Secrets of the trade

I was dropping my dog off at the groomer and there was so much racket I started to wonder how people could even work there. Then a groomer came out and I saw them- ear plugs!

Do it yourself milk

At the Cosi in Bryn Mawr, they have only half & half and nonfat milk. So someone like me who likes regular (or even 2%) milk in their coffee has to act like a chemist.

The other mystery here is that there's a display case full of muffins but if you ask for one they go and take one out of the refrigerator and microwave it to bring it to room temperature. The net effect of this is to make a coffee and a muffin transaction into something complicated and time-consuming.

Ski Tripping

Just as an aside, I think lichens are interesting organisms- kind like a fungus that grows its own algae for nourishment. But they live on rocks, not in the Underworld, and I don't know why someone made a movie about them. It's got to be like the dullest thing ever, except of course compared to stupid CG action movies.

By virtue of my having done it the most years in a row, I am now the chaperone of record on school ski trips. I do not enjoy this at all. The paperwork is annoying at best and I'm always the last one who gets to ski as a result, especially this time when I left my boots on the bus and had to call the driver on his cell phone and wait for him to get back. But, someone has to do it and I've at least done it before.

Camelback is a nice place to do a trip. It's a little far, but there's a decent complement of trails over a broad difficulty level, and it's a good place for beginners. The skiing was kind of odd on Thursday. There had been a bunch of snow the previous day, topped off with a dollop of freezing rain. After grooming, this left you skiing on something that felt like a combination of of manmade snow and crushed ice, all stuck together. It's not as bad as it sounds. It was kind of bumpy in spots, but there was enough that you could set an edge and turn. It was also lightning fast.

Skiing in these medium sized resorts has a completely different feel than at larger places. At Camelback, I cant take the fast lift to the top in about 4-5 minutes (if that) and then ski down to the bottom in about 45 seconds and then just go right back up again. I didn't even get on the slope until 10:45 and by the time I stopped for lunch at 12 I'd done at least 10 runs.

I got to have a variety of interactions with students. I rode lifts and skied with them, watched one crash into a cyclone fence and almost get mowed down by another when I was going over to help her. While we were in the infirmary having the crasher's wrist put in a sling, this boy came in and reported that he'd knocked himself out. The first aid people were trying to work with him but he kept insisting that he'd knocked himself out several times before and he was fine. Boys can be so stupid. He was actually almost getting belligerent with the guys because they wanted him to lie down so they could examine him. Finally he calmed down a bit when they told him irritability was a common symptom of a concussion. Oh, and if you didn't know, concussions are cumulative. The second one is always worse than the first.

The ride back is always more eventful than the ride up where everyone's sleepy. We feed the kids on the way, so this year we got deli trays with a variety of sandwiches. The downside to this is that buses don't lend themselves well to food distribution, so if you can picture 60 kids gathered around the side of a bus taking sandwiches and pickles off deli trays that are sitting on the pavement in an adjacent parking space (and someone forget to order napkins), you kind of get the picture. We also had bags of baby carrots and the obligatory carrot fight. We dropped one kid off at a rest area to the care of someone who claimed to be his father. And we got back to school without having left anyone at the mountain and so I guess it all went fine. And am I up for it again? Sure I am. Next year I have to take pictures though.

Sorry I didn't get a picture

I saw a billboard on the way back from the ski trip. It was advertising a car dealer in the delightfully named town of Wind Gap. It featured a picture of a big hot dog and the caption was, "You never sausage a deal." Read it out loud if you don't get it.

Update: Here's a related link. Link? Sausage? Get it?

Also, there was an actual road sign that said, "No Services, Keep Right." I am not sure what the purpose of this sign is. If you want no services you should keep right? Does anybody seek that out?

More on the weather

I'm pretty torn here. We have 3 possibilities.

