Great moments in sun protection

A day at the beach always includes a parade of sunscreen application methods. Most people seem to opt for the contortionism of self-application, which is what I tend to do. But there are other, more creative methods too. Right behind us was a guy instructing his 4 year-old daughter on how to apply and rub the goop in on his back. I didn't see him and hope for the girl's mental health that he wasn't too hairy. But our favorite was when we were eating lunch, there was a woman lying flat on her back, completely stretched out on the ground, and her husband was bent over her spraying sunscreeen on her from head to toe, from a height of about 3 feet. We were commenting that he should have a mop or a Swiffer to spread it around.

 In general, I had thought that the spray-on sunscreen has made the application process less comical, but it's clear that I merely had not been clued into its potential for humor. You could have your friends in a ring around you and spin around and spray them all. If you did this with people of varying heights doing the spinning you could probably do a pretty complete job of it.

By 3 PM on a day with a 10 UV rating, however, it doesn't seem to matter what you do. Everyone walking by has red spots of varying sizes, ranging from the small strip adjacent to the bathing suit, to the big circle in the middle of the back, to the entire head and shoulders and chest and belly. I fell asleep briefly, and even though I've never gotten burned in that kind of instance, my immediate reaction was to panic. I guess the sleep-aided sunburn is a cultural touchstone of sorts, and it doesn't matter whether or not it actually happened to you.

Maybe not quite a plight

Oh, the plight of the one early riser in a group of vacation sleepyheads. Who gets to join that battle to acquire and retain the prime beach chairs against the rapacious hoards of sun seekers? Who reclines, accompanied only by unused towels and place minding books? Who must answer the unending stream of "Is this taken? " queries? It's a lonely lot, but at least it's a sunny one.

Where else but a resort hotel would you see a stressed out looking woman rushing to catch an elevator carrying a neon green inflatable tube?

I'm always in a bit of a conundrum when we're on vacation because I get up so much earlier than everyone else. What do I do? I can go out but when do I return? I think I need one of those flashing pagers they give you at restaurants that have really long waits.

Only in a resort town do you see a store sign selling WINGS - SPORTSWEAR. This sounds almost irresistible to me. Hope they have a lot of napkins.

It was too cold and windy to lie on the beach today, so we went to Busch Gardens. It's kind of an odd place, stuck in the middle of a nondescript suburb of Tampa between condo complexes, office parks, and strip malls. It's not quite an amusement park, though it does have rides and it's not quite a zoo, though it does have animals, and if you're going to call it a theme park I defy you to identify a theme. Actually, I know. The theme is Absurdly Expensive. I don't mind paying for stuff, I really don't. But this thing was $75 a person to get in, for a half dozen roller coasters, a few animal attractions, and a teeny little version of Sesame Place with kiddie rides. It wasn't particularly crowded or unpleasant, I just didn't get it.

Mark your calendar

National Licorice Day is April 12!

We'll try to stay serene and calm

I am excited because starting in April I am taking a journalism class taught by someone whose writing I really like and respect. I've been lucky enough to get some good writing training in my life. I blame it all on Fred Wagner, an English Professor at Hamilton who did not teach me to write. He was, however, a wonderful teacher who did not teach me to write. What he did do was tell me that I couldn't take his 20th Century Literature class until I learned to write, and in an unprecedented and singular moment in my (I was going to say 'checkered' here, but that implies more high points than there actually were) college career, I was genuinely motivated because I really wanted to take the class. So I had to take an expository writing class with a guy who was neither a wonderful teacher nor an even a passably nice person. But a theme of my life seems to be that even seemingly wasted time is not actually wasted. So in the same way I kind of blew off my college psychology classes and yet ended up working in two different but both psychology-based fields, I seem to have begun learning to write in that class.

It was not that much later when I wrote the series of letters I mentioned a couple of days ago. I'll quote a part of it that I actually remember clearly.

We had just just crossed the Alabama state line looking for a campground. Steve and I went into this store and asked the owner. He said that there was a roadside park up the road about 500 yards and that we could camp there. I said, "Doesn't anybody care if you camp in a roadside park?" "Down here," he said, "nobody does nothin' about nothin'."

