Time to go

Travel day. For the logistically inclined, it's a bit nerve-wracking. It's one thing to get to your home airport and if things mess up then you can go home. To get stranded in the away place means you'd have to find someplace to stay and whatever else bad that can happen. It's weird. You'd think I had this kind of thing happen to me a lot, but I can't really think of a time that it's ever happened. I guess one time in Russia in 1977 a flight got canceled and our group had to sleep on the floor in the airport. But you'd think I'd be over that by now.

Parasailing

I had an employee once who was an avid skydiver. He was apparently quite accomplished, a fact which he attempted to show off to celebrate his 40th birthday by doing a fancy landing. He bungled it and ended up in the hospital for a month. I regret that I never learned to fly a plane, but I never really had a great desire to sky dive, I think today was the closest I'll get.

Parasailing always looked like fun and it is. It all seems routine when you're doing it. You get strapped to a parachute, the boat starts moving forward and instead of moving forward you go back and up. It's almost startling smooth and quiet. I went with one of my kids. It's always nice to have company when you're floating a couple of hundred feet in the air. Eventually they reel you back in and you land on your butt on the boat. Highly recommended if you're not afraid of heights.

Yesterday, we did our traditional Christmas on vacation activity, which is to go to a movie. It took less time than usual to choose a movie because I've thrown up my hands and stopped resisting seeing chick flicks. I live with a bunch of chicks, what can I do? Over the summer we saw Julie and Julia. Yesterday we saw It's Complicated. I've not seen too many of this director's movies (which I make up for by having seen The Parent Trap, which she also directed, about 30 times) and I think that's okay. Even though this movie is "unusual" in that it has an older female protagonist, everything about it was completely conventional and, to my eyes anyway, formulaic. At times it's painful watching good actors trying to sound heartfelt and original when the scenarios are not.

The most outstanding characteristic of this experience was the number of commercials that were played before the movie started. We got into the theater about 10 minutes late because of the persistent lack of useful road signs around here, and there was a preview on. This was followed by, and I'm not exaggerating, 10 or 12 commercials. Then, 3 more previews followed by 8 more commercials. I've never been so happy to see the dancing popcorn and soda.

Clothes make the man

Vacation clothing is not the same as home clothing. For some people, the packing rpocess is painful, as you feel your outfit options shrinking at factorial speed. I don't know if anyone actually makes this kind of calculation, but if you have 12 shirts and 5 pants and add one of each, you go from 60 to 78 options, and some version of that realization is somewhere in the mind of people concerned with such things. Girl note: I am told that sometimes wearing one thing can disable an entire set of outfits, and I am not equipped to dispute this point.

Once you arrive at your destination it's a countdown. Do I have enough clothing to make it through? Aside from the obvious running out of underwear problem, there are other pitfalls- on vacation you tend to do more things that get your clothes dirty than in your day to day, but your clothing supply is more limited, leading to difficult choices.

The starkest choice really comes down to this- how many times am I going to wear this not-completely-clean thing? This pair of shorts I wore yesterday- I wore them to breakfast and from 3PM to 6PM and again from 11PM until bed. Do I put them on again this morning? How about this t-shirt? I didn't put it on until the afternoon but it got a little wet around the bottom. Wear it again or not? Or workout clothes. You can't bring a fresh pair of workout clothes for every day (Girl note: Well of course you do!).

I used 'kerfuffle' in a sentence.

Traveling at holiday time is an intense experience by any measure. I have a personal history of mixed trauma and bemusement stemming from my father's behavior when we used to go away as a family when I was in my teens and early 20s.

My father is a big guy and not afraid to take an approach to life based on intimidation. We used to all ride to the airport together in a hired car and the moment we entered the airport he would turn into a raging lunatic. He would lash out at the slightest provocation and he wasn't choosy about targets, excepting my mother, who he wouldn't tangle with. But the driver, luggage carriers, customer service agents and, of course, us kids, were easy targets.

After we'd arrived at our destination he would relax and we could make fun of his behavior and he would laugh along. And though I was always a prime target, being the smarty pants that I was (but not any more of course), but I did realize after a while that it wasn't about me. I mean, you don't really have to yell at someone for standing 2 feet to the right of where you want them, or sliding a bag a few inches across the floor without being told to do so.

WIth this in the background, I try to moderate my own airport behavior, even though all sorts of things annoy me. I try to leave early to the airport and attempt to keep things calm. Of course, "calm" and "two teenage daughters" are not necessarily the most compatible things.

