Tempus Fugit

This weekend we got our first proper snow of the season. On Saturday it rained and drizzled and froze and culminated in a slushy mess at the foot of the driveway, but on Sunday the snow came drifting quietly down in great clumpy flakes. I tried to explain the significance of this to my nephew; he quickly reminded me that at six months old, he's not quite interested in snowmen or sledding yet. In fact, he's not concerned with much beyond bottles and rattles and his auntie's dangly earrings.

I'm rather enjoying Nephew at this age. He's a profoundly happy child. Every time someone pulls a face at him he bursts into laughter, and he stares at me in awe whenever I play the guitar. (He seems to prefer John Mayer to anybody else. We might have to work on this... Sorry, John Mayer.) But as much fun as he is right now, he's growing like a weed. Every time I see him -- which is pretty frequently -- he has a new trick. His newest trick is the fine art of Mobility. Yikes, baby boy!



And while we're speaking of people growing too fast, my students -- most of whom I met two years ago when they were barely sophomores -- are now well on their way to graduation. When I first started teaching at my current school, I taught 10th grade. The following year, I moved up to 11th grade. This year, I'm teaching seniors. The result of my professional evolution has been that I've had the same base group of students for three years and am now inextricably attached to them. I'm up to my eyelids in college application essays they want me to look over and have already written a couple dozen letters of recommendation, but I still can't quite wrap my brain around the idea that they are leaving.



Of course, I plan to thoroughly enjoy them between now and May, and they're making that pretty easy. Not only are they behaving like angels, they're also working harder than ever, in class and out of it. Every year for Thanksgiving, our school has a massive food drive to benefit the community. The kids pour their hearts into fund-raising for it, and this year, of the 28 kids in my AP class, 18 of them were directly involved in the senior class's primary money-maker -- The Senior Auction. As a proud supporter, I went to the auction and "purchased" a trio of my boys. Their task in return for the money I paid was to each perform a soliloquy from Hamlet for their classmates. They did a fantastic job. In addition to their assignment, they also brought me a mass of roses, a box of chocolates, and a latte; made me lunch; and prepared a little N'Sync dance number for the class.

I love these kids.


For who would bear the whips and scorns of time?

That Thing About Ignorance

My kid sister just got a job in my favorite sandwich shop. She finished her undergraduate work last May, and she's quickly discovered that holding a BA from a prestigious liberal arts university means very little in the work world. To get a real career in her field, she'll have to go back for a Master's (at least). Despite her brilliance and her work ethic, she's joined the ranks of thousands of members of Pepsi Generation Next© who went off to college a few years ago but are now living back in their parents' basements, working minimum wage jobs, and playing World of Warcraft. Because of this, we've been dubbed the Boomerang Generation and accused of being incurably adolescent. It's not all our fault though. Ever since the first day in Miss Gerkin's kindergarten class, we were taught we could grow up to be whatever we wanted; all along, the truth was that we could grow up to be whatever someone else would pay us for. That was a mean trick, Miss Gerkin.

But I do admit that the WoW has gotten a bit out of hand. I mean, I like dragons and stuff, but seriously...



So about my sister and the sandwich shop...

I thought it was really cool. Not just because I was looking forward to free sandwiches (though the thought did cross my mind). I thought it was cool because I thought it was a great little shop. I've been in there a billion times. They have this Smokehouse Turkey Wrap... mmm! Party for your taste buds! She'd also been job-hunting for quite a while with no success, so we were all pretty relieved that she finally landed something.

Then she came home from her first day of work, plopped down on the couch, and declared that she hated it and was going to immediately start looking for something else.

Being the loving older sibling, I immediately started dispensing some love of the "tough" variety. My sister is a great kid and pretty hard-working, but she's not very good at taking orders. (Trust me -- I've been trying to give her orders for 22 years now.) Naturally, I thought she needed to man up a bit in the face of an obnoxious boss or sore feet or whatever was ailing her. With the economy all in a shambles, you don't walk out on a brand-spankin'-new job just because you're unhappy. Especially if you live in your parents' basement.



Well, then she started explaining to me exactly why she didn't like it. Her reasons included things like the uniform they gave her -- which was a dirty company t-shirt (complete with grease smudges & stink), which some former employee had left in a wad in a corner of the coatroom; the food prep area, where other employees (manager included) were consuming their own food and drinks on the disinfected(ish) prep counter whilst preparing orders; and the mushrooms, which her trainer advised her to throw into the slicer without cleaning, even when she inquired about the conspicuous clumps of dirt on them.

Um, yeah.

Obviously, anybody would think the place a bit suspect after hearing that, but I used to manage a little coffee bar, and I am an exacting sumbitch when it comes to Health Code. You think it's bad; I know precisely how bad it is. And if those kind of blatant things are going on, I also know that they aren't monitoring the temp of their refrigerators or the concentration of their disinfectant rinse or the laundering of their rags or... well, I could go on for a while.

So ever since my kid sister got a job at my favorite sandwich shop, I don't eat there anymore.

What's that thing they say about ignorance... and bliss?

Sayonara, Smokehouse Turkey Wrap.

Ask My Kids IV: The Holocaust

Once again, my kids amaze me with their awesome grasp of history, culture, and the human experience. Today's feature: Hitler.

(This is the real deal, in all its raw and unedited glory.)

Hitler was a very cruel person who killed a whole lot of people which were Jewish, he also made them slaves it didn't matter how old you were he would make them work in open land and he would have his soldiers wip them if they did not work fast or if they said anything back to them. The reason he chose to pick the Jews instead of any other culture was because he did not like Jesus, and Jesus was Jewish, he also didn't like God because he herd from many people that God owned the world and that was what he was trying to do.

Fair enough.

GuitarCast

Now that I'm home for the school year, I'm having adventures of a more domestic nature. Here's the story of my day today:



And the song...

You Just Never Know...

Last week, in a rare moment of repose, I was sitting at home thinking "Yeesh, another Saturday night in Nowhereville," when I got an instant message from a friend inviting me to a wine tasting party. That's a little chic for this hick town, and for a second I expected him to say "No, just kidding. It's actually a barn-raisin'! Yehaw!" But no, he was serious about the wine.

So of course, I went.