1. The storm turns into nothing and there's regular school hours tomorrow
2. School is canceled and midterms are delayed until Monday and the start of the second semester is delayed until Tuesday
3. School opening is delayed by 2 hours in which case one of the two midterms is given during the afternoon, the second semester starts as scheduled on Monday, except everyone with a math midterm has to take their midterm.

What I'm torn about is that I'm the only math teacher who isn't giving a midterm, so it doesn't affect me directly at all. So I'm not sure whether to root for 1 or 2, which will make it easiest on my colleagues, or option 3 which will provide maximum chaos. So being collegial versus entertaining myself. It's a tough choice.

Weather Update

I've gotten 6 e-mails in the last 24 hours about what to do if there's "inclement weather" on Wednesday. It seems pretty clear that there will be inclement weather on Wednesday. I want an e-mail or two about what we'll do if there's also inclement weather on Monday when we'll be trying to make up everything that gets rescheduled from Wednesday.

Post-inaugural blues

A friend of mine told me he was taking a sabbatical from political news. I'm starting to really see the wisdom of this. The amount of focus on Obama's first few days in office is beyond anything I've experienced. It reflects both the hopes everyone has pinned on Obama and the dreadful mess his predecessor left. There's so much damage to undo that everything takes on an added urgency. The hardest thing has to be deciding what emergency to tackle first.

And so if you follow the political news you're automatically drawn into the intensity of it all. Economy, Iraq, Iran, Israel, Hamas, stem cells, climate change, torture (however did we come to debating torture?) Guantanamo (oh yeah, another nice touch by the Republicans to not keep records on the prisoners), and we haven't even touched health care yet (what are you waiting for, it's been almost a week?). And I'm already burnt out. Most of the direction is good, but I think I need to take a break.

Sparkly boy

I have to admit it. I like figure skating. Ever since I had a crush on Peggy Fleming when I was a kid I've been hooked. The national championships were in Philadelphia a few years ago and my wife and I went to almost all of it. Saw Michelle Kwan win one of her 9 titles.

It's a funny sport. All of these judged sports are kind of odd- gymnastics, diving, synchronized swimming (and what exactly is singles synchronized swimming? Do you need an imaginary friend to compete?). Skating is very strenuous and the people who do it are really fit. However, they've taken a lot of the fun out of it with the new pseudo-objective scoring system.

Back in the day, half the fun (or frustration) was the intrigue. All the communist countries would give great marks to the Russian and East German skaters and dis the Americans. British and US judges likewise. France was predictably a swing vote. Eventually a bunch of them got caught colluding and they changed the system.

In Men's skating this year, Johnny Weir (from Coatesville, the Inquirer never fails to remind us), one of the two top skaters for the last 5 years and a world medalist, was very sick in December and skated very poorly because he was out of shape. I guess some interviewer referenced Michael Jordan winning the NBA Championship with the the flu, and Weir, who is always good for a quote, said "Well Michael Jordan had a team around him. I'm just a skinny sparkly boy all alone in the middle of the ice." As silly as that sounds, it struck me a poignant and authentic and I guess it kind of explains the appeal to me, these tiny people in a huge expanse of white, all alone, performing amazing athletic feats.

Hem and haw

Isn't the Internet wonderful? I just used that phrase, meaning to hesitate, in an e-mail and it struck me that I had no idea what it came from. So I looked it up and the original British version is "hum and haw." In the American, "hem' is short for the throat clearing "ahem," and "haw" refers to a overly proper and hesitant way of speaking (haughty?)

Ellen DeGeneres

made a math joke. Talking about the inaugural, she said "It was full of pomp and circumstance. I don't know what pomp is, but circumstance is the distance around a circle."

Too Confusing

I'm a sucker for Girl Scout Cookies. Beyond my liking the cookies themselves, I also admire young girls (and their parents, usually moms) who can spend a freezing Sunday at a little table outside a supermarket to raise money. So I pretty much never pass one of these tables by without buying at least one box. This year, however, I'm having trouble finding the kinds of cookies I want. Thin Mints are still Thin Mints, but the enigmatically named Trefoils are just called Shortbread, and Samoas are Caramel deLites.

