In-Flight Electronics

Tomorrow will be my first flight since they've relaxed the in-flight electronics rules. From what I understand, some airlines will let you leave your iPod or phone on from take off to landing, provided you put it into airplane mode. I've read online that the FAA is considering easing the restrictions even further and allowing people to use their telephones to make calls while in flight. I'd rather sit next to a sick person holding a crying baby who's also smoking cigarettes than I would sit next to a person who spends an entire flight talking on the phone. I beg the FAA not to allow people to make calls while flying. You might argue that people would only use their phones to text or surf the web and that common sense and courtesy would reign, but to those people, let me tell you this: yesterday I sat on a packed train next to a woman who cut her fingernails and then tested new ringtones. Please, FAA, I'm worried that rolling back the phone-use ban will lead to in-flight fighting.

Urban Hip Hop

One of my middle school nieces in a rural township in a remote corner of Minnesota was talking about school and mentioned that Urban Hip Hop Dance was her favorite class. Her mother said that their instructor had insisted they wear Chuck Taylors. I find it comforting that children everywhere are being exposed to things besides wrestling and jump rope in gym classes. I only hope she does not become overconfident and go to a large city to engage in dance battles. I'm guessing that's something they do. I never made it past jump rope class.

Pre-Misconceptions

Shortly after I arrived in Utah for the first time I was getting off a chairlift at the summit of Solitude Ski Resort and I saw a huge avalanche deep in another section of the resort. A woman working in the summit lift shack burst out of the door and yelled, "Did you see that!" at me. I nodded. Big deal. We're in Utah. Avalanches all day, I thought. On my very first day in New York City I walked past a man surrounded by paramedics and police. He'd been stabbed in front of Grand Central Station moments earlier. Big deal. We're in New York. People get stabbed all over the place, I thought. In all my years in Utah, and all my years in New York, I never saw another avalanche or stabbing. The most exciting thing I saw in each place was right after my arrival. It's a strange coincidence, but I do like to get things started with a bang.

Immigrants Day Gathering

Some friends of mine host an annual Immigrants' Day gathering as a sort of pre-Thanksgiving/Friendsgiving event. Partygoers are instructed to bring something that people from their ancestral homeland would have cooked prior their arrival in the United States. The idea is that we celebrate all the wonderful cultures that arrived in America instead of only the puritans. I've never made it to the party, but based on the forbearers of my friends that attend this Minnesota party, it must be a very strange mishmash of sushi, lutefisk, matzo, sausage, and carnitas. Though I'm sure the food is fine since people are loaded up on aquavit, wine, beer, sake, and tequila.

Ghost Restaurant

A Vietnamese noodle soup restaurant in my neighborhood went out of business a year ago. My city relies on letter grades posted in each restaurant's front window that display their health department score for all to see. This place almost always had a "grade pending" sign, which is the equivalent of a sign saying ,"We just set off a bug bomb after the Department of Health threatened to shut us down for repeated violations, but due to the letter of the law we can stay open." So after a year, I noticed today it was open again. I stopped in. All the same people were working there and the menu was the same. But the tables were all a bit shorter. And the menus were printed on different paper. My pho arrived with red peppers instead of green. The floating meat in the was more raw than usual. It was good, but now I'm worried that I'll walk past the storefront tomorrow and it'll be boarded up again, and then some nice Vietnamese man will tell me that it never reopened. And that's when I'll have to worry about aliens hatching out of my stomach.

Thanksgiving Travelers

There's a large weather system moving across the country that has the potential to wreck havoc for Thanksgiving travelers. About once a year I get stranded in an airport during a storm system, and I see the same caricature of the same traveler each time: The person who's been at the airport help desk for 45 minutes holding up the huge line while they stomp their feet and shake a balled fist clenching a couple sweated-through paper tickets. I've even been that guy once. But there's no value in that kind of behavior. All you can do is sit and read, sit at the bar and ponder how your tab is averaging $35 per hour, and then be thankful that you're not driving and sitting in traffic hoping your tank of gas holds out long enough for rescue to arrive. You always have that to be thankful for, regardless of airport woes.

The Farmers' Market

The Sunday farmers' market by my house is still open. I stop by every week that I'm in town to buy an $8 bag of apples and a couple heads of $1.50 garlic, then I go to the grocery store where these items cost less than half the price. I'm not sure I'd be able to tell the difference between the stuff I get in the store and the stuff I get in the market, but I like to shop outside. It makes food seem healthier.

