August 1, Day 2 of My NYC Trip
“Are you just going to stand there and look cute are or you going to help me?” The bellman at the W Times Square asks the taxi driver. I’m in line for a taxi, and one has just pulled up to unload a passenger with luggage. The bellman is trying to pull suitcases from the trunk while the driver stares passively.
A young thin woman cuts in front of me.
“Excuse me,” I say. She turns and looks at me like I’m lunchmeat.
“I’m next.”
She says something in Spanish. She must be from Latin America. I’ve decided long along, from experience, that they are famous for cutting in line.
The bellman notices the occurance, though, and he motions me to take my rightful place in the empty taxi. I look back at the woman, who is looking away, as if she is trying to ignore not only me, but also her guilt and her etiquette crime.
I arrive at my destination. The Javitz Center. There is a trade show going on. I walk up to registration where a minor line has begun. I’m talking to someone I know as we wait to get our badges. It’s a man who has been in our industry for thirty years. I am complaining about the humidity in New York. Before walking inside the trade show, I could see a bank of moisture, barely visible, hanging above the street, an almost translucent cloud.
“Toughen up,” he tells me. He is trying to be nice in the way New Yorkers try to be nice. It is obvious he does not want to hear my complaints. There is an awful lot of humidity in the air. That much is obvious. Why belabor the subject?
I have been facing him and when I turn back for a moment in line, I see that a man has cut in front of me. He does not appear to be with the person who was in front of me, as she is in deep conversation with someone else. And frankly, it’s obvious by looking at the two of them that they aren’t together. She wears a hair band in her blonde pageboy and is dressed in lots of primary colors. She wears chunky gold jewelry, and speaks with a slow drawl. This woman is from the South somewhere. The man wears a white shirt, black pants, and a yarmulke. He stares off into nothing particular, as if he is avoiding eye contact.
“This man just cut in line,” I say to my friend, loud enough for the offender to hear.
“That happens all the time,” he says. “Israeli,” he whispers.
What is it with foreigners? Americans take cutting in line to be a vital sin. It’s right below cheating on your wife and right above running a red light. Everywhere I go in NYC, someone is cutting in line, and they aren’t American. Has the rest of the world banded together and decided that the way they will get back at us for whatever ill we’ve caused on their country is by cutting in front of us in line?
I can jus see a secret session at the UN – minus the American delegation. “Forget war,” some foreign diplomat says, “you know what would really piss them off? Cutting in front of them in line at the airport.”
I remember once, I accidentally cut in line in San Jose, California at the Winchester Mystery House. I cut in front of a woman with blonde wash and wear hair. You would have thought I had spit on her child. She berated me up and down. The reason I inadvertently cut is because she had been standing off to the side and a few feet back from the person ahead of her. I thought that person was the last person in line.
“Honest,” I said, after explaining the situation to her.
She gave me a look, suggesting I was not a skilled liar, which I’m not. Evidently, I’m not skilled at telling the truth either. I exist somewhere in between, in a world of half-truths, due to my own inability to see things as they are. Rather than call a spade a spade, I tend to call it a metal thing you can use to dig or to hit someone over the head with.
I learned a lesson that day. Scope out the line. If you see someone who might be next but you are unsure due to their stance, ask this question. “Excuse me, are you in line?”
Life is often gray. Some things are certain, such as death and taxes, some things are not, like: is that guy across the bar looking at you or is he looking at the hunky guy standing next to you? One thing we all have in common, at least in America, is that we at least want our rightful place in line.
August 05, 2006
August 04, 2006
The Perils of Flying
July 31, 2006. Day 1 of my NYC Trip
Some kids want ponies when they are growing up. I had a pony. Some kids want dogs. I had two. Some kids want a play house. My grandfather built me one. It was the size of a dining room. I had a lot as a kid, but we weren’t rich. Having so much, I naturally wanted more. I wanted to fly places. I wanted to see the world. Mainly, I wanted to climb aboard a silver jet, sit in first class and order stewardesses around. “Get me a coffee,” I imagined barking. “I want caviar.”