I've done a bit of research (and believe me, you can find out plenty about GS cookies if you try), starting with what Trefoil means (it means a leaf divided into 3 parts, like a clover- the Girl Scout logo is a trefoil). I then found out that there are 2 bakeries making cookies this year, only one of which gets to use the Trefoil name. I also learned a lot about foil trees in the process. Same thing with Samoas. I have to admit I'm a bit relieved about the latter. I'd have been pretty bummed if Samoas disappeared due to some kind of political correctness.

Decision-making

Lot's of people struggle with decisions. I know I've written about the consequences of having 80 different kinds of bread to choose from. Here's my favorite decision-making tool: Assume you're going to make the wrong decision.

If you're really not sure what to decide, the chances of making the correct decision can be estimated at around 50-50. So what I do is think about the consequences of choosing wrong. If you can't choose between the desired outcomes, how about the undesired ones? Which mistake would you rather make?

I learned this in business school, but the jury system (innocent until proven guilty) is founded on this principle. We'd rather let a guilty person go free than jail an innocent one.

This isn't going to help with bread choices, but when you have a sticky moral dilemma, it can come in handy.

Random Thoughts

I still haven't completely come down from the joy of the inauguation. And I hope I don't anytime soon.

On the other hand, the Forbes Magazine list of the 25 Most Influential Liberals in the Media is pretty light on actual liberals. As much as I like Daily Kos, I think the most interesting liberal blogs to read are Talking Points Memo and Matt Yglesias. I actually don't read all that many blogs and have no particular interest in expanding my list. You can waste multiple lifetimes on this kind of stuff.

I can't believe the first semester of school is over (for me at least, the actual students have midterms). It has absolutely flown by.

My daughter has been using my car every day, so I've been relying on a combination of bike/Septa and friends from work to get me to and from work. I'd feel like I was really inconveniencing people if I continued to do this after I got my car back, but it's nice being driven. I get picked up in the morning and the car is already warm, and then I'm dropped at my door after work. It makes the commute seem shorter and I always ride with people who have nice cars. The bike rides to the station have been pretty frigid, but I could see doing it regularly when the weather's warmer. Plus I get to ride the shuttle bus with the kids, and I like having a chance to talk to students when it's not about math homework.

Today we found out that out dog is limping because she's 8 pounds overweight. This may not seem like much, but it is for something that only weighs 32 pounds to start with, so we have to cut her food by 1/3. This should be fun. Nothing like a hungry dog to stir things up.

As opposed to an impossible bird?

Possible bird found in airliner engine

Headline on MSNBC.com

Beyonce

I have come to the conclusion that Beyonce is not a real person but a sort of cyborg who shifts from one beautiful form to another.

Historic Day

My first strong politics-related memory was JFK being assassinated. I was 8. I remember going to see President Johnson in a motorcade that went by out house in 1964 when he was running against Barry Goldwater. I worked as a copy boy at an international radio broadcast center in 1968 after all the atrocities of the summer and sat stunned as Nixon beat Humphrey. I went to Plains, Georgia and met Jimmy Carter's mother while he was still running in the primaries in 1976. Since then I've mostly kept my head down. Reagan's trickle-down faux-populism, Bush's mediocrity, Clinton's infuriating talent and lack of focus, the 8 immensely destructive years of W. I roll it all up into this one amazing day, when I finally get to see the right person become president.

I am daunted by the world Obama's inherited. I think we are only beginning to see the reality of what these past few years inflicted on us. It will probably get worse before it gets better. But we now have a president with calm, intelligence, vision, and with the desire and ability to bring people together. Almost 60% of McCain voters are optimistic about Obama, and I'm guessing McCain himself is among them. I've never seen a defeated candidate handled with the grace that Obama's shown. Nothing even close.

So is it any wonder that I can't pin down my emotions today? I've had a political lifetime bookended by disasters. The one thing I'm resentful for is that the campaign appropriated the word "hope," because that's exactly what I'm feeling right now.

