« November 2004 | Main | January 2005 »
December 30, 2004
Tsunami Relief
The latest death toll from the December 26 earthquake and tsunami is 120,000. At the rate it's climbing and with the high risk of disease in the disaster area, it might reach as high as 200,000 before it's over.
While nothing we do can replace these lives, we can help the survivors stay healthy and rebuild. President Bush has promised $35 million as a down payment on aid, but we all know it's going to take more. Write your Congress critters if you want to spur more government action, but you can take some direct action as well. While the Red Cross is far from my favorite NGO/charity, in international disaster relief, they're the main player and will use any donations pretty well.
If you want to make a Red Cross donation, Amazon has set up a page to make it easy. When I first saw it yesterday it was at $900,000. When I looked this morning, it was at $4,279,442 and climbing, and that was from only 71,000 donations -- about $60 per donor. Given how many of us do our Christmas shopping there, hitting ten times that amount does not seem unrealistic.
So, if this seems reasonable to you, give, and spread the word.
Blog by Dan | Permalink | Comments (0)
December 26, 2004
Happy Boxing Day!
Tinfoil Beanie by Dan | Permalink | Comments (0)
December 22, 2004
YATU finale
My family is home.
Merry Christmas!
Blog by Dan | Permalink | Comments (4)
December 21, 2004
YATU redux
Tommy lost about 90g on Monday, but after the 300g gain on Sunday, the docs were forgiving. They'll want to see a gain on Tuesday, but I'm worried. The feedings on Monday and Tuesday have been getting harder, so I fear we may see another slight loss on the Wednesday morning measurement. Even then, I may push to have him discharged. All we're using the hospital for at this point is the daily weighings, and I believe we might have better luck getting Tommy to eat more in the familiar environment of home. He can get weighed at the doctor's office, or if nothing else, I believe I can rent an appropriate scale from a medical supply company.
I just want to bring my family home.
Blog by Dan | Permalink | Comments (2)
December 20, 2004
YATU: Yet Another Tommy Update
All around good news this time. Tommy gained 300 grams Sunday, so he didn't have to get a feeding tube today. If he gains at least 30 grams (yes, just 10% of Sunday's gain), both today and tomorrow, he might be released on Wednesday. My only worry on the measurements is that the required gain is in the noise. A single wet diaper constitutes a 30 to 90 gram loss, so we have to shoot for a 100-200 gram gain. As a result, we're feeding him like crazy with six daily meals in the 175-250 gram range. He's starting to resist, and I sometimes think that each spoonful is offering the stuffed Monty Python diner a "waaafer thin mint".
Also, both MAW and Sammy have gotten over their fevers. She spent about five hours down at the Brackenridge ER, but I think it was good for her. If nothing else, it was five hours that she could just relax, knowing that I was taking care of Tommy. (Cue the cries of "My God -- Dan can't take care of a baby!!!")
So, it's back to the hospital tomorrow for at least the morning. That way I can be there when the doctors make their rounds. If all is on track, I can then pop back to the office in the afternoon.
Blog by Dan | Permalink | Comments (2)
December 19, 2004
More Tommy news...
Tommy got off the IV late Saturday, and with some medication has been keeping food down, so we’re doing our best to fill him up with food with a target of 1600 calories a day. (I believe sedentary adults are supposed to target 2000 calories.) The problem is that just overnight w/o the IV, he lost a little weight, so we’ve had to really push the foods to try to get him to hold his weight or gain weight. If he keeps losing weight with just eating (no IV, etc.), then he cannot come home. The big question is going to be what his weight is Monday morning. If he has gained weight, then we might be able to bring him home as early as Monday or Tuesday. At least that’s what I’m guessing. The hospital staff has been very non-committal. However, if he has lost more weight, they’re going to put him on a feeding tube and will likely keep him in the hospital through Christmas. I’m going to try to get down there very early in the morning to make sure he gets another good meal before the official weight check.
The big wrinkle to all this is that MAW, who has been staying with Tommy at the hospital, is now quite sick. She went in with symptoms of a head-cold, but is now coughing a lot and was running a 103 fever as I left tonight. I have similar symptoms, but much lighter, and my temp is yet to crack 100, so I’m crossing my fingers and taking lots of drugs. I’m hoping it’s the flu because all the kids have had the flu vaccine. On the other hand, Sammy (our eldest) has been running a fever all weekend, so it could be something else entirely.
The main problem is that MAW is now too weak to really manage Tommy’s care and feedings. When I asked her for an update this morning, she told me that a doctor had come by but she couldn’t remember what the doctor had said. So, I’m going to need to spend the bulk of Monday at the hospital. If nothing else, it will let MAW go down to the ER to see a doctor for herself. She has a history of lung problems, but she won’t leave Tommy without me there.
Blog by Dan | Permalink | Comments (1)
December 18, 2004
Another Tommy Update
It was a mixed day for Tommy. He had to go back on the IV for a while in the morning but was then taken off. The new IV location is in his scalp, and he's not trying to pull at it, so at least he's not in restraints anymore. That alone has significantly improved his disposition.
The problem is that they want to get a lot of calories into him, and he's refusing the high-calorie formula. A good sign is just how much strength he has to fight taking the formula. It took both MAW and I to even attempt it, and I don't think we got more than a single cc into him. It's not just us giving up easily. A nurse had tried to get it to him and gave up with the comment, "If the doctor wants him to take this formula, she can come give it to him herself."
The good news is that the docs say he's stable enough to just try to feed him what he usually eats and see how it goes. Kimm had been visiting, and she went out to buy some of Tommy's food, and he ate about 140 calories worth of fruit and rice cereal and kept it down for at least two hours. I'm presuming he kept it down permanently, but that's all the information I have. MAW is very tired, so I'm trying not to call when she might be sleeping.
Today I brought Catherine and Grandpa with me, and it was good for her to see her mommy and her brother, but she's too much of a handful to keep track of in that environment. I'll be going back tomorrow, but I'll be going alone.
Blog by Dan | Permalink | Comments (1)
December 17, 2004
Tommy Update
My son Tommy is now off the IV, which I'm interpreting as good news. There's still no word on when he'll be released or even what conditions they're waiting for, but at least they're going to see how he fares on just trying to eat.
Blog by Dan | Permalink | Comments (0)
December 16, 2004
Tommy is in the hospital
My 14-month-old son Tommy is in the hospital. He's been vomitting off and on for a little over two months, and it eventually got so bad that he became significantly dehydrated and also lost about two pounds.
He is now stable, though he's still weak and very uncomfortable with the IV and the restraints that are keeping him from pulling it out. We're now going through a series of tests to diagnose what's causing the vomitting, since no one thinks it's just a persistant stomach virus anymore. I suspect he'll be in the hospital until they get a diagnosis, and that will take at least a few days.
Any of you Austinites (downtowners especially) who want to visit MAW at the hospital, get hold of me for the particulars.
For the rest of you, any prayers, mojo, or cosmic influence would be appreciated.
Blog by Dan | Permalink | Comments (2)
December 13, 2004
Thank you faithful readers...
I just wanted to thank my faithful readers, who in five short months have made DanAmongDen.Net the 146,486th most popular site on the web.
Oh boy... 146,486th. I feel so... so... man, you guys suck. Couldn't you at least have gotten me into the top 100,000? Jesus H "Super Savings" Christ! I ought to fire you all. [Note: this paragraph uses the <sarcasm> tag which is not supported by all browsers.]
Hat tip to Adam for passing it on.
Blog by Dan | Permalink | Comments (0)
Timewarp!
In case you're having a hard time with the caption:
Scientists from the RAND Corporation have created this model to illustrate how a "home computer" could look like in the year 2004. However the needed technology will not be economically feasible for the average home. Also the scientists readily admit that the computer will require not yet invented technology to actually work, but 50 years from now scientific progress is expected to solve these problems. With teletype interface and the Fortran language, the computer will be easy to use.
Technology by Dan | Permalink | Comments (2)
December 12, 2004
Warrior Quiz
It's a silly little quiz, but the resulting graphics are nice.
You are a Vengeful Warrior. Someone or something
that was very close was hurt and now you want
revenge. You will let no one stop you.
What kind of Warrior are You?
brought to you by Quizilla
Meme by Dan | Permalink | Comments (0)
Ster-i-lize!
