My Quiet Phone

I run my iPhone with nearly all sound and lock screen notifications turned off. 

That's right. For every app I go into the appropriate settings and turn off anything that produces a notification. I have enabled a handful of apps to display items in my lock screen. I even go so far as to disable the "badges", the little red number that appears at the corner of an icon indicating there's stuff to look at. This has greatly quieted my phone.

Also, unless you are my wife or daughter, your text won't alert me. I turned off all text notifications, so I'll only notice your message when I look at the phone. (I do look at it regularly enough.) If you really needed to convey an important message to me, you can call me.

Of course the one thing I can't turn off are work notifications, but I try to set limits there too. For Slack messages, my phone makes a noise, but I have disabled nearly all the social channels and some of the direct messages as well. I also make use of the "active hours" feature. After a certain hour, I'm not reachable via Slack. If you really needed to reach me, you can raise a PagerDuty incident to my cell.    

I try to remind myself that before smart phones and flip phones, we were pretty much not reachable unless you were near a phone, and it had to be a landline phone at that. Instead of attending to every beep and buzz of our smart phones, we used to have to walk with our head forward, looking in front of us and around us. 

All this is in-line with my low-information diet, but it's also a way to control distractions. Turning off the notifications helps me remain somewhat present. I have noticed people making good use of the iPhone's "Focus" mode. This is probably something I should explore but my current system works for me.

Gordon Street

From March to September 1991, I lived at 80 Gordon Street, in Brighton, Massachusetts. This was my first time paying rent for my own place. (I moved to Boston in January 1991, stayed one night with family, then was conveniently invited into house sitting at a co-worker's friend's place.) Gordon Street reminds me of the simpler though lonelier lifestyle I had back then. 

The apartment was simply a place to sleep, nothing more. Despite that, I didn't have a bed. It never occurred to me to buy one. I had a sleeping bag, and I slept directly on the floor. Word got around the office and a few months later a co-worker offered me a mattress he was getting rid of. I remember driving that used mattress in my tiny car from some North Shore town and being genuinely glad for it.

My apartment had two rooms, but because I didn't buy furniture one could be confused by their function. In the one room was the sleeping bag/mattress. In the other room was a folding table that had some books and an old computer. I rarely used that computer though. Instead, as a young workaholic in high-tech, I spent most of my waking hours at the office where there were far more interesting computers. Someone joked "Rick has more rooms than furniture." I laughed at the absurdity.

There was a small kitchen in that apartment. However, the one time I thought to cook something on the stove I was met with the reality that you have to call the utility company to turn on the gas. I had not done this. My diet in 1991 was served by national fast food chains and local fast food chains. And sometimes, a high-end restaurant. That's right: if co-workers were headed to nearby Michela's, a gorgeous and fancy destination restaurant, I'd sometimes tag along, somewhat out of place in casual clothes but solvent enough to mostly not care.

The mattress on the floor was soon accompanied by a beach chair I had bought. I'd sit in that chair to read or to write in a paper diary. There was a door that led to a tiny balcony. It overlooked a parking lot which I didn't have a permit for. In the kitchen the window overlooked the air well between the surrounding apartment buildings. Sometimes, if I saw someone across the way, I wondered if they were as lonely as I was.

When one of my co-workers asked if I wanted to join up with two other people in a larger apartment in downtown Boston, I leapt at the chance. I needed this invitation at that exact moment in my life. I must have broken my lease with the landlord immediately, but left all my moving plans for the absolute last minute. The morning of August 31, a loud knocking at my door woke me. When I opened it, I saw two parents and some children. They were the new tenants, and they were here to move in.

I hurriedly gathered my mattress and folded up my table and chair. I marveled at their furniture and their unpacking of kitchen implements. I stuffed my car with my meager belongings. I must have given this new tenant my key, though I don't remember. I then drove a few miles to the Back Bay. In that new apartment I had the smallest of the four rooms. My mattress and beach chair fit perfectly. 

