Panreligious musings

What exactly is an interfaith chapel? What does that mean? I always thought of a chapel as a sort of consecrated space, but doesn't that imply that it's consecrated for some particular faith? Can you consecrate a place for every conceivable religion (and I can tell you, this hospital is one of the most multinational places I've ever been) without one somehow canceling out the other? I'm not sure how that works.

Or maybe it's not specifically consecrated for any faith. What would you call that? Oh, I know. A room. In this room they have one service each weekday and meditation once a week for an hour. Otherwise it seems to sit empty from 6AM to 11PM every day. Strange business, this interfaith religious stuff.

Not much doing so far today. I haven't been out outside a lot, although we had friends drive up from Philly for a visit and while they were there I went out for pizza with one of them. There's an old armory with an indoor track nearby where they've been having meets all weekend. School buses double-parked everywhere. I'd love to have gotten a peek inside when one was going on. We used to go to a track meet called the Millrose Games when I was a kid and they were at Madison Square Garden. I remember enjoying them a lot. Now they hold the Millrose Games across the street from where I'm sitting, in 3 weeks.

I had been told that weekends are different at hospitals, and in some ways they are. There's definitely not quite as much staff here and not as much activity in general. The only surgeries done are emergencies and this isn't the place those land, typically. But in other ways, it's the same. Beeps and buzzers and hisses and nurses coming and going. It just feels slow, and I'm getting sleepy just thinking about it. Maybe there's an interfaith pew in the chapel where I can lie down. I'll let you know.

What day is it? The one with the thick newspaper.

Hard as I try, it's hard to not have this all fade into one timeless blur. Maybe if they actually moved Ronnie, as they've been saying they might for 3 days, it would give a little structure that's completely absent in an ICU. The nurse asked if we wanted the lights down when Ronnie is napping, but I think it's best if we keep it bright all day so that she'll know it's night if she wakes up when it's dark.

Again, pardon me if I'm repeating myself, but we're really thankful to our friend and pet-sitter who noticed that it was cold in the house. She spoke with the plumber (for whom she also dog-sits, if that's not too weird a coincidence for you) and tried to reset the system but it says this.

The one downside of having a modern high efficiency boiler is that most plumbers don't know how to fix them. So we have to wait until Monday morning when out friend will once again go over to our house and let them in.

I brought books to read and things to do, but I haven't been able to concentrate well enough to read anything more than the newspaper. Hopefully once we get home it'll be better, even if the work will be harder.

A view from the bridge, literally.

A little reminder of why I'm here

So I just walked across the George Washington Bridge. I've been across that bridge thousands of times but have never walked or ridden a bike. But now that's one thing off my nonexistent bucket list.

It's easy to get there from here. Walk north 10 blocks and turn left and you're led right to the path. Lots of signs. And a minute later you're up there. It wasn't busy on the path, but I never went more than a minute without seeing someone, even though it was really cold. One guy had his dog with him. My ramblings can't do justice to the view or the pictures, but I'll start with a few observations.

First of all, as most of you know, I'm going through some tough stuff right now, and to add to the fun, our friend and dogsitter just called to say that the heat is off at our house. But you get up into a place like this and unless you just can't think this way, you have to feel lucky to be alive and up in this incredible spot.

Second, there are lots of signs about not committing suicide. I understand this, and they're not all depressing, but still.

It should also be noted that there is no shelter and no place to go to the bathroom out there. Hey Port Authority! Get your act together! I guess pedestrians and bikers don't pay tolls, so who cares about them. I'm thinking, it's almost as if they want you to pee off the bridge. I mean, it's almost a mile long and a guy's gotta go, right?

Actually, if you were going to do that, the other side of the bridge would have been a better bet today, because the wind was steady and strong from the south. I couldn't even dictate into my phone unless I was under one of the towers.

But a food stand would be nice.

The bridge is quite beautiful in both structure and setting, something that's tough to think about when you're stuck in traffic. The way it disappears into the New Jersey Palisades is dramatic. When I was a kid, I worried about the Palisades because I'd heard they were eroding. Maybe it was like an inch a year or something. I wondered with would happen to everything that's up there. I didn't realize until I'd walked over here that there's a road on the Jersey side that runs right under the bridge. Bet there's a nice view from there too (if not as good as the view from the cliffs the Lincoln Tunnel go into- those are really worth a detour.

So anyway, here are some pictures.

The craziest stuff

This is pretty calm for an ICU, but it's still full of beeps and bells and bubbly sounds (draining fluids) and something that sounds like a whistling tea kettle. I think maybe that is a whistling tea kettle, but who knows? There is just one alarm that's really piercing that makes me need to get up and move if it persists.

The other thing that happens is things go wrong sometimes. When I was trying to get Ronnie her meds this morning and couldn't get anyone, it was because one of the other patients was having a stroke and they needed all the nurses. That person is no longer here (in the ICU I mean), but it highlights the high risk environment.

