Why do we sleep?

When I last checked in, I was sitting in the Tampa airport, anticipating a trip home. That did happen, but not for quite a while. Our flight kept getting delayed more and more. Finally we got on the plane, which took a very long time to load, because there too much luggage to fit in the overhead, forcing people to push either to the rear or front of the plane to shed their excess.

I'm not even sure when we took off, but then the pilot announced that there might be turbulence and that the flight attendants needed to stay seated.  This went on for about half the flight, so I had to eat my carry-on food with nothing to drink and no napkin. There was no cutlery either, but fortunately I had my folding spork, which served nicely.

By the time we got into Newark, it was midnight. We went to baggage claim, where our first bag came out in the first batch, and the second came...well, it was about 20 minutes between when the first batch of bags came out and when the second batch arrived. Its hard for me to imagine what had happened to cause this. Maybe snakes.

Finally got out of the terminal at 12:30 and over to the Airtrain, where the platform as packed and the crowd restless. A lot of flights evidently had been delayed, you could see on the monitors in the station, but the trains were running on their late night schedule, which meant barely. Wow, if only there were some way for the people running the trains to see how many flights were delayed. Hmmm.

The train came, but instead of going from one end of the line to the other, this one went halfway, one stop short of ours, and then we had to wait for another train to come and take us the rest of the way. We finally got to the car around 1. 

At this point, my adult daughter, who had spent an awfully concentrated amount of time with her dad in the past 3 days, had decided it was no longer necessary to be part of the traveling party and somehow started studying in the car. Hell, at this point, I was pretty sick of my own company too; that's what sleep is for, isn't it? To relieve a person from being stuck with themselves? In any event, I got her back to her apartment at 1:30 and finally to my New York hotel at 2. This meant, starting when we left the hotel, that I had been traveling for 14 1/2 hours, pretty much straight through, with a 2+ hour pause at a ballgame. 

Trip done. Now for the New York piece of things.

On the way home

Sort of. We're sitting at the airport waiting for a delayed flight. This after a quick return visit to the mall following another afternoon of baseball.

Today we visited the Tigers' spring home, Joker Marchant Stadium. It's one of the oldest parks left in Florida, and I wish I could say that it's charming as a result. Well I could say that, but it would be a lie. There's nothing wrong with it; it was build during the 60's and has all the aesthetic of other ballparks built during the 60's, like Veteran's Stadium. We were seeing the Tigers play the Yankees, and between the good matchup and the size of the park, which is half of the Bright House Field capacity, it was totally sold out. Our seats were in a bleachers section, which would not be a problem except that the guy sitting next to me was a very large man, who simply could not help but take up a significant piece of my seat. This, in turn, crowded my daughter, who escaped to the row in front, where there was an empty space.

We kept fearing that the spot she was borrowing would become full, but it never did. In fact, it was hot and muggy enough that some of the other attendees moved off to cooler parts and left enough room for us to sit. This was yet another entertaining game, highlighted by a huge home run by MVP Miguel Cabrera, which flew over the batter's eye in dead center field. 450 feet at least.

Before all that, I got up on the late side and decided that I needed to walk on the beach. So I did, and it was worth the effort, which seemed Herculean at the time. The sand in Clearwater is soft and white and lovely to walk on, and the soft lapping of the Gulf water on the shore was soothing. I watched pelicans diving and gulls following them to try to steal whatever they caught. In one case, the gull landed squarely on the pelican's back, which I do not believe was it's intent. It flew off quickly, without being able to pilfer anything.

The hotel was a new, kind of non-descript place right near the end of the causeway. It's a convenient location and the rates were good for the time and place. The hotel is plain. There's nothing in particular wrong with it. The rooms were decent size and reasonably equipped, but with absolutely no character. The lobby was on the fifth floor for some reason, and was adjacent to a place where they had a free breakfast, which was also totally without character. It was a completely neutral experience, which seemed odd, even though there's nothing odd about it.