Unfortunately, the park was full of garbage do we had to move on. We drove through Mobile, catching a tremendous lightning show. I'd never seen such cloud to cloud lightning before. After about 15 minutes of spectacular displays, a huge starburst of electricity shot in all directions and suddenly the lights all went out. Intense.

I can still see that lighting flash and the city going dark.

 

Softball

This afternoon I went to a softball game, where I got to see my daughter's team play against the team from the school where I teach. As soon as I arrived, my daughter's coach yelled out to me to keep my rooting priorities straight. It was actually a little awkward. I ended up kind of pacing around, hanging out with various people (parents, actually, which are kind of like people) I knew from both teams. I have discovered over the years that I can't control who I root for, so when people ask me in advance who it'll be I always have to say I don't know, it'll just come to me.

I ended up rooting for different teams at different times. At the very end, I guess I had to root for my daughter's team (because as one of her teammates said, I have to remember who I go home with), but I also rooted for all the kids on my school's team to do well individually. It ended up being a very close game and a lot of fun to watch. After the game, my school's team gave me a shout out, which was very nice and surprising and made me feel kind of sheepish, or at least sheepesque. It also made me want to go watch them play when my rooting interests aren't divided.

Like a fine wine

I was in my attic looking for sports equipment for the sports equipment drive, and I found some old letters. (Note: My stomach just growled so loudly it made the dog bark. This is not the first time this has happened but it's always funny). The letters are from me. In July 1977 I drove across the country with 2 friends and I had the idea that I would write a letter to a couple, both of whom were also friends, each day and then they would give them back to me at the end so I'd have a written record of the trip. Unfortunately, they broke up while we were away, so I didn't get all of them back. But I do have some and they were the original inspiration for my writing a blog, so I thought I'd take a peek at them.

It's odd to hear the voice of a younger version of yourself. It's clearly me, but less subtle, more of a smartass (really, I swear it's possible) and very, very introspective in the way a smart 21 year-old who does not really understand his brain would be. I spent what seems like an inordinate amount of time trying to figure myself out, though I guess that time wasn't totally wasted, and I was aware even then that travel and changing scenes was a good way to see what you're like stripped of context. I wonder if someone other than me would recognize the writer as being me.

Where am I?

I've now gotten 3 teaching schedules for the Act III of school. Anyone who's seen my desk can imagine the potential problems inherent in my having 3 similar-looking but slightly different papers floating around there. I'm also teaching half my classes in a room I've never been in before, which is convenient, I guess, but a bit disorienting.

One of my kids has these funny invisible braces. I actually kind of forget about them until I get the bill, but being an adult is full of things like that. When I was a lad I had REAL braces, hefty metal things with wires connecting them, with headgear and everything. I distinctly remember the process of having one of this wires break, usually because I was eating something I wasn't supposed to (to this day I still eat sticky candy without actually chewing on it because of this). We'd make an appointment with the orthodontist, but in the meantime I had a small envelope with a piece of black wax in it. I would pull off a piece of the wax and stick it on the wire to keep it from scraping up the inside of my lip. This not only stopped the pain, but made it look like I'd lost a tooth, a fun prospect for a nine year-old.

I also remember the monthly checkups where they would tighten the braces. I'd have to sit there and watch and feel them twisting the wires tighter until it was just on the edge of hurting. Four friggin years I had to do that, and my teeth still aren't straight. In the orthodontist's defense, he had an impossible job. I grew up right before fluoride was introduced and my teeth, to quote my dentist, "dissolved in saliva." I wasn't allowed to have any candy until I was 8, and I still had anywhere from 3 up to 12(!) cavities every checkup. So ultimately they had to yank out (they preferred to say "extract," but I watched it happen and "yank" is more appropriate) 3 of my baby teeth. Yep, baby teeth so bad they couldn't wait for them to fall out on their own. This caused all my other teeth to shift all over the place. At least my front teeth are straight now. The back ones are kind of a mess. The only good news is that I've had so many fillings and caps that I no longer have much of anyplace to get cavities.