80 Gordon Street (Google Maps)

 

Doodling and Drawing

The greatest video on YouTube to me is Jeremiah's "A Conversation with my 12 Year Old Self". It is funny and witty and always makes me laugh. It's been on the Internet for 11+ years and it's an easy favorite.

There is a part in the video where the older present-day Jeremiah asks "What were you doing before you made this video?" and young Jeremiah gives an answer that completely pauses the older Jeremiah. The young Jeremiah was drawing! He shows a picture of a funny looking rabbit, and the older Jeremiah is stunned. It's a perfect moment, in a video that is full of perfect moments. 

Not long after rewatching this I found myself doodling more at work. It's the perfect thing to do during long remote meetings when you're not speaking! Like the young Jeremiah, the young version of myself liked drawing. A long-ago friend helped spur my interest by bringing over a copy of "Draw Comics the Marvel Way" and from that I learned how to draw grimacing faces and action poses.

Like all childhood things, doodling and drawing somehow faded away. But I never really forgot them. When we moved out of our house I found in the basement an old notebook of those long-ago "Action Comics" that I drew "the Marvel Way". The story was about a hard-edged secret agent named Clint Cad. It's a remarkable time capsule!

Like all childhood things, it's fun to take it up again. Drawing, like making music, or writing, or crafting, feeds our creative nature. And while there's an analytical side that gets frustrated at every imperfection, I have been channeling the advice that perfection isn't the goal. Instead, it's about the process and being in a different headspace.

Since I spend my entire working day exercising my analytical nature, it's fun to let my mind engage in something so different and creative. I'm glad it's reentered my life and I'll keep going with this for as long as I can.

Rodrigo!

I walked into a restaurant to grab my takeout order and as I approached the pick up area the cashier called to me: "Rodrigo!" Rodrigo? Then I realized he was hailing me by my real name, the one I rarely tell people about. He must have gotten Rodrigo from the credit card slip. Since college I have always introduced myself as Rick, leaving Rodrigo for my tax returns, passport, and other official documents.

Rodrigo is a great name but it is a mouthful. For some of my grade school classmates growing up in New Jersey, they would elide the "d", which comes out like "Rawr-rigo". If I'm remembering the story correctly, my parents began to call me Ric (and Ricky) because in the 1950s there was a Filipino actor named Ric Rodrigo. I am able to see web pages [1] [2] and even a YouTube video (in Tagalog) that prove this namesake. I only wish he had gotten into an American movie!

After my momentary surprise at being called Rodrigo, I confirmed that I was indeed Rodrigo, here to pick up my Saturday night takeout. I guessed he was probably still in high school based on his long floppy hair beneath a baseball cap. I silently applauded his boldness. When I was his age, I addressed older men as sir or mister and I suppose over the last several years I've come to expect that.

I wish I had responded to him with humor or boldness: "And what's your name young man?" or "What do they call you sonny?" I wish I had asked for his name! I'll be sure to next time I'm there. And I'll be sure to invite him to call me Rick.

Gas Translation

At the gas station a few weeks ago, I was sitting in my car jotting down my mileage. My door was open.

The person pumping gas to my left (my gas cap is on the driver side) waved to me. Though unusual, I said "hello" and then made to close my door. He raised his hand again and said "Wait. Wait." I braced myself for a directions question or perhaps a plea for money.

He then held his phone to his mouth and spoke into it. It was not English or Spanish. If I had to guess, I would say it was Portugese. He then turned his phone's screen towards me. On it was Google Translate, and the English text said "Can you show me how to subscribe to gas?"

After a blink I realized what he needed. I got out of my car. He moved off to the side, pointing at the gas pump. The gas station had pumps where you indicated the grade of gas by pulling the appropriate handle. When I looked at him, he pointed again, this time at the sign with the lowest price. 

"Yes, yes," I said. Then I looked at the credit card reader and gave the universal sign for money: rubbing my thumb across my fingers. "Pay? Pay?" I asked. He replied in his indecipherable language. I shook my head. He spoke into his phone again. When he showed it to me, it said "I paid inside already."