Only a kid would think coffee and caviar were an exotic combination. As I grew up and started flying places on my own, I realized that air travel was not at all what I had dreamt of as a child. In fact, the number one problem with flying was that planes were full of kids. And tall people. Really tall people who don’t quite fit in coach. Or fat people. Fat people don’t go out of their way to get good seats. It’s one of those psychological phenomena, the way poor people started voting for Republicans even though it wasn’t in their best interest. Fat people always end up in the middle seat next to me, their legs, spilling over into my space so that we sit knock-kneed from Vegas to New York.
If the person next to me is not fat, they are a squirming Cantonese child, spoiled by her aged grandmother sitting in the aisle seat. Cantonese children like to sit next to me and stare at me. They like to pull on my hair while they sleep. When they wake me, and I stare nastily at their grandmother, the grandmother puts a Cantonese hex on me or gives me an evil eye. “Do not criticize me or my grandkid,” they seem to be saying with the evil eye.
If the person sitting in the middle seat next to me is not a fat person or a Cantonese child, it is a young man who wants to talk. And talk. He has confused the plane for a fern bar from the seventies. He thinks the plane is a place to meet women, or score.
“I know you,” one guy said to me once on a flight from Dallas to San Francisco.
I looked at him, searching his green eyes, trying to find something familiar. I had never seen this man. He had sandy hair and a mustache that wouldn’t quite grow in though he must have been thirty.
“I’m afraid not,” I said.
“Oh we know each other,” he said, quite serious. He seemed slightly hurt that I didn’t remember him.
“I’m really sorry, but I don’t think we’ve met.”
He shook his head, my vacuity clearly annoying him. “Not in this life, silly,” he said. “We knew each other in a previous life.”
What was truly scary about this encounter is that the young man was not hitting on me. He believed we had known each other. I was his sister, Mirabelle. We lived on a plantation in Virginia. I’m so glad our past life was nothing cliché.
In my job, I fly a lot. I fly to Hong Kong, to New York, to small towns like Orlando, which I guess is not so small, but seems that way in comparison to New York of Hong Kong. I fly all over. I have learned many things from flying. Bring a jacket on board, even if it is the middle of summer. Airplanes are cold. Bring a water spritzer on board to freshen your face. Don’t drink alcohol when flying, it makes jet lag worse. Don’t drink caffeine either for the same reason. Of all the things I learned, there is one large pervading truth: people are jackasses when they travel. They are rude, self-centered, loud, smelly, inconsiderate, arrogant, and thoughtless and if they have brains, they forget how to use them.
As I write this, I’m on a flight to Newark. The plane is a pungent algorithm of smells. There’s flatulence, mixed with smelly feet and armpits, and the sharp scent of burned coffee. The movie has just ended and people who didn’t want to watch the flick, a show about a teenage mermaid, sleep, or try to. Behind me somewhere sit two women from what I imagine is Brooklyn or Queens. I’m not good with accents. One of them has not stopped talking for the last twenty-five minutes. Her voice hits our ears, an aural invasion. I think, “Go ask her to be quiet.” I don’t. I shift in my chair. I think, “Go slap her.” I don’t. I look at the woman across from me, who has plugged in her iPod and is listening to music of her choice. I envy her and wonder why I can never remember to pack my own iPod. That’s what they are for, to block out the world you don’t want to hear.
Oh great, the woman next to me is now snoring. The man in the seat ahead of me and across the aisle has removed his shoes. He really should not have done that. He stretches his long legs, bumping the back of the seat ahead of him. The person, a young man with spiked blond hair, a Billy Idol almost wannabe, turns around and gives him a look. The long legged man does not se it. I think of myself, as I strike these keys. Is the click click click annoying the people around me, as they are all annoying me. We are out to get each other, we people in rows 19-21, just as the people in the rows 22-24 and so on are doing.
When I boarded the flight, the attendants had stuck one pillow in between the aisle and middle seat, and laid a blanket over the aisle seat. One blanket, one pillow per row. Presumably, the winners of the prize were the people in the aisle seat, if they got their first. When I reached my seat, 20c, an aisle, there was no pillow or blanket. Someone had taken it – not my row mates, as they had not yet arrived. A kid sat ahead of me in 19C. She did not want her blanket, and for two hours, it lay where the attendant had left it, over the top of her seat. I grew cold and debated taking that blanket. But she is just a kid, and she might want it, I thought. I sat there and thought about it, but I was afraid if I took it, someone would say something to me. “God, you’re so rude,” the long-legged man might say. “That blanket is for that little girl.”