Tinfoil Beanie by Dan | Permalink | Comments (0)
Diamond season
We're getting into the peak diamond season, so I had to share:
Warning: A friend of mine bought his wife a $9,000 diamond ring for their tenth wedding anniversary. He did not get these results.
Tinfoil Beanie by Dan | Permalink | Comments (0)
December 11, 2004
ISP Rant!
MUST... NOT... NUKE...TECH SUPPORT...
I had a little trouble with my internet connection today.
What is it about calling up on tech support for your internet connection that implicitly states, "I am a complete idiot and will lie to you about the details of my problem"? I'd like to know, because everytime I call in, that's the kind of treatment I get.
What makes matters worse is that the connectivity in my area is spotty. I get great signal strength, so that's not the problem. Just somewhere up the line things get flakey. So, I get connection loss a lot, maybe once a week. Usually all I have to do is reset the cable modem, and then everything is fine, but about once a month, I have to call up tech support.
And that's when the trouble starts. For starters, today I had to wait on hold for about twenty minutes. Every couple of minutes a recording popped up explaining to me that if I was having conflicts between Microsoft Outlook and Norton AntiVirus where you were unable to access certain mail messages, I could follow these simple directions for disabling virus checking on my email. Oh yeah, now that's a good idea.
Eventually, I got through to a human being. At least I think it was. Considering the level of help I actually got, it's possible it was a good Eliza program. I explained that I had already reset the cable modem, and of course, she asked me to reset my cable modem. See what I mean about assuming I must be lying to them?
Well, I was prepared to humor her, so I did it anyway. When it came up again with the same fault showing on the "cable" light, I explained to her that this kind of thing happens all the time, and that it's not a problem at my end but a problem further up the line. She proceeded to query me on just how I had reset the modem. Once she was satisfied with my explanation, she asked me what IP address I was being assigned.
IP address? Like, you know, the thing I would get if I didn't have a fault on the cable line? Again, I humored her. I logged into my router and read off the IP address.
"That's not one of our addresses. Are you sure you're reading the right one?"
"Yes, I'm sure, and I know it's not one of your addresses. DHCP doesn't work if the underlying packet transport if failing."
I point out again that this kind of thing happens frequently, and I ask if she could please check to see if there was a problem in the area. She says she hadn't heard of any problems. I suggest that I might have just been the first to call in. She puts me on hold for a moment before telling me she isn't aware of any problems in my area. I even offer to go to the neighbors to see if their connection was also down, but she demurrs.
Then she's wondering if I have the signal strength, and I point out that the installer and one other guy who had to come out on a service call both went on and on about the incredibly high signal strength I had. Fearing problems in this, I had even told the installer guy to bring an amplification unit, which we chose not to install as it would be overkill.
Then she starts asking about my wiring. Now, remember, it's not like I was a way for six months and came back to find my Internet disconnected. No, I had been using it actively and then *POOF* it was gone. Nothing happened at that moment. No lightning strikes, no meteor strikes, no upper atmosphere EMP's. I pointed out how astronomically unlikely it was for my wiring to have suddenly failed for no reason, compared to the near constant problem of their network fouling up. Mind you, I was still being polite, just pointing out the mathematics of the situation. MAW was there, but she'll probably talk about the edge in my voice and how the veins in my forehead were about to burst.
Undeterred by my amazing recitation of history, logic, and probabilities, my tormentor helpful technician asked if there were any splitters upstream from my modem. (Clearly she was still after the signal strength issue.) I admitted that yes, there was one AND ONLY ONE splitter involved. She asked if I could try to bypass the splitter.
Now, let me say a little something about the wiring in my house, because I am both extremely proud of it and extremely frustrated with it. My goal was to have everything setup in a single closet dedicated to the wiring. Every telecommunications wire, from phone to cable to network, would be a single, direct run from the closet to its source or destination. There would be no connections hidden away in walls or attics. Nothing would ever "get loose" in an inaccessible spot. I even put extra ventilation in that closet so that I could host servers in there without worrying about the heat problem.
And I pretty much got what I wanted. The only problem was that the assholes lazy dipshits incompetant boobs wiring technicians who installed it did not follow my instructions on how to terminate everything in the wiring closet. I told them that I wanted it all layed out on a breadboard so that it was all easily accessible and that most changes could be made by the use of patch cables. Well, they must have figured that I wouldn't know the difference or that "no one does that kind of thing in a house", so they just dumped it all into a cramped metal box and just bundled up the connections wire-to-wire, cable-to-cable, with it all hanging in there loose.
So, when the ever-helpful technician from COX wanted me to bypass the splitter, it involved squeezing into the closet, opening up this metal box, sorting through the bundle of wires and connections, and identifying the one splitter and its input cable. Now, if it weren't for the fact that I desparately needed the internet connection back for some work I was doing "at the office", I would have just hung up and waited for an hour to see if things had sorted themselves out, but I needed it. So I got in there, worked it all out and connected the main source cable directly into the modem and reset it, and...
Drumroll please....
And there was still a fault on the cable light. I assured her that there was no equipment between my modem and their equipment outside the house. Well, now she admits that maybe it might be their problem and wants to schedule a truck to come out. Hopefully, she says, she can schedule it for today. I bite my tongue because their actual field technicians have generally proven to be very savvy, and I knew that one of them would be able to spot the problem immediately and fix it.
But first, the technician notes that I don't have "COX Wiring Insurance" on my account and that any problems the field guy finds in the wiring in my home will cost money to fix. Now, maybe this insurance is a decent idea if the cable was retrofitted into a fifty-year-old house with water damage, but in a two-year-old house with overengineered wiring and an owner who knows what he's doing, it makes no sense at all. It's just a $3/month extortion that will never pay for itself. Still... "Before I schedule the technician, would you like to add this insurance to your account?"
Ok, go with me here. She's still pushing the theory that the problem is in my wiring, but if she really believed that, then why on Earth is she offering to let me convert a $400 wiring charge into a single month's $3 insurance premium? That's like offering a good deal on life insurance to an 90-year old with lung cancer and a heart condition!! But I digress.
"No thank you. I am fairly confident that the problem is not in the wiring for my house. If it is, I will accept that risk."
So now, after about an hour from the time I first picked up the phone, she starts writing up the trouble ticket to schedule a field technician. I'm on hold for a few minutes, still cramped into the wiring closet, not wanting to move lest I lose track of which cable is which. Eventually she comes back on and says that she's forwarded it on to the supervisor and will know shortly when the field technician will be scheduled. I tell her I'm putting the splitter back into the arrangement, and I get started. She puts me back on hold.
I've just gotten the last coax on and tightened -- not just finger-tightened but wrench-tightened -- when she comes back on.
"Do you have the schedule yet?"
"I just got back the note from my supervisor. He'd like you to try to reset the modem again."
Now, on the one hand, I wanted to reach through the phone and strangle her (difficult on a cordless), but on the other hand, I had already unplugged the modem during the most recent cable switch. So I plugged it back in, and... and...
A GREEN CABLE LIGHT!! Halelujah! Halelujah! Halelujah!
For a split second I wondered if I'd been wrong about her. Maybe the problem was in my wiring after all? Had one of the cables been loose, even though I needed the wrench to disconnect them? Had my act of restringing the cables solidified a connection that had just recently become flakey? Was I, in fact, an idiot who had been unknowingly lying to her the entire time?
But the moment passed. "Tell me, just what did your supervisor say?"
"He said he'd checked something and wanted you to 'try it now'."
"He changed something?"
"Yes, I think so. There might have been a problem in your area."
"A problem in my area." The words echoed from half an hour ago. "Well, it's working now."
I spotchecked a couple of computers to confirm that the packets were flowing and started wrapping things up. Part of me wanted to take her back through the steps, pointing out that I had known from the very beginning that the problem was on their side, and that I had told her this repetitively, but that she had ignored me. I wanted to show her how she had wasted both my time and hers, when all she really needed to do was write up the ticket and have her supervisor push whatever magic button he'd pushed to fix it. Mostly, I suppose I wanted an apology for having been treated like an idiot who would lie about the problem in some perverse scheme to get it fixed faster.