The Commute Time

I'm using a new movement app on my phone that shows where, when, and how fast I walk and bike around town. A little map shows where I go and when day after day. I used to think I led a life of spontaneous adventure but it turns out that my daily movements are a study in repeated patterns: home, work, gym, lunch, bar. The only surprise, which shouldn't have been a surprise at all, is that I bike home from work about 3mph faster than I bike to work making my commute home several minutes shorter.

This is Unreasonable

I had an unreasonable hatred of a friend of a friend that I would see in social settings a few times a year. I would be sitting in a room with this person at a party, and find myself staring at them, my mind empty save for thoughts about how much I hated this person for no reason at all. I recognized the negative, baseless feelings, and in spite of recognizing their destructive and pointless nature, I could do nothing to stop them. My own behavior baffled me. I was lucky that it didn't last long, the person moved to a far corner of the Earth that I have no intention of ever visiting, but I still see this individual through the power of social media a few times a year. Nothing's changed. It still makes no sense. I'm considering deleting Facebook.

Adventure Dining

All too often I find myself wondering if it's safe to eat food. This cheese is covered in mold, but if it cut it off, perfect! Chocolate, same thing. But what about bread, yogurt, sour cream, ice cream...are these things even supposed to mold? I tend to err on the side of adventure, meaning that I scrape the nasty bits off and indulge. So far I have not died, though I have suffered illnesses of mysterious origin. My logic is that mold can't be all bad. The blue veins in blue cheese are mold, and I eat the heck out of those. Plus I saw a huge chunk of mold on my friend Nate's hotdog bun once, but before I could shout "No!" he'd eaten that entire half of the dog, and he didn't get too sick.

Stare Down

I was passing a car that was making a left turn, and a motorist went for the same pass coming within inches of me. I'm one of those cyclists who assumes that every driver is an alcohol-addled madman intent on killing me, so I try to be defensive while biking in the city. But this guy hit the next red light. I pedaled up to his car, it was unavoidable. He'd recklessly endangered my life so he could sit at a stoplight for a few seconds longer than he would have otherwise. I bent down to look in his window as I waited at the same light, and we made eye contact. That was enough for me. I know a guy who snaps photos of everyone who nearly kills him, but I have no interest in getting shot to prove a point.

Fish Oil Smell

I take fish oil pills. They're reported to offer some health benefits, and even if they do nothing physically, they make me feel like I'm taking positive steps towards better health. That has to count for something. But, I'm considering giving them up after a recent episode. I did a load of laundry while I had a head cold, and my wife had stuffed a few of the pills in a purse pocket that I washed. I didn't smell it until I'd washed and dried all our clothes. Now half my wardrobe of T-shirts smells like I just returned from the day shift at a fish processing plant. I give my shirts the smell test before putting them on, but my gym shirt slipped through and it wasn't until the treadmill hit 8 mph that I started choking back vomit from the dead fish smell. I powered through my workout, enjoying a 10-foot radius of personal space that moved with me through the gym.

Publishing A Correction

I interned for a rural newspaper for a few months after college, and during my tenure there we had to print one correction. We ran it in the paper that was dropped on doorsteps on Wednesday morning, and I was sitting at my desk in the afternoon when the offended party who had demanded the correction called. My boss, sitting one foot away, picked up the phone, "Yeah, it's in there. We printed it today." After a long pause, "You know, we've had several studies done and found that the classifieds are actually the most widely read section of the newspaper." I found one of the day's papers and turned to the last page where our correction was buried after 50 used car ads, in the exact same format and font as the ads. I was impressed with my boss's spirit, though it was disappointing to find out that sad "rooms for rent" section got more eyeballs than our front page.

The Power of Suggestion

One of my friends borrowed a bunch of ski gear for the weekend and returned it with a gift: a tote bag full of lotion. I assume someone gave it to him for free. That, or he's trying to tell me I have very dry skin. The lotion has an earthy smell that I've never quite been able to place, but I've been using it for a few months. My wife tried some the other day and informed that it smells just like her parents' freshly painted living room. And now all I can smell is paint when I use it. I'm hoping that it doesn't really smell like paint, and that her suggestion burrowed its way into my brain and won't leave. Either that or everyone I've met the last few months thinks I moonlight as a house painter.

Internet Doctor

The Internet does not work for medical self-diagnosis. It's great for buying skis and seeing pictures of your friends' dogs, but as for finding out why your stomach hurts, it can only cause panic. The symptoms for every illness are the same: fever, headache, chills, bowel irregularity. You just described almost every virus and disease in the world. You could have anything from a case bad of chicken wings to a terminal illness. But since those symptoms are the same, you will always assume the worst and then worry yourself even sicker. Stay away from the Internet sick people.

