Tired

Gah.

When I took my car in for service a few weeks ago they told me I needed to replace three of my tires (namely, the three that hadn't blown at high speed on the highway last summer). I knew this was important, I knew it was urgent, I knew I should do it promptly.

Did I do it urgently and promptly? I did not.

Everyone who doesn't see this coming, raise your hand right now.

No? Nobody?

I thought not.

Yeah, I'm an idiot. The only good thing about this story is that the flat was a) on a BACK tire and b) half a mile from home. So, ninety reimbursable bucks later, the spare is on and the shot wheel with its snazzy rim is in the trunk.

Me, I'm still an idiot. I'm not a DEAD idiot, however, and that's gotta count for something. No more highway driving for me until I get this tire business sorted.

JetBlue Totally Rocks

If JetBlue were a dude, I would totally marry him. Seriously, I am now going to look into buying JetBlue stock, because they have achieved something close to miraculous in this day and age: they have made air travel tolerable, even mildly pleasant. Their customers are not treated like cattle. They leave promptly and arrive early. Their personnel are friendly and helpful. Their seating is humane. Even their snacks are good. It is impossible for me to believe that a company doing so many things right for customers shouldn't -- barring terrible management or bad externalities -- prosper and thrive.

Hey, I was right about Apple, wasn't I?

Update: Well, I arrived in DC just fine (early) but my bag didn't. Hmf. In fact, the early departure from Las Vegas meant my bag never got on the plane. However, unlike my experience with USAirways, someone helped me promptly, took my report, promised my bag would show up later today, and gave me a $30 voucher for future travel. So I am somewhat mollified, if aggravated that my seamless experience was effed up.

Going to Albuquerque

I've decided that I need to be in Albuquerque for my Dad's cremation. It just isn't right for my sister to have to deal with this alone. I'll be back on Wednesday.

Near Death Experience

Driving 70 mph, at mile 86 southbound on I-95, my right front tire blew out.

Giant tractor-trailer rigs had been blowing by me at 90 mph for hours. Crazy guys in souped up Acuras and Beemers were weaving in and out of the traffic that had — finally — been liberated after the hour-long Delaware toll plaza slog (unbelievable, really). It was just about midnight.

The wheel suddenly became unresponsive and there was a godawful grinding noise. I knew I was going to die. I had a vision of twisted wreckage, a fiery explosion, a charred and unidentifiable corpse.

Obviously, since I'm writing this, that didn't happen. I managed to wrestle the wheel enough to cross two lanes of traffic to the shoulder. I brought the car to a halt and hyperventilated for a few minutes while I waited for the adrenaline surge to subside and the shaking to die down a bit.

The rest was a long saga of inconvenience, expense, and exhaustion, featuring my crappy and unreliable cell phone, a polite but not particularly warm and fuzzy state trouper, and a kind and helpful tow truck guy nicknamed "Shrek."

My thanks to Lynn for being so good to me when I called her in a panic, feeling horribly lonely, vulnerable, and scared while waiting in the dark for the tow truck to arrive. I now realize that not only did I wake her up, which was bad enough, but it was on the night before she was heading out to a marathon week of NAMI's annual conference.

My thanks to VW for providing a full-size spare tire.

My thanks to God for providing another reason to remember that if you're alive, you're already ahead of the game.

Note to self and others: when stranded on the side of the road at night, if your car is not damaged, leave it running while you keep your hazards and/or headlights on. Otherwise you wlll run down the battery and add substantially to your inconvenience. Trust me on this.

Other note to self: run, do not walk, to get an iPhone the moment they are available. You must get a cell phone that actually works reliably in an emergency.

To Boston

Family obligations take me to Boston Sunday and Monday. Please have a good thought for us.

The Party's Over

Apparently I am not as good a poker player as I thought I was. This is useful information. Wish it had been acquired slightly less expensively.

I'm returning on the red-eye this evening. I plan to spend much of this afternoon and evening strolling the strip, taking photos and generally chillin'. Looking foward to being home.

More Vegas

There's this thing that people do here, which I'm going to call the Vegas Drift.

