Monday
.
9/29/05
What I did on my summer vacation...
Well, it seems that the changing seasons are continuing their inexorable march with the regularity of, well, seasons I guess. All the usual harbingers of autumn are in place: the kids are settled in back at school, there's talk of apple picking, and the stores have been packed with Halloween crap for months now. All is right with the world. And although I don't know quite why, autumn has also always been a time of year that prompts me to take a look back and take stock of how the year is going so far.
This last summer was, in short, full of a lot of family fun. (How's that for a little taste of unintentional alliteration?) There was fun in the pool everyday at camp for the boys, plenty of running bases in the back yard, basketball in the driveway, and of course plenty of vital slug-time spent playing Splinter Cell and Halo2 in the cool, cave-like darkness of the playroom downstairs. (Few things are as pleasant as whiling away a day with the boys as we run around space stations slaying each other with energy swords. Ah, good times... good times.)
We also did the archetypal family car trip vacation; this year it was to Boston with another family, followed by a few days of sitting on a beach at a small lake in the Poconos. All in all, I think this was the very first year that I was really sorry to see the summer come to an end and the boys re-assimilated into the Borg Collective better known as elementary school.
In any case, the following are a few other highlights from our summer that I thought I'd share. (Thus quenching that burning fire that is the world's wish, nay, need to know just exactly how an astoundingly interesting guy like me spent my summer.) To wit:
During the trip from Boston to the Poconos we stopped off at the Stewart Air National Guard base where my buddy is a flight engineer. He drove us out to the flight line and gave us a tour of one of their C5A Galaxies which are not only very cool, but really, really big. Up close it's rather like standing next to an office building that is capable of carrying cargo as large as four charter busses. That kind of big.
Fan of churches? (The buildings, not the institutions...) A few weeks ago we made a stop at St. Elizabeth's in upper Manhattan; it's a particularly spectacular church thats probably been off the mainstream radar for decades only because it's up at 181st Street in Washington Heights. Another beautiful church we did was Trinity Church when we stayed at Copley Square in Boston; but as far as I'm concerned the best thing about Copley Square is the Oak Room at the Fairmont Hotel. It's the kind of place where you settle into a leather bar chair for a drink or three and it just feels right.
Anyhoo... I guess now that I'm done with this little exercise in blogging self indulgence I'll have to start thinking of something even more staggeringly fascinating about myself to post next time. Perhaps a missive concerning my belly button? Maybe a few photos of my sock drawer? Hoo boy, I can hardly wait.
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9/29/05
What I did on my summer vacation...
Well, it seems that the changing seasons are continuing their inexorable march with the regularity of, well, seasons I guess. All the usual harbingers of autumn are in place: the kids are settled in back at school, there's talk of apple picking, and the stores have been packed with Halloween crap for months now. All is right with the world. And although I don't know quite why, autumn has also always been a time of year that prompts me to take a look back and take stock of how the year is going so far.
This last summer was, in short, full of a lot of family fun. (How's that for a little taste of unintentional alliteration?) There was fun in the pool everyday at camp for the boys, plenty of running bases in the back yard, basketball in the driveway, and of course plenty of vital slug-time spent playing Splinter Cell and Halo2 in the cool, cave-like darkness of the playroom downstairs. (Few things are as pleasant as whiling away a day with the boys as we run around space stations slaying each other with energy swords. Ah, good times... good times.)
We also did the archetypal family car trip vacation; this year it was to Boston with another family, followed by a few days of sitting on a beach at a small lake in the Poconos. All in all, I think this was the very first year that I was really sorry to see the summer come to an end and the boys re-assimilated into the Borg Collective better known as elementary school.
In any case, the following are a few other highlights from our summer that I thought I'd share. (Thus quenching that burning fire that is the world's wish, nay, need to know just exactly how an astoundingly interesting guy like me spent my summer.) To wit:
During the trip from Boston to the Poconos we stopped off at the Stewart Air National Guard base where my buddy is a flight engineer. He drove us out to the flight line and gave us a tour of one of their C5A Galaxies which are not only very cool, but really, really big. Up close it's rather like standing next to an office building that is capable of carrying cargo as large as four charter busses. That kind of big.
Fan of churches? (The buildings, not the institutions...) A few weeks ago we made a stop at St. Elizabeth's in upper Manhattan; it's a particularly spectacular church thats probably been off the mainstream radar for decades only because it's up at 181st Street in Washington Heights. Another beautiful church we did was Trinity Church when we stayed at Copley Square in Boston; but as far as I'm concerned the best thing about Copley Square is the Oak Room at the Fairmont Hotel. It's the kind of place where you settle into a leather bar chair for a drink or three and it just feels right.
Anyhoo... I guess now that I'm done with this little exercise in blogging self indulgence I'll have to start thinking of something even more staggeringly fascinating about myself to post next time. Perhaps a missive concerning my belly button? Maybe a few photos of my sock drawer? Hoo boy, I can hardly wait.
Wednesday
9/23
Ebb and Flow. Or Not.
Damn this traffic jam
Well I left my job about 5 o'clock
It’s not often that I ruminate over my seemingly endless list of psychological peculiarities… um, I mean ‘charming eccentricities’... but it was just yesterday that I was reminded of one of my favorites. To wit: I’m often unable to allow myself to be drawn into the moment of a situation and simply experience it the way I’m meant to. I can’t for example, just sit back and enjoy a movie shot in England because my mind inevitably begins to wander and I’ll start thinking about how peculiar it is that Japan is the only major nation on earth with no historical ties to England that also drives on the left. Coincidence, or is there a reason?