I next lifted the handle indicating the cheapest gas option. I picked up the gas nozzle, walked to his open filler and showed him where the nozzle went. I then signaled for him to pull the nozzle's trigger. The display began to cycle and we heard the clunk-clunk of a working gas pump.

I smiled to him this time. He did too. He waved and said "Thank You" in accented English. I smiled and waved and got into my car. All he used to communicate to me was "Wait", "Thank You" and Google Translate. I wonder if I could do as well with just these if I were in his native country.

Photo by Sean (Flickr)

Working on Cars

On my way to my car, I saw a man and (presumably) his son in front of their car with the hood up. The man was examining the engine and showing it to their kid. I wondered what he might be saying to him. "This here is the watchamacallit... And this is the doohickey..." It reminded me a bit of growing up.

My Dad showed me car stuff too. We started with easy things: brake fluid, transmission fluid, and engine coolant. (It never occurred to me to ask why our car at the time needed some of these fluids replenished so frequently.) He then showed me how to check and change the engine oil. It was vital work but getting my hands dirty in this fashion didn't appeal to me.

Years later at a college job my car wouldn't start in the parking lot after work. Someone came out and asked if I was having some problems. I said yes and he said "let's take a look." At least I could open the hood for him. He peered inside and fiddled with some cables. After a few minutes he asked me to start the engine and sure enough it started! It felt like a magic trick.

That was back in the 1980s. In today's cars, the engine block under the hood is more sleek and seemingly less open. I wonder if that competent and kind gentleman could get a modern car to start. For one thing, you need a computer to examine any "check engine" problems. And in battery electric vehicles, an engine block full of engine oil isn't even present. What is there to fiddle with?

I am drawn to automotive tools however. Maybe in another life I would have been a auto mechanic. I've seen the posted mechanics' labor rates at various car garages. It's a decent-paying job, with its own computer work. And maybe in that other life, I'd be curious about the computer talking to the car and wonder how I could work with the computer instead.

(photo: Nenad Stojkovic)

Jersey City

I was in Jersey City, New Jersey a few weeks ago, the city where I grew up. The GPS put me on Rt 440 near Lincoln Park, and though I know these landmarks from my youth, it was barely recognizable. I drove timidly as the GPS guided me through streets that I remembered but could no longer navigate. I eventually reached my great friend James McDermott, who took over all the driving duties for my brief stay.

He and I were going to an all-years grade school reunion at a Jersey City bar. I knew where the bar was located but this was likely my first time inside. On our way there, he drove by St Aedan's, Journal Square, and a few familiar houses of our past. We went down our long list of mutual acquaintances, taking note of who was here, and who had left.

He took me to Jersey City's downtown. It was teeming with new buildings and people eating at cafes with outdoor tables. Parking was challenging. Amidst the new I spotted the old: my old high school buildings, the office of my first job, the downtown train station entrance. We went uptown past my old dentist's office building, a rival high school, and the library.

I was struck by all the high-rises. Jersey City had been building upwards. Like New York City across the Hudson River, the skyline of Jersey City was transforming to accommodate. It made me think of the little town where I live in Massachusetts: more people coming in, construction seemingly everywhere, though perhaps not on the same scale, and not as towering.

At the bar, there wasn't anyone from our year, but we socialized as best we could. James called another grade school friend and we were able to catch up briefly. I met a few people who grew up on the street next to where I grew up. I said hello to my sixth grade teacher. We all looked appropriately old. 

In the morning, I followed James back to Rt 440. "You know how to get home from here right?" I said I did. Determined to get out of Jersey City using my wits, I followed my hazy memory towards Rt 3. When I got to Secaucus and MetLife Stadium I was at last comfortable. On the drive here I was sure that I had gone over new roads that made the trip faster, if a bit unfamiliar.

Jersey City is no longer the city of my childhood. It is still a dense and muscular city, filled with a casual roughness, but parts of it now has some of New York City's sleekness. 70s and 80s Jersey City exists only in the memories of those who experienced it. I'm always grateful for my life there, and as I barreled north to New England, I thought: perhaps I shouldn't be such a stranger!

