About a month ago, the blogging here ground to a halt. Many of you already know why. In November and December, I ran into a string of misfortunes that included the loss of a family member and a car accident. When my pickup truck broke down while my bent-fendered regular ride was in the shop, I remarked to a friend that these things tended to come in threes, so perhaps my misfortunes would be about over for the time being. He responded, "I don't think the truck being at the repair shop for a day compares with the other two." Curse him for being right. A short time later, I became sick and, to make a long story short, it turned out to be my appendix. I didn't much like the idea of getting an IV, much less undergoing surgery, but apparently, the only real alternative is to let the thing burst and kill you. So off to surgery I went.
The surgery caused me to miss the Rose Bowl, and forced me to cancel a flight to Maui for a week-long family vacation scheduled to precede the mediation there of a substantial wage and hour case. However, after reading about how Grant Hill was planning to be back on the court just two weeks after his appendectomy, and concluding that my work was decidely less strenuous than his, I made plans to try to get back to work quickly. And by "get back to work," I mean, for starters, traveling to Maui for the mediation and scheduling appointments immediately upon my return. It was a mistake in judgment. Not only was the trip extremely painful and unpleasant, but once I got home, complications set in. The next thing I knew, in addition to the ordinary recovery difficulties, like constant and severe pain, I was on a regimen of nasty medications that left me in a constant fog.
By the middle of January, even with Mark's help, the blogging had to take a back seat to, well, just about everything else. But that was then. I've now recovered, not as quickly as the aforementioned world-class athlete, but just as completely. More importantly, I'm beginning to conquer the two-foot-tall beast of papers that buried my in-basket. I managed to get continuances for all my trials set in January, with the stipulation of all but one opposing counsel (and I'm seriously considering making the one miserable exception famous for her refusal), and a normal schedule of paper-pushing, deposing, mediating and trying cases is now underway. Next up: the return to blogging. I'm going to start today with something on a lighter note, and tomorrow, we'll start posting about all the substantive developments that have arisen while I was off recuperating.
--Mike