No one walks in a straight line here. There's so much eye-candy, so many bing-bonging bells or exclamations of victory, so many people to ogle, that no one actually looks where they're going. It's impossible to make a bee-line from one point to the next. If you try, you will find people caroming off you, wandering into your path in an unavoidable way, or clumping up to rubberneck at some critical juncture.

Give it up! Realize that you, too, have inevitably perpetrated Vegas Drift in your own way and time.

On a different note: the most pathetic sight I've witnessed on my stay so far was a family having a meal at about 10:30 at night at a mid-scale burger joint. Mom and Dad were chowing down. Tow-headed youngster, maybe ten years of age, had literally done a face-plant on the table from exhaustion. He was passed out leaning forward in his seat, with his arms dangling from his shoulders, and his parents were bovinely masticating their forage while the poor kid drooled into his linen napkin. Call me judgmental, but... WTF are they thinking?!?

Scenes from Las Vegas

It's 8 am, and the self-professed night-owl (who woke, wide-awake ~ to her horror~ at 6 am) is wending her way through the Mandalay Place walkway-cum-shopping-mall in search of coffee. In the middle of the carpet, boogieing unselfconsciously to the dance beat piped in for our listening pleasure are two dorky white boys. They have clearly been up all night and are still inebriated. They are having a wonderful time. I could not help laughing in delight.

There are wheelchairs everywhere. Say what you will, but the Americans with Disabilities Act has clearly made life a whole lot better for a whole bunch of people who used to be shut away, immobile and invisible. Now they are out and about, and they are gambling and gawking and eating to excess just like the rest of us.

I am perpetually chilled here. I didn't bring any long-sleeved shirts, and so I have to wear my jacket all the time. It's a light-weight jacket, and it's not doing a whole lot for me. Being indoors all the time, in artificial light, is adding to my confusion. My body doesn't know what time it is. I went outside once, and the sheer blast of heat and sun served only to disorient me furhter. As always after an airplane flight, I have sniffles. Basically, I suspect I'm going to be a complete basket-case by the time I get home.

Still 'n' all, Vegas is fun!

Home Again

It's gonna be wearying to do all this traveling, three weekends in a row. I love to come home to DC though.

South Beach Album

A smattering of tropical sunshine is available in photos here. God knows it makes a pleasant contrast to what we're putting up with right now in DC.

Wedding pictures to follow.

McAlpin is Surprised

I've been taking photos like crazy in this very photogenic town. When I get home I'll make an album page with the choicest of the bunch.

Until then, please enjoy this friendly, but perhaps slightly panicked fellow.

Another Relaxing Getaway

...courtesy of Abbie's generous and tolerant Mom and Step-Dad. A gaggle of us descended on Lake Anna, where we ate, played dominos, and yakked. Another totally no-stress experience.

Thanks, Abbie!

More pictures here.

Mini-Golf: Sovereign Remedy

Rare is the evil mood whose clutches can't be weakened by the whole-hearted kindness and generosity of dear friends and a game of mini-golf. I had a lovely time in Rehoboth.

See more pictures here.

Home Again, Again

No more traveling for awhile, mmkay?

I am TIRED.

There's a pile of Dad's financial stuff sitting on the desk waiting for me to deal with it. I'm hoping to go for a long run on Saturday. And Sunday, I'm basically at church all day, what with one thing and another (search committee, healing ministry retreat, etc.). Monday, it's back to work.

I had an interesting time in Austin, along a variety of different dimensions. I feel pleasantly stretched.

Except for the part about being TIRED.

Sleeping late tomorrow. Wake me at your peril!

Toasted

The conference is over. I can now stop substituting calories consumed for sleep missed.

I had nine hours of sleep last night (although it was interrupted early this morning by a staff colleague calling to ask if I wanted to share a cab to the airport, grrr, I specifically told him last night that I wasn't leaving today, why can't anyone ever remember anything?).

Looking forward to the R&R portion of the program now.

In Austin

Rising from the crypt this morning at 5:30 am after a scant two hours' sleep, I schlumped onto a plane at eight, and six hours later I find myself in Austin, Texas. DC had finally cooled off to what looked to be a beautiful weekend... here, it's a sweltering 100 degrees. Thank god for air conditioning.