Bergen and Highland

Doing the Dishes

Over the last several years, doing the dishes after dinner has become a welcome part of my day. It wasn't always this way. This task is called a chore for a reason: it's a routine task that is generally unappealing. Put it this way: after dinner, I would definitely prefer to go right to the couch to start a movie. So while I don't look forward to doing the dishes, I've grown to welcome its routine.

The phrase "doing the dishes" encompasses all the procedures to shut down the kitchen. That means wiping down the stove top and counters, storing leftovers, and putting away pots and pans and other kitchen implements after they've been hand washed. I spend time toweling things down when necessary. I admit all this is easier with our empty nest.

Growing up, my family did not have a dishwasher. I was raised to hand wash everything. My two brothers and I took turns weekly, I think, doing this chore. I applied to be a dishwasher at a restaurant near our house, but when they found out I wasn't 18, they backed out. After I got married, I decided that since I couldn't contribute making meals, my contribution would be the dishes. 

Over the past several years I have refined my dish washing techniques, but there is one essential element: near-constant running water when rinsing. My mother chides me on how much water I'm using. I've learned to be more frugal, but I like a lot of water. I run my fingers over what I'm washing, to be sure all the grit is gone.

Of late, doing the dishes has become calming for me. I find myself doing it deliberately. I go carefully each step of the way. Sometimes, when the oven was used for dinner, I'll finish by holding the wet dish towel over the partially open oven door so that it gets slightly drier. 

I think my change in attitude comes from the chore's finite duration and my sense of accomplishment when I'm done. It's 20 to 30 minutes, though sometimes longer. The result is a kitchen ready to go for tomorrow. When I turn out the light, whatever relaxation happens afterward feels earned.

 

Wordle

Wordle is my favorite new thing from 2022. It's a part of my morning routine to sip coffee and eat cereal while solving this puzzle. I like comparing my solves with my wife. At one point our daughter played the game, and it was fun trying to have the fewest guesses.

I like Wordle's history: Josh Wardle, a programmer, makes a game to play with close friends and family. He makes a website for this game, which allowed more people to play it. He created a nifty emoji-based scorecard which was easy and fun to share. Within a year his game becomes viral. Frustrated by copy-cat versions of his game, he made a deal to sell his game to The NY Times.

Like other programmers, I took stabs to solve Wordle programmatically. However, the enduring challenge is solving it with just the clues that emerge from the game itself. The fact that you can only play one game per day is another draw. At first, Wordle allowed every five-letter word to be in the puzzle, but he whittled that down to the most popular 6000 words. At one game per day, we're talking 15 years of puzzles!

Some Wordle words are fiendishly difficult. Double consonants and double vowels add difficulty. If I can identify the first letter, it's usually easier. Some words are hard enough that I wouldn't finish the game during my breakfast. Instead, I'd let the puzzle linger in my head, turning over the letters until an hour or so later, usually in the bathroom, I'll remember my game and when I open it, I'll instantly solve it. 

Someone on Twitter said that the ideal starting word is TASER, because it contains the most popular letters. My brother said AUDIO is another great starter: you identify the vowels early! In the end, what's worked best for me is to come up with a brand-new five-letter word every morning. Before it was a word  from the cereal box (WHOLE, WHEAT, HEART, GRAIN), but nowadays I pick something out of the blue, like my mood for the day: CRANK, FUNNY, SMILE.

I am competitive with my Wordle score. I always try to get the word before the sixth and last guess. My Wordle statistics show 100s of solves in 4 and 5 guesses and I like to keep it that way. Ultimately it's a guessing game, so I try not to get too down about not getting the word (breaking my streak). Of late I've been posting my scores on a public Facebook group. Look for my posts there if you want to see my recent puzzles!

Procrastination

In a little over three weeks I have to give a presentation. It's about eBooks and how to make them. I haven't started preparing for it however. Since I made the commitment a week ago all I have done was mull over my topic and mildly groused about how I got into this.