Truck Commercial

I saw a real television commercial today where Jean Claude Van Damme does the splits between two Volvo trucks that are driving backwards and slowly separating. Music by Enya plays in the background. I watched the commercial four times. It's difficult for me to put to words what I was seeing, as the commercial confounded me on so many levels. What was being sold? Why was Jean Claude Van Damme there? And why was he doing the splits between trucks? Is this a truck commercial? Is there some kind of affinity for Jean Claude Van Damme among truckers? Perhaps, I reasoned, this is a whole new thing in advertising: making the most absurd commercial you can image so that people will talk about it. If so, Volvo is way out in front of this trend. If I needed to buy an 18-wheeler truck, it would be one of theirs.

The Pedometer

I got a new pedometer app on my phone that tells me how many steps I take, how many miles I ride on my bike, and how many calories I burn each day. It's not all that accurate. I know it's not that accurate because once in a while I'll pick my phone up and shake it for a minute to see how many steps it counts off. I suppose you could call that cheating, but I'm still burning calories. Plus I don't have time to walk everywhere, but it's very easy to give my phone the death shake a few times a day. I feel healthier already.

A Positive Attitude

Every few months during middle school our normal classes would be canceled and we'd all be herded into our massive gymnasium to sit in the bleachers and listen to the latest motivational speaker that our principal had fallen in love with. I remember only one of them. He stuck in my brain not because he yelled the word "Attitude!" over and over, but because a week after we'd heard his talk, our gym teacher wore a shirt to class that said, "Attitude!" I knew even then that this was no mere coincidence. I found it hard to believe even then that any human being could take these speakers seriously, but my gym teacher seemed like a rational person, so I thought that perhaps there is something to bringing a positive attitude. I tried my best to embrace this notion, and I almost made it through that full gym class. Now I find myself wishing there was a nationwide registry for motivational speakers, because I'd like that to look this guy up and find out what happened to him. I'm guessing jail for his work as a con man.

Wedding Cake Dare

Of all the wedding traditions, eating year-old wedding cake on your first anniversary is the oddest. It can't be that old of a tradition. There's no way that 100 years ago people were taking up valuable refrigeration space all  year with old cake. Not to mention that if people were eating cake made without preservatives 60 years ago, they would have all been getting sick from all the gnarly but natural microbes. I had a bite of year-old wedding cake last month. I approached it in the same way that I did a plate of buffalo wings made with ghost peppers, supposedly the hottest pepper on Earth. A bit of a dare, a bit of an experiment on my body. And now I can tell you from experience that year-old cake is safer to eat than anything featuring ghost peppers.

The Agency Is After Me

I've been receiving letters from a collections agency. It's true that I ignored their initial letters requesting payment, all four of them, for months. But, on that last one I noticed the deadline was looming, so I sent the lab a check for my bill: $6.75. I haven't noticed if it's cleared yet since, well, it's a check for less than $7, but nothing has stemmed the tide of mail warning me that they're about to lawyer up and come after me. I'm not sure how much this company spends on collecting late bills, but I'd argue that they could profit from a cost/benefits analysis and perhaps focus their energies on people with delinquent bills that are over $7.

Passing Notes

I never passed notes in middle school. Perhaps I wasn't cool enough or didn't have enough literate friends. But the past few days I've been passing notes with my UPS guy, and I've discovered that I never missed out on anything in middle school. I leave a note asking him to leave my package at my door, and he sticks another note on top of it saying that he'll come back the next day. Three days in a row. Now I'm wondering if he's literate.

Towel Space

There's one towel rack in my bathroom and on it are two towels that are forbidden to use. If that sounds horribly inefficient all I can say is that you've found a logical friend in me. The towels I do use are hidden on hooks behind a closet door in my bedroom, but sometimes I'll forget to grab that towel so I'll get out of the shower and track about a gallon of water over the floor on my way back to the bedroom. Why not use the towel on the rack? Well, I could never fold it back to the way it's supposed to look. I'd be better off using the rug on the bathroom floor but then I'd have to shower again.

Late Night Reading

The past week I stayed up late reading a dense book rather late. Each evening I would have to back track a few pages before I would reached something that I remembered reading, and then I'd proceed on again. I find it interesting that I'm capable of reading in this near-sleep state. What I'd really like to do is figure out how to write these emails in that state. I could bang out a few each night, but they'd be even less sensical than they are now.