Just as I had almost convinced myself that I was not cold, and the even if I was, cold was good for you as you burned more calories, the woman sitting next to me leaned forward, and casually lifted the blanket from the back of the kid’s chair. She took it for herself. She did this in a way that I could tell she did not give it a second thought. She did not have an internal dialogue between her inner angel and devil. She just did it. No regrets. No looking back. “How selfish,” I thought, with utter envy.
I got up and walked down the aisle to the bathroom. I had to wait, and wait. There were two restrooms, both occupied by people inside who were evidently writing a novel, slowly. There’s a little boy behind me, holding his treasures in his hand and stomping his feet back and forth. I think of offering him my place in line, but my middle-aged bladder wants immediate relief, too.
As I stood in line, between the woman in the aisle seat in 30 D and the woman in the aisle seat in 30C, they started talking around my body.
“This is so rude,” 30 D said. “I have no privacy back here. People just stand in line and crowd us.”
I looked around, uncertain where else I could stand. I thought of crawling in her lap. Would that be less rude?
“And then I have this big Norwegian goof ball who is crowding my tray,” 30 D said to 30 C who acted as if she didn’t know her. “Look how far I have to lean over.”
I stole a glance. I recognized the Norwegian goof. He had been in front of me in the queue to board the plane. The boy knew tall. He must have been 7 feet. Seriously. I imagined that he had pituitary gland issues. I did not even come up to his elbow. He sat in 30 B, the middle. His knees crunch against the back of the seat ahead of him. I looked at 30 D, and she returned my look with the evil eye. This flight had more people giving the evil eye than a Turkish Knitting Circle. I think, "this is what flying has become. A plane full of people giving each other the evil eye." It's the best response we have to noisy kids, smelly feet, flatulance, burnt coffee, all circulating in a flying can.
Some kids want ponies when they are growing up. I had a pony. Some kids want dogs. I had two. Some kids want a play house. My grandfather built me one. It was the size of a dining room. I had a lot as a kid, but we weren’t rich. Having so much, I naturally wanted more. I wanted to fly places. I wanted to see the world. Mainly, I wanted to climb aboard a silver jet, sit in first class and order stewardesses around. “Get me a coffee,” I imagined barking. “I want caviar.”
Only a kid would think coffee and caviar were an exotic combination. As I grew up and started flying places on my own, I realized that air travel was not at all what I had dreamt of as a child. In fact, the number one problem with flying was that planes were full of kids. And tall people. Really tall people who don’t quite fit in coach. Or fat people. Fat people don’t go out of their way to get good seats. It’s one of those psychological phenomena, the way poor people started voting for Republicans even though it wasn’t in their best interest. Fat people always end up in the middle seat next to me, their legs, spilling over into my space so that we sit knock-kneed from Vegas to New York.
If the person next to me is not fat, they are a squirming Cantonese child, spoiled by her aged grandmother sitting in the aisle seat. Cantonese children like to sit next to me and stare at me. They like to pull on my hair while they sleep. When they wake me, and I stare nastily at their grandmother, the grandmother puts a Cantonese hex on me or gives me an evil eye. “Do not criticize me or my grandkid,” they seem to be saying with the evil eye.
If the person sitting in the middle seat next to me is not a fat person or a Cantonese child, it is a young man who wants to talk. And talk. He has confused the plane for a fern bar from the seventies. He thinks the plane is a place to meet women, or score.
“I know you,” one guy said to me once on a flight from Dallas to San Francisco.
I looked at him, searching his green eyes, trying to find something familiar. I had never seen this man. He had sandy hair and a mustache that wouldn’t quite grow in though he must have been thirty.
“I’m afraid not,” I said.
“Oh we know each other,” he said, quite serious. He seemed slightly hurt that I didn’t remember him.
“I’m really sorry, but I don’t think we’ve met.”
He shook his head, my vacuity clearly annoying him. “Not in this life, silly,” he said. “We knew each other in a previous life.”
What was truly scary about this encounter is that the young man was not hitting on me. He believed we had known each other. I was his sister, Mirabelle. We lived on a plantation in Virginia. I’m so glad our past life was nothing cliché.