Yesterday, one of the patients, who's here for something, I don't know, had been standing around the nurses station talking to them and then suddenly started screaming at the top of her lungs "HELP! HELP! HELP!" And calling for someone. JEFFREY! JEFFREY! It went on for, no exaggerating, 5 or 6 minutes, while the nurses surrounded her and tried to get her to sit down in her wheelchair. She screamed any time one of them touched her. The nurses kept asking what kind of help she needed, but she'd hit full-scale paranoia at that point. Eventually they got her to sit, but only when they moved the oxygen tank somewhere she could see it (they're usually in a bracket in back or on the side).

She's been in her room with her door closed (the only closed door on a patient room), but as I'm writing this I can hear her going off again. I presume she doesn't do this when she's not in the hospital, but how would I know? Maybe this is good behavior.

Another morning. More evidence that I exist.

Fell asleep watching TV last night- Colbert with Jerry Seinfeld, who did a really funny bit about donut holes (as only Seinfeld can do) and I don't remember anything after that, so you get an idea of how exhausted I must have been. Glad I'd showered earlier.

Today Ronnie will have a close friend visiting for much of the day, so I can get a real break. I've been itching to walk out onto the bridge, so maybe today. It's very cold out, or so I hear- the one really good thing they have at the cafeteria is coffee, so I haven't been out yet (I brought cereal to eat for breakfast). I'll have to decide of that's a good or bad thing. Really I just want it to be clear so I get full advantage of the view.

I also want to walk down by the river. That's down a lot of steps, which I'm presuming are clear of snow by now. It's quite beautiful down there- we're a couple of hundred feet up from the river and you have to cross the Henry Hudson Parkway to get there but it's worth it.

I know I've mentioned before how nice it is that they've been letting me stay in the ICU, but as it turns out, my presence is occasionally completely necessary. There are many specialists who come in (physical therapists, x-ray, EKG and echo technicians, etc.) who have no idea what's going on overall and are therefore operating (so to speak) with incomplete information. When the patient is full of pain-killers and their consciousness and memory is compromised, how are they supposed to deal with this?

Or say there's an emergency somewhere and all the nurses have to scurry to help. That happened yesterday and again today. How can someone who's barely awake supposed to make sure they get their medications on a timely basis? I've already reminded nurses to give medications and averted a redundant procedure.

Believe me, I'm not blaming anyone; you have to deal with the acute problems immediately. That's what the ICU nurses have to do. I'm just thinking how impossible it would be for someone who doesn't have full command of their facilities to ensure that they're getting what they need. Or know if one of the near-constant alarms is meaningful when they can't turn around and look at the monitor.

I'm not sure how I know to do this. Probably from watching my dad when my mom was on one of her frequent visits to the ICU. But it feels natural somehow. I just feel bad for the people who don't have it.

A day mostly like yet unlike the other ones

Not much happened with me today. Both of my daughters visited, which was wonderful for both of us. But I've barely been out of the building. I have been up and down the stairs a bunch of times though (96 steps up from the ICU to my room, 144 up from the lobby), so it's not like I've had no activity at all.

I've continued to sample the local restaurants. Had some very good chicken paella for dinner at a Spanish restaurant a few blocks away. It'll be lunch tomorrow. And some particularly delicious curried Singapore noodles with all kinds of veggies and proteins. Enough for another meal there too.

The rest of the time I've been with Ronnie. She's doing okay, but she's a little like Curious George in that it does not matter how many times I tell her to stay there and not get into any trouble, when I come back she is much busier doing something than I'd like. I don't really have a better description than that. She just gets busy. But she had a good time today because of the time we all got to spend together.

One thing I hadn't noted, I don't think (I am without a doubt quite fuzzy at the moment), is the waiting room scene. You're not really supposed to do what I've been doing, which is sit in the ICU all day and until late evening. But I'm polite and easy and don't get in the way and even help sometimes. But what you're supposed to do is sit in the waiting room and call to see if it's okay, and then 2 family members can come in at a time. I'm not sure how much of this is directly because we're kind of VIP's (not like when the same doctor team did Bill Clinton or Barbara Walters, but big donors nonetheless), and how much is because we're nice, but I like it.

Anyway, the waiting room serves 3 different acute care units, ours being the calmest- post-surgical people who need lots of care but whose life is not in danger. Who knows what goes on in the others. But in the waiting room, there are entire extended families essentially living there. I don't know my Spanish dialects, but this neighborhood is primarily Dominican so I'll say they're Dominican. One corner has 8 adults, 2 kids and a baby. They eat and sleep there and they've been there since I arrived. There are 2 TVs on the walls that are always on Spanish programming and there is often a line at the microwave. At 7, it smelled like a restaurant kitchen in there. There are families in other nooks too. Quite something.