Now I have known this guy for ages, but I know him because I used to babysit him. Yeah, he's a little younger than I am. And naturally, so are his friends. In fact, they're all three or four years younger than I am. I can't decide if hanging out with the college crowd makes me feel cutting edge or lame beyond redemption.

I gravitated towards the only other "grown-up" in the house, who happened to be a pretty smokin' hot guy. We got into a conversation about who he is and how he spends his time, and guess what? He races sled dogs.

wtf?!?

Yeah, he's an Alaskan tundra conquering, fur-trimmed coat sporting, frostbitten appendage losing, Call-of-the-Wild answering sled dog racer.


You never really know who you're going to meet next, do you?


Rock on, sled dog guy. Rock on.

Wild Nights on the Town

My youngest cousin, who just turned 20, got married this weekend. Then yesterday, my brother turned 30. Things like this make me start to feel like I'm getting a little old. In order to wage war on this unpleasant sensation, I've been actively spending wasting less time working and more time going out with my friends. (I've also been playing a lot of MarioKart on the Wii, but that's a story for another post.)

In our recent adventures, the gang and I have been playing some Beerball when the weather's nice and getting out of town when it's not. Last week we were quite fortunate to score tickets to a Flight of the Conchords gig in Ann Arbor, which evolved into a pretty epic night. Really, anything that involves a parking garage just screams: "High jinx on the horizon!" Throw a couple of the most creative people I know in the car, reunite some long lost buddies, add a dash of sexual tension, and let the good times roll! I've found that most evenings I spend in Ann Arbor end up this way and have resolved to get over there more frequently, especially with the summer coming up.

I'd hardly heard any Conchords' songs before we went to the show and just sort of went along because my friends wanted to go, but I found the boys pretty damn entertaining. Here's a taste, in case you haven't seen much of them yet:



"You could be a part-time model..."

So the Conchords are a new love of mine. An old love of mine is comedian Eddie Izzard, whom I finally had the opportunity to see live last night at the Detroit Opera House. There was also a Tigers game on, so we ended up having to park several blocks away and walk, which adds flavor to any evening in downtown Detroit, but once we got to the theater, all was well. We laughed 'til our guts hurt. I love Eddie Izzard because he's clever, which is my favorite trait in any human being, and he's especially clever when it comes to matters of language. Last night he did this bit about Latin and how complicated it must have been even for the Romans. I won't tell you the details -- particularly because I know my little sis is going to see him in Nashville in a few weeks, and she'd murder me if I spoiled any of it -- but I will tell you that it's awesome and well worth getting out to see. No good videos of his new stuff are out yet, so here's an old classic:

Gathering 'Round the Hearth

I like to travel pretty much anywhere. I'm into going new places, meeting new people, and seeing things I would never, ever see at home. Normally, I make it my goal to visit one new place every year. This summer, I'm adding four new places to my "Been There" list: London, Dublin, Seattle, and Hawaii. And yet, somehow, I always end up back here. I even got surprisingly pissed off at my boss the other day when she implied that I was kind of a leaf in the wind who may not be around long. I raised my voice to her. (Good thing I'm in a union. Shit.)

At first I wasn't sure why I got so upset. After all, I consider myself a Citizen of the World, and I detest the idea of being tied down anywhere by anything. But lately, that seems to be changing, and I can only think of one little reason why...




This is my nephew, Aaron. As I'm writing this, he's four and a half days old.

I am smitten with him. He is perfect.


The truth is that the farther I travel from home and the more people I meet, the more I like my family. Of course, over the years in my travels I've met lots of fantastic people I adore, but taking people for granted is much easier when you grow up fighting them for the bathroom. Now that I'm old(er) and wise(r) I've realized how rare cool families are. I have three siblings who rock, two gorgeous sisters-in-law, two parents who are still in love with each other, five aunts, three uncles, three living grandparents, four kick-ass cousins, a dog-nephew, a cat-nephew, and now, finally, a real nephew. Everybody's stable; everybody gets along. Even the dog and the cat. We even know and love my brothers' families-in-law.



Brother #2 entertains his niece by pretending his weight clips are earrings. She digs it.

The amazing thing Nephew's coming has done is give us all an excuse to spend more time together, especially my brothers and sister and I. We're all grown-ups with pretty demanding lives. Brother #1 is an engineer who schmoozed his way to the top of his company inside a few years, which means more money and less free time to spend it. Brother #2, in addition to working to support the Wife and the Little Guy, is a law student. Sister is a historian, and her projects take her all over the country to dig in the dirt and polish dusty things. I currently teach at my alma mater and hang my hat about fifteen minutes from the homestead, so I see the Parents pretty regularly, but when the Siblings come back to town, the party is on.


My cat-nephew, Guinness, takes a snooze in the bouncer seat. We've tried to explain to him that it's for the REAL baby, but he just gives us a confused look.

When they arrive, I'm sitting on the living room floor, restringing my little Epiphone. I have to do this at my mom's house because I need to borrow her tuner... and because I inevitably ask for her help at some point. I set the guitar down to exchange the customary greeting hugs and to gather up the little bundle of Aaron. Within minutes, one of the brothers picks up my guitar, finishes restringing it, and starts strumming. The other slips down the hall and returns a few minutes later with our mother's sacred Gibson, a guitar we were hardly allowed to touch until we were teenagers.

Over the course of the evening, the baby and the guitars are passed steadily around the living room. The brothers play around, poking fun at each other and putting on thick country drawls to croon "Every Rose Has Its Thorn" while their wives laugh and roll their eyes. My sister, who in her own words "wields a guitar like a drunken polecat wields an abacus", attempts to play a song she has dubbed "Mostly Only D" on account of the fact that it mostly has only one chord -- D. Every other line, the chord shifts to an A, and she predictably flubs the rhythm each time. She gives up before long, trades me the guitar for the nephew, then sits and improvises flawless harmonies to everything I play.

With some coaxing, we finally convince Mom to sing, which is what we've been hoping for all evening. She acts shy and embarrassed, but eventually she starts playing "All the Pretty Horses". If you don't have a mother who sang you lullabies, and this lullaby in particular, then I'm sorry. You've missed out. We all lose track of the time as she reaches back across years (and -- it makes me feel so old! -- decades) and pulls forward all the songs she sang to us in our childhood -- a handful of Joni Mitchell melodies, old campfire tunes and folk songs, and my father's favorite: "Kisses Sweeter than Wine".