The main hitch on this trip was when a child who packed late at night and completely independently comes downstairs 5 minutes before we were supposed to leave and asks, "Do I need to pack anything else?" My response, which can be summarized as saying that was a silly line of questioning because I didn't know what she had already packed, was not met warmly. The ensuing kerfuffle lasted about 15 minutes so by the time we left for the airport the taxi meter was already over $10.

The drive went smoothly, but once inside the terminal everything changed. On most mornings, and airline terminal is businesslike, with everyone acting in a directed manner. Today it was a mix of bewildered and frustrated adults and bored and cranky kids all trying to figure out what line to stand in. The lines were ridiculous, and people standing in line with piles of suitcases are the most uncomfortable people anywhere.

The one thing the terminal seemed to lack was airline employees, but I finally found one and asked what line I should join. She said "Right here. There's a sign over there but nobody seems to see it." Well, duh. Have you ever noticed how many signs there are in an airport? There must have been 100 of various shapes and sizes within reading distance. And too many signs is only slightly better than no signs at all.

The rest of the trip was pretty routine. I'll check back in later.

Ugh

I like a good cultural stereotype as much as the next guy, but do they really have to put "we ship to prisons" in an ad for a gangsta rap album?

Snow Day

A heavy snow sets off a predictable flurry of activities, some universal, some peculiar to myself. I like snow very much. It can be a pain but I like watching it fall and I like seeing it on the ground. I also like to venture forth into the snow, as I always put it, either on foot (there's always a trip to the grocery store on the agenda) or by car.

Last night, one of my kids said they wanted to sleep over at a friends's house about a 20 minute drive from here and could I pick her up in the morning. I said okay knowing what I was getting into. This morning, I cleared off the car and ventured out into the white. I did a lot of my early driving when I was in college in upstate New York, so I'm a pretty skilled driver in these kinds of conditions and I kind of enjoy it.

Driving in the snow is all about friction. Actually, all of driving is about friction, though friction is boring and so nobody ever talks about it. I think one of the reasons people drive too fast is they don't really think about the massive force that's necessary to bring a one ton object moving at 60 miles per hour to a stop. And all of that force is provided by friction between the tires and the road. Fortunately, most tires and most roads are designed to maximize the coefficient of friction between them. In the snow, however, you've still got the tires but the road surface is missing and 4 wheel drive or even 40 wheel drive if there was such a thing is going to change that.

It's a little unnerving if you haven't done it much, but the key to driving in the snow is to not expect the tires to grab the road. This is a pretty foreign idea, and it means driving as if you can't stop and you can't turn. So when I drive in the snow I go at a speed such that I can stop without skidding and control both my speed and angle of approach to a turn to minimize the skid. I also try to keep breaking and accelerating to a minimum. Rolling with my foot off the accelerator pedal is best.

Skidding is bad, but you can (usually) live with it if you know what you're doing. The key is that you can only control the car when your wheels are turning and in contact with the road. This means that if you skid, you must turn in the direction you're skidding. Most spins happen when people try to straighten the car out by turning against the skid, but that only makes it worse. If you have a car with antilock breaks you can keep your foot on the break. If not, you have to take your foot off immediately because it's the breaking that's causing you to skid.

And however hard you try, you will occasionally lose control of the car, and while it's perfectly appropriate to react with a succinct "I'm f#@&ed.," sometimes you have to sit back, enjoy the ride, and hope the car behind you doesn't do the same thing.

Besides skidding, the other dangerous thing about driving in the snow is other drivers. There are few things scarier than driving along in the snow and encountering someone who does not know what they're doing- the back of their car swinging wildly back and forth. This is the main argument against recreationally driving in the snow. I've had terrifying experiences on the Turnpike when people who assume 4-wheel drive makes you perfectly safe start changing lanes suddenly at high speed only to lose control halfway in between.

OK. Time to light a fire and fall asleep on the couch.

19 Whiteboard Markers, 15 Binder Clips, 3 Ricola and 4 Rubber Earbud Thingees

Question: What was at the bottom of my bookbag?

More gas

Here's the response to my gas station directions:

2 questions:

Do I press the inside level the whole time it's filling or does it just start filling after i press it and i don't need to press it anymore?

Also, i'd like to just fill the whole tank up, but im going to do debit and i dont know when to take the nozzle out i don't know how it's supposed to stop and i dont want the tank to overflow

And my response:

Sometimes you have to hold it, but some of them have things that will let you prop the handle in the pressed position. It has to stay pressed the whole time either by you or the thing propping it. It shouldn't take more than a minute or two.