Likewise, despite the fact that I’ve been on the Pirates of the Caribbean ride three or four times I couldn’t really tell you much about it because I spend most of the time wondering about things like how deep the water is and if Walt’s head really is frozen in a top-secret underground bunker. In short, I’m the guy who ends up missing the point of a magic trick because I’m so wrapped up in trying to figure out how it’s done.
Anyway, the practical upshot of all this is that in the midst of watching the horrendous Rita-driven evacuee traffic on CNN yesterday my mind inevitably wandered from the human toll of the situation to more arcane matters. Has anyone, I wondered, ever scientifically quantified just how traffic jams work? It’s always seemed to me that fluid dynamics might be a way of framing an explanation, but then wouldn’t individual cars suggest more of a particulate or granular model? And wouldn’t chaos theory have a hand in the whole thing? There seemed but one solution: consult that shiny, new-fangled wonder of technology that is the Interweb!
My impatience was quickly rewarded; after about 30 seconds of Googling around I found more geeky goodness on the mechanics of traffic jams than you could shake a simile at. There are simple representations of traffic waves, and there are very cool interactive Java applets that let you control the destiny of tiny, (and presumably aggravated) traffic bound drivers. There are descriptions of traffic in terms of granular physics, (hey, I was right!) and there are mathematical models of traffic that are, to me at least, entirely inscrutable. There are articles about theoretical physicists who ponder social order and crystalline structure; and then there is this book about massively parallel microworlds and complex adaptive systems. Hoo-rah!
So there it is; that’s how that particular psychological eccentricity of mine played out today: my apparent emotional ADD concerning Gulf Coast evacuees enabled my fondness for figuring out geeky stuff. Go figure.
(Oh yeah, and it turns out that the Japanese drive on the left because of the way Samurai warriors carried their swords. Really.)
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Ebb and Flow. Or Not.
Damn this traffic jam
How I hate to be late
It hurts my motor to go so slow
Damn this traffic jam
Time I get home my supper'll be cold
Damn this traffic jam
Well I left my job about 5 o'clock
It took fifteen minutes go three blocks
Just in time to stand in line
With a freeway looking like a parking lot
- James Taylor
- James Taylor
It’s not often that I ruminate over my seemingly endless list of psychological peculiarities… um, I mean ‘charming eccentricities’... but it was just yesterday that I was reminded of one of my favorites. To wit: I’m often unable to allow myself to be drawn into the moment of a situation and simply experience it the way I’m meant to. I can’t for example, just sit back and enjoy a movie shot in England because my mind inevitably begins to wander and I’ll start thinking about how peculiar it is that Japan is the only major nation on earth with no historical ties to England that also drives on the left. Coincidence, or is there a reason?
Likewise, despite the fact that I’ve been on the Pirates of the Caribbean ride three or four times I couldn’t really tell you much about it because I spend most of the time wondering about things like how deep the water is and if Walt’s head really is frozen in a top-secret underground bunker. In short, I’m the guy who ends up missing the point of a magic trick because I’m so wrapped up in trying to figure out how it’s done.
Anyway, the practical upshot of all this is that in the midst of watching the horrendous Rita-driven evacuee traffic on CNN yesterday my mind inevitably wandered from the human toll of the situation to more arcane matters. Has anyone, I wondered, ever scientifically quantified just how traffic jams work? It’s always seemed to me that fluid dynamics might be a way of framing an explanation, but then wouldn’t individual cars suggest more of a particulate or granular model? And wouldn’t chaos theory have a hand in the whole thing? There seemed but one solution: consult that shiny, new-fangled wonder of technology that is the Interweb!
My impatience was quickly rewarded; after about 30 seconds of Googling around I found more geeky goodness on the mechanics of traffic jams than you could shake a simile at. There are simple representations of traffic waves, and there are very cool interactive Java applets that let you control the destiny of tiny, (and presumably aggravated) traffic bound drivers. There are descriptions of traffic in terms of granular physics, (hey, I was right!) and there are mathematical models of traffic that are, to me at least, entirely inscrutable. There are articles about theoretical physicists who ponder social order and crystalline structure; and then there is this book about massively parallel microworlds and complex adaptive systems. Hoo-rah!
So there it is; that’s how that particular psychological eccentricity of mine played out today: my apparent emotional ADD concerning Gulf Coast evacuees enabled my fondness for figuring out geeky stuff. Go figure.
(Oh yeah, and it turns out that the Japanese drive on the left because of the way Samurai warriors carried their swords. Really.)
9/21
'Nuff Said... (v. 2.0)
"Brownie is to Katrina what Paul Bremer is to peace in Iraq; what George Tenet is to slam dunk intelligence; what Paul Wolfowitz is to parades paved with flowers in Baghdad; what Dick Cheney is to visionary energy policy; what Donald Rumsfeld is to basic war planning; what Tom Delay is to ethics; and what George Bush is to “Mission Accomplished”..."
- Sen. John Kerry, 9/19/05
P.S.- Hey all, boy that was a heck of a break I took, huh? -E
|
'Nuff Said... (v. 2.0)
"Brownie is to Katrina what Paul Bremer is to peace in Iraq; what George Tenet is to slam dunk intelligence; what Paul Wolfowitz is to parades paved with flowers in Baghdad; what Dick Cheney is to visionary energy policy; what Donald Rumsfeld is to basic war planning; what Tom Delay is to ethics; and what George Bush is to “Mission Accomplished”..."
- Sen. John Kerry, 9/19/05
P.S.- Hey all, boy that was a heck of a break I took, huh? -E