Another training day

Much less driving today. The game was local, so we got to the park early enough to go to the team store. There's always some vague sort of line outside the store, and someone who periodically waves people inside. The store is tiny and once you get in it's packed and nearly impossible to move around, so I'm not sure what standard he uses to wave people in. As usual, I bought a Spring Training shirt and my daughter got some tank tops, a hat and a Phillies flask for a friend. I used to have a flask when I was a kid. I would fill it with apple cider and very conspicuously drink and swallow with obvious discomfort while riding the subway. And no, that wasn't the most disruptive thing I ever did on the subway. I spent a lot of time on the subway ages 12-15.

Very few spring games are actually decent games, but this one was. The Phillies took a 4-0, then 4-1 lead on the Braves, who stormed back to take the lead 6-4. The Phils tied it up in the 8th and won in the 9th on a mammoth home run by Darren Ruf, who was promptly sent to the minor leagues (we also got to see him butcher 2 fielding plays in left field, which is why he was being sent down). We had parked in my favorite lot, the one shared with the frisbee golf course. So when we returned, we had to dodge around men of all ages, rolling coolers full of beer and flinging disks wildly through the woods.

From there, we went to International Plaza, a nice mall that would be in the shadow of the Tampa airport if airports had shadows. There I got to observe my daughter go through the ritual that girls call shopping. I have shopped. I go into store and buy things all the time. This, my friends, is not shopping. This is a voyage of self-evaluation and strategic planning. At least on this trip, every item had a purpose or multiple purposes and was bought in the context of prior and prospective purchases. It was actually very impressive. I was, of course, so help except to say if I thought something looked good, which I'm not bad at for a guy who doesn't think about that stuff much. I was there to pay, which was fine. That was my role and I was comfortable in it.

By the time we finished, it was pouring outside. Fortunately, we had, almost randomly, parked in the covered parking rather than the open lot. We headed back to the beach and had dinner at Frenchy's Rockaway, a favorite spot of mine, where we dined on grouper and watched NCAA basketball. While we waited for a table, the rain turned to a torrential thunderstorm that caused the lights to flicker, diners to cheer, and me to get soaked when I went out to feed the parking meter. It had subsided somewhat by the time we returned to the car and to the hotel.

Once back, I watched the strangest soccer game I've ever seen, the US national team versus Costa Rica in a World Cup qualifier in Denver. The game was strange because it was played in a blizzard. Guys were shoveling the lines constantly so the ref could call things. The players were strangely unfazed by this. I can't imagine this was familiar territory for the Costa Ricans. The first half resembled soccer, but as the snow picked up in intensity it covered the field 2 or 3 inches deep which transformed the game into something unfamiliar. It was a treat. Hard to imagine the result standing, but the players all agreed to keep going when the ref tried to stop it. All in all, an entertaining end to an entertaining day.

Just to brighten everyone's day

The worst thing I've seen around here is sitting outside of Hooters, oddly enough- they're usually so tasteful. There are decorated fiberglass dolphin sculptures all around town, and most of them are cute. This one has the halter top, which is fine, but also boobs, like human boobs. Ew. The more you think about it the more disturbing it gets.

I rented my car through Costco for this trip, because it was strikingly cheaper than any other way I had at my disposal. This routed me through Enterprise, which routed me to my current awesome rental car, a brand new (less than 400 miles on it) black Dodge Charger. This is a very large car. Its got great acceleration, rides as smooth as glass, and cruises very comfortably at high speeds.

The car was important, because today was a day of driving and baseball and driving and baseball and driving. We left on the late side for the first game, in part because we got in late last night and in part because we had a misunderstanding about when to leave. Because of this, I felt the need to get to the ballpark, which was about 100 miles from the hotel (not as ridiculous as it sounds- if we'd stayed near each ballpark we'd have had to change hotels every night. This one is central, sort of) as quickly as possible. And that required driving as fast as possible. That's hard to do in a new place, because how am I supposed to know what constitutes speeding here? The limit on most of the route is 70. So can I go 80? I don't know.

