a 50-mile bike ride through the canyons, and then the parents and I spent the rest of the day preparing and eating a delicious, traditional Thanksgiving dinner, watching Jane Eyre, snacking on left-overs, and Skyping with distant family. 

I always appreciate this opportunity to reflect on all that I'm thankful for -- good health, a sound mind, a job to support myself, and so many wonderful friends and family that make it all worth it.  The more things I list, the more things I want to add to the list.  That's the magic of gratitude -- it changes the way you see the world; it makes everything so much better.

Blue Diamond Highway
There were signs indicating where the scenic route started and stopped.
I tended to ignore those signs...

A Thanksgiving feast for three