Every day, the world is getting smaller. I want to see and experience a lot of it. At the same time, maybe it's not such a bad thing to be a little bit tied down here...

Spring Break Phase II: Livin' the Rough Life

After exhausting myself skiing, I need to go on an actual spring break to someplace with pools, palm trees, and lots of rum. The only logical solution is to go visit my aunt and uncle for a bit. They've recently finished constructing their dream home in Florida -- a lavish little number oriented around a graceful lanai. The front of the house opens up entirely to the lanai and faces a little canal, where the folks can conveniently pop down the dock for a little bout on their modest yacht. I'm sitting in the lanai at the moment, watching the sailboats passing, listening to the little frogs in the palm trees, sipping on a Rum Runner.

And snickering to myself about the snow that's still piled high at home.

I may live from paycheck to paycheck in the bitter North, but that doesn't mean I can't take advantage of my better-to-do relations in the Tropics.



For the next few days, I intend to do very little. When I return to work, we only have two months left in the year, and it'll be a mad rush to graduation. Once summer starts, my shenanigan schedule is packed from the first of June until Labor Day. So this little pause is a welcome Calm before the Storm.

Spring Break! Phase I

Dating a college student comes with a unique set of complications. While other women get hurt and huffy when their menfolk work 'til 5:30 or 6 (primarily because dinner's gotten cold), my Mr Right is in class until 10:30 in the evening at least twice a week. Other days, he's home before noon but barricaded into a corner by Statics & Structures, The Physics of Soil Composition, and fifteen volumes of Basic Real Estate Law. Leaving work at "the office" is a laughable impossibility. When he does make an honest attempt to get everything done at the library, he ends up in the library until midnight. If he brings it home, he spends all day Saturday hunched over the my Mac typing papers or doing the infamous CAPA problems. In short, it's not really the boozin' good time that I remember college being. This isn't exactly Boyfriend's fault. Given that he's completing six years worth of study in four years worth of all-nighters, he does a pretty remarkable job of managing a cumbersome load of responsibility, but he does stray precariously close to the All-Work-No-Play Zone on a regular basis.

Just when I think I can't take it anymore, he gets his Spring Break.



Spring break is a time-honored festival for high school and college students alike. They shake off the winter doldrums, go to Cancun, and spend a week throwing back shots of tequila diet Cokes*, listening to Jimmy Buffet, and getting sun-burned.

At least, that's my idea of a proper spring break, especially when it's still snowing in Michigan at the end of March. (Curse you, Global Climate Change! shaking fist at ozone layer)

Of course, Boyfriend's idea of a proper spring break is 180° different from mine. He insists on spending the week on the side of a snow-covered mountain, with brief but frequent breaks to play poker and drink brewskies. Nothing about this strikes me as "springy", but I go along anyway because I'm a pretty respectable poker player and I really do love to ski.



The fine art of downhill skiing is a new addition to my little Bag'o'Tricks. I went for the first time last year, but I haven't gotten in much practice this season due to the lingering effects of The Sickness. In the last couple of months, I've finally been feeling 100% and hearing the sweetly tempting call of The Slopes.

Skiing is the perfect sport because in it one finds the delicate balance between ecstasy and terror. On the one hand, you zip downhill with the wind in your hair and the snow crunching under your skis, all your being focused on carving your sassy way down the mountain. On the other hand, you could be killed or maimed at any moment. For a rookie skier, every run presents at least a dozen obstacles that might lend themselves to your untimely demise. If I had known how awesome it was, I wouldn't have waited so long to try it.

It's my duty to report that on this particular trip, I conquered my first Double Black Diamond -- a steep, narrow run lined by trees and littered with jumps (both excellent candidates for bringing Death and/or Maiming). I am told that I have chutzpah. Fortunately, Boyfriend and I both managed to cheat Fate and return home with all appendages attached, brains safely stashed in skulls, and only a few bumps and bruises.



After his brief sabbatical into the Land of the Living, Boyfriend is now buried back under his pile of books, and I'm packing my bags again. Next week, I head to Florida for my actual spring break, and I'm looking forward to some much-needed face time with Mr Sunshine.


*Part of my continuing campaign to be a positive role model for the impressionable youth. How am I doing?

あ、い、う、え、お。。。

I've been home from Japan for a year and a half now. I can count on one hand the foreigners I know who still live there. The company I taught for there has gone bankrupt. The guy I lived with there is engaged to somebody else. None of this should make me too fussed, since I'm still in touch with the people I like, the company was shite, and as for the ex... well, more power to him.

Still, it's weird.

For months after I got home, I was convinced things in Japan were just as I had left them. My friends would talk about people coming and going, but in my head every aspect of life there looked just the same. I often toyed with the idea of going back, imagining I would find my opal earrings on the corner of the coffee table, just where I had forgotten them on the day I flew home.

Enough time has gone by now that I am thoroughly over these delusions.

My work here keeps me constantly on my toes in a way that is only a pain in the ass 7% of the time and pretty entertaining the other 93%. The Boyfriend is a superstar who keeps me entertained and out of trouble. And if the almighty Admissions Board wills it, I’ll be starting work on my MFA in the fall. Far from settling down as I may be, I finally feel settled in my own life -- the American version of it.


Boyfriend on our epic PCH adventure

Of course, it is in this moment that Japan has come strolling back into my life in full force.

Just before Christmas I received an email from a colleague at school. Unlike me and all of our coworkers, she actually reads our union's monthly newsletter, and in it she’d seen something she thought might interest me – a tiny ad seeking chaperons for an American/Japanese exchange program. My interest piqued, I checked out the website. In short, it was perfect.

I stayed awake until three o'clock that morning writing my application essay.

Not three days later, my mother called me from a dinner party and insisted I come over. The hostess, who has recently moved here from the Philippines, had invited a couple of friends from her English class. As fortune would have it, they were Japanese and delighted to learn that I had been to the fair Nippon.

What's more, they wanted to do an infamous "language exchange" -- a very popular pastime in Japan, but not something you hear about that often on this side. Still, I decided it was a good idea. My 日本語　is downright rusty, and if I have any intention of going back to Japan, もとべんきょうが　ひつようです (I need more practice). To that end, I've been hanging out with them regularly and getting back to the basics of Japanese. I am astounded by how much I've forgotten so quickly, but piece by piece it's slowly coming back.