Can't believe I even need to say this

Since it's been so cold here the last few days, you can't go too long without someone saying, "Well, so much for global warming." This is so stupid it defies understanding. It's not called "northeastern United States warming." If it's especially cold here, that only means it's especially warm somewhere else. It could be somewhere in the Southern hemisphere, or it could be in San Diego (averaging about 12 degrees above normal temperatures for the last 10 days).

The Football Post

I'm watching 3rd Rock From The Sun (best sitcom ever!) where they're talking about football. The first line is, "Football? I thought that got canceled in January."

I'm not a big football fan. Never have been. I'm a sports fan, so I don't go out of my way to avoid it, but I'm not as engaged in it as most. However, I've been watching football since the 1960's (it's the sports that's on TV on Sunday) and have seen many many games including every Super Bowl, so I have a bit of perspective on the Eagles.

What the Eagles have done these past few years is unusual but hardly unprecedented. The Buffalo Bills went to the Super Bowl 4 times and never won. The Eagles are a very good team, but not a great team, and very good teams need a lot of breaks to win the Super Bowl. Andy Reid is a very good coach and evaluator of talent, but he's not great at either.

For all the overanalysis, McNabb is a very good quarterback, but not a great quarterback. He has never had quite the consistency needed to put together enough of a run to win it all. Yesterday's game was a microcosm. He made some amazing, perfect passes, and when the game was on the line he didn't throw badly, but he didn't throw great either. And he seems to be able to think only 90% clearly when the heat is on, so he makes mistakes sometimes. This doesn't make him bad. It just means he isn't great.

Have they lost more than their share of big games? Sure they have. They're not quite good enough to win even if they don't get the breaks. They suffered from some questionable officiating at key times yesterday, but great teams can overcome that, and this just isn't a great team.

So I'm sorry, but not surprised that they lost. That Fitzgerald guy is amazing and the Jackson catch is something I'll always remember. It was an entertaining game to watch. Only 25 days until pitchers and catchers report to spring training.

MLK Day

Listening to interviews and such today, I'm kind of unsettled to think that all this stuff happened during my lifetime. I lived for 10 years in a country where some people were simply not allowed to vote. It seems like it ought to have been longer ago than that. But clearly progress moves in a slow crawl and in great leaps and I feel lucky that I've seen all of it. I will not ever forget standing outside a barbed wire fence around the motel in Memphis where Dr. King was killed. It's a museum now, but it was just an out of business motel with no markings then (this was around 1987 or 88). You could see the motel balcony and where the shot came from. Chilling.

Maybe it bears repeating

I haven't covered this territory in a while, so as a quick overview for new readers, this blog operates on a the following philosophy:

1. Treat others the way you'd like to be treated.

2. Leave every situation you encounter better than you found it.

3. Pay attention. Don't do so many things at once that you lose focus on what's going on right in front of you. And as a corollary, LISTEN.

4. Have fun, but never at anyone's expense. If you insult someone and then say, "just kidding," you still insulted them.

Now whether or not the blogger, as opposed to the blog, lives up to this isn't really for me to decide. All I can do is try.

Go Eagles!

What's Cooking?

I heard someone on the radio today promoting her cookbook, The Axis Of Evil Cookbook. Looking at Amazon, there are actually two Axis-themed cookbooks listed. Go figure. There's good food to be found everywhere I guess, but I thought a large portion of the North Korean populace was severely undernourished.

I almost got hit by a nostalgic driver

Nostalgic as in, "Ah, I remember when that light was green and I want to re-live those times, even though the light is red now."

What is this?

Adidas
Acer Aspire
Aphrodite
audio books
apple iphone
Atlas Shrugged
airsoft guns
alarm clock
apple
animal collective

Treading carefully

I don't like to dip into politics here, especially Middle East politics, about which I am more ignorant that most of my colleagues (and students). All I want to say about it is that I think it's a grave error to attribute an enemy's actions simply to their being "evil." as opposed to understanding their motivations. I know there actually are evil people out there, but hate and greed are historically much more common motivators for wars than pure evil.