I have a heavy work schedule while here, but there are a few intervals of socializing mixed in, and I'm tacking one extra free day on the end. On Wednesday and Thursday I'll be having two get-togethers at wildly different ends of my personal spectrum. It should be a fun exercise in compare and contrast.

Home Again

So glad to be back.

Despite having maintained a stiff upper lip the entire time I was in Boston, when I saw the National Cathedral in the distance as I returned by cab from the airport on the GW Parkway, I started to cry.

The work has just begun. My Dad is really falling apart. Any anger and resentment have pretty much crumbled in the face of his extremely pitiable state.

I brought home one of ~ if not the~ last drawings he ever did. It's a tender little sketch, slightly vague and shaky, of a tendril sprouting out of an egg in a nest. So tentative, so hopeful. I asked my sister to give it to me (it was up in their bathroom), because although it breaks my heart, it also reminds me to be gentle when I think of my father.

In Boston

Exhaustion.

Some positive steps.

Steps that seem like mere milimeters compared to the miles to go.

You can only do what you can do. Even if it seems utterly inadequate.

Boston Bound

I'm off to Boston for a week in the morning. It's hardly a pleasure trip: the goal is to try and bring some stability to my father's situation. My brother will be there too. I don't hold out much hope that we'll get everything resolved, but I hope at least that the three of us (my sister, brother, and I) will at least be able to agree on what needs to happen next.

I wish this weren't necessary, but it is. Perhaps once I get up there some of the dread will dissipate and I'll be able to get on the with the business of coping.

Wish me luck.

Unsunny Florida

Pictures from the trip are here; some of them are even worth looking at, I think.

There aren't any of Andrew, because they make me cry.

Beach Blitz

I admit it was an email sent by Independence Air touting super-cheap airfares that tipped the scales. And indeed they were cheap. Cheap cheap cheap.

Andrew's parents are purportedly arriving from China next weekend for an indefinite stay, which will likely curtail our social life. So we are zipping off this weekend to St. Pete Beach on the Gulf Coast of Florida for two days of sun and sea while we can. I managed to snag inexpensive lodging and a bargain rental car as well.

Today, I have cast off one of my crutches, and I hope to travel crutchless tomorrow evening. I can't tell whether the soreness and gimpiness are due to more than three weeks of disuse, or whether my injury is lingering on. Time will tell.

"We Had to Destroy the Village to Save It"

I remember when our government said that about hamlets we destroyed in Vietnam (we weren't welcomed as liberators there, either). Now we're applying the doctrine to whole cities. Imagine how the Fallujans will feel when they are finally allowed to return home...

I've used a picture from Kevin Site's Blog, the personal site of the freelance photographer who took the video of the Marine shooting the prone Iraqi in that mosque. I apologize in advance for posting it without permission, and will remove it immediately upon request from Mr. Sites, the copyright holder.

Shelter Island Trip

It was too many hours uncomfortable travel to get there and back, but our visit with Annika and Aaron to the Shelter Island home of Kim and Aimo (?spelled how?) featured absolutely beautiful weather on Sunday. The place is gorgeous.

See some pictures from the trip here.

Cooling My Heels & Paying Through The Nose For The Privilege

Well, here I am in Logan airport, where my 10:30 pm flight to Washington has been pushed back to 12:02 am. In order to while away the hours, and to keep from going stark raving mad with only CSS manuals to keep me occupied (they have LARRY KING on the TV monitors instead of the World Series... go figure), I have paid an extortionate fee for WIFI access. There's not an open bookstore to be found anywhere in this wing of the airport.

This snafu kind of caps a fairly snafuful weekend. My aunts both packed up and left Boston before I even got there. I arrived on Friday afternoon in Boston to find nobody home at the studio in Cambridge. My father never showed up to the birthday dinner for my niece on Saturday night. The dinner we had with my Dad tonight was a painful experience. The whole trip is another lesson in learning to let go of expectations and try to find grace in whatever transpires. I'm still working on that.

It's great to see Odessa looking healthy and happy, with a positive outlook for her future and an expressed desire to give something back to a system that ~ while hardly perfect ~ did provide a safety net for her in an hour of great need. I hope she'll find a way to do that, one way or another. We did a tourist spin at the Aquarium and the iMax theatre, which we both enjoyed. I hadn't been there in at least twenty years, and it seemed in much better repair than I remembered it. It's very cool to get eye-to-eye with the underwater set.

