Uh oh...already behind

Okay so yes, I have already fallen behind on my resolution to stay up with this blog.  But here I am now.  On top of it again.  Sort of.

So almost one month into the new year, how am I doing on my other resolutions?

-Gym at least 3 times a week: check!

-Starbucks down to once a week: check! (sort of...I decided dates/social coffee meet-ups don't count.  Don't judge me.)

-French practice: yeah, no check whatsoever.  Oy, I need to pick this back up.  But hey, I've been baking things out of Julia Child's "Mastering the Art of French Cooking: Vol 2".  Does that count?  I say so.

This week, I've been settling into the routine of school and work, and getting used to being busy pretty much constantly.  This also means no time for grocery shopping.  As a result, one place I've been multiple times this week is sweetgreen, an amazing salad place in DC.  There's a location on M Street in Georgetown that now knows my name and my order: romaine with butternut squash, spicy kale, grape tomatoes, cucumber and quinoa, in curry pineapple yogurt dressing.  I know you're jealous.  Just come visit and I will take you there.

And  to be honest, I have barely had time to think about anything this week.  Memos, problem sets, snow storms...who has time to think?  But last night, I took an hour off and watched the State of the Union address.  As per usual, Obama was articulate, though perhaps vague at some points (although who isn't in the SOTU?)  I have to say, when I heard from my favourite political writer John Dickerson say he thought education was going to be the biggest topic addressed in the SOTU, I got nervous.  I can't remember the last time I just 100% agreed with someone on education policy, especially a politician.  Would he start bashing tenure?  Would he start falling down at the altar of TFA?  Would he do the charter school dance like everyone else?  Well, he didn't do any of those things.  He was sadly unpointed and noncommittal.  It sounded distinctly like he was planning to do what every politician does: talk about the importance of education, and then drop it at the next news cycle.  I think the saddest part for me was when he made the plea to "young people" to look into teaching as a future career, especially in math and science.  I waited for the follow up statement - "We will reward you by forgiving all your loans" or "we will make it worth your while by developing a fair, thoughtful merit pay system that rewards good teachers" or "we will make the job easier by focusing on strong school administrations and parent involvement, so you can be in a supportive work environment".  Nope.  Apparently people who are strong in math and science should just choose to be teachers and give up millions of potential dollars and add hours of stress to their life for funsies.  Can't wait to see how that one will go down.

I'll just go ahead and change my name to Mr. Navorski

I have been at the Atlanta airport for 12 straight hours.  I was supposed to be on a flight last night at 9 PM to Reagan.  Well, to be fair, I was on the plane.  Starting at about 8:35.  First, it was going to be a 30 minute delay because we had to wait in line to get "de-iced".  Then it was an hour delay.  Then it was 11 and we were still waiting.  Then all the runways closed, and apparently there's a window after you get de-iced in which you can still take off, so we had to wait until a runway was open before we could even go get in line.  So we waited.  At around 12, we backed off the gate and got in line.  And waited some more.  At 2 AM we finally got de-iced and at 2:30 AM, the pilot came on and announced that we had waited so long that we were now low on fuel, so we had to return to the gate.  At that point, the freezing rain started coming down.  So off the plane we got and I have been here since.


Ways to entertain yourself in an airport:

• Talk to the people around you.  I have met a woman who works for Lockheed Martin who can't discuss the details of her job, a man in an army uniform who is leaving for Afghanistan in two weeks and said he thinks having children and being in the military is irresponsible, two hipster 18-yr-olds who are starting a band called Dove Dawn ("It's ironic", they explained, but I don't think they know what that means) and a very nice man at Atlanta Bread Company who keeps giving me free tea refills.
• Walk through the various terminals and see how the people change with the airlines.  For example, Air Tran was filled with huge families and 20-somethings with no money (like me!), while Delta was predominately older couples and business travelers.  My Freakonomics-style analysis of this is that Delta was much more popular about 15-ish years ago (I remember my grandparents used to use them a lot), so the people who have frequent flier miles with them are likely to be older.  Someone out there will shoot that down, I'm sure.
• Watch Netflix Instant Play on your laptop.  I've watched so many episodes of Friday Night Lights.  And the $10 it cost to connect to the internet is quite possibly the best investment I've made in the last year.

Note: Unfortunately, none of these things will actually cure the mind-numbing boredom that comes with being in the exact same space for this long.  Which brings me to my thought for the day.

There was a family near me at one of my hours at the airport with 2 kids, ages 3-ish and 8-ish.  The older one must have said "I'm bo-o-o-o-ored" about 65 times over the hour, stretching vowels and adding syllables in a way I haven't heard since teaching days.  The younger one, on the other hand, had 4 crayons and a napkin, and didn't make a peep.  He coloured away, making scenes of his family in various locations.  But no, this was not a trite revelation about how it all comes down to attitude, even though it does.