But I knew I wasn't going to get it, so I just thanked her for her time and ended the call. Closing up the wiring box was another ordeal, one which has me very close to hiring a professional wiring guy to come redo that closet the way it was supposed to be done. And then I went back to my work.
Now, maybe the other 99% of their callers are idiots, and they have to take those precautions to avoid dispatching repair vans out to someone who will say, "But why should the cable be connected? My laptop has a wireless network card." But I'm not that guy. I'm the guy who knows more about the network than you. I'm the guy who might even know more about the network than your boss. I'm the guy who should get to call in on the Red Phone.
But there is no red phone.
So I sit here in dread, awaiting the next time I have to call, knowing that the first thing they will say is, "I understand, sir, but could you try resetting it again?"
Narrative /Technology by Dan | Permalink | Comments (3)
December 10, 2004
Friday Five: My born-again passport
Today's question comes from Gord:
If you could choose five nationalities to be born into in your next five lives, which ones would you choose?
- The United States of America: Yes, that's where I was born this time around, but gosh durnit, it's an awfully nice place to live, even during the quadrennial stampede to Canada.
- Australia: From what I've seen so far, it's Texas with better accents.
- Japan: For once, it would be nice to watch anime on TV without the feeling that I'm watching the edited version and maybe even understand it. Plus, I've always had a thing for for Japanese women. (Of course, in that next life, I'd probably lust for American blondes.)
- The Free Republic of Mars: Hey, if one of those lives is far enough into the future, I'd just as soon escape Earth altogether and spend my winters skiing the slopes of Olympus Mons.
- France: While I rarely have a good word for this bunch of cheese-eating surrender-monkeys, I have to give grudging respect to the nation that gave us the term "menage a trois".
Meme by Dan | Permalink | Comments (0)
December 09, 2004
Lego Clock
Here's a fellow who's made a 7-foot tall grandfather clock completely out of Lego parts.
And it works! It uses a weight driven pendulum to drive the gears and can run for about 13 hours before the weight needs to be reset.
Be patient. It looks like the site is being Slashdotted.
Blog by Dan | Permalink | Comments (1)
December 08, 2004
Zoom Quilt
Here's a really interesting art project called the Zoom Quilt. You can zoom in forever, seeing a range of images that look like a mix of Escher, Dali, and a pint of absinthe. Here's a captured, lo-res sample:
(another hat-tip to The Keeper)
Blog by Dan | Permalink | Comments (1)
Canada Busy Sending Back Bush-Dodgers
The flood of American liberals sneaking across the border into Canada has intensified in the past week, sparking calls for increased patrols to stop the illegal immigration. The re-election of President Bush is prompting the exodus among left-leaning citizens who fear they'll soon be required to hunt, pray and agree with Bill O'Reilly.
Canadian border farmers say it's not uncommon to see dozens of sociology professors, animal-rights activists and Unitarians crossing their fields at night.
"I went out to milk the cows the other day, and there was a Hollywood producer huddled in the barn," said Manitoba farmer Red Greenfield, whose acreage borders North Dakota. The producer was cold, exhausted and hungry. "He asked me if I could spare a latte and some free-range chicken. When I said I didn't have any, he left. Didn't even get a chance to show him my screenplay, eh?"
In an effort to stop the illegal aliens, Greenfield erected higher fences, but the liberals scaled them. So he tried installing speakers that blare Rush Limbaugh across the fields.
"Not real effective," he said. "The liberals still got through, and Rush annoyed the cows so much they wouldn't give milk."
Officials are particularly concerned about smugglers who meet liberals near the Canadian border, pack them into Volvo station wagons, drive them across the border and leave them to fend for themselves.
"A lot of these people are not prepared for rugged conditions," an Ontario border patrolman said. "I found one carload without a drop of drinking water. They did have a nice little Napa Valley cabernet, though."
When liberals are caught, they're sent back across the border, often wailing loudly that they fear retribution from conservatives. Rumors have been circulating about the Bush administration establishing re-education camps in which liberals will be forced to drink domestic beer and watch NASCAR.
In the days since the election, liberals have turned to sometimes-ingenious ways of crossing the border. Some have taken to posing as senior citizens on bus trips to buy cheap Canadian prescription drugs. After catching a half-dozen young vegans disguised in powdered wigs, Canadian immigration authorities began stopping buses and quizzing the supposed senior-citizen passengers.
"If they can't identify the accordion player on The Lawrence Welk Show, we get suspicious about their age," an official said.
Canadian citizens have complained that the illegal immigrants are creating an organic-broccoli shortage and renting all the good Susan Sarandon movies.
"I feel sorry for American liberals, but the Canadian economy just can't support them," an Ottawa resident said. "How many art-history majors does one country need?"
In an effort to ease tensions between the United States and Canada, Vice President Dick Cheney met with the Canadian ambassador and pledged that the administration would take steps to reassure liberals, a source close to Cheney said.
"We're going to have some Peter, Paul & Mary concerts. And we might put some endangered species on postage stamps. The president is determined to reach out."
(Hat-tip to The Keeper.)
Politics /Tinfoil Beanie by Dan | Permalink | Comments (2)
December 07, 2004
A rather different December 7th anniversary...
Today is December 7, 2004. Most Americans will think of today in terms of the 63rd anniversary of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. A few (including my parents) will think of it as the day before their wedding anniversary – a bachelor party which will live in infamy. Me? Well, I think of it as the anniversary of an event twenty years ago today, the theatrical release of 2010. It’s not as dorky as it sounds, really!
Thanksgiving in 1984 was early, one of the few years when we remember that Thanksgiving is the fourth Thursday of November, not the last Thursday. We had the traditional family gathering out at my aunt’s house, less than a mile from the ancestral family farm. Now, my aunt cooks a great turkey, so by no means do I mean to impugn her cooking skills in this story. However, my piece of turkey had a little extra ingredient, something special just for me: a parasite.
I didn’t realize this, of course, not at first. I just hung out and watched the Cowboys beat New England 20 to 17 in a tryptophan-induced haze – and I was feeling pretty sleepy myself. However, by Sunday I was tethered to the toilet and piling up empty bottles of Kaopectate like beer cans at a frat house. I was a junior in high school, and I tried to go to school on Monday, but I didn’t even last to lunchtime. Though I was not running a fever, I was dehydrated and weak. Pretty much anything that went into me, solid or liquid, came running out my back end within an hour or two.
Over the course of the next week, I was in and out of the doctor’s. At age seventeen, I was still seeing my pediatrician, and this was a little beyond him, I think. Still, he figured out it was a parasite that had settled into my colon, and that it was commonly found it turkey. He couldn’t do much for me, but at least we knew what it was. By the next Monday, the 3rd, the parasite appeared to be gone and I was starting to hang on to my meals long enough to digest them. However, I had lost fifteen of my 155 pounds and was still very weak, barely unable to stand unassisted. The word from the doctor was that I would likely need another week or two of bed rest before I could resume light activities.
More troubling, however, was the word from school. As usual, I had been slacking off, continuing a trend since the fourth grade when I threw away a 4.0 GPA upon discovering that there were intellectual pursuits beyond school. In this particular case, I had been really slacking off in Pre-Calculus. My mother had called the school to have my assignments brought home, and I “overheard” her talking to my math teacher, Mr. Wolgehagen. (Hey, phone taps count as an intellectual pursuit!) He suggested that since I was likely to fall so far behind, I should just drop out of the honors section since I wasn’t doing very well anyway.
Frankly, that pissed me off. How dare he make such an assumption? Sure, I’d been goofing off, not learning the material, failing to turn in homework, and doing poorly on tests, but that didn’t mean I was a bad student. Well, ok, it did mean I was a bad student, but that didn’t mean I couldn’t cut it, just that I hadn’t chosen to do so. I was lazy, not stupid.
So, I sat there in my sickbed, cracked open that trigonometry textbook and got started on chapter seven. That was the section that they had started the Monday that I had left early, and I knew they would be having the test on it at the end of the week, final period of the day. So, slowly but surely, I worked through the material, just figuring it out from the text, and working every single problem in the chapter. Mind you, these were the dreaded “word problems” that made you figure out just what equation you were trying to solve rather than just throwing it at you and asking for the value of theta.