All Songs Considered

If you like a variety of music and are interested in hearing an eclectic, intelligent mix, check out the All Songs Considered podcast. I've been listening to a show called "The 1980's. Were they really that bad?" (Panel consensus is a definite yes). It's from 9/2/08 and it's a really interesting panel discussion deconstructing why the music's so bad. I'm up to the part where they're discussing bright spots, but even that is sometimes cringeworthy because the engineer keeps fooling around and doing things like playing "Hungry Like The Wolf" when a panelist asked for "Fast Car" by Tracy Chapman (other high points were Replacements, REM, Guns and Roses and Talking Heads).

My Ferris Beuller moment

No, I didn't skip school or anything. More like the end when he's racing to beat his parents home. I don't have my car these days because my daughter's using it to get to her internship, which is inaccessible by public transit. So I'm getting rides from co-workers most days. This requires my being on a schedule.

Today I was getting picked up at 8:15. I was also dropping my other daughter off at school first. So I told my older one that I'd get her Starbucks on the way back if I had time (she was also leaving around 8:15). I zip back and forth to school and get back around here at 8:05, so I figure I'll go to Starbucks and if there's no line I'll get her coffee and if there's a line I won't. There's no line so I order some foamy coffee thing and go wait. Nothing comes, so I ask and it turns out they messed up my order. So they had to remake the coffee and now I was late.

So I head home and as I approach my road I see my ride 2 cars ahead of me. There's a light at my corner that I can see she isn't going to make so I make a quick left the block before, zip around the corner, pull into my carport, dash in the back door, hand off the coffee, thank you very much, and calmly walk out the front door, just as my ride pulls up.

Of course, it wouldn't have mattered if I was a minute or two late, but it still felt like I got away with something.

The Hall of Fame Gets it Right (mostly)

The most frequently heard line from HOF voters to defend their not voting someone is is "It's not the Hall of the Very Good." It's a fair statement, and you can't justify putting more marginal layers in just because there are already a few. But today's inductees were well chosen, even if there were a couple more who ought to have gotten in.

There's nobody in baseball today to compare to Rickey Henderson. Somebody once asked Bill James, probably the best known statistical analyst of the game, whether Henderson was a Hall of Famer, and he replied that Henderson was so good you could cut him in half and have 2 hall of famers. He was the most dominant offensive player of the 1980s and early 1990s and man oh man was he fun to watch.
Here are some of his statistics from 1985 with the Yankees: 146 runs in 143 games, 28 doubles, 5 triples, 24 homers, 72 RBIs, 99 walks, 80 stolen bases (caught 10 times) .419 OBP and .516 SLG. He's baseball's all time leader in runs scored and stolen bases (he stole 130 bases one year) and is second all time in bases on balls. He's the best leadoff hitter ever. Nobody else is close.

Jim Rice was never just thought of as very good. He was feared as a hitter and he hit the ball as hard as anyone I've ever seen. Amazing power. He wasn't one of my favorites like Rickey, but I always respected what he could do.

Facebook

I have a page. I don't want to be intrusive with students and former students, so I'll respond to being friended, but I won't initiate anything and I won't be insulted if people don't want to. It's just a way to keep in touch, since the blog is pretty much a one way thing.

Eagles Effect

I went skiing this morning. It was pretty crowded there until around 12 and then everybody vanished, at least all the people wearing jerseys over their coats and chanting on the lift lines. We got home about 3:00 and finished the game on Tivo about the same time the actual game ended. Pretty cool. Time to call my friend in Phoenix.

OverSATurated

Is it just me, or does the entire SAT process suck? And by the way, why is okay to use the word suck and not its rhyme that starts with a ph? Their meanings seem awfully similar to me.