So I just used the follow the fastest car strategy. This turned out to be a little black Acura, who kept zipping around, with me in hot pursuit. So it's the Acura followed by my bigass Dodge, with me occasionally moving in front as well, depending on the situation. This went on for a long time, maybe 70 miles or so. So when I turned off for the game and saw he was not, I felt a little sad. My daughter then saw me start to wave to the guy and started fussing at me, at which point I said, "Look, I'm waving back." She looked and sure enough, the guy gave me a friendly wave as he headed south.

The game was the usual Spring Training mix of things. There were a couple of mammoth home runs and a couple of good fielding plays, but the stuff you remember is more like the 3rd base coach coming over to a front-row fan who he clearly knew, and reaching into his pockets and taking out handful after handful of bubble gum, until he filled the guy's hat, at which point the guy started tossing the pieces up into the stands. Or the umpire coming over to ask a couple of fans how his NCAA Basketball brackets were going. Or the Toronto third baseman coming up behind a runner and giving him a big, affectionate hug around the waste, and then the two of them having a very happy-looking conversation.

The second game was at the almost new mini-Fenway the Red Sox built in Fort Myers. That was a much less informal atmosphere. The game was sold out and it seemed kind of more corporate. We stood to watch the game from behind netting in the middle of a replica Green Monster. It was still good fun and it will be fun again when we do it tomorrow.

Baconalia

Watching a basketball game on an airplane, of all places, and a commercial comes on for Denny's, promoting something called Baconalia. On one hand, I have to say that this is one of the cleverest names for a food promotion that I've ever seen. And its true, one can never have too much bacon (by the way, why isn't there any bacon flavored cereal?) On the other hand. Exactly which people who eat at Denny's would have the slightest clue of what that means and where the name came from? I'm not totally up to speed on the Denny's demographic, but I'm pretty sure that Classics majors are not in their top 10.

So why am I on a plane anyway? I'm going to Florida with my daughter to take in some spring baseball. We tried this a couple of years ago, but she was sick and it was kind of miserable. I did it alone last year, but it's more fun with another baseball fan. We're seeing 4 games in 4 different stadia in 3 days.

This is the start of a crazy few days, where I taught, packed, drove to Newark Airport (horrible, horrible, at least until after security), took a plane to Tampa, and drove to Clearwater. After 3 days here, we fly back, I drop my daughter back at school and check into a hotel in New York, where my wife and other daughter are already staying. The next night she's in a concert. We watch that, stay at the hotel one more night, then off to Queens for a Seder. Home after 5 days and a lot of stuff. Nice, restful vacation, eh?

Whining

I try not to do this too often, but getting old really sucks. Yesterday, I was working out. I started working with a trainer as part of recovering from shingles, and I'm still doing it because it feels good. I'd finally noticed this week that I felt strong. So I'm working out, just doing some lunge/stretch things with no weight, and suddenly something pops in my left leg.

Ouch!, I yelled. And then Ouch! again for good measure. It wasn't the most painful thing I'd ever felt, but it hurt and of course I had to stop exercising. Then came the dreaded wait. This is the big difference between getting hurt when you're young and getting hurt when you're old. When you're young, you go to sleep assuming you'll be fine in the morning (to the point of not even thinking about it) and you usually are. At my age, you go to bed cringing at the thought of what might await you in the morning. Better or worse? Better or worse? Which will it be?

Fortunately, this time I woke and felt it, not miraculously better, of course, but somewhat better. Given the range of possibilities, I would have been happy with no change, so this is very positive news. I'm going to Florida next week and want to be able to walk around.

The big problem now is taking care of it. Partially limiting injuries are a real challenge for me, because I have a hard time sitting still for a long time and I want to do stuff. I especially like walking around. This is a very bad idea at this point, and I have to consciously plan my day so that I don't tempt myself to, for instance, take public transit to a doctor appointment, which would obligate me to walk a mile or more. I don't like having to be that strategic about things, but not much choice at this point.

Allman Bros.