Last Saturday I interviewed for the exchange program position, and it went swimmingly. I had the interview committee on the edges of their seats -- laughing at my jokes, nodding in pensive agreement at my profound statements about cultural education, and so on. They were eating out of my hand. As soon as I hear back from them, I'll update you.

I'm not sure where all these new endeavors will take me, but I promise I'll bring you along for the ride.


Hikone Castle, April '06

********

On a side note, if you follow my adventures regularly, here are some upcoming travels to look forward to: I have a shamelessly wealthy aunt and uncle whom I'll be visiting in Florida in early April. Look for photos of their private chateau & yacht and stories about fancy food right here. In July, I'm attending a convention in Seattle. This'll be my first time in the infamous insomniac city, so expect late-night posts and a detailed description of my trip to the original Starbucks. Also, since I already told you how perfect The Boyfriend is, I might as well throw in the fact that he's taking me to Hawaii in August. Jealous? I knew you would be.

New Photos!

Since New Year's we've gotten dumped with snow and I've got the photos to prove it. I nearly missed my chance one morning when I woke up to find that everything standing still was covered in frost... and I couldn't stop to take pics because I had to drive Gramps & Gram to the airport. I did get a few quick shots before it melted though. Enjoy!

The Assident

My friend Big'n'Tall likes to play with words. He likes to say "apposa" instead of "supposed to", and he calls pickles "piggles". Anything remotely resembling a bucket or a basket is a "busket". He also calls an accident an "assident". This seems like a pretty accurate interpretation to me.

Today, I got in an assident.


I hate getting into traffic collisions. I'm sure no one particularly enjoys them, but any time it happens, no matter what the circumstances, I get that feeling that I'm being sucked into another dimension via a black hole in the pit of my stomach. It's decidedly unpleasant.

Whenever my students tell me a story in which they are ultimately guilty of something stupid or irresponsible, they always start it with the phrase, "See, what had happened was..."

Between the copper, the insurance agent, and my mother, I've already explained this more times than I care to, so here's a little diagram to illustrate. Essentially, I was trying to get home, turned in front of a bus who was stopped behind a Hummer who was trying to turn behind me, and should have waited two more seconds before so doing. For my male readers, I have put everything in military terminology to help you understand.



(Note: References to the Hummer as the "Enemy" are purely due to the fact that I think everyone who drives a Hummer hates nature and ergo is no friend of mine. This is not at all indicative of the driver's behavior before, during, or after the Incident, which was exemplary.)

I actually T-boned the Bogie. My mother thought I misspoke -- in her head, it seemed like the Bogie T-boned me -- but she underestimated the Bogie's velocity, which was a significant factor. By the time I saw the car at all, I was looking through its back window. The force of the impact pushed the Bogie toward the curb, and the driver then over-corrected and slammed into the passenger's side of the Hummer.

Technically, the assident was my fault, which I suppose makes me the ass who caused the dent. I expect, based purely on past experience, that when I'm in an assident, whether I was the ass or not, the other driver is going to bitch me out. It's kind of how people do things around here. I got out of my car fully expecting to get it from the driver of the Bogie, who turned out to be a little old woman on her way to work at the local home for down-and-out teenage moms. The driver of the other car was a college student who was approximately thirty-seven feet from her home when the Bogie slammed into her. Once we confirmed that nobody was bleeding, neither of them seemed upset at all. A bit shakey, perhaps, but nowhere near slapping me or pulling my hair. In fact, I didn't get so much as a dirty look from either of them.

How is this possible? Well, here's what I figure:

I made a left turn without ensuring that the coast was clear and so was guilty of the moving violation that caused the Incident.

However:

The driver of the Bogie was exceeding the speed limit by approximately 20 mph, which is naughty in any case, but she was also doing it while passing a school bus on the right. That's not exactly a crime, but it's criminally stupid, especially considering how much traffic there was.

Additionally, it turned out that the teenage driver didn't have her license! Another big no-no.

When the cop arrived to write the report, we were all hanging around chatting in pretty good spirits. There was no finger-pointing, just calm explanations of what happened. He was so flabbergasted that instead of writing tickets for all of us, he wrote no tickets at all. He just looked at our cars, filled out the report, and took off.

Ultimately, I came up with a new theory of traffic collisions, which is thus: When guilt is equally distributed among all parties and all parties are of such a moral fiber that they accept responsibility for their own guilt, a altercation may be easily avoided by shrugging and saying "Shit happens".

Busted

today, in an effort to entertain myself, i logged on to yahoo answers and starting buzzing around solving people's problems. this is a wonderful pastime for me, as i'm a bit of a wise ass and enjoy spreading my wit around.

well, this girl had a question that went something like "AHHHHHHHH! PLEASE HELP ME! MY COMPUTER KEEPS FREEZING!!!" the situation, in brief, is that her pc is as rank with viruses as that meatloaf your roommate has had in the refrigerator since last february. she can't even turn the damn thing off. it freezes completely and to "resolve" the problem, she unplugs it and reboots. she also reported that it made loud noises. yeesh! she's clearly on the edge of a breakdown and had nowhere to turn.

so i gave her the only bit of advice i knew would actually help her. i said (and i quote):


jeez, why torture yourself?
just get a mac.


i thought this response was brilliantly clever, undeniably true, and pretty funny to boot.



only a couple minutes later, i got an email saying that i had been reported for abuse, my answer had been removed, and i lost credibility points on my profile.

for saying she should get a mac?!



i can't figure out what i did that violates the yahoo terms of service or the answers community guidelines.

did i...
*vent, rant, or use hate speech?
*chat or otherwise violate the question-answer format?
*say something mean or obscene?
*exploit the community (via spam or such)?
*cheat (to give myself unearned points)?
*violate the law?
*behave maliciously?
*post things that are incomprehensible or in a different language? (by the by, this is a bit exclusionist of them, isn't it??)
*do harm??

i did not do any of these things.

i don't think slamming pc's counts as a racial slur, and that was a pretty gentle slam anyway. i didn't even post a picture of a naked woman licking a mac! (though it wouldn't be hard to get one, i'm sure.)


if she had logged on and said that orange juice gave her canker sores and i told her to try apple juice instead (because of the lower acidity, obviously), i'd have been commended for a very reasonable solution. she's having problems with a product so i suggested a superior product.


and some sniveling, beady-eyed, little microsoft lackey out there saw it and got pissed off and flagged my comment.

it was pretty mean of him to report me just because we have a difference of opinion. it was even a bit malicious. and it did me harm -- it lowered my credibility and raised my blood pressure (downright dangerous, given my delicate condition).



what a prick.