Anyway, I have a daughter in high school who is freaking out about the SATs. Why is my kid mad at me because I didn't force her to start studying for a test 6 months ago? Is it normal for people to take that test 4 times? I don't get it. At this point all it does is test your ability to take a really long test.

I was talking to the guy who runs the local SAT prep place and I asked how business was. He said he'd seen no dropoff at all. We agreed that since his business was dependent on the insanity of baby boomer parents that he'd probably be able to weather any kind of economic storm.

Metablogging

I've tried to enable comments but I can't tell if it works. Can somebody let me know if you can find a place to comment? You may need to log in first- I'm not allowing anonymous comments and I'm moderating the comments as well. I'll try this for as long as it doesn't feel bad, so hold off on the evaluations of me as a person or a professional.

New Adventures

Before we get to my own adventures, I should mention that my reading glasses had an interesting couple of days. Reading glasses are the bane of my existence. If I had to choose between hair loss and needing reading glasses for the worst thing about getting older, I'd go with reading glasses in a second. I don't like that I've lost a lot of my hair, but it doesn't really affect my life in any way. Not being able to read stuff without taking something out of my pocket is a constant frustration.

So I had my reading glasses resting on the top of my head as I finish using the toilet. I lean over to flush and just as the water starts to move my glasses jump off my head and right into the bowl. Now, I've changed diapers so I'm not afraid of getting anything on my hands, but before I could get my hand down there, they were gone. So now I have no reading glasses and a clogged toilet (the only one downstairs) to boot. The plumber tells me they'll have to remove the whole toilet to get the out and it'll take all day, etc. etc. So the next day the guy comes, reaches in with something (I don't know what, I reached my hand in as far as I could and didn't feel them) and says, "Here they are."

So now I have these glasses that have been living in the toilet and what do I do with them? I'm afraid they'll melt if I run them through the dishwasher, so I put them in a bath of Purell. And now I'm wearing them again.

My own adventure is really less an adventure than an inconvenience. My daughter got her drivers license and is doing a month-long internship about 30 minutes from home, inaccessible by public transit. So she's driving my car. I used to work walking distance from home, but not any more, leaving me with finding other ways to get to work. Yesterday I rode my bike to the train (Brrrr!). Today I got a ride from a colleague. This fits nicely with my love of trip planning, only without the vacation at the end. But I grew up using public transit and I've never liked being so car-dependent, so this is okay as long as I don't feel like I'm imposing on anyone.

I know, I know. I can solve the whole thing by just getting her a car. Well if anyone has a few thousand dollars lying around, let me know and I'll put them to good use. Otherwise, we'll wait for a bit.

Random Thoughts

I got a text message from my daughter today accusing me of spiking her coffee with decaf. I swore I never touch the stuff.

We got a new stovetop cappuccino maker. It comes with an instructional DVD. In general, I think it's a good idea to avoid anything that needs an instructional DVD. Even our new Toaster Oven Broiler didn't have a DVD and it seems much more complicated that this thing, (the TOB is excellent, btw).

Regarding the TOB, there was something in Consumer Reports on the risks people take that they shouldn't and one of them was not unplugging the toaster when you're not using it. Does anyone do this? I guess anything is safer unplugged. But I don't turn off the gas when I'm done with the stove either. It's exciting to think I'm a risk-taker.

Today's Deep Thought

Anyone who tells you they give 110% is lying.

Movie Notes

Just got back from seeing Milk, which was excellent. I'm a little curious, though, about what kind of person would go to a film about the first openly gay elected official in the US and then say, out loud, "That's disgusting!" every time two men kissed each other. This was a woman sitting directly behind me. I mean, what movie did she thing she was coming to see? Maybe that cute little kid's movie that was advertised on the marquee, The Curious Ben Button. Cute little Ben. Always so curious.

Mystery

We stayed one night at a hotel in Montreal. The bathroom had 2 toilet paper rolls with 2 distinctly different kinds of toilet paper on them. I never got a chance to ask why.