Meanwhile, I had the television on low in the background – ok, so maybe I was a bad student after all – and I began seeing ads for the release of 2010 that Friday. The audio on the ads frequently focused on Dave Bowman’s brief visitation to Heywood Floyd, particularly his words, “You see, something’s going to happen... something wonderful.” All the while, various space images were flashing by at an accelerating pace. (Mind you, this was the effect of cramming all the “action” of the film into fifteen seconds, only a slight compression factor.) Well, for someone weak, disoriented, and going through SF-withdrawal associated with Lucasholism, this was pretty incredible. Each ad ended with a sudden drop to a black screen with white letters emerging in a minimalist font: December 7. Man, I was pumped. I was going to see that film. Something wonderful was going to happen.
And so the week passed. I ate and studied and slept and repeated and repeated. By the end of the day Thursday, I was feeling ready. Friends had told me that my math teacher had given two pop quizzes over the course of the last two weeks, and I knew I would have to make those up as well. So, Friday morning, I showed up in his classroom an hour before school.
“I’m glad to see you back, Dan”, Mr. Wolgehagen told me. I believed his genuine relief because I knew he was a good guy, but I could also detect the “but...” lingering in his tone, as in “but what are you doing here when I said you needed to drop out of the honors section.”
“I heard you gave out two pop-quizzes while I was out. I need to make them up.”
“Ok, I’m giving the chapter test today. You can take the quizzes during the test.”
“No,” I told him. “I’m going to take the test during the test. I would like to take the quizzes now.”
He looked at me strangely, as though I’d just grown a second nose. “Don’t you think you need some time?” See, I said he was a good guy, even willing to cut me some slack.
But I was defiant and confident as Hell in a January heat wave. “You normally give us twenty-five minutes for the quiz, and if we start now, we just have enough time before first period.”
He shook his head grimly. “Ok, Dan, if that’s what you want.” I’m sure he felt as though he was giving me just enough rope to hang myself.
He gave me the first quiz, and I ripped through it like a pizza slice – this was trigonometry after all. Besides, this was the quiz for the first part of the chapter, using skills I’d honed to perfection on the later sections. I checked my answers twice and handed it back in ten minutes. He gave me the second quiz and began grading the first. I walked out with half an hour to spare, and he watched me go, not sure if I was the same student he’d last seen before Thanksgiving.
The rest of the day went fairly smoothly. I had not been cramming on my other subjects, but I was able to fake it with the same skills that had let me get by with slacking all year. Even in band, where I never really practiced, I was able to join the rehearsal by just sight reading the new piece we were working on. Besides, I was riding an adrenaline rush. Either that or I was just a touch bipolar and had been dared into an extreme manic phase. At lunch, my friends talked about how they were getting together a group to go see the opening of 2010 that night, and they wanted to know if I was feeling well enough to go. “Oh yeah, guys, I am absolutely going. I was going anyway.”
I rolled into math class at the end of the day, a little tired, but still burning with a rage to prove myself. Mr. Wolgehagen had graded my quizzes by then, and though he did not give them back to me yet, I knew I had aced them, and it showed in his face as well. He did not even ask me if I was ready to take test, he just handed it out to me like everyone else. Again, I checked my answers twice and turned in my paper before anyone else. Now, I don’t say this to brag or anything, because in the final analysis what we did in high school does not matter all that much. Mostly I say it to describe the rush I was feeling on that day. I knew I had aced the test as well. Wolgehagen graded it before the end of class, and the twin looks of amazement and dismay made it all worthwhile.
I went home, rested a bit and regaled my mother with tales from the day. Clearly full of energy, I was allowed to push the limits and go out with friends that night. She was just grateful that I wouldn’t have to drive myself. We arrived and waited in line, passing an unprotected marquee. Dune was to be released in another week, and we took the liberty of swapping the N and D.
I arrived at the ticket booth and slid my three dollars under the glass – yes, three dollars for an evening showing – and just smiled at the lady. “2010?” she asked.
“No thanks,” I replied, “just one.”
Oh yeah, I was having a major geek-out evening.
We had a great time, and even though the movie was a far cry from the 2001 original, I was far too buzzed to notice. I got home and crashed. In the week that followed, I grew weak again and missed a few more days. I had pushed myself too far, too early, and my body was not really ready yet.
But mostly I remember the days leading up to it and the anticipation, not so much of the movie itself, but this nebulous promise that “something wonderful is going to happen.” I had found a well of focus and energy within myself that could enable me to accomplish things normally considered outside of my grasp. I’ve tapped it numerous times since in the years that followed, and a lot of wonderful things have happened.
And yet the thing I hate most about myself is that I only tap it on occasion. My natural state is still to do just enough to get by until something forces me into the Big Push. Then I am so focused on getting things done that I barely notice the scale of what I am attempting, and only afterwards, in a David-Banneresque state of shock can I come to grips with the discontinuity of results. I always want to tap it permanently or at least on-demand and under control, but I have never managed it.
To this day, eighty percent of my output comes in twenty percent of my time, and I think back to that “something wonderful” promise and do the math: I am operating at only 25% of my theoretical potential. So yeah, I can take on extra hobbies and commitments. It’s not a problem. I just have to find that switch. It’s around here somewhere.
The mid-life crisis countdown clock is at T minus 1000 days and counting.
Narrative by Dan | Permalink | Comments (0)
December 05, 2004
What a long, strange trip it's been...
This is actually a rerun from my LJ-blog that I posted back in March, 2004, but I wanted to move it over to this blog for a permanent home. It describes a long and strange trip I had returning to Austin from a business trip in San Francisco.
My trip home began smoothly. I was in San Francisco for business, and the week had gone very smoothly. In truth, there had been very little to do since about half of the planned meetings had been delayed for three weeks. The other out-of-towners had already left the night before, one by car and one on the red-eye. I had thought seriously about trying to switch to the red-eye to get home a little earlier, but instead I opted for the low-stress trip I’d already planned. I stayed up late watching a couple of DVD’s, safe in the knowledge that my flight didn’t leave until noon. Even the planned anti-war protests didn’t phase me. I was only one block from the Civic Center BART entrance.
I rose Saturday morning after seven, showered, dressed and went out for breakfast. My hotel was in a less-than-elite neighborhood, 7th and Market, but I had survived the week there and was feeling good about it. I shied away from the donut shop – a previous day’s breakfast there had featured a drug-deal in progress at the next table – choosing a Carl’s Jr. instead. Inside I began to question my judgment as I saw the sign reading “This section of the dining room closed from midnight to 7am in cooperation with the SFPD.”
One sausage-and-egg breakfast later, I strolled back to my hotel, taking perverse pleasure that after a week of 80-degree days, it had finally gotten cold enough to wear the rugby jersey I’d packed. Back in my room, I packed quickly, taking care to include Sammy’s new “Alcatraz Dig-Run-Swim Triathlon” t-shirt, and then it was back down the street to the BART station. I had missed the previous airport train by about five minutes, so I had to wait a bit, but by 9:50am, I was handing over my luggage to the X-Ray technician and headed for security. Even security went smoothly, not even costing me my shoes. (I had opted to just leave my pocket knife home this time.) By ten, I was sitting at my gate with my laptop plugged in and getting a little work done.
I should say that by this point I had had only one real travel worry, and it was a silly one. Earlier in the week, I’d had a dream that I had met my long-lost younger sister in San Francisco, and due to a terrorist attack shutting down the airlines we’d been forced to drive back to Austin in a rental car. Since neither had happened – not to mention that I have no long-lost younger sister – I felt quite certain that I was getting home that night.
After boarding, we rolled out onto the taxiway and then rolled some more, then stopped, and then rolled some more. At 12:30, the captain came on and said there was a hold pending approval from Chicago. (Yes, I was connecting through Chicago. We’ll get to that later.) I couldn’t even use my cell phone to call home since we were in a “be ready to go” mode. I went over my itinerary again. Suddenly that 35-minute layover looked awfully short. We finally took off at little after 1pm.
The flight itself was fine. I caught enough of “Duplex” sans-headphones to decide to cross it off my Netflix list, and I had enough elbow room to get out my laptop again and do a bit of work. Somewhere over Colorado I called for the flight attendant.
“I’ve got a pretty tight connection in Chicago. Are they holding any of the flights?”