The PCH, Loads of Adventure, and Overdraft Fees

it's all sandra's fault, really.

well... some of it is k.c.'s fault.

it occurred to me months ago that i needed to go to california and run around with sandra. she was by far my best girl bud in japan, and i'd been missing her and her shenanigans like crazy. all school year, i'd been promising myself that i would make good use of my summer holiday, and a trip to california sounded like the perfect way.

enter k.c. we met several months ago and have been getting on wonderfully ever since. when i started making noises about going out west, he started waxing nostalgic about the two years he'd spent living in san diego. the weather is so perfect, the people are so great, there's so much to do, etc. he would just really love to show me around san diego.

the only little problem is that san diego is a mere ten hour drive from where i was planning to go in california.

after a great deal of discussing, debating, and counting the pennies in our piggy-banks, we decided we would indeed fly to sandra's... then make an epic journey down the pacific coast. and that is what we did. we saw everything from tahoe to the governator to pandas at the zoo, not to mention the drive down the pch (pacific coast highway) -- the most glorious ten hours i've ever spent in a car. courtesy of a good contact, we even spent a night at bacara, which was clearly way out of our income bracket.

here are some photos to make you jealous...

sandra and k.c. hiking at lake tahoe. tahoe was absolutely gorgeous -- bright blue and clean, tucked way up in the mountains -- and freezing cold. we had a blast hiking around emerald bay and climbing all over rocks like these.

we stayed at sandra's for three days of eating japanese food, randomly bursting into song, and hearing sandra's childhood tales of jew camp. then we took off at four o'clock in the morning to beat the rush hour chaos between sac and s.f. it's a good thing k.c. is a morning person because i'm really not fit to drive until at least nine.

random stop along the pch -- driving down highway 1 (also known as the pacific coast highway) redefined the term "scenic drive" for me. the only thing we had determined when we left home was when we would fly back. this left everything in between a blissful blur of spontaneity, which we took full advantage of, particularly during this drive. we stopped often and very randomly whenever the notion struck us.

getting our toes wet at carmel -- we stopped at carmel because we saw a sign on the highway for the "historic mission" and thought it might yield some good photos. we never found the mission, but we did find a beach and decided that was good enough. this is the first picture of me in the pacific ocean. (my toes are the pretty ones; k.c.'s are the big man toes.)

rose gardens at hearst castle, san simeon... thank you, i thought it was a great shot too.

funny story about hearst castle: the castle's on the side of a mountain in the middle of a huge piece of land that used to be the hearst ranch. when you get to the visitors' center, they put you on a bus to ride up the mountain and on the way, you listen to a recording about the history of the place. part of this is a little blurb about hearst's menagerie, which included thirty types of exotic grazing animals that roamed free on the ranch. a few ancestors of these animals are still living wild on the property around the castle. (this is the part where i got excited.) some of them are zebras. can you imagine how frickin' cool it would be to see a zebra just hanging out in california? so i decided to spend the rest of the day keeping an eye out for the zebras...

well, if you've followed my adventures in the past, you'll know that i'm not very lucky with spotting creatures of the woodland realm. in a scenerio sadly reminiscent of my moose-tracking expedition in the adirondacks, i didn't see any zebras.

but i could feel their presence.

admiring the ocean view at bacara -- as mentioned earlier, we went to the fabulous bacara resort & spa near goletta, ca. the resort was everything they promised and so much more. the room was wonderfully luxurious, the views were breath-taking, and the staff were downright cool. the food, though shockingly over-priced, was pretty scrumptious. the spa itself, however, was a bit of a let down. not to sound like a spa slut, but i've had better.

the national cemetery at point loma -- when we arrived in san diego, k.c. was thrilled to be back on his home turf and our entire stay was high-lighted by his always comical and unpredictable "this one time..." stories. as we drove up to point loma, he told the story of the one time that he took his scooter up the same very long and steep hill at about five o'clock in the morning. the story mostly went "so i was pushing and pushing" on the uphill parts and "here i was coasting" on the downhill parts with a few interjections of things like "here's where the navy guys passed me in their jeep and told me to go home..."

we also went to the san diego zoo, which was very cool. and here i did see zebras, but it wasn't the same.

and my very own photograph of one of the most photographed spots in america. i don't really like l.a., but we stayed here in hollywood for several days and had a pretty good time, in spite of the pollution, the traffic, and the general over-population.

so now i'm home. i have no money and some overdraft fees to pay, so it's a good thing that school starts up again next week.

until next time...

- g

The Uterus Tax, ps

remember how bill had initially told me that all four o2 sensors on my engine needed to be repaired at $130 each? then when i was pissed off, he changed his story and said only two were bad?

well, out of curiosity, i gave paul a call today and just innocently inquired how many o2 sensors there were in a 1995 v6 mystique.

funny -- there are only two.

go to hell, bill.

The Uterus Tax

one of the things i miss most about japan is the trains. you just can't beat
the ease and reliability of japanese public transport. and honestly, who doesn't want a commute to work that involves zoning out with your ipod, texting novellas to your friends, putting on your make-up, and drinking your coffee or beer (coffee on the way in; beer on the way out) in total safety and serenity. it's an extra twenty minutes of responsibility-free lounging before you arrive at the office and hop back on the hamster wheel. not to mention the infinite joys of train games such as train surfing, shown here. incidently, this is the same day that marley, the indian/trinidadian/canadian wonder on the right, got shoved off the train. poor marley.