In my job, I fly a lot. I fly to Hong Kong, to New York, to small towns like Orlando, which I guess is not so small, but seems that way in comparison to New York of Hong Kong. I fly all over. I have learned many things from flying. Bring a jacket on board, even if it is the middle of summer. Airplanes are cold. Bring a water spritzer on board to freshen your face. Don’t drink alcohol when flying, it makes jet lag worse. Don’t drink caffeine either for the same reason. Of all the things I learned, there is one large pervading truth: people are jackasses when they travel. They are rude, self-centered, loud, smelly, inconsiderate, arrogant, and thoughtless and if they have brains, they forget how to use them.
As I write this, I’m on a flight to Newark. The plane is a pungent algorithm of smells. There’s flatulence, mixed with smelly feet and armpits, and the sharp scent of burned coffee. The movie has just ended and people who didn’t want to watch the flick, a show about a teenage mermaid, sleep, or try to. Behind me somewhere sit two women from what I imagine is Brooklyn or Queens. I’m not good with accents. One of them has not stopped talking for the last twenty-five minutes. Her voice hits our ears, an aural invasion. I think, “Go ask her to be quiet.” I don’t. I shift in my chair. I think, “Go slap her.” I don’t. I look at the woman across from me, who has plugged in her iPod and is listening to music of her choice. I envy her and wonder why I can never remember to pack my own iPod. That’s what they are for, to block out the world you don’t want to hear.
Oh great, the woman next to me is now snoring. The man in the seat ahead of me and across the aisle has removed his shoes. He really should not have done that. He stretches his long legs, bumping the back of the seat ahead of him. The person, a young man with spiked blond hair, a Billy Idol almost wannabe, turns around and gives him a look. The long legged man does not se it. I think of myself, as I strike these keys. Is the click click click annoying the people around me, as they are all annoying me. We are out to get each other, we people in rows 19-21, just as the people in the rows 22-24 and so on are doing.
When I boarded the flight, the attendants had stuck one pillow in between the aisle and middle seat, and laid a blanket over the aisle seat. One blanket, one pillow per row. Presumably, the winners of the prize were the people in the aisle seat, if they got their first. When I reached my seat, 20c, an aisle, there was no pillow or blanket. Someone had taken it – not my row mates, as they had not yet arrived. A kid sat ahead of me in 19C. She did not want her blanket, and for two hours, it lay where the attendant had left it, over the top of her seat. I grew cold and debated taking that blanket. But she is just a kid, and she might want it, I thought. I sat there and thought about it, but I was afraid if I took it, someone would say something to me. “God, you’re so rude,” the long-legged man might say. “That blanket is for that little girl.”
Just as I had almost convinced myself that I was not cold, and the even if I was, cold was good for you as you burned more calories, the woman sitting next to me leaned forward, and casually lifted the blanket from the back of the kid’s chair. She took it for herself. She did this in a way that I could tell she did not give it a second thought. She did not have an internal dialogue between her inner angel and devil. She just did it. No regrets. No looking back. “How selfish,” I thought, with utter envy.
I got up and walked down the aisle to the bathroom. I had to wait, and wait. There were two restrooms, both occupied by people inside who were evidently writing a novel, slowly. There’s a little boy behind me, holding his treasures in his hand and stomping his feet back and forth. I think of offering him my place in line, but my middle-aged bladder wants immediate relief, too.
As I stood in line, between the woman in the aisle seat in 30 D and the woman in the aisle seat in 30C, they started talking around my body.
“This is so rude,” 30 D said. “I have no privacy back here. People just stand in line and crowd us.”
I looked around, uncertain where else I could stand. I thought of crawling in her lap. Would that be less rude?
“And then I have this big Norwegian goof ball who is crowding my tray,” 30 D said to 30 C who acted as if she didn’t know her. “Look how far I have to lean over.”
I stole a glance. I recognized the Norwegian goof. He had been in front of me in the queue to board the plane. The boy knew tall. He must have been 7 feet. Seriously. I imagined that he had pituitary gland issues. I did not even come up to his elbow. He sat in 30 B, the middle. His knees crunch against the back of the seat ahead of him. I looked at 30 D, and she returned my look with the evil eye. This flight had more people giving the evil eye than a Turkish Knitting Circle. I think, "this is what flying has become. A plane full of people giving each other the evil eye." It's the best response we have to noisy kids, smelly feet, flatulance, burnt coffee, all circulating in a flying can.