She put her hand on my shoulder reassuringly. “Oh, don’t worry. They’re having a lot of wind shear in Chicago, so all the flights are backed up. Your plane probably isn’t even there yet, so you’ll be fine.”
There are two things to be learned from this: First, if you’re on a plane trying to reassure a worried passenger, starting off with “they’re having a lot of wind shear” is not the best approach. Second, when they pat you on the shoulder and tell you you’re going to make your connection, just give it up. You’re screwed, and they know it. They just don’t want you getting upset mid-flight.
Landing at Chicago was chaotic. First we were told we’d land at 6:30, a scant five minutes before my connection but theoretically possible. Then we were told that we would be in a holding pattern for an hour. Then were told we’d be on the ground at 6:45. Given the amount of turbulence, clouds, and the aforementioned wind-shear, being told we’d be “on the ground” wasn’t the phrasing I was hoping for, but we did manage to land at 6:51 local time. On the tail end, we were able to use our phones as soon as we’d gotten off the runway. I called Julie immediately and had her look up my connecting flight to Austin.
“Hang on, I’ve got to get to a cordless phone.”
“Ok, just do it.”
“Yeah, I’ve got to put you on hold.”
“Ok, just do it.”
“Putting you on hold…”
I pause for a moment considering different phone configurations back at the house, and then I notice it. We’re not moving. No announcement from the captain. We’re just not moving.
“Ok, I’ve got it,” she says. “It’s been delayed…”
Yes!
“… until 7:01. Where are you?”
7:01? I looked at my watch: 6:58. “We’re on the taxiway, but—” We started moving again. “Did you say 7:01?”
“Yes, estimated 7:01. Man, you’re screwed.”
Thanks, honey.
“No, well, maybe. It’s just estimated. You never know. The gates might be close.”
“In Chicago?”
Oh yeah, the confidence is just oozing across the line. “Well, we’ll see. If you don’t hear from me, assume I made it.”
I hung up just as the seatbelt light went off. Two minutes passed getting the door to open. And then first class got off. And the first few rows of coach. I looked around. I was on row 25. By the time I get to agent at the top of the jetway it’s 7:15. A young woman in front of me had just asked “Austin?”
“H8, it’s to the left.”
I clutched my laptop bag to my chest and said, “we’re together,” and took off running. Just to the left, he’d said. Must be close. Then again, we’re just passing L3 or some such, so who knows. At least people were getting out of my way. After about two minutes of running towards one H sign after another, I suddenly wondered, “Was that Austin, or Boston?”
No matter, because that was the moment my second wind failed to arrive, and I had to slow to a brisk walk. The same young woman as before whisked by, running in open-toe sandals, her carryon luggage rolling along behind her. I finally turned the corner into H-territory as I was renewing my commitment to get back in shape, and I glanced up at the departure monitors. Albany, Albuquerque, Boston… I did a quick double take. No Austin. When I finally reached the gate, that young sandaled sprinter was just stepping away from it. It didn’t even say Austin anymore. They were already setting up for the next flight.
At the edge of the waiting area was a bank of red phones for calling the ticketing agents. Frankly, I’d have been better off if they connected to Batman or the Kremlin, but ticketing agents is what we got. The sprinter and I picked up at the same time.
“Yeah, I missed my connection to Austin, flight 1217,” I said. I gave my name and spelled it. It was kind of loud right there between the other passengers and the P.A., but it was almost like hearing an echo.
“Are you traveling with someone else?”
“No,” I said.
“No, I’m not,” said the sprinter next to me.
“Are you sure?” asked the agent.
“Yes, I’m sure,” answered the sprinter.
“Positive,” I answered. “Why would you think that?”
“There’s just another passenger with the same last name who missed that same connection,” the agent explained.
“Wow,” from the sprinter. “That’s weird.”
That was when things turned surreal. There I was, taking part in what sounded like a three-way conversation that couldn’t have been – I mean, we’re talking to different ticket agents. So I took a closer look at the sprinter, and more importantly, her ticket stub. Bang, there’s she was: my long-lost younger sister. She was the other passenger with the same last name. She even looked about right. The dream sister was much younger than me, about fifteen years my junior, petite, and athletic, just like the sprinter next to me. The nose and hair were a bit off, but it was just too close for words.
“I’m sorry, sir,” came the agent, “but there’s nothing else we can get you tonight.”
That pulled me back to reality. The rest of it was a rather anxious and disappointing negotiation where the best the airline could do for me was a Monday flight, arriving in Austin around 2pm. Sunday was the last day of spring break, and every flight was packed. I asked about stand-by, but after quite a few keystrokes she told me that every route she could find into Austin was not only full but oversold. I asked about getting into Dallas or Houston, figuring I could maybe find something from there, but she didn’t even sound very optimistic about that. Eventually I settled for the Monday morning flight and hung up about the same time as my sister, the sprinter.
“Did you find anything?” I asked.
“No, nothing until Monday. I can’t believe it!”
“My wife’s gonna be pissed.”
“I’ve got to work tomorrow night, and oh, I really can’t be late on Monday.”
“I’m gonna call my wife. Maybe she can find something.”
“Yeah, my dad will think of something.”
So we each hit our cell phones. Julie looked up Greyhound for me. The earliest thing there would leave Chicago at 1am Sunday morning and roll into Austin 6am Monday, twenty-nine hours on the bus. I wanted to get home, but not that badly. I thought about driving it, but it’s about 1200 miles. Even trading off drivers it would be tough since I was already feeling pretty tired. Putting a hotel stopover in there would stretch it out to about the same time as the Greyhound. Resigned to the fact that I wouldn’t be home that night, I let Julie go for a bit to see what my new partner had found.
“Anything?”
“No, my dad even tried to get me up to first class, but there’s nothing. You?
“Nothing by air,” I told her. By this point, we had moved to an empty gate and had collapsed on the empty banks of molded seats. I laid out the options of Greyhound or trying to drive it, but neither sounded much better than just waiting until Monday.
“If we could only get to Dallas tomorrow, we could rent a car and drive it down to Austin – four hours, tops.”
She shook her head. “That’d be great, but I’m not old enough to rent a car.”
It was then that I decided I was going to get her to Austin by Sunday night. I’m no knight in shining armor, and she wasn’t exactly a damsel in distress, but I couldn’t help but remember a trip of my own once. Julie and I were driving back from New Hampshire, and we ran out of cash in Tennessee. Vibrant hadn’t been paying any paychecks for a couple of months, so the checking account was down to $8.65, and the credit cards were already over the limit. All I had was the company American Express and the knowledge that its bill would be overdue in three days. We did make it, but I’ll always remember that terrible feeling of desperation.
“I’m Dan,” I told her, holding out my hand, “and I’m old enough to rent a car.”
She took my hand firmly – strong hands. “I’m Lucy.” (Actually, it wasn’t, but I’m trying to grant the lady a little anonymity in this recounting.)
We exchanged cell numbers to coordinate things and split up. I headed for baggage claim to get my suitcase, and Lucy went to the main ticket counter to get us some hotel vouchers. She finished first and found me trying to explain to the luggage agent that no, I didn’t know where I was staying but that they could just call my cell number when they eventually found my bag. I left it at that and we headed for the hotel shuttles.
“You did get two vouchers, right?”
“What?”
I spelled it out. “Two rooms – you got us two rooms, right?”
“Oh… oh yeah.” She gave me mine.
“Good. For a minute there I thought this was going to turn into a bad movie cliché.”
Outside, it was clear that Chicago was not having the 80-degree days of San Francisco. I was in my just-in-case warm shirt, but Lucy was less prepared. If we’d had to wait long, I was going to offer her my jacket, but we found the Holiday Inn shuttle fairly quickly.
“We’re going to the Holiday Inn,” I said.
“Which one?” the driver asked, but between the wind, the traffic, and his accent, I didn’t hear it.
“Ho-li-day Inn,” I repeated, slowly.
“There’s lots of Holiday Inns, man. Which one?”
Lucy was ahead of me on this and had her voucher out. “Elmhurst?”
He looked at her like she’d lost her mind. “Elmherst… oh no, I don’t go out to Elmhurst.”
“Is there another shuttle that does?” she asked.
He shrugged. “Yeah, I think I’ve seen one, but I don’t know if that one runs on the weekends.”
We got back on the curb, and I asked her, “These are just vouchers, right? They don’t have reservations there for us or anything?”