(see the addendum to The Anti-Climax for an explanation of why american trains don't cut the mustard.)

well, dorothy, we're not in japan anymore. here in the u.s. of a, if you have places to go, you need a car to get there. americans love cars. almost as much as we love guns. nothing gets us off more than having a gun in the back seat of our car. it's the american way.

enter my car. she's a mercury mystique -- notice how we love cars so much, they get to be called "she" instead of "it" -- a 1995, which is far from new, but her only previous owner was a little old lady who drove her to the grocery store and to church and nowhere else. when i got her, she had a staggering 30,000 miles on her. unbelievable. and o so beautiful. an added bonus: mystiques normally come with a little four-banger engine, but mine has a v6. this means that i will kick your ass in a drag race any day of the week. try me.

however, at the end of the day, a twelve year-old car is still a twelve year-old car, so we obviously have a few maintenance issues. right before i left for new york (literally the day before), one of these issues chose to rear its ugly head. it happened like this...

because i'm a delinquent cat parent, i often drop him off at my mother's when i decide to skip town in search of adventure or when i'm running from my creditors and crack dealers. on this particular occasion, i just get him settled in for another stay at "grandma's" and am about to pull out when the coolant light on the dash comes on. ok, no biggie. i stop the car, pop the hood, and sure enough, my coolant's a little low. i bee-bop into the garage and grab a bottle, top it off, and think i'm set to go. o no, no, no. as i start her back up, my mother comes running down the driveway after me.

"wait! i know why your coolant was low!"

"other than because there wasn't enough coolant in the tank?"

"don't get smart with me. it's leaking. it's dripping all over the driveway."

"well, i'm supposed to be in *insert name of other, slightly cooler town* in half an hour for dinner with *insert name of hot guy*, so... i don't care."

"well... you could take some coolant with you and top it off again later, but if the hose goes... especially since you're driving all the way to *other town*... you should really have somebody look at it before you take it on the highway, honey."

somehow by adding "honey" to the end of things, she always sounds so reasonable. so since she's my mom, i do what she says and i head over to an auto shop. the two auto shops we use are actually kitty-corner from each other on the same intersection. i randomly chose one. for our purposes, we shall call it "bill's".

bill checks out the car while i wait. a good twenty minutes later, he returns with bad news -- it's not a leaky hose; it's the water pump, which circulates the coolant through the engine. this is a biggie. if i had gotten on the highway, i would have basically toasted my engine and had to thumb my way home. thanks, mom.

but the news gets worse. a mystique is a smallish car and it turns out that the location of the water pump is somewhat problematic. bill tells me they'll actually have to take the engine out of the car in order to reach the pump, a job which will take four to five hours. i'm already late for dinner. did i mention it was dinner with a guy? and that he's hot?

bill insists that the car's in really bad shape and i shouldn't even drive it home. well, so much for dinner. i call my mom to get a ride home. one ringie dingie... two ringie dingies... no answer. hmm, i muse... how curious. i try her cell. same story. then i remember she had said something about mowing the lawn... dammit! it'll be at least an hour before she gets a message. so i'm going to be at bill's reading last january's "better homes and gardens" for a while. i call my dinner date to cancel and explain the situation, hoping he believes me and doesn't think i just bailed.

"*long explanation of my current conundrum*... so i guess i'm not going to make it up for dinner. i'm really sorry."

"where are you now?"

"at the auto shop."

"is someone coming to get you."

"no, not yet. i left a message for my mom, but i think she's mowing the lawn."

"what's she doing mowing the lawn? that's a man's job!"

"*laughter* i know! tell that to my dad!"

"well, stay put. i'm on my way."

the tone with which he says this conjures vague childhood memories of batman on the red phone with the commissioner and inside i swoon a little bit. on the outside, i protest -- it's too far and he really shouldn't go to all the trouble... but he's already walking out the door and before he hangs up i can hear his car starting.

so dinner was saved, but i had to abandon my car at bill's while i was in the adirondacks. when i picked it up a week and a half later, his $500 estimate had lept to $650. yikes methinks as i write a check. that's gonna leave a mark. just to make my day a little better, he stops me on my way out and explains that they also found a problem with the o2 sensors. (o2 means oxygen, he explains, as if i didn't pass fifth grade science.) there are four of them -- three are completely shot and the fourth is going, so they all need to be replaced. he estimates $90 per part and $120 in labour, which will be another $500 by the time you add tax and such. brilliant. i sigh and set up an appointment to bring it back in.

i take the receipt home to file it with other work we've had done on the car and i am astounded to find another receipt from the auto shop across the street -- paul's -- for the exact same job early last fall. my parents have had this car for a while now, and less than a year ago, they replaced that same water pump. this raises a wide variety of disturbing epiphanies. first and foremost, the water pump paul installed was under warranty, and thus if i had taken it back to him, he would have replaced it for free. $650 thrown to the wind. but it gets better.

the overall job at paul's cost only $400, a whopping 40% less than bill's version of the same repair. confuseb and a bit irritated, i start looking at the fine print. $110 for paul's water pump; $160 for bill's. $15 for a belt at paul's; $30 at bill's. $15 for fresh coolant at paul's; $25 at bill's. 2.8 hours of labour at paul's vs 4.5 at bill's. for the same bloody job! that's $180 for paul's labour and $280 for bill's. then my favourite -- as i'm looking at the charges on bill's bill, i notice something kind of funny: less than $250 in parts plus less than $300 in labour plus $15 in taxes magically equals more than $650 total. you don't have to take non-euclidian geometries to figure out that that's bullshit, and i f*cking aced non-euclidian geometries.

i'm flying into an apoplectic rage about now. i leap back into my g-mobile and all six cylinders buzz me over to bill's to read him the riot act. i try to be polite to the receptionist 'cuz none of this is her fault, but she can probably see the plumes of donald duckesque red smoke billowing from my ears.

bill is, of course, shocked and appalled at the mathematical "error" and slyly attempts to blame it on the receptionist who has conveniently left the room. almost instantly, he pulls the difference of $100 out of his wallet in cold, hard cash and thrusts it at me, all the while blubbering about how his accountant would have caught that mistake. she surely would have called me in a day or two.

then let me ask you this, bill: shouldn't you give me my refund in the form of a check so that you have some written record to show your accountant when she comes asking?