Margo and Calvin extended kind hospitality despite both being overextended with work obligations. The four of us watched the first game of the World Series together on Saturday night, a fun ~ if atypical ~ experience for us all.

I also managed to squeeze in about an hour and half with Joanna in Harvard Square, where we stood on the riverbank clutching coffee cups in the cold drizzle and watching a bit of the Head of the Charles regatta. She explained some technical stuff about rowing. It's a sport that I would never in a million years take up myself, but which I can now appreciate a bit more (from a safe distance). As ever, I was reminded how lucky I am to have wonderful friends.

I took one NIA class and walked to Harvard Square and back. The ankle's a bit sore, but not too bad. I'm hoping and praying that it'll continue to heal, because I really want to start running again.

I'm eating regular food again, trying to moderate my instinct to eat everything in sight at the rapidest possible speed and in the largest possible quantities. It amazes me how incredibly difficult it is to remain mindful about eating. For example, I keep forgetting my intention to not do anything else while I eat (for example, like reading or watching television). I keep forgetting to give thanks before I start stuffing my face. I keep forgetting that I've decided to stop eating when I'm not hungry any more (no matter how tasty the food is) and that I've given myself permission to not eat everything on my plate. You'd think these few rather simple intentions would be easy to follow through on. Apparently not. Years' and years' worth of ingrained habit is pretty hard to break.

The lovely Andrew was going to meet me at the airport at midnight. Since my flight out is NOW scheduled for 12:50 am (it's been pushed back another fifty minutes while I've been writing this!), I'm going to give him a call and tell him to just get a good night's sleep. God knows when we'll actually leave.

Windy City Report

The lovely Andrew successfully broke the 3 hour 30 minute barrier in his third marathon!

The weather in Chicago was perfect ~ cool, not too windy (except for me, waiting at the intersection of Wacker and Franklin in the morning with a wicked breeze off the lake chilling everyone to the bone), and with negligible humidity. I met Andrew at three locations: just after the 3-mile mark, at the aforementioned intersection which was approximately 12.25, and then again in Chinatown at about 21.5. I swapped Gatorade bottles with him a couple of times, but other than shouting "Go, baby!" that was the extent of my contribution to his success. He finished in pretty good shape, with nothing much more than sore legs, a discoloured toenail, and a few minor blisters. I, for one, am most impressed.

Our friend Bernie also had a terrific showing in her second marathon, slicing an impressive 24 minutes off her previous time!

The three of us had dinner together Sunday evening at a restaurant recommended by Amy and Paul: Bistro 110 at Water Tower Place. I highly recommend it for a delicious meal, not too formal and not excessively pricey. I had an extremely potent martini as well as a glass of wine with my meal, and having arisen at 4:45 am, was totally knocked on my ass. But in a fun way.

On Monday, Andrew and I visited the Art Insitute for a few hours in as foot-sparing a way as possible. This wasn't really much of a tourist trip ~ it was really all about the marathon ~ but we had a good time when he wasn't running.

(Of course I am quietly eaten up with envy for all the sound of foot. I'm now trying to calculate when I will be sufficiently healed to begin training in earnest again, and whether I should try to shoot for Phoenix, or I should aim for something a little later on. In the meantime, I bought a lovely shirt in Chicago ~ while Andrew was getting his post-run massage ~ which I fully intend to wear to a victory dinner after MY first 26.2!)

On a Jet Plane

Probably more like a buncha puddle-jumpers...

But anyway, I'll be heading to Chicago on Saturday, October 9th, to be a support team for the lovely Andrew's marathon effort. I'm hoping also to see Amy and Paul, and soak up a little windy-city goodness. Returning on Monday, the 11th.

What's extra-specialicious about this particular trip is that I'm doing it on frequent flier miles from the soon-to-be-non-existent US Airways. If I can use the remaining 17,700 miles for upgrades or something, I definitely will.

Back from the Banx

A much needed mini-vacation on the Outer Banks saw the lovely Andrew and I doing such key activities as: swimming, eating, sightseeing. Check out the photo album.