“No, just that they’d pay for the room.”
“How many people were getting them?”
“He was just handing them out to anyone who asked.”
“So we could get out there and not even have a room.”
“Right.”
At this moment, we both looked up at the building across the street. Hilton. “Are you thinking what I’m thinking?”
“Oh yeah,” I said. “It’ll be more expensive though.”
“At this point, I don’t care,” she replied, a gust of wind making her point.
We wormed our way through the shuttles, taxis and limos to cross the street. We get up to the counter, and I’m trying to do the math. Two rooms at Saturday night rates… maybe $250, $300 total. She got there first and slapped down her credit card. “We need two rooms, please.” Like I said, not a damsel in distress.
I put mine down on the counter next to hers. “Yes, two rooms.”
It worked out to just $119 per room, not bad for an airport hotel in the city. Even my fleabag on 7th street had been $89.
“At least let me buy you dinner,” I offered, and we settled down to a fair but overpriced dinner in the hotel restaurant. I’d reached the point where you just stop looking at the price tag. You just do it. Still, she stuck with a chicken Caesar salad.
We talked for a while. Well, at least she talked. It’s been a long time since I’ve been on anything even approaching a first date, but I did remember one piece of sage advice. Ask her about herself, and let her talk. So I found out a lot about her, and she was quite fascinating. She was twenty, just a year behind my long-lost sister, and a professional ballet dancer. Suddenly I didn’t feel quite so bad for not keeping up on the race to H8. She called San Francisco home, but her ballet company was based in Austin. Her Sunday appointment was only an evening meeting at her part-time job, but she really needed to get back for rehearsals on Monday morning.
We talked a lot about music and ballet and her childhood growing into it. She knew this was what she wanted as early as five or six. Even at that tender age, she had sat her mother down for a serious discussion about how she couldn’t be late for practice any more. “Mom, sit down. I cannot be late for ballet. That has to stop.” Six years old. She then got into the prestigious San Francisco school of ballet and trained there through high school. I’d actually heard of it once, and I got the impression that it’s a bit like a musician saying they got into Julliard in New York. But she left SF to get some experience elsewhere and because the professional SF ballet has a very specific body type that she didn’t quite fit. From what I’ve heard, she’s just a bit too muscular for that kind of thing.
Her parents had been very supportive of it, but I never got the impression they’d pushed her into it. It was clear that she’d just known early on what she wanted. It was pretty neat, because I knew I wanted to program for a living as early as twelve, and I rarely run into someone else who had that kind of youthful certainty. But ballet is an athletic life (hence the Caesar salad), and it doesn’t last forever. Like most athletes, their careers wind down in their early thirties.
“What then?” I asked.
“I’ll probably take the time off to go to college.”
“What would you major in?” I was expecting Kinesiology or perhaps music.
“Probably business. I’m good at the mathematics and logical analysis, but I also really like using my people skills.”
I had to admit my surprise. “You don’t find that mix in most people.”
“Well, my folks are in business, the restaurant business actually.”
This perked my interest. One of the joys of going to San Francisco on business is sampling the great food there. You could go to a different spot for three meals a day, and not repeat for years. No kidding – I looked it up. “So which restaurant? I’m always on the lookout for good food.”
“Actually they manage a chain.”
“Oh?”
“Yeah, they have a franchise of about thirty-five Carl Jr’s.”
“Really?” I grinned. “I had breakfast at one this morning. Terrible neighborhood though.”
She cocked an eyebrow. “Seventh and Market?”
It’s a small, small world.
After dinner, we split up to drop things off at our rooms before calling the airline back. I called Julie again just to touch base. She was a little upset that I wouldn’t be home tonight but glad that I was at least making the attempt at getting home Sunday instead of Monday. She also told me that Sammy had been running a low fever all day.
That did boost my motivation to get home soon, but mostly it made me think about my kids. Someday they’d be grown up like Lucy, out and about living their lives. I hoped I would do as good a job at raising them as Lucy’s parents did. I hoped they wouldn’t get stuck in Chicago. But then again, there are good people out there to help out, just like I was doing, so I hoped that if it ever did happen, someone would be there to help. So if my little Catherine ever got stuck in an airport, I hoped a guy like me was there to give her a lift. Yep, I hoped my daughter would hop in a car with some guy she had just met for a cross country drive.
Oh, my, God! Her dad must be freaking out!
I found Lucy down at the check-in counter, already on the phone with the airline. Mostly she was having a hard time convincing them that yes, we really did want to change from a Monday flight to Austin to a Sunday flight to Dallas.
“Yes, I know the original flight was to Austin…. Yes, I know this flight stops in Dallas…. I know. Yes, I am trying to get to Austin, but you can’t get me there, now can you?” She looked at me in bemused frustration. “I’m on hold again. She thinks she can find something into Austin.”
I perked up at that thought. “Really?”
She just laughed. “No, she just doesn’t understand… yes, you did? When?”
I was on my toes…
“Monday morning? Is it flight 1325? No. No, no, no. That’s the flight we’re already on. We’re tying to get into Austin tomorrow, not Monday.” Again, the look of frustration, less bemused this time. “I know there’s no Austin flight tomorrow. That’s why I’m trying to change to the Dallas flight. We’re going to drive down from there.”
I remembered her dad, probably looking up the number for the Texas State Troopers to get started on a missing person report. I tore off a bit of the inside liner of my ticket envelope. I quickly wrote my name, my home address, my home phone number, and my cell number. I slid it across the counter trying to look as harmless as possible while remembering how Kimm once described me, somewhere between a Norse god and a serial killer.
“I’m on hold again.”
“Give that info to your dad, ok? He’s probably freaking out.”
“Yeah.”
“It’s ok. I would be too if my daughter were getting into a car with a stranger. Tell him to call my wife. My mother-in-law is there, too. They’ll tell him I’m not a madman.” I specifically avoided saying “serial killer”, but then I wasn’t so sure that my wife would classify me as sane.
“At 4:11, through Missouri. Yes, that’s the one I was telling you about before, flight 3933. Yes, then 3462. Yes, I know there’s no flight from Dallas to Austin on Sunday night. We’re going to drive the rest of the way.” She gave me a look so deadly I start thinking maybe Julie had better have Lucy’s home address, just in case. “Yes, both of us. Ok, yes, B-E-L-S-A-A, got it. Here’s Dan.” She handed me the phone. “She’s got your confirmation number.”
I shoved it up in the crook of my neck, trying to hold the tiny cell phone while writing on the back of my ticket envelope. I gave it back, and she finished it up.
“It’s an 8:30 flight out of Chicago,” she told me, “then a four hour layover in Missouri.”
“Four hours?”
“Yeah, that sucks.”
“Hey, it’s better than thirty-five minutes. I don’t want to get stuck in Missouri.”
We parted for the night with the understanding that we’d just meet at the gate. I crossed the street again to look for my luggage, figuring I was in for a long line and a many-boxed form to fill out, but as soon as I got to baggage claim 4, there it was. My bag was parading around the conveyer belt all alone. I grabbed it and rolled on out, grateful that I’d spent the time having a good steak rather than hanging around.
I got back to my room after eleven and faced the problem I’d been dreading since the take-off delay at SFO. I was out of underwear. Now, normally I always pack a spare, not just of underwear, but of everything. Extra socks, extra shirts, spare pants, extra breathe-rite strips, even a backup set of contacts in case the first ones don’t go in. But this time, I miscounted. I had extra of everything else, but not underwear.
So I figured I’d do a little laundry, but with midnight approaching, I wasn’t in the mood to go searching for the hotel laundromat. First I thought I’d use the sink, but then I realized I was going to need to brush my teeth there. No, bad idea, just use the tub. I started filling it with hot water and looking for some soap to use, preferably liquid. No ivory, not even soft-soap. I started flipping through the various bottles on the counter. Neutrogena shampoo? What the hell. I poured it in.
I started stripping down, ready to toss in my current pair. Fortunately caution caught me just in time. If something went wrong with this, I’d be really out. I decided to just lay that pair out and toss in a couple pair from my dirty laundry. Using hand agitation and liberal soak time, I put them through two wash cycles, and a double rinse. The smell reminded me of Julie’s hair. Sorry, dear. I wrung them out as well as I could and hung them on the clothesline in the shower. So, it does have a use beyond secret agents eluding their captors. Cool.