Every gas pump has an automatic mechanism that make the pump stop when the tank is full. As long as you've put the nozzle in the hole it will stop itself when it's full and it will not overflow. It'll make loud click and if you're holding it it'll suddenly feel limp- like it takes no pressure to press it. If you've propped it it will stop itself. Either way, you won't have to do anything except put the nozzle back.

So there. And now, for your viewing pleasure:

From Life's Instruction Book

In case you have never had to put gas in a car by yourself before, here are instructions (I wrote these out for a new driver I know who has cash and a debit card)

1. Pull up to the right side of the pumps.

2. Find the button in the car that opens the outside gas tank cover and push it (if you can't find it look in the index of the owners manual for gas tank or fuel tank or whatever)

3. Unscrew the top of the gas tank

4. Take your debit card and slip it in in and out of the slot on the gas pump. It's usually magnetic strip up and to the left.

5. I haven't used a debit card so I'm not sure here, but you probably have to push a button that says DEBIT and then enter your PIN on the keypad.

6. If at this point it isn't working, find the number on the pump, lock the car and go inside and tell the attendant you want to pay for gas with either a (for example) $20 bill or the debit card. He will ask you what pump number and how much gas you want. If you use the debit card, say "fill it" and if you use the $20, say "$20 worth"

7. Go to the pump, lift the nozzle out of the holder (don't touch the inside lever) and insert it in the gas tank, (just like in Health Class), press the button on the pump that says "Regular" (or 87 octane). The numbers on the pump will go to 0. Squeeze the inside handle to start dispensing gas.

8. You can stop whenever you want or wait for it to stop itself if you told the guy "fill it." If you gave the guy the $20 and you let it keep filling, it will automatically stop at $20.

9. Pull the nozzle out (keep the end pointed away from you, they can drip a bit) and put it back in the pump.

10. Screw the tank cover back on until it clicks (don't worry if it clicks more than once, it's supposed to) and close the outside cover

11. The display will ask if you want a receipt and you can say yes or no.

I made this up sitting in traffic. It's probably funnier if you're a beer drinker

Two bacteria walk into a bar. The bartender says, "Get out. We don't serve your kind here." And the first bacteria says, "why not, isn't this a microbe brewery?"

Endangered Species

One of the sad trends of 2009 has been the rapid disappearance of bubble wrap as packing material. It has been crowded out by cheaper (those big plastic pillow kinds of things) or more environmentally friendly (any kind of paper-based substance) cushioning products. But clearly nothing else adds to the pleasure of receiving a package like a nice sheet of bubble wrap.

Bubble wrap is yet another of the marvelous products invented during my lifetime, but now all we're left with is this.

Saturday Morning Lynx

Time for the Saturday morning lynx.

Anyone with a Facebook page should read this and check your settings. Everything that's not checked as "Just friends" is pretty much public (and I include "friends of friends" as pretty much public- if you have 500 friends and they have 500 friends, that means 25000 people can see your stuff)

http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/GadgetGuide/facebooks-privacy-settings-things/story?id=9312771

On a more fun note, if you like astronomy, or even just looking at the stars, check this out.

Squatter's Rights

In a meeting yesterday we were discussing creating a faculty lounge. This let to a brief discussion as to where such a thing might be located, which then led to a discussion of how to make the necessary changes in the schedule to make it work. This sounded like a recipe for inaction to me, so I suggested that we just pick a room and start using it as our lounge, regardless of whether there are classes scheduled there. My theory is that if the teachers are sitting around drinking coffee or chatting or playing ping-pong or whatever in a room, the class that's trying to meet there will have plenty of incentive to relocate themselves and will almost certainly do so if we make it clear that we're not leaving. That way there's no need for the administration to get involved.

Sometimes simple solutions are the best.

Don't read this while you're driving

The New York TImes has been running a series called Driven to Distraction about driving while doing other things, like talking on cell phones, texting, reading, etc. Everyone knows people who do this kind of stuff (and probably worse) and I, for one, am extra careful around cars when I can see that the driver is not he phone. Reminds me of an old comedy routine about how it's better to be on the road with someone who's drinking and driving than someone who's eating and driving, because at least the drunks are trying to drive.

Today's article is about how everyone thinks they are capable of driving safely while talking while others probably are not. There's a lot of chatter about how biased people's perceptions of themselves versus others are, but I personally think the whole discussion is beside the point.

