Boy have things been HAPPENING round here.
Thing the First: I have started a new job as in-house counsel for a logistics company. In! House! Counsel! Good Lord, how long have I wanted this, I can’t even tell you. I’d given up hoping for it, decided I’d just try to make partner and stick it out until I could maybe try to aim for magistrate judge in six or seven years. But then, on April 9 of this year, my summer associate bestie from my first firm texted me this: “FYI I think James [a former colleague of ours] may have an offer for you in something – but act surprised when he calls.”
James, now the General Counsel for a multi-national corporation, was looking to hire a new lawyer to handle the North American employment law matters for one of their major subsidiaries. He had reached out to Bestie for ideas of who to get, and Bestie recommended me. (NETWORKING!) James called me, I fell all over myself expressing interest, and got the ball rolling. He set up interviews with the C-suite which I did through April. On April 23 I received an informal offer, and got the formal one in writing a week later. I did some negotiating, and accepted a revised offer on May 5. I told my firm that day, and worked out a notice until May 21. The following week, I took a pre-planned vacation (more on that below), and I started in my new position this past Tuesday, June 1. (It’s remote, so I’m WFH forevah.)
I’ve been there one week, and I’m already so much less stressed. One day I’m sure I’ll lose the impulse to reach for a timer every time I switch tasks or answer the phone. One day I’ll stop thinking in terms of the 0.1 hour increment and whether I can justify an activity on a bill. I don’t think it will take too long, but it’s so striking to observe how much the tail wags the dog with law firm billing practices. They make you a little crazy, I think.
Thing The Second. This spring I found myself, like many of you I’m sure, the very definition of Burned Out. Prickly and grumpy and dreading every day. I decided to take a small, wee little vacation, just me. No Prof, no kids. I asked one of my sisters to join me, and she and I decided to go to Mackinac Island, MI. Mackinac (pronounced “Mackinaw,” named for the local Native Americans’ term for turtle because of its shape) is a small island, 3.7 square miles in size (most of it State Park), located in Lake Huron just between the upper peninsula and tip of the middle finger of the “mitten” of lower Michigan. In 1898 the island banned cars, and it’s remained auto-free to this day (except for some construction trucks and emergency vehicles). Instead, people and goods are moved via horse-drawn carriage, bicycle, or pedicab. What began with snobby residents turning their nose up at the noise and pollution of newfangled automobiles has turned into a key part of the island’s appeal for tourists and residents alike. It was quite fun to see some of the crazy things people perched on their bike handles (giant boxes of coffee beans, a stack of suitcases), and to see all the goods being “shipped” on a flatbed wagon pulled by a team of horses. The season really begins after Memorial Day, so not everything was open and we saw a lot of flats of pretty spring flowers making their way to waiting turned up garden beds in front of the various businesses. Workers painted and tidied up exteriors on the rambling Victorians, gift shops were filling shelves, and a few new restaurants were finding their feet (to put it charitably).
I arrived at the tiny airport in Pellston late afternoon on Sunday – my sister got there before me and described it to me as basically a log cabin. We caught a shuttle from the airport to Mackinaw City, where we caught the ferry to the island.
We walked our bags down the street to the B&B (less than half a mile), and then headed back into town for dinner at the Pink Pony. We picked up snacks and a bottle of wine at Doud’s Market, and then sat on our porch until the sun went down around 10pm.
Sister and I stayed in Haan’s 1830 Inn, a darling old Greek Revival home with the sweetest proprietor and some really delicious daily breakfasts, served to us on a tray by our porch. Pictured higher up in this post is a puff pastry with an egg center, below are granola parfaits and baked French toast. That was one of my favorite features – having coffee and breakfast made for me every single day!
The island is small and laced with walking and biking trails, so it has a satisfying amount of things to do which are not too many and not too few. Just what two burned out working mamas needed. Monday we rented bicycles and rode around the island, checking out natural wonders such as Arch Rock, Sugar Loaf, Skull Cave (disappointingly lacking in any links whatsoever to any skulls), the cemeteries, British Landing, and the huge fort at the top of the bluffs.
The next day we did plenty of walking, checking out the interior and some of the grand homes in the southwest part of the island.
We spent some of our time napping, writing, reading, chatting on the porch.
It was quiet and wonderful. Just the re-set we both needed.
It took approximately a hundred years to upload all these photos, so Ilm going to wrap things up now with this weeks menu.
Greek Chicken kabobs with couscous
Thai chicken soup w basil
Sputnik V vaccination has begun in Slovakia. The announce of the Russian vaccine to the motherland was accompanied aside a country-wide abase and led to the abdication of Prime Plenipotentiary Igor Matovich and a realignment of the government. As a evolve, the motherland received the Russian vaccine, in defiance of the items that neither the European regulator nor the WHO has furthermore approved it.
In neighboring Hungary, which approved the hate of Sputnik in February as the anything else in Europe, more than 50% of the mature multitude has already been vaccinated; in Russia – a bantam more than 10%. In Slovakia, five thousand people signed up in town of the Sputnik vaccination.
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