"o no," he's floundering big time now, "not necessary. i just prefer cash 'cuz it's faster."

yeah, that's the same thing my crack dealer says.

next i set my two receipts on the counter side-by-side and demand an explanation of the pricing difference. why is your water pump worth $160 when paul charged me $110 for the same part? and the belt? the coolant? the labour??

blah blah blah, bill tries valiantly to explain something about the quality of the parts and warranties and such.

this is hard to swallow since i was just on the phone with paul who assured me the pump and belt both have lifetime warranties. the pump, in fact, is the newest model they can get their hands on, absolutely 100% satisfaction guarenteed. through the whole ordeal, paul's a total star and even though i took my problem to the guy across the street, he's willing to refund me the cost of the defective part. he is in no way obligated to do this. he's just nice.

bill's voice is starting to remind me of charlie brown's mom and i know that the 100 bucks in my pocket is the only useful thing i'm going to get out of him, so i start to collect my papers and walk out. in the last death throes of our customer service relationship, he changes strategies and offers me some "good" news -- it turns out he was wrong about those o2 sensors. only one of them is really bad and a second one going, so i'll just have to have two of them replaced instead of all four.

i almost laugh aloud because he has got to be a cokehead if he thinks he's ever touching my car again.

i've heard other women complain about the uterus tax that you pay when you take your car to a shop yourself, instead of having your husband/boyfriend/father take it in for you. i always thought it was sort of an urban legend. well, somebody call "myth busters." of course, some of the additional fees on bill's water pump job were probably related to the fact that i was going out of town and not just the fact that i don't have a penis, but in total they amounted to $250 worth of bullshit charges, not including the upcoming $500+ o2 sensor replacement.

unfortunately for bill, i'm ballsy enough that i pulled right out of his parking lot and into paul's where i had him run a scope on my car. you'll be relieved to know, dear reader, that my o2 sensors are just fine.

The Great American Pastime

I don't care how popular it gets in Japan -- there is still nothing more American than a game of baseball.

I remember the strike. If you're American, you remember it too. 1994 -- dispute between the players and the owners over a salary cap; players went on strike; no major league baseball. That year everybody watched football and basketball and hockey instead, and ever since, Major League Baseball's been just a little bit... mrah :-/ And it doesn't help that now that they're back in the game, they're passing the 'roids around and every good player's suspect.

So here's what I say:

Screw Major League Baseball.

That's right. I said it.

Real baseball doesn't happen in huge stadiums under florescent lights with $8 (cold) hot dogs. Real baseball doesn't happen where you're so far up in the nosebleed section that you have to watch the game on a TV anyway, even though you came to the game. Real baseball doesn't happen where the ref can make a call and you can't scream about how blind he is because you couldn't see it either. Real baseball doesn't happen where the advertisements on the wall are four thousand times the size of the damn ball.

But have no fear, gentle reader. This is not the death of America's Favorite Pastime. ©

Real baseball still happens all the time.

In fact, as you read this blog, in a sunny local park somewhere in America, real baseball is in full swing. You won't find many 90 mph curve balls. The players won't be sluggers like Hank Aaron or Barry Bonds (with the exception of a few guys like the one shown above, whose current batting average this season is somewhere around .850 -- meow!). There are sometimes cheap uniforms, sometimes not, sometimes good old-fashioned shirts & skins. When it gets dark, they won't turn on the lights; the best they can do is grab a yellow night ball and finish out the inning. Expect multi-tasking -- in addition to the throwing, batting, catching, and running involved, they'll also be drinking beer (cheap American beer) and eating a wide variety of grill-able meats. And you can't buy a cold hot dog for $8, but you can probably bum a hot one for free.

None of these factors should be used to judge their passion for the game.

Instead, consider this: the entire 1994 postseason (including the World Series) was scrapped because of a dispute over money. Owners wanted to keep more of it; players wanted to get more of it. So they argued. They all got pissed off. They all took their balls and their bats and went home. This, as you well know, is the quintessential metaphor for a retreat in the face of opposition, reserved only for the most bull-headed and infantile of men who pound their fists in rage at the very thought of negotiation, cooperation, or (God forbid!) compromise.

On the other hand, somewhere in a little corner of the Midwest, there is the Beerball League©. These guys show up faithfully every week (including on holidays, on rainy days, and yes, even on Mother's Day). They are deterred neither by the cold nor the heat, scorching sun nor the falling darkness. At the end of any given inning, at least one of them will walk off the field bleeding from that perfect slide/tag/collision/pile-up. They keep painfully intricate stats on every aspect of play. A bad call by the ump will result in the dropping of jaws, the throwing of gloves, and profuse streams of profanity, but never ever in going home. They come for nine innings and they play nine innings come hell or high water. And as the name suggests, the major difference between the Beerball League© and a standard league is that in Beerball©, every fielder is required to have a beer with him at all times.

And like amateurs all over the country, the Beerballers keep playing week after week, year after year, for one reason and one reason alone:

They frickin' love this game.

I Do Mountains

There's just no keeping me at home anymore. As soon as I have any money or leisure, I take off somewhere, which is just as irresponsible as it sounds. I spent this past week in the Adirondack Mountains of upstate New York.

Maybe it's my roots in the tragically flat Midwest, maybe something deeper, but I've always been drawn to mountains. They're intoxicating for me -- wild, exotic, overwhelmingly beautiful.

After a week of residency, I now consider myself an Adirondack expert. Here are some useful things to do if you're headed this way:

1) Go to Lake Placid. For starters, Lake Placid is one of very few cities in the world that have hosted the Olympic Games more than once -- 1932 and 1980. The 1932 games were only the third time the modern games had been held and the first time they were held in the US. The 1980 games were, of course, the site of that famously "miraculous" hockey game.

Just outside of Lake Placid lies Whiteface Mountain, the fifth highest peak in the Adirondacks and the highest that is accessible by car. Go. It's fantastic. And don't take the elevator to the top, you pansy. climb. My mom did it; you can do it too.

2) Go white-water rafting down the Hudson. Be extremely careful if you're going in the early spring -- they open the river the first of April -- because the standing waves can be up to twenty-five feet high. For you metric system readers, that's, um... well, it's really high.

Our go wasn't quite that intense, but it was pretty fun. We had one especially exciting moment when we nearly capsized going over a rapid -- my aunt went overboard and we had to haul her back in by her life jacket. At another point, the boat behind us got hung up on a boulder. Our guide ordered us over to the bank so we could wait and make sure they got free. When we got to the edge of the river, he yelled that one of us had to hop out and hang on to keep us from rushing further downstream. When it became apparent that the three grown men on board had checked their balls at the front desk with their car keys, I jumped out, crawled up on a rock, and held the raft. Once the other raft was on their way, I lept, with the dexterity of a gazelle, back into my place and we were off again. Quite an thrill, I must say.