The alarm clock had two alarms, and I set them both. And just to be safe, I put in for a wakeup call as well. There was a form for breakfast room service on the bed, and I figured, why not? Well, I could think of about 25 reasons, all named George, but it was after midnight and the schedule in the morning could get tight. I signed up for a ham and cheese omelet and put it on the outer door handle.
Drifting off to sleep around 1am, the surreality of it sunk in again. What the hell was I doing? For that matter, what the hell was she doing? She barely knows me. Was I going to wake up in the morning to find she’d chickened out? Would I wake up and just find her gone? A figment? Or would I wake up back in my San Francisco hotel, swearing to God, my wife, and my doctor to never eat Chinese after ten again?
The music alarm came first. I was still in the what-city-is-this disorientation when the buzzer alarm kicked in. I was over on the left side of the bed trying to turn them off when the wake-up call came in on the right side. By the time all the electronics had died down, I was awake. 5:32 a.m. Twenty-eight minutes before my omelet was set to arrive. I headed for the shower with purpose.
The underwear was still wet. I couldn’t wring anything out, but they were damp. Not just five-minutes-in-the-dryer damp, but ewwww-something-happened-in-my-shorts damp. I showered anyway wishing I hadn’t tossed out that last sliver of my own soap in San Francisco. Then I was faced with that most personal decision: dirty-in, dirty-out, or commando? I’ll leave at least a little decorum in this tale by not answering that question, but I will say that my choice was guided by the nightmare scenario of a fatal accident along the way. I could picture the trooper talking to Lucy’s father. “Now, the man she was with must have been some kind of sex criminal, because when the emergency crew got his pants off…”
The omelet was great, the OJ pulpy, and the milk warm. Ick! I pulled up to the airline ticket counter at 6:30, only to find at 6:40 that I was in the international line. They then sent me over to the domestic line, which was self-service only. I put in my credit card for ID, punched in 3933 for my flight number and got as far as seat selection before it barfed up, “Unable to complete you transaction. See ticket agent.”
Fortunately, it was fine after all, just that this was an American Eagle flight, which the self-service system couldn’t properly connect with, so the ticket agent took care of me promptly and sent me on my way. Security was quick, and I was on my way to G19. At 6:58, I got there and found that it was 1442 to Honolulu. I double-checked my boarding pass: K19. When I finally got there at 7:22, Lucy was waiting calmly.
“Sorry, I went to wrong gate at first.” Oh yeah, she must be feeling really good about my ability to get from Dallas to Austin.
“No problem. I got stuck for a while at check-in.”
“How come?”
She shook her head. “He was hitting buttons for like twenty minutes before he finally said there were no flights into Austin today.”
We both laughed.
We didn’t really talk all that much. I read another two chapters in the latest Honor Harrington book. Rather, I skimmed a couple of chapters. This was still early enough in the book where you’ll get two lines of dialog and then four pages of inner-thought exposition trying to recap everything that’s happened in the previous ten books. Lucy read a magazine. I think at some level we were both aware that we had a long drive ahead of us at the end of the day and were worried we’d either run out of things to say or just be sick of each other by then.
Then it started snowing.
If it had kept up, I was definitely going to be buying some underwear, but fortunately, we boarded a few minutes after it started. It was just a little 25 passenger commuter jet, but at least it was a jet. At six feet, I was cramped the whole way. Lucy looked much more comfortable. I just slept the whole flight, knowing I’d need to be sharp later on.
Missouri was… well, let’s just say I was expecting St. Louis, Missouri, not Springfield Missouri. I’m not saying that it was an asphalt patch and a wind-sock, but for those of you who remember old Robert Mueller airport, that place was LAX compared to Springfield. We were probably the first passengers in a year to use it as a hub. For a moment, it looked like our stay might be much shorter. We found a flight leaving for DFW at 10:30, just 25 minutes away, but when we asked to be put on stand-by, the ticket agent told us that it was overbooked and that she would be bumping people to the next flight. The board listed that next flight as 12:30, a good two hours earlier than our own.
“Well, if there’s room to put folks onto that 12:30 flight, can we get on it too?” I asked.
“Sorry, but there is no 12:30 flight.”
I glanced over at the board. “But, it says right there.”
“Nope, no 12:30 flight.”
“It doesn’t exist?”
“Oh, it exists, just not on Sundays.” I was suddenly reminded of the old Texas “Blue laws”. But then I got worried.
“Does the 2:30 flight exist?”
“Oh yes.”
“Even on Sundays?”
She gave me that be-nice-to-the-crackpot smile. “Yes, even on Sundays.” I half expected her to comfort me with wind shear.
Four hours in Springfield. I decided to forgo the requisite Homer search and get some more work done. Partly this was because I’d thought of a really cool scene-graph optimization earlier in the week but also because of the same fear of conserving our social interaction budget for the drive. Lucy read her magazine. Again. She must have read that thing three times. We took turns watching each others’ carry-on so that we could go have lunch outside of security without having to do that little dance again. I will say this though, as little as the airport was, it was one of the best layovers I’ve ever had. No time pressure, quiet, plenty of seats, even tables with access to power outlets.
The 2:30 flight came into existence and lifted us away from Springfield. I tried to sleep again, but I was crammed up against a bulkhead with no legroom. I skimmed another two chapters of Honor Harrington and had just reached the start of the real plot when we touched down in Dallas. There was something really uplifting about having made it to Dallas, and we both felt it. From here on out, our fate was in our own hands, no longer captives to the capricious whim of air traffic control or weather. We were going to get home.
We had to wait a bit too long for my luggage, but we were soon on our way to the Hertz station. Lucy offered to pay a share of the car rental, and I have to admit that if she’d been a guy, I would have accepted. Maybe that’s considered sexist today, but I just couldn’t take money from a lady. Plus, it was fairly neat getting to impress her with the Hertz Gold treatment. She was clearly a seasoned traveler, but this must have been her first time for this. We just walked up, found my name on the board, and got into the car parked in slot 312. A quick adjustment of the mirrors, and we were on our way towards IH 35.
The conversation began again in earnest, and I kept up my end this time, figuring I’d bled her dry the night before. There was the ballet again, of course, but there was music (Tori Amos and Philip Glas), photography (Schatz and Greenfield), and movies. Glas had led me to Koyaanisqatsi, among other things. There’d been quite a bit of high art in that discussion. But then…
“Did you see the Texas Chainsaw Massacre?”
I blinked a few times. We were out in the middle of nowhere, that dead zone between Waxahachie and Hillsboro, and she’s bringing up the Texas Chainsaw Massacre. I really should have gotten her info to give to Julie.
“No, I’m afraid I didn’t.” Gulp. “Why?”
“Oh, just wondering what town it was supposed to have been in. Not really my kind of movie, but my friends dragged me to it.”
Deep breath. Long sigh. “Not mine either, but a friend once drove me by a house in Round Rock where they filmed the original one. At least, that’s what he said.”
“Cool.”
“You know, I was going to save this for later, because I didn’t want to freak you out, but you should really be more careful about strangers. I mean, I’m safe and all, but you should be more careful.”
She nodded. “Yeah, I know. Normally I wouldn’t just get in a car with some guy I just met, not without getting all his info and everything. But, you know.”
“Yeah, just be more careful next time, ok?”
“Ok.”
And then we got back to the safe subjects: why she doesn’t refer to herself as a ballerina, how we each came by our shared last name, our common Scottish roots, etc. No, she’s not my long-lost sister, but somewhere, way out there in the family shrubbery, perhaps a distant cousin.
Peppered through it all were the occasional phone calls from friends and family making sure I hadn’t murdered her. The best was from her older brother who was really apologetic for having booked her through Chicago when he’d bought her tickets.
“Dad’s really pissed at you,” she told him. “No, it’s going to be ok. We’re almost to Austin now, but next time I’m doing the direct flight from San Jose and you’re driving me to the airport.”
I’m starting to think that’s pretty good advice for me too.