Rather, it mostly made me think about how much adults reward the wrong things.  I mean, like I said, the 3 year old was totally content, but his parents were barely paying him any attention.  The 8 year old, on the other hand, was being offered option after option to appease his increasingly loud feelings of discontent.  That 3 year old is going to learn that if he wants to compete, he better start finding something to complain about, and fast.  And that is how you end up with a plane full of people yelling at flight attendants, even though we ALL KNOW it is not their fault and there is nothing they can do.  The quiet, polite kids get 4 crayons and a napkin.  Whine, and a free chocolate milk is in your future.

EDIT: As of now, I am at a hotel in Atlanta.  The airport was basically completely shut down, and I'm hoping to be on a flight tomorrow morning at 8:55.  Here's hoping.

Already winning

Well I have learned a new trick for getting a higher success rate on New Years Resolutions: don't start until 4 days in.  I'm guaranteed to last at least a week.


So as I have said at least 4 times now, keeping a blog is a resolution for this year.  However, it is not the only one.  Here are my others:
-Keep going to the gym at least 3 times a week
-Cut Starbucks visits down to once a week (for people who know me...yes, I know this sounds impossible, but it will be done.)
-Save $150/month for a plane ticket to Australia in December
-Work on my conversational French at least twice a week


I'm also trying to be realistic with myself that those all sound doable now, but I also am not back in school or work, so they could rapidly lose plausibility come January 12th.


As I am writing this post, I am thinking it could swiftly turn into a rambling series of empty paragraphs, which will then lead me to hate my writing, which will then lead me to give up the blog altogether.  So new plan: I am going to take the heading of my blog a little more seriously.  I really just chose those words because I like the letter 'p' but I think that will be a good format - one place I've visited, and one thing upon which I've been ruminating.  Done.


This week I am not back in DC, I am in CA soaking up the rain and the valuable time with family and friends-so-old-they-are-like-family.  I haven't really been going anywhere new or interesting - in fact, I have purposely been going to all the places I've been a million times before, or staying home and doing absolutely nothing.  My family is currently on a Shanghai Rummy kick (You should play!) although my mom winning every single time gets a little old...


One slightly different place we've gone this week is to the Humane Society in Ojai, where we were looking at a new dog to adopt.  My parents have big, big hearts and they wanted our dog Lucy to have a friend, and they also wanted an adult dog to find a home.  After much deliberating, and a few detours, we ended up applying for a Tibetan Spaniel we've decided to name George Bailey.  However, there's a hold on him, so we have to wait to see if some other paperwork goes through...it's all up in the air.  As a side note about the Ventura County Humane Society, if you live anywhere near there and are thinking about getting a pet, please go check them out.  They care so deeply about all the animals, and take really good care of them, but we learned it costs $10,000/month just to keep the doors open.  So if you're looking for a place to volunteer, donate or adopt, go visit.  Ojai even built you a new yogurt shop to draw you in...


My pondering actually came from this visit.  When we first walked in and saw all the dogs, they were all cute enough - it is very hard to convince me I don't like a dog.  We weren't even going in to look at the Tibetan Spaniel, we were coming in specifically to look at another dog we'd seen on their website.  But I saw this little boy in his cage and started to pet him and he was just the sweetest thing, so we took him out to play for a bit.  He was unnamed, so of course I immediately started thinking of all the things we could call him.  It was just after Christmas (the 30th, I think?) so obviously Christmas names were coming to mind.  Kevin McAllister?  Ralphie?  Scott Calvin or Bernard?  George Bailey.  My family has watched It's a Wonderful Life religiously, every Christmas, for as long as I can remember.  So George it was.  And the second I thought that, and repeated it to my mother, the bond between us and the dog appeared and strengthened instantaneously.  Just in the act of assigning a name, he became ours and we became his and my heart was set on this dog.  So is that why I name so many inanimate objects, like my computer (Ginger) and my Kindle (Toby Ziegler) and my phone (Stackhouse)?  I want to feel bonded to everything around me?  Or is that why we give so many nicknames to the people we love?  The name everyone else calls them is just the species.  The name that is just for us bonds us to each other more deeply.  In high school, all my friends and I had these ridiculous captain names for each other - I was Captain Dubious, I believe.  But being able to call each other and answer the phone, "Hey Captain Mathster" or "Captain Innuendo" makes me feel like no space has grown between us.  And even though I'm sure everyone else at our school thought us incredibly nerdy, I wouldn't trade that feeling of closeness for anything.  This week I got a present from my best friend, who signed the little gift tag simply "<3, PTS" and made a joke as I was opening it about the great amount of thought put into the signature.  But I loved it.  In those three little letters, a nickname we share for each other, were all our years of friendship and love, conversations going until wee hours of the morning, knowing each other well enough to speak without words, and, as we got older, years of counseling, mourning, celebrating, and confiding.  A small little name can say so much.