One note of caution: If you do go, bring your balls with you so that the little girl behind you doesn't write sh*t about you and publish it on the internet.

3) See a moose. I haven't managed this, even though I researched the best times & places to see them and how to make moose calls (which I'm getting pretty good at). Try coming in the fall. That's what I'll do next time.

If this sign were being honest, it would say "No moose for the next three months."

Keeping the Adventure Alive

When I was preparing for my blind leap into the Land of the Rising Sun, my mother had two reservations:

1) She was a little bit nervous about her innocent baby flying to the other side of the globe, into a foreign culture, with no knowledge of the language or customs, to a town she'd never heard of, with a somewhat sketchy job, all alone, for an indefinite amount of time.

2) She'd never gotten the chance to do something cool like that.

Before I moved overseas, I had always been a bit shy, a bit on the fringe of things. Some of my friends would strongly disagree with this, but they are only my most intimate of friends. The average classmate or coworker of mine knew little to nothing about me and had probably never had a conversation with me.

Then I moved to Japan.

Part of my motivation for going overseas was the need to stretch my wings. You know the feeling you get in your legs if you sit in a cramped back seat of a car for too long? That feeling that makes you want to do jumping jacks and run around in circles? It was like that, only it wasn't in my legs; it was in my whole life.

So I stretched.

I don't think I really noticed the change 'til one day i was at Starbucks with Don (our usual pre-work ritual) and he asked me a funny question: "So what's it like to be the only girl in the office?"

"I'm not the only girl in the office."

"Yeah, you are."

"No... there's Erica, and both our bosses, and the Japanese staff... There are lots of girls in the office."

"All right... What's it like to be the only hot girl in the office?"

"What?! Just drink your coffee."

This very brief conversation led to deeper contemplation on my part and, eventually, to a total paradigm shift. It was true -- looks aside -- I was the only girl in the office who ever did anything. because I wasn't particularly attached to my roommates, I was out with guys from the office every night -- 80s night once a month at The Metro; fish & chips at the pub; Bruce Lee movie nights; nabe parties; discovering new hole-in-the-wall bars in Shi-jo; karaoke marathons 'til 4 a.m.; Christmas caroling (my god, whose idea was that?!); a thousand beers in dimly lit izakaya; loitering around San-jo bridge when we couldn't afford anything else; and train beers every single night after work. Inintentionally and for the first time in my life, I was right in the hub of the social scene.

For the most part, this was due to the perfect balance of yin and yang that was my friendship with Don. No one alive is more unlike me than Don. We were therefore an inseparable and flawless team. He hatched a scheme, I hopped on board, and in three seconds flat, the shenanigans were in full swing and anybody who was anybody was with us -- the idea man and his hot sidekick makin' the magic happen.

Don is going to hell for being irreverent at the Kobe earthquake memorials... and several similar offenses. I'm going to hell for laughing.

You can imagine my dismay when I got home and had no Don and therefore nothing to do. Nothing to do. I now have to create all the trouble I get into on my own, which is an awful lot of work.

However, one thing I did decide was that I needed to share the new, adventurous me with my mom, who doesn't think she is adventurous at all. Today, my mom and I went white-water rafting for seventeen miles down the Hudson river. Seventeen miles. Go, mom!

:-)

The Clinger Jr.

I thought that one of the big advantages of my new job would be the consistency. I would know which students I was going to be dealing with at any given time on any given day. Better yet, there would be no clingers. Even the most obnoxious of adolescents would only be in my room for fifty-five minutes a day.

Theoretically.

You should really never make sweeping generalizations about teenagers.

I had a problem child in my sixth hour. To sum up, he watched too much South Park and thought that it was so funny, he should model his own behavior after it. This essentially meant that he spouted obnoxious, and generally racist, remarks almost constantly. Throw in a dash of potty humor and a "your mom" quip here and there, and you'll have a pretty complete picture of him.

Just as Japanese Mr. T's rambling tales of erectile dysfunction made his classmates squirm and look at him sideways, this student's crass remarks made his classmates squirm. The building tension finally came to a head one day when he turned to a girl in the back row and, for all the class to hear, referred to her Pakistani boyfriend as a (and remember, these are his words, not mine) "sand n*gger." I was completely dumb-founded. She was in the social worker's office in tears. Parents were on the phone in a rage. All signs pointed to Little Mr. T on the fast-track toward expulsion.

What happened next is a bit hard to explain. After a few days of exchanging emails with the social worker and speaking to both sets of moms and dads (which, in Little T's case is actually dad and truly Disney-style evil stepmom), I pulled him out of class. I asked him if he wanted to be expelled. He insisted fervently that he did not. Then, I explained, the only person who could save him was that little girl in the back row, so he had better fall down at her feet and beg for mercy.

This he did, though I don't know exactly how he managed it. What I do know is that it involved apologizing to both her and her boyfriend and that when he was done, she dropped all the charges against him and after that they got on like a house on fire. What's more, all my problems with his outrageously inappropriate sense of humor vanished into oblivion like a politically incorrect ninja.

Truly miraculous.

So all was well, you assume? O no. Never make assumptions about teenagers.

Very shortly after the dust settled on this one, Little T started developing another peculiar quirk. He started coming to my room on his lunch hour when I was teaching another class. He insisted that this would keep him out of trouble, as lunch hour is normally fraught with mischief-making and shenanigans of all shapes and sizes. We struck a deal -- as long as he behaved in sixth hour, he could stow away in my room during lunch hour.

The arrangement worked well for a while... 'til he came in my room one day during fourth hour. When I inquired as to where he was supposed to be, he explained that his math teacher told him to get out and never come back. Ever. She didn't account for the fact that there are no refugee camps for geometry exiles, so the child had nowhere to go. "You can send me to the principal's office," he suggested, "but I won't go -- I'll just go out to the parking lot and smoke pot with *insert names of two other miscreants here* 'cuz she threw them out too and I know that's where they are."

*sigh* So I told him to sit down and be quieter than a deaf, blind, and mute mouse. In fact, quieter than a mouse that was actually dead.

By the end of the year, Little T was attending my class for three and a half hours a day. Three and a half hours! He was a Miss G junkie! He truly must have been Mr. T's much younger and much whiter twin. The other option is that some time before Mr. T's current erectile problems, he fathered a son...

Ew.