I take solace in the fact that my presentation isn't tomorrow. That's happened before, usually with papers in high school and college. I'd have a some kind of draft but the evening before I'll bang out a final version in a feverish all-nighter that still makes me nervous thinking about it. I had a similar mindset with computer projects but staying up all night writing a program was "fun" to the younger version of myself. 

One of the things I learned is the simple power of just taking even the smallest step towards my assignment. I open up PowerPoint and make one or two slides. Just the title page. Maybe part of the agenda. A bullet point. Even a picture. Anything. Just starting is the hardest part but once I'm past the first few sentences it begins to build on itself. It starts to grow and the effort to add to it becomes easier. 

Putting things off make me think about process versus product. Maybe I like to think about the product and the reward of making that product, rather than embracing the process of making that product. Procrastinating doesn't help with either though. Wish me luck!

Photo by Guy Sie

Resolving the Rubik's Cube

On a recent trip to my parents, my brother told me he had relearned how to solve the Rubik's Cube. A few months before this moment he had noticed an unsolved Rubik's Cube in our parents' house. He picked it up and slowly became obsessed with solving it. I could only finish the top layer at the time. Luckily enough our parents kept the small fold-out solution guide for this toy.

When I first got the cube in the early 1980s I was stymied by how to solve it. The top layer is straightforward but how do you solve the whole thing? An old friend came over one afternoon and magically solved it right in front of me. He made believe that he was guessing and figuring out the moves on his own and I was completely fooled! 

It didn't take long before I realized you could just buy a book with the solution, which is what I did. After I had memorized the intricate steps for solving it, I began to time myself to see how fast I could do it. Somehow I learned that you could take the cube apart and oil its innards so you could spin the pieces faster. Yes I did this and I'm pretty certain I was able to solve the thing in a minute. All of this played out in the years before high school.

After seeing my brother solve it last month, I resolved to relearn how to solve it. I bought a Rubik's Cube and found the online solution guide from the cube manufacturer. After an hour of careful reading, I was able to solve my cube. The steps were complicated however, so I looked for an alternative solution. I happily found jperm.net by Dylan Wang. His page has a simple but slow method to solve the cube and I have recently memorized these steps.

For the moment I'm just happy being able to solve it again. I like the challenge of solving the cube using a different starting color. I've studied the moves from his website and on a solved cube you can see how the steps move the target edges or corners to the desired locations. The cube that I bought seems to spin fast, which is good if I decide to tackle speed cubing. For now, it's enough to have revisited this old obsession.

Fun Facts About Me

At work the other day, we all went around the virtual table to introduce ourselves to a new co-worker. The first few speakers added "fun facts" about themselves, so I knew to be prepared to offer a fun fact about myself, but when it came to my turn, I froze.

"Well, I'm a parent of a college-aged kid, so most of my fun was before that," I said. The joke fell flat, and then I offered this: I binged watched five seasons of Homeland last Winter. "Binge watching TV," our host said. "That's always fun!"

The rest of the meeting went well, but I stewed about the lack of fun facts I could offer. My co-workers offered awesome-sounding fun facts: world traveling, high school athletic accomplishments, career changes, gaming. I had fun facts about myself too, I just couldn't be sure what they were.

Part of the problem was getting stuck on the word "fun". My ideas of fun have changed. I think I could have gotten past the word 'fun' by replacing it with 'interesting', but then they may as well be random facts. Fun is enjoyment and amusement. That helped crystallize the list: these were all things I enjoyed.

So, here are some fun facts about me:

1. I attended a kids' soccer camp with Carlos Alberto as a featured guest (he was a player on Brazil's 1970 World Cup team) (circa 1980s).
   
2. I have done a cross-country road trip across America with my family (1983).
   
3. I did a tandem skydive (1989). It's not something I would do today!
4. I met and shook hands with an astronaut during an internship (1989). (Joke: we were on Earth.)
   
5. I met my wife through a personal ad in the Boston Phoenix newspaper (1991).
6. I played ice hockey with a local recreational league (1993-1996), fulfilling a childhood ambition.
7. I worked at a company that had an IPO (Open Market) (1996).
8. I produced a cooking show (two episodes) for local community access TV (2001).
9. I wrote a version of Tetris in C++ (for MS Windows) (2011). Remarkably, it still runs!
   