Last Saturday, I went to what you might call an adult concert. That would mean a concert where the majority of audience members, like me, were adults. The Allman Brothers Band was a staple of my dorm room listening in the bid 1970's, and with original members still making up half the band (one brother died in the 70's, running his motorcycle into a truck, which did not, in fact, lead to the album name of Eat A Peach. The story I had been told was that Duane Allman crashed into a peach truck, but it was actually a lumber truck. Read the Wikipedia article if you want the real story) there was no kind of kid vibe on stage.

Don't worry, there was still plenty of familiar concert smell filling the Beacon Theater on New York's Upper West Side. I'd last been to the Beacon in the mid 80's, when I saw The Smiths play there. The place was kind of a pit then, and I remember the concert mostly because the people in the front were so crazy that they wouldn't just stand up, they had to stand on the armrests of their chairs, forcing everyone behind them to do the same if they wanted to see. Ronnie and I tried mightily to overcome this, but finally decided to leave, only to find that you could see perfectly well by sitting at the back of the orchestra.

There was no standing on armrests, and the theater was beautifully renovated (or possibly a new interior was simply invented. Maybe it had always been a pit until now). I went with Allman concert veterans, who assured me that for an 8:00 show, that 8:25 was the correct time to arrive. We got to the theater, got us some drinks, and entered at 8:22, just as the band was getting ready to take the stage.

Great show. Terrific guitar work, vocals, and drumming by the 2 drummers and 1 percussionist (at one point the bass player started playing the drum kit and one of the drummers started on a kettle drum of some sort, so it was 4 drummers total). There was also a funky light show on the screen behind the band. During intermission, we went backstage and chatted with the guys who did the light show, which was very cool.

By this time, it was clear that one of the reasons that people weren't standing on the armrests is that they were too inebriated to do so. I don't remember a bar at the old version of the Beacon. I like this version better.

All in all, it was a first class show. I would definitely go to other concerts there if I lived less than 100 miles away.

No Blogging Anytime

I don't read a ton of other blogs. It's not that I'm not interested in what other people have to say. Well, maybe it is that, but it's also that I'd rather do something else. If I want to know what people think, I'd rather listen to them. But I noticed one that I couldn't miss this evening. Did you know that Philadelphia's pride, the Philadelphia Parking Authority, has a blog? It's right there on the page where you go to pay parking tickets (for the record, I did not receive the parking ticket).

It's a curious mix of things. There's an entry about how the Parking Authority is moving from 30th and Market to 7th and Market. That's 23 less Market, by the way. Anyway, there's one note trumpeting the move, then below it is a picture of two people walking around what looks like completely unfinished space in large building, with no interior walls and wires hanging down and stuff like that. Then underneath, there's a Public Notice seeking bids to construct the customer service space at the new location.

Leave it to the Parking Authority to move first, then start thinking about providing customer service.

Dragging

We've reached that black hole-like time in the school year when the end of a trimester and vacation and senior finals and Pesach and a bunch of other stuff all get mushed together to create something just this side of chaos. Even the school schedule on the web site looks a mess.

Oh, and it's Human Rights Week too. I find the existence of Human Rights Week to be totally depressing. The school events themselves are always excellent, but the fact that human rights need special attention paid to them is appalling. I know that disregard for other human beings goes back at least 2000 years, at least according to Mel Brooks (His cave's national anthem? "May you all go to hell, except Cave 57."), but the inability of various groups to recognize the legitimacy of others to simply live doesn't make me optimistic. Is it that hard to rise above it? I guess so.

Of course, the main dynamic around school at this point is simply exhaustion. As far as I can observe (and feel), teachers and students alike are essentially stumbling around hoping to make it to the break. I'd love to just sort of pack it in, but the trimester's end requires some level of summing up , with tests and the like to finish grades. This means the parade of people wanting to know their grades and if there's anything they can do to improve them in the last 3 days of a 10 week-long period has begun. I'm slightly embarrassed to say that I always respond with the teacherly reminder that you're not only supposed to care about your work when report cards will be sent to your parents within days.