If you want to convince people that it's dangerous to drive while talking on a cell phone, you first have to make them understand that the most dangerous thing they do on a daily basis is drive. Over the course of a lifetime, your probability of being killed in a car crash is 1 in 100. The only more common causes of death are heart disease, cancer and stroke (more details here- scroll down for the grim details). I think the next most common accidental cause is falling in the bathroom, so definitely don't drive in the bathroom.

But seriously, even if you accept only that talking on the phone only makes you, say, 10% more likely to die in a car crash, why would you want to take the most dangerous thing about your day and make it even more dangerous? It's just stupid. But people assume that because they've all driven in cars lots of times and haven't died that it's not dangerous. That's stupid too. You sit in a metal box traveling at 30, 50, 70 miles per hour and you're surrounded by other boxes moving just as fast. And some of them are going in the opposite direction from you without any physical separation. And some of them are driven by people who are tired, distracted, dim-witted, drunk or otherwise. And you don't think that's hazardous? How could it not be?

I think I'll dredge up my old How To Drive Safely essay, but in the meantime, please try to recognize how important it is to do everything possible to minimize, rather than increase, the danger.

Deep Cleansing Breaths

I was in Starbucks this morning, doing my usual buying coffee for everyone except me (that's because I don't go out until after I've had my own coffee). The woman behind me asks for a large tea and the guy behind the counter says, what kind of tea and she says, "Calm." and the guy behind the counter says, "I'm sorry, but we're all out of Calm."

This sounded like a terribly sad state of affairs, and the woman looked as distraught as you might imagine anyone might look if they had been told they couldn't have any Calm. As much as I wanted to help, I decided not to point out that the new seasonal tea was on the shelf, because someone who didn't get the Calm they wanted was probably not in the mood for Joy.

Results versus Process

My dog is a good example of valuing process over results. Every morning I take her out to "relieve herself" as they say, and even though she really needs the relief, she will sniff and sniff and sniff until she finds just the perfect spot. I'm not really in a position to judge the priorities of other species, but in lousy weather this can be kind of infuriating. But for the dog, finding the right spot is what rules, not what happens once she finds the spot.

One of the consequences of our "hurry up and get it done so we can get on to the next thing" culture is that we often lose sight of the process when we put a singular focus on results. I see it all the time with students of all levels. The idea of math class is to learn math, not to do well on math tests. The learning is all the stuff that leads up to the test. The test is just to make sure the learning took place. So what happens in school turns the whole thing inside out.

I was thinking about this because of something I heard, Mike Krzyzewski say on the radio. I'm not a huge Coach K fan. Not for any major reason, I just think he's kind of full of himself (although after listening to Bono on the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame concert I think the idea of 'full of yourself' has been taken) and his players are floppers and whiners. But what he said in this instance was pretty interesting. He was talking about several basketball greats, Larry Bird and LeBron James and some others, and said that what allowed them to elevate themselves to a championship level was that they learned to love the process. They learned to love going to the gym and taking 100 shots from the same place, love lifting weights, love running sprints, love all that practice stuff that lies behind being a great ballplayer.

So I ask myself if I love the process of what I do. It's kind of a funny question for me, because what I do is process. Teachers don't actually accomplish anything for themselves, they are there to help the students accomplish something. But the answer is yes anyway, because I love the process of being a process, the reading, the lesson planning, the getting up in front of the class, the one-on-one work. I have nothing tangible to show at the end of the day, but if I edged my students toward their goals, I've been a successful process. What other jobs are like that?

Over Easy

My brain is fried at the moment. At school to see the show last night (great!) so home late. Up since 6. Today I think was the first day I was both the first teacher in and the last to leave, at least on my floor. Lots of old school cutting and pasting and photocopying. And I think the scramble to regain some sort of post-strike normalcy and order (not that I'm such a fan of either) and the need to draw the trimester (or whatever kind of mester we're left with at this point) to a conclusion has worn me down a bit.

There's probably also the fact that I'm teaching Calculus for the first time. I know the material just fine, but the first time you teach something you can't anticipate the questions the class will come up with. In my other classes I've heard 95% of the questions before, so it's just a matter of referencing something I've said previously, but in Calculus I need to formulate the answers from scratch, which is very stimulating but much harder.

Enough for today.

Seasons Greetings

I don't usually pay that much attention to seasonal gifts, but I must say I was taken with one thing I saw today- Sunoco Gift Cards! Yes, give gas, candy, cigarettes, snacks and maybe a propane tank refill to the ones you love. Available in denominations of $25, $50 and $100 (!), or as they say on their ad, Regular, Midgrade and Premium. Can't you just feel the love behind such a gift?