Fatty Acid Rock

I just took a couple of fish oil capsules. Fish oil is very good for you and my doctor suggested I take it. I've done this before but I never keep it up because a little while after you take the capsules you get (surprise surprise) fish repeats. But I got this new kind that says on the label "Controls Fish Burps." I generally prefer that everything I eat, even fish, control my fish burps, (presumably they're talking about my own and not other people's), but I've never seen it on a label before. My daughter noticed that it does not say "Eliminates Fish Burps" or even "Reduces Fish Burps." So I will have to keep you posted as to what sort of fish burp control I get.

Update: 30 minutes later, a single small, one might say "controlled" fish burp.

The other reason I'm not sure I'll keep it up is because I've maxed out space in my pill holder with all the supplements I take. Aside from a multivitamin, I already take vitamins B12 and D, Calcium, Magnesium, Glucosamine and Condroitin. This seems rather a lot and it doesn't all fit in my pill case, and I will not get one of those huge ones that old people who can't open childproof tops have.

I amuse myself

Driving to work today I saw what looked like a pyramid in the parking lot of the former General Wayne Inn. As I got closer I could see it was the top of the tent, but for some reason before my mind went to "Oh, they're taking down the tent," it went to "Oh cool, a  tent for a midget wedding!" I actually started laughing out loud, which I seldom do when I'm driving by myself. Hope nobody saw me...

I have been known to do stupid things

Maybe I had too much to drink last night, because apparently I invented something called Daylight Savings TIme. I don't remember doing that. I thought that there already was Daylight Savings Time, but clearly I was wrong, because my daughter is exasperated with me because I'm making her turn her clock ahead by an hour.

Oh, and if my 18 year-old is now an adult, I would like to know what that makes me, because I am definitely not the same thing as she is.

Today's question

If I spent all day doing useless stuff I wanted to do and didn't get to any of the things I was supposed to (and still need to) do, was this a good day or a bad day?

Awkward and odd and miscellaneous

Last night my wife and I were sitting in the office and she was reading something about one of my kids' teachers. She started reading them out loud and I realized that it was from that site ratemyteachers.com. So I'm sitting there thinking, "Please don't please don't," but of course she finally got to "Hey, let's look at yours!"

I am aware of the site and looked at it once a few years ago, but I had decided at some point that I'd rather not see it, but I got to hear the 10 or so comments, good and bad, read to me. For some reason, this was uncomfortable for me. It's weird, because I'm not someone who tries to avoid getting feedback. Usually, I want to know everything. In personal relationships, knowledge is power, in that knowing how the other person or people feel about you and things you did or said can help guide you. I remember one of my high school friends asking me, "Why do you always want to know the worst?" I didn't know how to reply at the time, but the answer is, of course, that if you know the worst you at least have a prayer of making it better.

(On a totally unrelated note, this same friend said one of my favorite things that anyone's ever said about me. I'd said or done something that had disrupted a group activity or class, I don't remember, and seeing what had happened I muttered, "Well, there's one in every crowd," to which my friend replied, "Yes, but why does it always have to be you." I cherish that.).

I was in the supermarket yesterday getting some stuff at the deli counter. I like getting things at the deli counter because they slice them really thin. The deli people have a dress code of some sort. They have to wear a cap with the store brand of deli products and an apron. They men need to wear ties, even under the apron. They guy waiting on me had his purple and grey-striped tie done in the same way they show a stereotypical roaring drunk man in a suit, loosened about 4 inches below his neck, with the back and front twisted over each other and turned at a right angle so the end is much closer to his armpit than his belly button. And I'm thinking, what is the objective of having the guy wear a tie in the first place, and is this particular arrangement meeting that objective? It's like the speed limit. If you make a speed limit but don't actually enforce it, it's at best the same and possibly worse than not having a speed limit at all. Personally, I think having a rule that's not enforced is worse than having no rule at all, because it trains people not to follow rules, and not just stupid rules like wearing a tie under your deli apron, but important rules like don't speed (and by extension, don't run red lights).