July 30, 2006
On The Road Again
Willie's tune seems to be my theme song lately, though I like to think of myself as more a Born to Run type of girl. I'm off to NYC, where I am sure there will be much discussion about Israel, Lebanon, and the general sad state of the world today. I'm bringing my laptop with me, so I'll try to blog from my hotel room. But I say that all the time, and I never do.
For a peak at the trials and mishaps of a struggling novelist, check out the link to the left for Bourbon Decay.
For a peak at the trials and mishaps of a struggling novelist, check out the link to the left for Bourbon Decay.
July 28, 2006
Googling to Feel Better
When I travel, I spend long hours sitting in airport terminals reading magazines or eavesdropping on conversations. The writer in me turns on when faced with long waits in a public place. One thing I’ve noticed, is that people like to talk about what they are angry about when they are waiting. They are angry about flight delays or the trip behind them, perhaps the trip ahead.
When I returned home, inspiration struck and I Googled the words, “I’m Angry.” It turned out to be an interesting experiment. What the search yielded were many links to blogs where bloggers had written the words, “I’m angry.” There are many angry bloggers out there, let me tell you.
Some were touching. A parent was angry at losing a child. Most had to do with broken hearts, particularly scorned lover. “I’m angry that he left me for a whore.” “I’m angry I spent so much money on me and she left me for a ripped hard body.” “I’m angry that I made him my obsession for four years and he dumped me like a used carton of milk.”
Republicans were angry at Liberals. No matter what Republicans say about Liberals, one thing is certain: they hate liberals more than liberals hate them. Maybe that is why they keep winning political offices.
In my Google search, the word “Hate” kept cropping up. Hate is a strong emotion, there are times when it is stronger than love. I have had to work with certain people over the years that I have truly hated. They are without merit. They are demons in human form, albeit, they are not very attractive humans. The thing I hate about these demon/humans is their inability to see themselves as they are, their incapacity to take responsibility for their shortcomings.
Point is, those people make me angry. Maybe when you are in a stable relationship, rather than obsessing about your love life, you obsess about your work life. Your annoyance with your coworkers becomes amplified when you are content with the rest of your life. I got curious just how many people out there felt that they either now, or had in the past had bad coworkers. I Googled, “I hate my coworkers.” 4,920,000 hits came up. When I Googled, “I’m angry,” I got 43,400,000 hits. Lots of people hate their coworkers, but even more are angry in general.
Madonna once said something along the lines of “Life is too short to be bitter and I’m too short, too.” If she didn’t say that, it would have been a good thing to say.
So tonight, as I write this, I’m not really angry about anything. Life, like me, is just too short.
When I returned home, inspiration struck and I Googled the words, “I’m Angry.” It turned out to be an interesting experiment. What the search yielded were many links to blogs where bloggers had written the words, “I’m angry.” There are many angry bloggers out there, let me tell you.
Some were touching. A parent was angry at losing a child. Most had to do with broken hearts, particularly scorned lover. “I’m angry that he left me for a whore.” “I’m angry I spent so much money on me and she left me for a ripped hard body.” “I’m angry that I made him my obsession for four years and he dumped me like a used carton of milk.”
Republicans were angry at Liberals. No matter what Republicans say about Liberals, one thing is certain: they hate liberals more than liberals hate them. Maybe that is why they keep winning political offices.
In my Google search, the word “Hate” kept cropping up. Hate is a strong emotion, there are times when it is stronger than love. I have had to work with certain people over the years that I have truly hated. They are without merit. They are demons in human form, albeit, they are not very attractive humans. The thing I hate about these demon/humans is their inability to see themselves as they are, their incapacity to take responsibility for their shortcomings.
Point is, those people make me angry. Maybe when you are in a stable relationship, rather than obsessing about your love life, you obsess about your work life. Your annoyance with your coworkers becomes amplified when you are content with the rest of your life. I got curious just how many people out there felt that they either now, or had in the past had bad coworkers. I Googled, “I hate my coworkers.” 4,920,000 hits came up. When I Googled, “I’m angry,” I got 43,400,000 hits. Lots of people hate their coworkers, but even more are angry in general.