It was dark by the time we got in, but I managed to drop her off at her part-time job at 8:45pm, just fifteen minutes late for the after-hours staff meeting. She called her parents to let them know she’d made it – I’d insisted on that. She thanked me, and we said goodbye. She went through the doors and was gone. I caught just a whiff of the surreal again. My long-lost sister? No, not really, just one of those transitory relationships that springs into your life and then leaves just as quickly, like a stranger sprinting past you in an airport. All that remained was a name and a cell number scrawled on the back of a ticket envelope. Or maybe not. Maybe, just maybe, I’ll go to the ballet sometime.
But I also had permanent relationships to attend to. As much as I’d done it to get Lucy home, I did it to get home to my own family. I called Julie to let her know I was on my own again and to see if she would get me at the airport or if I should get a cab home. From the sound of her voice, I knew it was going to be a cab before she told me.
“But can you pick up some McDonald’s as well?”
“Huh?”
“Yeah, something burger-ish, with either no pickles or no onions. I don’t want either, but just in case you can only remember one, you know. I just don’t want to get both.”
I had been having a bit of an adventure, but it was clear she’d been through the wringer with the kids. “Sure thing.”
I whipped on down to the airport rental return and walked to the cab line. I always try to get Yellow Checker after one horrific night with a drunk driver in an Austin Cab, but the drivers get really annoyed if you don’t take the first cab in the line. That night it was Roy’s Taxi, Austin Cab, and then Yellow Checker. I wasn’t in the mood for a confrontation, so I settled for the Roy’s Taxi in front. She looked ok. Well actually, she looked like she’d seen a lot of years and a lot of sun, but she looked alert and sober. That was good enough.
The cab reeked of cigarette smoke. Strike one.
“Do you smoke?” she asked.
“No,” I replied, trying to decide if it was better to use my nose as an air filter for my lungs or to take it in direct just to avoid smelling it.
“No problem. I won’t smoke then. Never do with a non-smoker, so don’t you worry. I go through two packs a day in here and you wouldn’t know it.”
Admittedly, the cab it spotless, so I hold back my commentary on the environmental disaster seeping out of the upholstery.
We drove up 183, making very good time. Too good. Every now and then she would slow down saying, “The cops like to hang out there.” Strike Two.
We stopped off at the McDonald’s drive through, and I had to switch sides in the back seat to manage the transaction. I remembered about both the pickles and the onions, and I tossed in some fries for good measure. Getting back into my right-hand seat, I buckled up again. “Oh, that’s something I’d never do,” she said.
“Eh?”
“Seatbelts,” she replied, pulling back out onto the road. “Friend of mine got burned up in his seatbelt. Not gonna happen to me.”
Strike three, but we were already moving. I tightened my own belt and looked for her license card. Dora.
“I’m very religious,” she went on, “and when it’s my time, it’s my time. No seat belt is going make a difference.”
I kept quiet. I’d been through too much in the last thirty-six hours for Dora to call my number.
It’s a long ride out to my place, but we made it.
I came through the door with McDonald’s in hand. Julie was there in the entry way. It was the best hug I’d had in a long time, eventually broken by Sam’s voice in the kitchen.
So there I sat in the breakfast nook, with Sammy in my lap resting his head against my chest and Julie across from me munching on fries, and I totaled it up.
Dinner with a ballet dancer: $42
Hotel with room service: $144+tax
Rental car: $72
Taxi ride with Deathwish Dora: $66
Being home with my family: priceless.
MasterCard would have been proud.
Narrative by Dan | Permalink | Comments (0)
December 03, 2004
Cluster Ballooning -- Un-Fucking-Believable
Remember the tale of the guy hooking helium balloons up to his lawn chair?
Well, these folks have turned it into a sport. Check it out.
Blog by Dan | Permalink | Comments (0)
Friday Five: Dr. Feelgood feels good
Today’s question comes form me:
Dr. Feelgood has unlocked the primal secrets of mood altering drugs and can now induce any emotion or mental state with no undesired side effects, so he's trolling the internet to find which drugs to make first. Which five moods/emotions/mental-states would you most want to have available in pill form, and when would you tend to use them? Note that these aren't necessarily the moods/etc. that you most enjoy, just the ones that you most want to have available on-demand.
Hey... better living through chemistry.
- Alertness: It’s not so much of an emotion as a mental-state. I could really use some it right now as I struggle along without enough sleep. I can get a little of this from caffeine now, but I’m looking for a little more.
- Catharsis: When something bad happens, or is pending, it hangs over me in this cloud of gloom until I can work through it. Sometimes it helps just to go into full catharsis mode and get it over with. Certain pieces of music can help induce it, but that’s all I’ve got.
- So-relaxed-I-barely-know-my-own-name: I get migraines, you see, and sometimes after the migraine passes (especially if it’s been helped along by my trusty Maxalt-MLT prescription), I get into this really relaxed place where I’m sort of groggy but not really sleepy. I’m just so super relaxed that I barely want to move. Even my speech becomes slowed or slurred, and yet I’m completely aware of everything around me and have full access to my mental abilities. I’ve had this a few times without the migraine, but it’s rare. I’d love to be able to pop into this mode at five o’clock on Fridays.
- In-the-Zone: When I’m working on something intellectual, whether it be writing, programming, or whatever, I sometimes get into “the zone”, where I’m hyper-focused on what I’m doing and can keep track of hundreds of interdependent details in my head. There’s a special exhilaration that comes with it, like “runner’s high” without the heart-rate. While it would be nice to just pop this pill around deadlines, I was mostly thinking it would be great just to feel that exhilaration without having to be actually working on something.
- Mirth: Sometimes life can be so stressful or sad that it’s easy to forget the little joys in day to day life. It hit such a spot about eight or nine years ago, and I had dinner with some friends. One joke led to another, and I spent most of the time laughing, often simply unable to stop. There’s something amazing about the emotional release that comes with uncontrolled laughter. It’s like a catharsis of joy. Afterwards, the problems are still there, but you can face them with a smile.
Meme by Dan | Permalink | Comments (0)
December 02, 2004
Unsurprising Meme... social status
Tanya alerted me to this meme, with (for us at least) unsurprising results:
 | You scored as alternative. You're partially respected for being an individual in a conformist world yet others take you as a radical. You have no place in society because you choose not to belong there - you're the luckiest of them all, even if your parents are completely ashamed of you. Just don't take drugs ok?
What Social Status are you? created with QuizFarm.com |
And what's wrong with taking drugs??
I don't put a lot of faith in these quizzes, but I do find it surprising that I rated so low on the lower class bar. Many of the questions dealt with money, and while I am not now poor, my fundamental perceptions of money came from when I was barely getting by. I learned that money did not provide happiness. All it did was reduce worry. Of course, it's great for that, so I'm not knocking it at all. On the other hand, maybe it's that attitude about money that got me out of the hole.
Over dinner, MAW and I were reminiscing over a Christmas eleven years ago. At the time, I owned 23% of a company that could barely pay me what folks often call "a living wage", and as Christmas approached, the company had hit a rough patch. As we had done before (and would do again), the principal owners gave up their paychecks for a while. A big December order came through, and I managed to extract one paycheck because I absolutely had to have it to pay bills and buy food. When that was done, we had a Christmas budget of $100 to share between the two of us. I know that's not eating dogfood or anything, but it was pretty tight.
Even then it wasn't the tightest things had ever been. That had come over a year earlier when we had $8 in the bank and no idea of when the next paycheck was coming. It had gotten to the point where we were looking around the kitchen to see how long the food was going to last us. I don't know how many of you have been in that place. I would hope very few of you, but at the same time, I feel lucky I passed through that place because of what it taught me. Fortunately, a donor who shall remain nameless heard of our plight and gave us enough to carry us through a few months.
Looking back, I realize that I was making less than minimum wage through much of it, building sweat equity for myself while paying employees more in real dollars. Though it never occured to me at the time, I probably would have qualified for government assistance. Certainly it would have been problematic answering questions about why my job paid so little, but mostly I think it felt like defeat to me. Me against the universe, and I wasn't going to ask for help.
But I've never forgotten the nameless donor, and it forever shaped my perceptions of the right way to do charity. It's not government helping people or even the church helping people. It's people helping people. This is not about efficiency or accountability. It's the personal touch that came with it. The donor was making the ultimate pay-it-forward gesture: "I think you're worth the risk." It was charity for the soul.
Meme /Narrative by Dan | Permalink | Comments (0)