The school has now instituted a system where they interrupt classes once a day to remind teachers to take attendance. They also posted huge signs in the lobby to remind the kids to check in when they arrive at school (they don't say, as I have intimated, "Swipe in or die!" but the idea is the same). All I have to say is that it's good to have the functionality of knowing which kids are in school and which kids are not to be fully operational by the time it's two-thirds of the way through the school year.

Danger!

How many warning lights on the dashboard before we bring the car in for service? Up to 4...

I am watching The Oscars

Why am I watching the Oscars? I haven't seen any of the movies nominated for Best Picture, even on video, and it looks like they nominated a whole boatload of them this year. I'm not sure why I haven't seen these things. I like movies and before we had kids we used to go to the Telluride Film Festival and see a dozen movies in a long weekend (oh, and a note to all you Jewish kids out there who only know a dozen from the bagel shop, a dozen is 12, not 13).

I guess kids got in the way of our seeing movies, so when we don't have kids anymore we can go back to seeing them all again. That does happen eventually, doesn't it? The kids do go away, don't they?

My Least Favorite Thing

I'm currently in an unused classroom at Widener University while the students are participating in the JETS engineering competition. I took the opportunity to bring a foot-thick pile of unsorted papers and spread them out on a nice, big open table. I can never do that at work or at home, because in both paces I am stymied by an implacable enemy. That enemy is my desk.

I seem to be incapable of keeping an orderly, neat desk with space available for me to put something down in front of me to work. I read somewhere that when a journalist mentioned to Einstein that his desk was very messy, he said, "If a cluttered desk is a sign of a cluttered mind, then what are we to think of an empty desk?" My mind doesn't feel particularly cluttered. It's certainly more clear and orderly than my actual life. But I cannot for the life of me keep paperwork in order. It's actually demoralizing at times. I can clear tons of things off the desk and yet more remains.

I think my problem is in putting things away. My filing system is as follows: Every 6 months I clear everything from my "To File" folder, which at that point is about 18-24 inches tall and put it in a box and I seal the box closed with tape. If in the next 6 months I have no occasion to open the box I throw it away and start a new box. This is a functional system but not a good one, and it makes me cautious about putting things in the file box and so they remain on the desk.

At his point I have no solution to this. Years ago, when I was running the little ad agency, I bought a organizing self-help book called "Winning the War With Your Desk." One of the people who worked for me walked in, noticed the book and said, "My money's on the desk." That about covers it.

Caution rules

One of the things you learn in marketing is that you should never overpromise. Or maybe that's my own thing. I grew up always hearing about how much potential I had and how I wasn't living up to it. So for better or worse, I've made a habit out of holding back a bit so as not to raise expectations too high. I can't honestly say that I think this is a good idea, but it is something that I do.

What's made me think of it is the professional development thing that I've occasionally referred to as Awesome Teaching Techniques (not its real name). The idea is to incorporate newer technology into the classroom. I have no problem with the idea of doing that, but to a great extent I find the program self-referential, meaning that I think the program measures success based on how much you use the program, rather than achieving actual goals. One of the buzzwords I keep hearing is collaboration. Here's a quote: "... 'evaluation' can be embedded in the collaborative projects, not the quality and quantity of them..."

What in the world does that mean? The purpose of the project is to evaluate itself? The ATT program talks about transforming education and then I hear the people who run it praise the idea of using an ATT-provided tool to have a faculty book club as a "great idea." I actually like the idea of online book clubs, but in what way is that transformative? How about instead you say, we'll have an online book club to help the faculty become more comfortable using the web as a social network and a way of sharing insights? That's a nice little step, but if you promise it as transformative then you run the risk of people saying, "Is that it? That's all?" And once that happens you're dead. You can't get those people back.

It's the same box Apple has put itself in with the iPad. They've introduced it as something that will change your life. If all it is is a bigger screened version of an iPhone but without the phone, it's going to flop and flop hard because it doesn't change your life at all. It's just a nice incremental change that would be appreciated if that's what you called it.

No Fun

Having this cool phone is not as much fun as it would be if I didn't need reading glasses to use it.