The Nostalgia that is Midland

The story begins with me helping start up a research unit out of the Department of Economics at San Jose State University.  The story has no ending yet, but somewhere in the middle I find myself running across the infamous Tridge of Midland, Michigan in the middle of a blizzard.

Before going any further, I must warn you that being from California, I carelessly use words like blizzard in reference to any weather that does not involve a sun.  The spelling of Tridge, however, was not careless; it is meant to imply a bridge with three legs (as opposed to the implicit two legs of the bridges with which you are most likely familiar).  The three legs span the shores over the confluence of two docile, unknown rivers that will remain inessential to the full understanding of the story.

While we’re off track, I used to spend my winter breaks in Midland.  This is where I first met snow.  This is where I would watch my grandfather devise intelligent bird-feeders that could throw a perpetrating squirrel a good ten feet and not spill but an ounce of seed. 

Also in the middle of the story I meet lots of really intelligent, passionate people and they teach me how to start and operate a think tank.  No, it is not that easy.  Nor is driving through a blizzard to an airport.  On return from Midland we missed our plane.  It’s the first time this has happened to me.

Taxes and Brushes with Fame

This April 15th, I had the pleasure of celebrating taxes in good company.

For concern of any stray tabloid-employds, I will not publicly assert any of the names of the involved parties, though I will mention that included in these parties was a hero in the world of economics and his wife.

Unfortunately, I did not get to, as they say, shoot the bull, with this particular Noble Laureate, however, I did have the chance to direct him and his wife to the restroom.  Let me tell you the story.

As there was a high price tag on the event, volunteer work was quite a hot item and I was one of the first on the list.  Furthermore, getting to the event just a tad late placed me in the “limbo” category of the volunteers - all of the roles were already assigned by the time of my arrival.

I was meandering with a sophisticated presence near the entryway when they approached.  They first looked behind a plant and then down a dark hallway; that is when I made my move.

“Are you looking for the restroom?” I rhetorically questioned.

Quickly, as the dark hallway exposed itself as simply a repository for chairs, the couple changed directions.  The wife looked my way and smiled with an inquisitive affirmation.  Surely, she had not heard a thing I said but, positioned awkward and available in the middle of the side of the room, I could only have one purpose.  I continued in a bit louder voice,  “Right at the other end of the hall on your left.”

Without breaking stride, she cordially replied “Thank you,” as she looked back over her shoulder and the wake of their high-speed trail came upon me as a small breeze from the elbow down.

Tourism from Above

Using the satellite feature of Google Maps and resourceful users, the blog Google Sightseeing shares the world from above.

Friends From Above

You may not be able to zoom in on the owl house, but the barn, the driveway, the neighbor!  Google Maps now has satellite view.  The most reasonable uses that come right to mind are 1) star-perspectived entertainment and 2) writing invites for space-themed parties.

House Plan: Faucets

The faucet reads:
1 turn Cold
2 turns Warm
3 turns Hot

I’ve heard from the inside (inside the house that is, as I live in the illustrious, ex two-car “cottage”) that, this week, the only setting is really hot. Nevertheless, this is definitely an item that will be built into the architecture of my pipe dreams.  I’ll probably modify the heat feature in the water to be more compassionate, but I never know when I might be struck by the longing to re-create the weathered pains of a 99 year old shingle-style house in Professorville.

Thanks to mom (who apparently is a graphic designer in her spare time) for the photo and a pleasant visit.

Custom News

Consuming grandiose amounts of information is a hobby of mine.

Today: Google News.   If you enjoy reading the paper but don’t enjoy reading what is in the paper, Google has just solved that (minus the actual, physical paper.  Instead there will just be a large amount of photons shooting at your head).

You can now put the Sports section before the Enternainment section, or just get rid of the Entertainment section all together and add a customized section on Digital Photography instead.  Google explains here.

Schematic Food Planning

A blog entitled Cooking for Engineers takes recipe writing to a new level!

Dandy Map

Google has made navigation much like flying a super-fast and intelligent spaceship right at the location your screamin’ out!

Found a Perch

As I packed the final boxes and moved them into the truck, Dad and Zon bid me farewell and left for their walk.  Hah, I bet you thought I was the one leaving!

No, no, it seems i have overleft my welcome.  Now it is just assumed that I’ll be moving somewhere else again in the next month and trying to use it as leverage to get hugs and cookies.  What’s wrong with goodbye hugs!? 

It was probably in the inchoate stages of my travels that i began forming this delusion.  I assumed that no matter how far I was going that when I got to the kitchen I would be bombarded with love.  Furthermore, i assumed that upon arrival to my destination, no matter how precisely i packed my bags, there would always be a treat Mom managed to sneak into one of my boxes. (I wonder what the airlines would say about this…).

But it wasn’t the love that was missing, Dad and Zon both yelled ‘see ya dude’ over their shoulder as they took off.  And though there was no See’s Milk Chocolate with Marshmallow at the bottom of my guitar case, i found a gift card surreptitiously waiting in my wallet to treat me at Trader Joe’s.

All that I’m trying to say is that if you travel a lot, there comes a time when a trip to the airport gets treated like a night at the movies. 

My new perch is downtown Palo Alto.  I live in the cottage (garage) of a Shingle Style house with Carpenter Gothic interiors (i’ll work on figuring out what this means too) in Professorville (though I am only a lecturer).  Close enough to home that I don’t feel like i’ve left, close enough to work that I don’t feel like i’m there,  and close enough to Stanford that i can still feel like i’m climbing the ladders of academia.

Tree Hunting

The phrase at the end of the clip reads:

    Pa-ri-zek /puh-ree-zeck/ n : a little stump.  You know, when you cut down a tree:     what you have left.