Honestly, though, I'd rather I didn't have to give tests. They're a pain to make up and a pain to grade and the people you make them for don't like them. For a marketing type like me, this is complete cognitive dissonance. But I always have to remind myself that there's no way to get students to focus on learning the stuff you've been teaching if there's no reward-punishment mechanism. I taught an ungraded elective this year. It was surprisingly dull at times, because it was difficult to get people engaged. Why? Because I couldn't reward them if they paid attention and fail them if they didn't. Oh well, at least I don't have to read essays.

Brooklyn Bound

Because I just can't stay away, I found myself back in New York last night, this time in Brooklyn for a Brooklyn Nets game at the Barclays Center.

Unlike my last visit, where the train travel was problematic at best, yesterday's trip up was easy.  I got to 30th Street to find the longest line to get on a train that I've ever seen. Lines at that place are funny anyway, because they form without any guidance and hence wind somewhat randomly through the station. This time, it wound from the north entrance to track 3, around to the 29th Street side, then looped across the concourse and all the way across to the 30th Street side on the south side. These lines are kind of silly to wait in, because they let everyone down to the track before the train gets in anyway, but people wait anyway.

I got in almost 2 hours before game time and so decided to walk in the general direction I was going. This took me from Penn Station to Broadway and Houston St., where I boarded the subway for the ride over. While on the train I felt like I really needed coffee, so I searched the Starbucks app for a store near the Barclays Center. Which it did. In London.

So thwarted I figured I'd try to find it on my own (there's one right at the entrance). I've spent a lot of time in that neighborhood. In truth, calling that area a neighborhood is a bit of a stretch. It's more like a crossroads between Flatbush and Atlantic Avenues, two of Brooklyn's main thoroughfares. I know it for a variety of reasons- we lived near there when I was little, my orthodontist was there (as were nearly all of Brooklyn's orthodontists, all in one building for some reason), I went to many shows at the Brooklyn Academy of Music, which is right there, and my good friends live pretty nearby.  

Whatever you want to call this area, it is completely unrecognizable. The Barclays Center is huge and striking and dominates what is now mostly an urban mall area. I am mystified where people park, but I wasn't driving, so no matter.

Inside, the arena is state-of-the-art. The concourses are wide. The food stands and the food served is nearly all Brooklyn-centric. Maybe a little overdone, but being from Brooklyn, I understand the whole local pride thing. The strangest thing about the food concessions is that all of the condiments stations were attended, as in an arena employee was stationed at every place you could get ketchup, mustard, sauerkraut, etc.  They didn't offer to put ketchup on my French fries for me, but they were there, I suppose, if I couldn't decipher the coded dispensers (K for ketchup and M for mustard) or maybe to make sure I didn't overdo it on the hot peppers. I don't know.

Yes, they have a gourmet macaroni and cheese stand.

The game, about which I had low expectations, was in fact very entertaining. Deron Williams, the Nets star, set a record for 3 point baskets in the first half, and outscored the entire opposing team for the half. In the second half, a guy named Reggie Evans, who is one of the best rebounders and least adept shooters in the league, took center stage, because the opponents kept fouling him in the hope he would miss. Which he did. Over and over. At one point he had made 3 out of 14 shots, and when they fouled him again, the crowd began to chant his name and exploded with cheers when he made both shots.

All in all a fun evening, which I would gladly repeat at some point.

A short rant about stumbling

I was reading a newspaper today and stumbled on an interesting article.

I doubt that anyone cares about whatever stupid article I wanted to read (Okay, it was in the food section and I found out the mole sauce is not made with actual moles). My point is to note the irony in how people use the word "random" and kids, in particular, go to places like stumbleupon to find out about so-called random things.

Not meaning to sound like an old fogey here, but stumble upon is  a kind of literal saying. You're looking for something and literally (sometimes) stumble upon something else. Back in the day, if you were looking for the definition of implant (sorry, just saw a video with Britney Spears) you couldn't help but also learn about the word implode, just because it was proximate to implant in the dictionary. That might lead me to find information on imploding buildings (which is done because it's preferable to having them explode).