Oh, and someone turned down the AC in my room. It's been about 60 degrees in here since I've arrived but it's almost pleasant now. Hope I can sleep okay with it like that, but it'll make it easier to take a shower.

In the end, hospitals just kind of suck

I don't like using that word, not just because it's graphic and obscene, which it really is more than things you're not supposed to say, but because it's used in place of using probably 100 other words that would be more useful and descriptive. An excuse for not giving any thought into what you say.

I tend to save it for situations like this, where the whole combination of time warp and constant beeping and gurgling and hissing and families sleeping for night after night in brightly lit waiting rooms is so unpleasant as to defy any kind of shorthand description. There's an episode of House where they're trying to get him to come to work when there's a meningitis outbreak where he says something like, "Hospitals? Nooo, lots of sick people there." That's kind of how I feel.

It's around 1:00PM now and I haven't been outside yet. We'll have some visitors later- both daughters- and I'll be able to get out and walk around. Maybe I can even do some exercise other than walking, though the walking is highly entertaining around here.

Medicalwise, I guess things are okay. Post-surgery pain management is the main thing, but they seem to be finding the right balance. Ronnie is finally able to get some sleep. When you're in bed this long, they sometimes put things on your calves to squeeze them to prevent blood clots (same reason you should get up and walk around when you're on a plane flight). Hard to sleep with that kind of thing. But it doesn't have to be on 24/7 apparently.

So yeah, hospitals are kind of like casinos, except in most cases with a more positive outcome. I'm going to be really happy when I get home.

Day 2, I think.

It's all starting to fade into one formless span of time. I believe it's Thursday. I know that because there is a clock that says the date as well as the time.

It seems sort of a shame that I even need to say such a thing, but given people's experiences, it's important.

Through this process so far, which shockingly has been barely more 48 hours yet, I feel treated like a person and I have seen Ronnie treated like a person without fail at all times by every person we've come in contact with. I can't say we've loved every single person but we interacted with, the occasional person being a bit annoying and a little condescending, but even they seemed genuinely interested in helping. They were trying to interact in a human fashion, but maybe just didn't really know how.

It's now about 29 hours post, and so far everything seems to be proceeding in a routine fashion, if there is such a thing in these cases. Ronnie is uncomfortable and dozy, but seems incredibly much herself for so soon after surgery. I'm taking things as easy as I can; they've let me sit here in the ICU as long as I want and tolerate my occasionally asking for or about things.

The other thing that occurs to me at this point is how you just can't take anything for granted. I try not to in general; I'm grateful for everything. But it never hurts to get a rude reminder of some sort.

We're at a point of waiting for the next step. Ronnie got out of bed to sit in a chair for a while, and we've had some visitors, but that's all the action so far.

End of the day

So let's recap, shall we?

It's been a long day. It's after 10 and I've been up since 5:30, so I'm about ready to fall asleep. But it's been a good day. The surgery went really well, and all the signs from the recovery so far have been very positive.

It's nice to have family around to have someone to hug when the news is good. I presume when news is bad too, but that hasn't happened. And of course it's a relief of some sort when family is gone and it's just me again. It's also important to get out and go for a nice walk from time to time. I really enjoy walking around this neighborhood and found some very good pizza not far from here.

Hospitals are strange organisms and all kinds of odd things happen here. Some nurses use the patients as tables, while some nurses prefer to use tables for tables, so at one moment there could be a half dozen things sitting on Ronnie and then the next moment they could all be gone and placed neatly at bedside. And the array of things attached to her in incredible.

The biggest takeaway, I think, is that the surgery, which gets built way up in advance, is just the beginning of the process. If you think about in terms of the goals, which would be to have Ronnie feel good and able to live her life without impediments, then it's clear that it's just the start and that there's a whole series of small and large steps ahead of us.

I'm an instinctual caretaker and it's hurt me at times, but as I've gotten older and possibly, though not certainly, more mature, I'm better at knowing when I have to stop and care for myself. It's going to be necessary to keep that up, especially after we're home and I'm back at work.

But all in all, a successful day. I'm ready for bed, because I need to be up at 6 to see the doctor(s) when they come around for their first rounds.

"DO NOT take BLOOD out without permission of the NURSE PRACTICIONER"

There's a sign you don't see everywhere. Like I said, hospitals are weird places.

It's around 6:00 PM. The dynamic has completely shifted. We've transitioned from the high anxiety of waiting to hear the results of surgery to a waiting game. Slow, step-by-step recovery, starting a couple hours ago with removal of the breathing tube. As stressful as it's been, the first stage was the easy part in ways. Now the hard work starts. We have a lot of support, and Ronnie is very determined, so things should go well. Recovery from this kind of thing just isn't quick or easy though, even though the outcome should be excellent.