Madonna once said something along the lines of “Life is too short to be bitter and I’m too short, too.” If she didn’t say that, it would have been a good thing to say.
So tonight, as I write this, I’m not really angry about anything. Life, like me, is just too short.
July 23, 2006
Grumpy in Vancouver
Greetings from Vancouver, a very clean city. When you live in Vegas, traveling to other cities can pose a rather annoying problem: most are not 24/7. Las Vegans tend to do well in New York, the City That Never Sleeps, but up here in pristine Vancouver, you tend to forget that you can’t get a drink at 11:00am (not that I drink at 11:00am. My husband does, sometimes, but that’s another post) or go shoe shopping at 10:00pm (yeah, okay, I do that).
The thing a desert dweller like myself can’t get over is the water. It’s everywhere. This city loves fountains, and they have some spectacular ones. The only place I’ve seen with fountains this pretty, and abundant is Rome. But the ones here are modern, of course, as Vancouver is a baby of town compared to creaky old Rome. Can a person have fountain envy? I think I do. When I first moved to Vegas four years ago, I remember laughing because even the gas stations had fountains, one in particular was rather large and garish. Then, we started realizing that, gee, we live in the desert, and there are nearly a million of us, so perhaps we might to conserve water. So bye-bye fountains.
It’s true what they say: Canadians are a friendly lot. Their cheeriness punctuates my bitchiness. I feel like the Wicked Witch of the West in this town. I’m all in black, I don’t want to greet complete strangers, and I really don’t want to make room for this in crowded elevators. There is another convention in this hotel beside the one I’m attending, and I don’t know what these folks line of work is, but good lord are they annoying. It’s easy to recognize them. They wear little brown badges that hang from lanyards around their neck. They pile on charter busses to go do group activities, like gondola rides. I have no idea where they go on gondola rides, and maybe they are talking about gondolas that take people up mountains, as opposed to the Venetian smelly canal kind. Either way, when they go on their gondola rides, there is a line to get on the elevators. Numerous times, I’ve been sandwiched in with these friendly people, who talk loud when they chit chat about gondola rides, and we stop at every floor because there are more people waiting to pile on. It never fails, two or three cheery jackasses on the elevator – almost invariably in the back, call out, “hey get on, we’ll make room. The more the merrier.”
Yesterday, I had had enough, so I responded with, “No, not the more the merrier. This is ridiculous.” A woman with a frosted hairdo, the kind that you get at the hairdresser and then have to sleep in for a week, gave me a look, then turned around to her husband and made a face indicating, “What a grouch.” Of course I’m a grouch. I have a fat, bald man standing on my feet.
I’ve come to realize that being polite can be rude when multiple people are involved. If Dick and Jane are on an elevator with the entire membership of the Elks Lodge, and the car stops on a floor and Dick and Jane say to the three people standing in the hotel hallway of that floor, “Hey, get on!” then they have been rude to the Elks Lodge, but polite to those people.
This kind of behavior is an oddity that I have only seen in Vancouver. Maybe it’s the fact that this town is so clean and cute that it brings out the best, hence the worst, in people. I’ll tell you though, it’s enough to make you want a drink at 11:00am, or even 9:00am.
The thing a desert dweller like myself can’t get over is the water. It’s everywhere. This city loves fountains, and they have some spectacular ones. The only place I’ve seen with fountains this pretty, and abundant is Rome. But the ones here are modern, of course, as Vancouver is a baby of town compared to creaky old Rome. Can a person have fountain envy? I think I do. When I first moved to Vegas four years ago, I remember laughing because even the gas stations had fountains, one in particular was rather large and garish. Then, we started realizing that, gee, we live in the desert, and there are nearly a million of us, so perhaps we might to conserve water. So bye-bye fountains.
It’s true what they say: Canadians are a friendly lot. Their cheeriness punctuates my bitchiness. I feel like the Wicked Witch of the West in this town. I’m all in black, I don’t want to greet complete strangers, and I really don’t want to make room for this in crowded elevators. There is another convention in this hotel beside the one I’m attending, and I don’t know what these folks line of work is, but good lord are they annoying. It’s easy to recognize them. They wear little brown badges that hang from lanyards around their neck. They pile on charter busses to go do group activities, like gondola rides. I have no idea where they go on gondola rides, and maybe they are talking about gondolas that take people up mountains, as opposed to the Venetian smelly canal kind. Either way, when they go on their gondola rides, there is a line to get on the elevators. Numerous times, I’ve been sandwiched in with these friendly people, who talk loud when they chit chat about gondola rides, and we stop at every floor because there are more people waiting to pile on. It never fails, two or three cheery jackasses on the elevator – almost invariably in the back, call out, “hey get on, we’ll make room. The more the merrier.”