10. I have read Ulysses (2012).

Tandem Skydive (credit: Joe Jennings)

Turning 21

I turned 21 on April 6, 1989. I have very few memories of this day but I know that I was a junior in college, and that I definitely had dinner at Holmes and Watson in downtown Troy. My favorite meal there was a patty melt with french fries. Of course, now that I was 21, I would be able to wash it down with a nice cold beer.

Holmes and Watson had a feature where you could start a World Tour of Beers. You would ask the bartender for a World Tour card, which was a long rectangular card listing all the beers available on tap and bottle. The bartender put your name on the card, and your Tour began. You had one calendar year to drink 50 beers off the card (there were up to 80 beers from many countries). I knew people who completed multiple Tours and I aspired to be like them.

The Tour cards were stored in a wooden box with dividers for letters, and people who were serious about the Tour would fish their card out when they entered the restaurant. After you ordered a beer off the card, the bartender would punch a hole next to that beer's listing on the card.  Finishing the Tour rewards you with a tee-shirt, a mug and a hat. I'm proud that I finished my Tour before the year ended.

I'm pretty certain that I would have had this 21st birthday dinner with Dean Kehoe, a classmate from Massachusetts who indulged my humor and my poor attitude towards school at that time. I relished the opportunity to drink legally, and he and I were regulars at Sutters, a nearby bar that was famous for Thursday night wings, a loud juke box, and cheap beer by the pitcher.

Turning 21 is supposed to be the start of adulthood, but I admit that I had a rocky start. I was unhappy in school, and I wanted to tranquilize my anxious state. I wanted to make changes. I wanted to start over. I felt a lot of pressure, but when I look back, it was all self-imposed and self-inflicted. It took a while to gain my bearings and to take the reigns of my adult life.

There's a lot the 53-year old me would have told the 21-year old me. I'm not certain I would have listened back then, but I'm listening now.

Me in college

 

Deep Dives Not Taken

"Everything interests me," says the main character at the end of the movie "The Insider". I really like this line. I feel the same way at times. When I read something new, or listen to someone talk about something that interests them, I usually get swayed to find out more.

Mostly it's enough to read a Wikipedia article, watch a YouTube video, or visit a few web pages. However, there are subjects that provide such a draw that I want to go deeper. It's like a compulsion. This is when I go down the rabbit hole. This is what I call "taking a deep dive."

Here's a recent example. In 2017, having already finished the book and the movie "The Big Short", I wanted to learn more about the financial collapse of 2008. I wanted details! I found a government report, but it was more than 600 pages. After reading a little bit, I decided it was enough to just watch the movie again.

On the other hand sometimes I can go down the rabbit hole. I became much more interested in football when I started playing fantasy football. I spent a weekend memorizing the names of all the NFL teams as if there was a quiz the next week. After many seasons, I've become more conversant in football.

I have gone deeper though. My years becoming a baseball fan included not only reading several books, but attending many games. I even developed a ritual of wearing my Red Sox hat only when they had won the previous game. I loved the process of becoming a baseball fan.

I also went down the rabbit hole of video production. I had joined community access cable and produced a cooking show featuring a local chef. "Here's a camera," they told me. "Go shoot it!" I loved editing footage and I bought software to do it at home. I gave serious thought about quitting my job to pursue a television production career.

I look back at these and other deep dives with contentment. I explored and learned a lot. My curiosity was more than satisfied. Eventually these periods of intense pursuit yielded to other interests and the cycle would start again.

All of these deep dives have one key requirement: time. I'm old enough to know that time is something I have less of. I know I can't undertake these deep dives with the same fervor. In the past that thought would have made me morose, but today I'm ready to let it be.

Here are some of those interests that I've always set aside "until there was more time". I'm sure I'm leaving some out!