And it's also a waiting game because Ronnie's nurse, while very sweet, is one of those people who says "I'll be with you in a few seconds" when she really means "I'll be with you in 15 minutes or so." The lack of precision makes it difficult for me to know where to be and when.

I think what's going to be frustrating for me is that I need to be helpful at the same time as I am for the most part pretty helpless to really do much of anything. I can't relieve any kind of pain or discomfort; I can only try to distract and rehab and just generally take care. And try to remember to take care of myself.

I've now spent the last 3 hours in the Intensive Care Unit, where she'll be for the next 12-18 hours. There's a very impressive array of stuff attached to her and it seems as if the task is to keep her awake long enough to let her go to sleep. Or maybe they don't let her sleep. Who knows? I'm going to need to sleep at some point. I have to be up at 6 to make sure I catch the doctors on their rounds.

I'll probably check in one more time tonight. My family was around earlier, and my sister will be stopping by again shortly, but soon I'll be alone again, which I'm ready for. This has been a pretty overwhelming day.

Whew! Noon on the day of surgery

So Ronnie's surgery's done. I was supposed to come to the waiting room at 11 and got a call around 10:45 saying it was over and went well and to come to the doctor's office. My sister was with me at this point and we went to his very busy office and stood there waiting to talk to him while I got more and more anxious.

But the news was as good as could be hoped. Easy surgery, best possible result. Hopefully will never have to go through this again.

So I'm still internalizing this. I get waves of relief and some other unidentifiable emotions pouring through me. To paraphrase the opening thoughts in Infinite Jest, I am trying to appear normal. It's not necessarily easy, but relief is such a generalized kind of feeling that it's tough to attach to to affect or a facial expression.

And of course I can't see what I look like either, but I'm glad I showered.

At this point, the most overwhelming thing is informing everyone and getting responses and responding to them. And one of our friends just reminded me to breathe, which was very good advice. I'll go for a walk soon, which will be helpful, though the snow is annoying. I do want to walk out onto the George Washington Bridge at some point. It's only a half mile from here and I want to look down the river at New York and just inhale it (not literally).

I'll keep posting as we go through the post-surgery process. Thanks again for all the support.

5:30 AM, day of surgery.

I slept a bit. Cold in the room, and no extra tissues, which led me to steal a box from a reception desk (tissues, not blankets . I need a shower. 

But once Ronnie goes in I won't have anything to do for most of the day, so I can take care of little details like personal hygiene. 

At some point soon they'll be wheeling her off to the surgery floor. And then the reality will set in completely. For the moment she seems to be sleeping and I see no reason to mess with that. 

Everyone says first surgery slot is the best. Nobody ever says why. I guess doctors get tired too, but the reason may be nothing more than time certainty. Considering how long we sat around yesterday doing nothing, there's no reason to wait. 

Once surgery starts, I guess I'll try to get a bit more sleep, and then my family will be coming by.

Thank you at 10 am

I'm pretty much overwhelmed with all of her messages and prayers and concern that we been getting. I barely have time to type a sentence and do anything without getting a message from somebody.

Ronnie went into surgery at seven and should be out between 11 and one. I desperately need to take a shower, and then one of the time, my entire family will be coming. Not my kids,brother sister and father.

To be honest I am torn between wanting the company and wanting to be alone with it. But I think the desire for company will win out. It's very emotional. Everything about the experience.

Hospitals are weird places. I've been a few of them and they're all designed in a style that might be called Neo-Post-Classical Maze. There are bunches of interconnected buildings with elevators in seemingly random places that take you to other floors where you may not be able to re-access the building you came from.

The main thing you need to know about these buildings is that they are named after people who give lots and lots of money to the hospitals. If you only give lots, but not lots and lots, you may end up like the 3 families, all of whom have cath labs names after them in a Cath center named after someone else in an interventional cardiology wing named after someone else on a floor named after someone else in a building named after someone else. I actually know something about this (note the name of the pavilion), and I'm completely serious. The naming stuff is cutthroat. In buildings like this, only the hand sanitizers aren't named.

And the frigging places stay busy all the time. Even at 11, it takes several stops on the elevators to go a few floors down from where my lovely pseudo hotel room is to the patient floors.

Hospital room disguised as a hotel room

The most difficult thing about dealing with hospitals is that they are incredibly complex machines with lots of moving parts, and nobody ever seems to have 100% of the necessary information. "Why don't you have the paperwork?" "The people in the last office told me I didn't need to bring the paperwork." "We can't do anything without the paperwork."

And more often than not, it's the patients who have to navigate this by themselves. It's lucky that I can be there to intercede on Ronnie's behalf, because being the patient is completely overwhelming by itself, so how are you suppose to sweat the details?

It's been a long day. Gotta be up 5-something. Will keep you all posted.

Entry 2, Evening before.

I've never been through this process before, so I'm learning as I go.