Today, searching for things is far more directed, and it just amuses me that people have to make a real effort to stumble upon something. And although it amuses me, it's kind of sad too. Genuine randomness, as opposed to "that was random" randomness, which is absolutely nothing like actual randomness, is always exciting and scary and is often where the best experiences are to be had.

Up and out

I don't get out much. That's some combination between my fundamental nature, a lifestyle choice and your basic middle-aged inertia. I am often that object at rest that you hear about in physics, but like said object (I prefer to think of myself as a particle, but no matter) I have no particular resistance to being in motion. I just require the energy to get started with it.

For most of the last 24 hours I have been in motion in a most agreeable way. The activation energy, in this case, was supplied by my brother. My brother and I go back a ways, I guess, but our lives haven't really intersected much since the family business concluded. In this case, we managed to coordinate going to see the Allman Brothers Band in New York. I'd not seen them since the mid 1970's, but my brother is a friend of a band member and a big fan of the music, so we picked a date to go.

Just warning you now, I may draw profoundish conclusions here based on nothing profound. Our fundamental similarities and differences were evident in the way the evening developed. I'm kind of a skimmer. I'm interested in a lot of things, whether they're inherently interesting or not. And with activities I tend to be a get in and get out sort, treating things as discreet units. My brother is more of a dive in sort. He loves what he loves, and music is something that we both share and approach differently. And going to a concert, it wouldn't naturally occur to me to do anything but go, enjoy the music, and go home.

Of course, another way to approach this would be immersion. You go to the concert, you're friends with the band and so you go backstage during the intermission (necessary because the 3 remaining original band members are about 200 years old total and maybe haven't taken the best possible care of themselves), and then afterwards you go see a related band until 2am and only after that do you go get some late night pizza before heading home. So saying yes to the concert also means saying yes to going to bed at 4am.

I have to say, I see the attraction of this. I know intellectually that the best experiences happen outside of my comfort zone, but it's just so damned comfy in there. The key for me, I think, is to get myself out of that zone more often by choice, rather than because the comfort zone has somehow become less comfortable. And the best way to have that happen is to keep having experiences like this.

Adventures in adulthood

I am doing something this morning that I would have never dreamed of doing either when I was young or even older but before I got married. I am tidying.

Tidying is not something I think of as one of man's higher purposes. It's really hard to think of any objective reason why it is better if things are tidy rather than untidy. It's not that I dislike a tidy house, it's just so much harder than having an untidy one. This is a fundamental force in the universe, the tendency toward entropy, the total disorganization of matter. Anything other than entropy requires energy. Tidying, which requires putting things in some sort of order, is just like applying atomic forces and molecular bonds. No, really.

So what is the driving energy behind this burst of activity? It's the energy created when a messy person lives with a neat one. The closest natural parallel that I can think of for this energy is lightning. Clouds roll around, minding their own business, and then for no apparent reason, some energy builds up beyond the reach of whatever's containing it, a balance is tipped and a huge charge of electricity is released. This is very much like living with someone who is just plain tired of the mess. They can contain themselves for weeks, even months, and then something tips the balance and all of the stored up irritation is released. Yes, kind of like getting struck by lightning but  wouldn't make as good a Youtube video.

So the purpose of this morning's tidying is simply to avoid this occurrence. The goal is clear- there should be nothing anywhere in the house about which I might be asked the innocuous-sounding question, "What's going on with _______?," into which blank you could, at least before I started, inserted "this pile of magazines, these coupons, the jar of nuts, the computer mouse, the ant traps, the maple sugar, the paper plates, these books, the pile on the dining room table, the bike trainer, the old Tivo, and so on." It's a lot of stuff, and some is trickier to remove than others, especially since the usual repository for excess stuff is my desk, which not only has a horizontal surface of finite proportions, but is also the resting place of the house's printer, which means it must remain accessible. Even worse is "Can I do something with_____?" Note the subtlety- "I", not "you".

So part of my plan to stay happily married requires forcing myself to think like a neat person and lap the house, searching for potential irritants, and then removing them. It's an interesting exercise to put yourself in someone else's head, but I'm not doing it because it's interesting. I'm doing it because it brings happiness to others, but also for my own good.