Yesterday, I had had enough, so I responded with, “No, not the more the merrier. This is ridiculous.” A woman with a frosted hairdo, the kind that you get at the hairdresser and then have to sleep in for a week, gave me a look, then turned around to her husband and made a face indicating, “What a grouch.” Of course I’m a grouch. I have a fat, bald man standing on my feet.
I’ve come to realize that being polite can be rude when multiple people are involved. If Dick and Jane are on an elevator with the entire membership of the Elks Lodge, and the car stops on a floor and Dick and Jane say to the three people standing in the hotel hallway of that floor, “Hey, get on!” then they have been rude to the Elks Lodge, but polite to those people.
This kind of behavior is an oddity that I have only seen in Vancouver. Maybe it’s the fact that this town is so clean and cute that it brings out the best, hence the worst, in people. I’ll tell you though, it’s enough to make you want a drink at 11:00am, or even 9:00am.
July 19, 2006
The Other Beck
I just finished watching Glenn Beck on CNN. I've never really watched him before and I really don't know anything about him, other than he is a conservative who thinks that the latest middle-east development is the beginning of WWIII.
Honestly, I have to admit when I first heard what Israel did, the thought crossed my mind. I haven't tried to think about it too much, because, yep, I'm shallow. I'm also scared. I also tend to over-react, so I hope that Glenn Beck and I have this in common.
Work tends to get in the way of me getting to obsessed with matters of the world. For a change, I'm glad I have a hectic job that keeps my life unbalanced. Later this week, I get on a plane and fly to Canada, a place that seems like a fitting retreat in the middle of a war crisis. So I won't be blogging, but I will be reading the papers and watching the news. I have a feeling the Lebanon war will be a big topic of this blog in the upcoming weeks.
On a lighter note, I have not commented on W saying the "S" word in public. A lot of people take this as proof that his faith is all show. Uh-huh. It took him uttering a four letter word to prove that? I've said it before and I'll say it again. The guy uses Jesus as a marketing tool. It's an old trick used by lots of folks. Having said that, I don't see how saying the stronger version of poopy makes anyone less faithful. But that's why religion can be so silly, or dangerous, as in the case of what's going on in the world these days, and for that matter, what has happened throughout history.
Honestly, I have to admit when I first heard what Israel did, the thought crossed my mind. I haven't tried to think about it too much, because, yep, I'm shallow. I'm also scared. I also tend to over-react, so I hope that Glenn Beck and I have this in common.
Work tends to get in the way of me getting to obsessed with matters of the world. For a change, I'm glad I have a hectic job that keeps my life unbalanced. Later this week, I get on a plane and fly to Canada, a place that seems like a fitting retreat in the middle of a war crisis. So I won't be blogging, but I will be reading the papers and watching the news. I have a feeling the Lebanon war will be a big topic of this blog in the upcoming weeks.
On a lighter note, I have not commented on W saying the "S" word in public. A lot of people take this as proof that his faith is all show. Uh-huh. It took him uttering a four letter word to prove that? I've said it before and I'll say it again. The guy uses Jesus as a marketing tool. It's an old trick used by lots of folks. Having said that, I don't see how saying the stronger version of poopy makes anyone less faithful. But that's why religion can be so silly, or dangerous, as in the case of what's going on in the world these days, and for that matter, what has happened throughout history.
July 14, 2006
Brittle Bones and a Fragile Mind
I think about Sin a lot. I’m not talking about biblical sins, cheating on your spouse, murder, lies – hey, those are in the Bible, right? I haven’t been to Sunday school in thirty years. I’m talking about your run of the mill bad habits that these days are considered sinful. Drinking too much wine. Guzzling caffeine. Eating French fries. Neglecting exercise.