The catheterization went easily and the results were both very positive and reassuring that we're making the correct call in doing the surgery now. Afterward, Ronnie was moved to the appropriately named Holding Room. Not that anyone is holding her exactly, but it has a very temporary feel to it. We're hoping to have her moved to an actual room later, which could help her sleep.

I've been fielding lots of calls and texts, and after a while went out for a walk to clear my head. This is a very busy neighborhood, between the hospital and the many residents of all the apartment buildings that surround it. I walked up and down Broadway from the 150's to the 170's and even for New York, it seemed very lively and extremely multicultural, as is the hospital itself.

Tomorrow starts early, with prep beginning at 5:45 and surgery at 7. Everyone says you want to be first in a day, and I'm presuming this is the first, considering it takes 4 hours or so. I should have an idea of what's going on within a couple of hours afterwards. I'm not worried, just hoping for the best possible outcome. I finally met Ronnie's doctor and he seemed optimistic, as was the surgeon.

For myself, I'm not stir-crazy yet, though I'll probably need to go for another walk soon. This is way more sitting than I'm used to. Maybe I should pace or something.

I've managed not to think about school too much. Not worried about that either. We're on this ride and there's nothing to do but go with it.

Entry 1 in the saga. 11AM 1/26

I'm sitting in a waiting room, trying to not freak out. Nothing serious is happening today, just a catheterization, where they poke a camera up inside you and check for blood vessel blockages that might affect cardiac surgery in some way. It's referred to as a "cath," which is slightly jarring because that's the name of a close friend. I'm just a little scared and a little sad.

Anyway, today is just a test, if a fairly invasive one (the camera goes into an artery (I think) near your groin. Easiest way to the heart, I gather. So it's nothing to be worried about. I just got hit with a wave as we came over the George Washington Bridge that this wasn't like any of the other thousands of times I've come over that bridge. It's a step into the unknown.

I have every reason to feel hopeful about the result. Ronnie's and therefore our quality of life should improved noticeably. We're in one of the best possible places in the world to get this done. It's just, well, major surgery. I have no experience with this. My mother died of ALS and she just gradually faded away. My dad has a pacemaker and has had some relatively minor cardiac procedures done. But nobody's been opened up like this before. So it's hard not to have a kind of nervous expectation.

So I indulge myself in the trivia of logistics, making sure we got out in time, getting parked, all that kind of stuff. Next is to find the hotel section of the hospital where I'm staying for the week or so we're her. Lunch fits in there somewhere, probably from a food truck (#5 area lunch place on Yelp and just downstairs). Then it's waiting until 5:45 tomorrow morning when they take Ronnie from her room to prep for surgery. Wonder how I'll fill that time.

That's all for now. Back soon.

Limboland

Well, it's the Monday of what is likely to be one of the more excruciating weeks of my life and there's nothing going on. I'm generally anxious, not about anything specific about the surgery, but about the general uncertainty surrounding the aftermath.

Also, it's just weird doing this. Took the dog to the dog sitter, packing a suitcase. Not going on a vacation or real trip of any sort. Plus, Ronnie and I are going together and yet we're going to having completely different experiences. It's just strange.

Part of what makes it hard is than neither of us has ever done anything like this before. At least we both know the hospital building fairly well. We have to leave at 7-something in the morning for a 10:30 procedure and then at some point I'm checking into my hotel room. I don't understand the parking system, so even that's stressful.

But we'll move ahead and hope for the best.

Taxi!

There was a headline in the business section of Friday's New York Times (I'm a hybrid newspaper user- I check in on the online version several times a day, but I also get a paper copy delivered and I read it pretty thoroughly) with the headline "Self-Driving Cars May Get Here Before We're Ready."

I will admit that I did not read the rest of this article, because the point had been made. I can predict what's in it with just a little thought. Self-driving car technology is far more advanced than the laws, rules, infrastructure, etc. that are required to support it. The time is out of joint, as that Shakespeare guy says.

One aspect of technological advance is that it is agnostic to what we need and are ready for. Advance can happen when we are ready for it, but it doesn't necessarily come because we are ready for it. Smaller or more specific advances can occur because there is a need for something, but then the advance lags the readiness. Electric refrigeration, antibiotics and cars themselves are examples of that.

The Web, invented in 1993, lest we forget, was an example of fortuitous timing. The Internet already existed. Personal computers were becoming popular and more affordable, and enough people had them who were beginning to think, "Gee, this is a great thing for spreadsheets and word processing (there were word processors before PC's) but as long as I have to put all the information into this thing in order to get anything out, it's nothing more than an appliance of sorts." The ingenious invention of HTML and its ability to link people to information easily came at a time when people were ready for it.

Smart phones too. They're probably the most revolutionary device there is as far as their effects on society, but cell phones had been around for a while and smart phones were evolutionary in terms of cell phone technology. All it really took was miniaturization and more powerful processing, which was happening whether or not cell phones existed.