A Non-Smoking Smoke Break Option

We need smoke breaks for non-smokers. It's reinvigorating to take random 10-minute breaks throughout the day. It helps me return to work focused, but I have nothing to do while I stand outside for those 10 minutes, so I end up walking to the store to buy an apple or getting several cups of coffee a day. There should be a dog outside of my office that I could throw a stick to for ten minutes whenever I felt like it. We need a nature equivalent to the smoke break. At my last job we tried to get one by putting a slackline between two trees by the road, but it turns out that slacklining is pretty boring when all you do is fall off every two seconds. Plus cars would always stare at us while driving past and I worried one of them would succumb to object fixation and run us all down one day. It wasn't the most relaxing way to spend 10 minutes outside.

What's in a Name?

I see some of the same people every few days. There's the guy at the Laundromat, the lady at the gym, the person who gets my coffee when I feel rich enough to spend $2 on a cup. These people? They all know my name. They get it off my credit card or gym membership card, and when I drop off shirts to get cleaned -- that guy even has my phone number memorized. I'd suggest he's some kind of human calculator, but it took him a year to get it right. My problem is that I have no idea what any of these people are named, and I have no subtle way to figure it out. I'm that guy who calls people "man" and "bud" because it's obvious to anyone paying attention that I have no idea what their name is. I was brainstorming possible solutions to this problem. One option is to change my name and put myself back on equal footing with these people, another is that I could ask them their names. I'm leaning towards the non-confrontational option.

Election Day

There were only two people in line before me at the polling place, a nice surprise since I was running a little late for work. Then the first person in line found out that someone had already voted using his name. The polling people asked him what they should do. He shouted, "You tell me! I'm just here to vote." No one said anything for a few minutes so he shouted it a few more times. All in, it only took about 10 minutes for them to sort it out. Then, the next person in line and I breezed through registration. We filled out our ballots next to each other, and I let her feed her ballot into the counter ballot box before me. I should have said something when I saw her fold it in half before jamming it into the machine. If you're wondering, it takes much longer than 10 minutes to find an election official who has the clearance that's required to open a ballot box to clear a jam. On my way out, one of the polling place workers asked me if I wanted an "I Voted" sticker. I said no, but before I was out the door I turned around to grab one just in case I needed a passive-aggressive way to tell people why I was so late for work.

Give it your all. Or not. Who knows?

I met a guy who was managing a restaurant, and he spent half the night complaining about how unmotivated and shiftless his employees were. He said that he understood that they all wanted to be actors/models/musicians and didn't care about being waiters, but that while they were working for him, they should give it their all. I agree with him, in theory. It makes sense to dedicate yourself to something if someone's paying you, but, let's be honest. A lot of these TGI Friday jobs are throwaways while you're chasing the dream, and if TGI Friday decides you don't get your nachos on the table fast enough and they have to let you go, while, then I'm sure Chile's is hiring down the street. Working hard...burning bridges, who's to say what's right (besides that guy I was talking about, he knows what's right).

Food Tales

When I was a kid I was picking out frozen pizzas in the grocery store and a sales clerk there told me not to choose one of the brands because they put wallpaper paste in their sauce. I put back that particular brand and chose a different one, and he commended me on my taste. Now, most modern wallpaper paste is made of a synthetic adhesive, but it used to be made of starch and water or wheat paste and water. By those standards, he may not have been outright lying to me as there certainly was a certain amount of starch and water in the pizza sauce, but I don't think anyone could have used that marinara to hang posters. Looking back, what's more surprising to me is that I was so ready to believe what some stranger told me in a grocery store about pizza. Then again, I read online the other day that the dye used in some candy is banned in almost every country except the U.S. and I believed that, too.

Train Beers

If you ever have the chance to travel by train I recommend you take it. There's no dealing with long security lines or mysterious delays that leave you sitting between two strangers while waiting on a tarmac for hours. On a train the seats in coach are the same size as a plane's first class, and not only do some trains have bar cars, but you can bring entire six-packs of your own on board. I have a few friends that commute in and out of the city each day by train, and I think I'd love that, except that every time I've ever traveled by train I've passed the time drinking beer. If I had to do that every day I would have some serious health issues sooner than later.

French High School

Just after college I held a job for a few months teaching French high schoolers how to speak English. I'd been told that they'd be fluent in English, it was my job to teach them subtle nuances of conversation in American English. Their English turned out to be worse than my French (non-existent), but I pushed ahead with my lesson plans. One of them involved me standing in front of the class and saying things in odd accents, and the kids trying to write them down. My favorite was, "Pahk tah caa en haa-vad yod." Only one student got it right. I told her she didn't have to worry about getting whatever the highest grade is that you can get in a French high school. Top of the class, that one.