Okay, those things aren’t technically sinful. But I know I shouldn’t do them. Three years ago, I got a dexa scan, which showed I had ostepenia, the precursor to osteoporosis. My doctor prescribed 1500 milligrams of calcium a day. She told me to cut out coffee, limit alcohol, do weight bearing exercise and eat healthy.
I have a stressful job that requires lots of travel. Do you have any idea how hard it is to eat healthy on the road, much less avoid wine at mind-numbing business dinners where the only salvation to the evening is a good buzz? Then, of course, the next morning, I’m exhausted from the late night entertaining, so I drink either coffee or everyone’s favorite industrial waste, Diet Coke. On top of that, I don’t stay on top of my calcium and truly, sincerely, do not have time to go the hotel gym as my days begin early and go straight through to night.
When I return home from these trips, I’m often on a health-kick binge fest, though I can’t seem to eliminate the caffeine, no doubt, because I am one of those people who wake up at 3:00am and ponder the previous day while fretting over the upcoming day – plus I throw in these memory games I play with myself to prove I don’t have early-onset Alzheimer’s, such as, “what was the name of that boy I dated for three months when I was in the 11th grade? It was during that phase where I had blackheads on my nose.”
If you play, you pay, the saying goes. Today I went in for another dexa scan. Over the course of the last week, I’ve avoided wine, I did an hour of weight-bearing cardio each day, plus yoga, and I took 1500 mgs of calcium, you know, because that would rebuild my bone density – wouldn’t it? But alas, I could not avoid my beloved Diet Coke, though I did compensate somewhat by drinking only half a can and also had green tea, which may have caffeine, but is supposed to be good for something else, I don’t know what. I can’t keep up with the prevention methods of all the disease I may have or may get.
I won’t know if my T score has gotten worse till Monday, maybe Tuesday. In the meantime, I’m googling Osteoporosis like a hypochondriac who just learned about a new life-threatening disease. So far tonight, I’ve google Osteoporosis and Ambien, Osteoporosis and Elliptical machines, Osteoporosis and yoga, Living with Osteoporosis, I’ve got Osteoporosis – now what?
Don’t hold me to this, but I may now be an expert on Osteoporosis. Or insanity.
Okay, those things aren’t technically sinful. But I know I shouldn’t do them. Three years ago, I got a dexa scan, which showed I had ostepenia, the precursor to osteoporosis. My doctor prescribed 1500 milligrams of calcium a day. She told me to cut out coffee, limit alcohol, do weight bearing exercise and eat healthy.
I have a stressful job that requires lots of travel. Do you have any idea how hard it is to eat healthy on the road, much less avoid wine at mind-numbing business dinners where the only salvation to the evening is a good buzz? Then, of course, the next morning, I’m exhausted from the late night entertaining, so I drink either coffee or everyone’s favorite industrial waste, Diet Coke. On top of that, I don’t stay on top of my calcium and truly, sincerely, do not have time to go the hotel gym as my days begin early and go straight through to night.
When I return home from these trips, I’m often on a health-kick binge fest, though I can’t seem to eliminate the caffeine, no doubt, because I am one of those people who wake up at 3:00am and ponder the previous day while fretting over the upcoming day – plus I throw in these memory games I play with myself to prove I don’t have early-onset Alzheimer’s, such as, “what was the name of that boy I dated for three months when I was in the 11th grade? It was during that phase where I had blackheads on my nose.”
If you play, you pay, the saying goes. Today I went in for another dexa scan. Over the course of the last week, I’ve avoided wine, I did an hour of weight-bearing cardio each day, plus yoga, and I took 1500 mgs of calcium, you know, because that would rebuild my bone density – wouldn’t it? But alas, I could not avoid my beloved Diet Coke, though I did compensate somewhat by drinking only half a can and also had green tea, which may have caffeine, but is supposed to be good for something else, I don’t know what. I can’t keep up with the prevention methods of all the disease I may have or may get.
I won’t know if my T score has gotten worse till Monday, maybe Tuesday. In the meantime, I’m googling Osteoporosis like a hypochondriac who just learned about a new life-threatening disease. So far tonight, I’ve google Osteoporosis and Ambien, Osteoporosis and Elliptical machines, Osteoporosis and yoga, Living with Osteoporosis, I’ve got Osteoporosis – now what?
Don’t hold me to this, but I may now be an expert on Osteoporosis. Or insanity.
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