Anyway, self-driving cars will probably have to wait for a while, because everything about the way our roads and driving laws and associated things such as insurance are designed is based on people operating the cars. Changing that is a massive bureaucratic task (although the insurance companies are getting ready for it). Whose fault is it if a self-driving car hits someone? Google? Yeah, good luck with that.

I'm sure there are plenty of technologies waiting for implementation. Some of them are just marketing-based, but cars and driving are fundamental to modern life and are almost inconceivably complex as systems, so next time you call a cab, it's almost 100% certain that someone will be driving it.

The storm before the calm before the storm.

I know everybody always talks about the calm before the storm, but I've always have great affection for the calm during a storm. Now obviously, if you're outside in that storm, things are not so calm. But if you're inside and comfortable, as I am with a fire going and a dog sleeping nearby, It's pretty darned comfortable. And pretty darned calm.

I think my most extreme examples of storm seeking our first when we flew to Martha's Vineyard, knowing there was going to be a hurricane the following day, just to experience a hurricane on Martha's Vineyard. It was extremely noisy, but it was kind of cozy and kind of fun. The other was when we drove into the last big blizzard in Philadelphia, leaving from Connecticut just as it was starting to snow, know that thing that they were going to be 2+ feet of snow on the ground by the time we got to Philadelphia.

I remember almost getting stuck at the blue route interchange with the Expressway, which would have been pretty frustrating because we already been driving for 150 miles in three hours. We had fought our way over there and then a couple of cars right in front of us got stuck on the ramp. We sat in traffic there for about 10 minutes trying to figure out what to do, and then, miraculously, a snowplow came by and things cleared right out. I also remember coming as fast as I could down our road and just plowing our car as far as I could get it into our driveway. 

What makes this storm particularly strange, at least as far as the timing is concerned, is that I'm leaving for New York on Tuesday morning, in preparation for Ronnie having open heart surgery. My original intent was to get everything prepared for my absence on Monday, but then it occurred to me that there might not be school on Monday, so I scrambled to try to get everything done on Friday, and for the most part succeeded.

So now I'm in a storm, but also in the calm before the storm that will take place during the surgery and its aftermath. I have no experience with this particular type of thing. Ronnie and I have, for the most part, been pretty healthy over the years. I had shingles a few years back, and once, a long time ago, we both had pneumonia at the same time. But aside from that, nothing worse then the flu has really hit us in that 25 years or so we've lived here. It doesn't feel really scary but it doesn't feel completely safe either. Uncertainty is no fun.

But off we'll go to New York on Tuesday morning. A new adventure. I'll keep you posted.

Well this is ridiculous

Over winter break, my daughter asked me if I'd like to go skiing sometime and we realized it was a possibility over the long weekend. There was no snow to speak of in the east, so I looked into Colorado, and there were cheap flights to Denver and decent accommodations available in Vail, so off we went. It's a crazy thing to do, given everything going on in my life, but we did it.

The trip over here was one of my all-time worst travel experiences, though not up to the prolonged agony of our 3 days in China waiting for our luggage to possibly show up. Our 6:30 flight left an hour and a half late and got in an hour late, and then baggage claim took forever an featured a conveyor belt jam when my bag and a backpack got wedged in the chute. This inexplicably took 15 minutes to clear, so rather than leaving for Vail, a 2-hour drive away, at around 9:30, we left somewhat after 11.

The interstate going west of Denver traverses several mountain passes and by the time we left it had begun to snow, so going was difficult- our car did not handle very well in the snow. I've driven in snow and ice many times in cars that don't handle well, so I wasn't frightened, but it was very slow and arduous and took nearly twice the time to get here as it would have with clear roads. So between the delays and the roads instead of getting to Vail around 11:30, which was the plan, we arrived in town around 2:30 AM exhausted. Then, because of all the snow were unable to get the car up the driveway into the condo parking lot. We tried 2 different driveways for all different angles for nearly half an hour, but never got more than halfway up.

So we left the car there briefly while we unloaded luggage and then I went and parked in a lot that I'd noticed not too terribly far away. But by the time I got back to the condo it was 3:15 mountain time, which felt like 5:15AM to the two of us. We went right to bed, of course.

We had a lesson planned for the first afternoon, so we got up as late as we could manage. I walked to the nearest convenience store to get breakfast stuff, ate and then went over to rent our equipment and have our lesson.

Amazingly, we had a great afternoon skiing, but that's another story.

Blast from the past.

Yesterday toward the end of conferences, one of the parents, perhaps noticing that I was making up multiple tests before they came in and seemed generally frazzled, jokingly asked if I wanted a drink. I think I replied yes, but that conference night was probably not the most appropriate venue. But it brought me back to one of the most ridiculous jobs I ever had.