This is how a nice Czech girl once explained me the meaning of our last name.  It is only fitting for the abridged (in length and in frames-per-second) story I share with you here.  It is the story for the season and a story of the journey my family took this year in order to fill our living room with pine needles.

So, without further ado: seb_2004DecXmasTreeHunt.mov

It is only a specimen of the video’s original quality but byte-brevity is necessary from this remote land-line that I work.  Happy Holidays.

Foreshadowing January

I had my first nightmare about teaching economics last night.  It was my first class and it took me over a half an hour to take role.  I first handed the role sheet around and afterward, I decided to call it aloud.  Unexpectedly, everyone’s name was spelled something like ‘Ooogggcckkknnnn.’  How the heck do you pronounce that?  And then, regardless of whom i called on, another student would ask me a simple question I couldn’t answer and while I wasn’t answering the question I would lose the role sheet amongst the variety of torn papers I was holding.  As the role call drew out toward infinity, my fear of the lecture portion of class increased because I knew that I would have to explain a few things using the chalkboard and, go figure, the entire front of the room was barricaded with desks so I could not approach the board.

The prelude to teaching principles courses: what trauma.  I could only imagine what my nights would be like if I got a job in a truly savage job like commercial fishing in Alaska or a route as a US postal worker.

To Blog

My mom, on a quest of reason to determine how the word blog may be derived, came to the following insight:

Blog:

(v) to log one’s blah-blah’s.

(n) a blah-blah log.

Jersey City, NJ

I think Nietzsche called it the ‘eternal return.’  I just know that as Amanda was driving me to the airport in New York, all of a sudden, the sign said Jersey City with some dastardly crooked arrow signaling pointedly into a muddle, and we were lost in the dirty city again.

My last adventure began this way and I am beginning to fear how Jersey City might sneak up on me the next time! 

Our (Jersey City and me) last encounter involved a case of six German wines.  The U.S. government stole them from me right out of the mail; held them hostage in a wherehouse down a tortuous, stop-lighted road in a vacated, numbered lot; and charged me two dollars to retrieve the care package that was sent to California in the first place.

Our (Amanda and me) time in Jersey City was mostly spent photographing streets with names like ‘Vroom’ and the undersides of the freeway from dirt roads that we came across in the multitudes of circling and where-the-heck-are-we’s we did around the dirty city.

Luckily, this time Amanda maneuvered free of the dirty city’s grasp with an ingenuous U-turn, obvious and round—an artless move that would insult the craftiest of ugly concrete mazes.

Yes, I am expressing triumph.

Halloween: Pittston, PA

The streets were quiet, but potential, while Amanda and I snuck out with her grandmother to the Olive Garden for dinner on Halloween night.  Leaving a note for the candy hunters on the door, telling them when we would be back, seemed more dignified than my effort the past year.

Although I learned many things in school, I do feel academia sheltered me from any exposure to these lil’ ones who are so potent and lifelike.  This became clear to me as I answered a knock on my door in San Jose last year: two trick-or-treaters.  With a shocked look on my face I greeted the dashing beasts with an “Is today Halloween?” and before they could reply asked them to hold on.  I closed the door and turned to Silvio quickly telling him to help me search the house for anything sweet and giveable.

After a little sweat and a twice over of the cupboards we returned to the door with the option of a banana or canned garbanzo beans.  Already halfwaydown my walkway the little beasts politely declined my offer and scampered off for a chance a sweeter plunder next-door.  Silvio and I quickly turned the lights out and hid in the backroom until we established a plan and proper escape route from our cornered situation.

Despite being in a State with arguably less youth, the return from the Olive Garden this year went a bit smoother—the neighbor greeting us to tell that the streets were quite calm this year.  “Not to many Haloweeners,” he said.  I quietly let go a sigh of relief, currently disregarding the fact that they refer to ‘trick-or-treaters’ as ‘halloweeners’ over here (I guess it is more appropriate for their average size). But Amanda’s grandmother wouldn’t let go so easy. 

This halloween I witnessed the type of compassion they don’t teach in academia.  Within minutes she was out on the porch with the candy bucket yelling at kids who looked like they might be passsing without getting the generous handful of sweets they were due: “Hey, come ova here!” she yelled to the ghost.  “I’ve got candy for ya!” she yelled to the zombie.  With plenty of effort she emptied that basket, mostly on the neighbor who also got a few extra handfuls to give to friends, though an eloquent bout of pro-active halloweening.

Meter Maids and Company

Two train ticket from New York to Philadelphia cost $35.00.  Amanda and I paid it.  But that I guess is not interesting.

My friends across Southern Europe had different interpretations of their public transportation systems.  Let me give you a list of our trips savings:

Barcelona: +16 Euros.  (Tickets to Sitges 6 Euros, but you can get on for the price of a metro ticket, 2 Euros.) Lyon: +6 Euros.  (There is no barrier in the Metro Station) Paris: +10 Euros. (Here you just jump, it is very circus like) Milan: +4 Euros (You validate the ticket in a machine on the Bus)—————————- Total Debits: +36 Euros in metro-hopping savings, a gift of local knowledge

But here comes the catch, the grand equilibrator (Yes, I’ve tactfully hidden information from you).

Milan: -34 Euros (A gift of foreign knowledge.  As we pulled up to a station and saw a handful of ticket checkers collaging the doors, we decided to jump off as to not be on the bus with them, though as it goes, they didn’t want on, but to see our tickets once we got off ((sad music)) (Yes, this is my story, i can choose the music).—————————- Total Credits: -34 Euros in metro-hopping slappings

Grand Total: +2 Euros!

Some people play Bingo or go to the Horse Track.  I ride public transportation while in foreign countries ((trail off with Hawaii Five-O type music)).