In the spring of 1979, after I'd been admitted to Wharton and was living in New York with no plans between May and September, I got myself a job. It seemed perfect. They were looking for people with 2 or more years of college to work a 4:00 PM to midnight shift (the infamous swing shift) in an office doing clerical work. That was ideal because I could then spend my day at the beach and then go into work.

Here's what the job was. At that time, a series of court cases were underway which culminated in the breakup of monopoly of the Bell Telephone System, which was at that time, the only real telephone company (cell phones were still nearly 10 years in the future). As with many lawsuits, this one involved a process called "discovery." For those unfortunate souls who have never watched the movie, "My Cousin Vinnie," discovery is when the opposing sides in a lawsuit share their relevant documents with each other. It's required by law.

So what companies do when given a request for discovery is one of two things. Either they cheat, and try to conceal things, which is illegal, or they comply. And the one way to comply is to send every single document you can get your hands on and make the other side sort through them trying to find something useful (aka document dump). This was the path taken by the parties in these lawsuits. So what does a company do when faced with millions of sheets of paper that may or may not be relevant? One thing you can do is hire another company to hire a bunch of people cheap who can read to go through the documents and try to find something.

That's what happened here. We worked in the Bell System building, but it was taken over by another company with a bunch of people working for a couple of bucks above minimum wage. We sat at desks on an open room the size of half a city block and sifted through paper, looking for words that suggested that the company was acting in an uncompetitive way (that's what the lawsuit was about).

Each evening, we were given a box of numbered documents and coding sheets and we would read through them and note what pages the key words occurred on, if they occurred at all. Our quota for an evening's work was a minimum of 180 pages and a preferred amount of 225-250 pages.

I'm a fast reader, and was typically done within a couple of hours. And I was accurate, so my quality ratings were high. So what did I do with the rest of the time? Mostly, I wasted time and performed mischief. I walked around and distracted other people, even my supervisor. I became very adept at shooting the huge rubber bands that the documents came wrapped it. My best skill was to hit a spot on the ceiling (which as about 20 feet high) and have it then drop in the middle of someone else's desk. I’m still pretty decent at doing that.

Then one day, I decided it might be nice to bring something to drink to work with me, so I brought a thermos full of white wine. It honestly seemed a perfectly innocent thing at the time. I hadn’t had too many jobs and I didn’t know that you weren’t supposed to bring alcoholic beverages to work with you. My previous boss had sat at his desk with a bottle of Guinness all day, starting at 10 in the morning.

I don’t know if anyone in authority ever realized that I was drinking 16 ounces of wine out of my thermos over the course of the evening. I certainly never made any effort to hide that I was doing it. I’m not sure they would have cared. On payday we would go and have what we called liquid dinner at a bar down the block. Nobody ever got in any trouble for any of this. A week before I was planning to quit they offered to promote me.

My best friend there was a nerdy guy named Marty who kept a Lucite picture frame cube thing with photos displayed on all sides on his desk. He told me that he had decided to keep the pictures that came with the frame, because the people in them were so much more attractive than his actual family.


I don’t know what the moral of this story is, or even what the point is. Except that maybe it’s worth not giving a crap about anything every once in a while and to just do what you feel like doing without worrying about consequences. I’m never really in a position to do that at this stage of my life. I hope that changes.

Dogs can only do so much

I was walking my dog the other day and and a neighbor's puppy came running down their driveway to greet us. No problem with that for me, but they they have one of of those Imaginary Fences, or whatever they call them, that are supposed to keep the dogs penned up by shocking them if they go past some imaginary boundary. But this dog didn't have the appropriate attire and so received no shock. So I rand their doorbell to tell them their dog was loose.

My neighbor came out and was grateful for the return but was fussing at the dog, calling it dumb and, horrors, bad. But as I was walking away, I was thinking, the dog wasn't the one who forgot to put the collar on, it was my neighbor. So whose fault is that exactly? I decided not to pursue it, but I have hypotheses.

A little segue

I don't watch a lot of football. Even though there are a lot of great athletic players in a football game, I find the game simplistic and brutish. There's certainly room for subtlety and intelligence in the game, but it is such a small part of it that it really is kind of meaningless.

One thing I've noticed, is how adept they've become at slipping little advertisements into the announcement. Yes, I did listen to some of one of the games on the radio. Every time that was an excellent block by a player, it segued right into an advertisement for H&R Block. All in the space of about five seconds (and notice how I segued here too).

That said, the last two football games this weekend, between Detroit and Pittsburgh and between Minnesota and Seattle, of which I watch not one second, both ended in equally horrific and completely different fashions.

The one thing that's great with live sports, even live sports that I don't like, is that they're live. You don't know what's going to happen, it's not scripted. Even scripted the way reality shows are scripted

Call me old-fashioned, but I long for the days when every single thing that you did or looked at or listen to wasn't trying to sell you something. I think that's part of why people feel stressed all the time, because somebody's always trying to sell them something. I'm not really aware of anyone who enjoys going in to a store or market and having to try to fend off the salesman trying to sell them something. It just isn't pleasant and it's stressful. And the ubiquity of advertising these days isn't really that different.

I studied and worked in advertising for nearly 25 years, so I have a pretty acute sense of when somebody's doing this to me, be it through banner ads or play-by-play mentions or pop ups or product placement. I make fun of it. My wife worked in advertising also and she does it with me.

So I don't find it the stuff stresses me out at all. It's really easy for me to ignore it, because I know what they're doing. We tried to teach our children about it. I feel bad for people who don't though, because if it makes them think about things they don't really want to think about, that means, and I know this sounds stupid, they are thinking about the things they want to think about. And that's bad.

I can't give you any advice as to how to avoid this; you can't avoid all the messages. What I can advise however, is that you become aware of their existence and what they're doing there. They're there to sell you something and absolutely nothing else. They don't care about anything else except your buying the product and making them money.

It's really nothing more than 1 million little Nigerian email scams every single day. They're not always actual scams, but they're always trying to make money out of you, one way or another. That's just the way things work.

Going to 7-Eleven

I've decided to walk from my house to the nearest 7-Eleven. I'm not really doing this out of choice, PayPal screwed up and overdrew my bank account instead of charging my credit card, so I have to go deposit money in that account. There are no branches around here, and the closest place to make a deposit is at a 7-Eleven. Such is the joy of being an adult.

I honestly never go into 7-Eleven. Around here, if you want to go to a convenience store you go to Wawa. And even though Wawa really is a convenience store, I don't think people really think about it that way. It's more like a home away from home where they have sandwiches and junk food. So I have to say, I feel ever so slightly guilty going to into a 7-Eleven and only depositing the check and then walking out. Shouldn't I buy some beef jerky? Maybe it taquito or a Big Gulp of some kind of sugary soda. As I proceed along the road, I pass a Dunkin' Donuts, McDonald's, pancake house. Also places to buy mattresses and tires and liquor. 

In and out of 7-Eleven in a matter of minutes. On my way back now, so that's exciting. I found out first of all that it is the 50th anniversary of the Slurpee. I don't know how I got 10 days into 2016 without knowing that, but I did. I also found out that the Big Gulp is not the largest size drink at a 7-Eleven. The largest size is the Super Big Gulp. I didn't even have the heart to look at the size of that cup. 

I'm tired

I guess I'm not supposed to admit that, should carry on and be professional and all that, but I'm beat. Being professional isn't necessarily my thing anyway, so that's fine, but really. I left school at 9 and am back at 7:30 and it's just kind of numbing, especially being back in the same exact room so soon.

This week flew by. My life is feeling a little bit roller coaster-like right now in general, which will probably continue to be the case for the next month or so, for reasons that will be explained when they happen. Right now, I'm filling in for an ill colleague. That means taking on an extra class, which is perfectly enjoyable in and of itself, but it throws the  rhythm of my days off. Weird that teaching 5 classes instead of 4 would be that jarring, but my class/preparation time ratio went from 50/50 to 63/37. It's a pretty substantial difference and it feels that way.

I can't end this without talking about the bells. It is simply astonishing to me that we can't have bells on time. If they're always ringing a couple of minutes late, can't we either set a clock somewhere to check them or start school at 8:18? This is worse than no bells at all, to be honest. That's what we had in my high school. But of course there we had clocks that all read the same, accurate time in every classroom. Running the school had to feel like Whack-a-Mole. You knock off one problem and another pops up. I've been at the school for 13 years now and it's only in the last couple that we actually have a solid idea of who is in attendance and who isn't. So there's progress.

Yeah, I'm ready for the weekend.

Mid-conference blogging

Okay, yeah, I feel sort of obligated to write more now, which is fine. I get busy and forget, but I love to write. I also feel obligated to be interesting and possibly even funny. For me, that stuff happens pretty spontaneously, so it's pretty hard for me to try to do either. But I'll give it a shot.

Starting tomorrow. Tonight is parent conferences. I enjoy parent conferences. I do not, however, particularly enjoy being at school from 8 in the morning until 9 at night. I therefore suggest that conferences be held someplace more comfortable and that there be food and open bar. Cocktail Conferences. Yeah, that's it.

Or not, aside from the long day part of it. I do enjoy talking about what I do and about my students. I like hearing from the parents what their kids think about the class and about math, and it puts the students in a different context, which is always enlightening in some way.

I am noticing that I am now older than a lot of the parents. Not sure if they think so, I don't look quite my age, but I'm increasingly aware of it.

I had all of my conferences in a room where I had my last period class, tutored after school, and have my first and third period classes tomorrow. So I hope you'll excuse any disorientation on my part in the morning. I'll try to make it interesting and funny.