1. Opera

2. Poetry

3. Sailing

4. NASCAR

5. Japanese

6. Spanish

It would be nice to study these subjects, and perhaps I'll find a way, but for now these remain deep dives not taken. 

Down the Rabbit Hole!

(by Nullify)

 

Loving French

When it came time to pick a language for my high school's foreign language requirement, I chose French. I liked the sound of French, so fancy, so melodic. Around the same time, I was interested in the Tour de France, and that greatly contributed to my Francophile desires. It was the language that I wanted to master, that I dreamed to be fluent in.

I liked the crazy rules of French: nouns having gender, choosing the correct articles, negating verbs, conjugating verbs. I liked reading in French. A whole world of books open up when you learn another language. I thought that being a translator would be a fine career, and advertisements for the Middlebury Language Schools would always catch my eye. The idea of immersing myself in the language sounded very appealing.

Of course, it's difficult to achieve any kind of fluency unless you're practicing the language with other native speakers. I was able to mimic the accent, but that's all I was able to do: imitate. Forget understanding, or speaking off the cuff. I was good at passing French tests, but that doesn't make one a French speaker.

As I got older, I began to acquire French experiences: going to a French store near Rockefeller Center in NYC (I remember buying a copy of L'Equipe, the sports newspaper), visiting Quebec on a family trip (I ordered 3 small sodas which turned into 3 large sodas), then being roommates with a Frenchman in college (though we spoke mostly English together).

I finally got to live out some of my French dreams when my wife and I took a trip to Paris for our 5th anniversary. By then I was many years out of school and very out of practice. I bought CDs to brush up on the language and a pocket French/English dictionary. We were only there for a week, but as the days progressed I felt my fluency improving. How could it not? Everyone around us was speaking the language of my dreams!

I remember the last French conversation I had there. I asked the hotel shuttle operator if this was the bus to the airport, and if so, when would we be leaving. Simple questions, with simple answers. I was able to understand the shuttle driver, and he was able to understand me, and for a quick moment I let myself believe I was this different person. Incroyable!

Photo by Jason Taellious

9/11: Twenty Years Later

For the years immediately following September 11, 2001, I'd spend part of its anniversary day reminiscing about that morning. I somehow found a copy of Howard Stern's 9/11 broadcast, and I would listen to it during work, reliving the events through the changes in his voice, his bombast turning into alarm, then into resignation. "No one's listening to me anyway," he said.

In the evening, I'd put on the movie "United 93". United 93 takes place in one of the hijacked airplanes, and its kinetic imagery is breathtaking. In later years, I bought "Tuesday Morning in September". This 'home movie' puts you in Jersey City, NJ, watching the horror unfold across the Hudson River. I'd spend the movie in a reverie, ruminating on the day, and its aftermath.

I never thought that another building could go up in Lower Manhattan so quickly, but in 2015, One World Trade Center was opened. I look online and learn that the Twin Towers were designed and built in roughly the same amount of time (11 years). I have not stepped foot in that area of New York City since 2000, though I hope to visit to the 9/11 Memorial someday.

I imagined many trips back to the World Trade Center. It was one of my favorite places to visit. After 2001, those thoughts vanished. I took a good number of people to its observation deck when I was growing up, all through college. I took my wife, back before we were married. She said she felt a little sway in the building as we stood atop its 110 stories.

I took it for granted that I could go back. If time heals all wounds, then I suppose time will have to keep doing its work. 

 

Naptime

I used to avoid taking naps. Not anymore. I now have a short nap every weekend day (or non-work day, who am I kidding?).

I wonder how much this is related to having a kid? Maybe fifteen years ago, I was showing someone a home movie I had made of my daughter at the playground. On the screen, we saw the camera slowly turn towards the ground. The person watching with me laughed and said "You were falling asleep!" Without a doubt.

I wonder why I don't nap during the workday, especially since I'm working from home. Maybe my brain is engaged, powering through the afternoon doldrums, while making the computer do things. When I traveled for work, I remember sometimes taking a walk outside and I seeing some people fast asleep in their cars after lunch.

I try not to take too long a nap. 30-40 minutes is my usual duration. I lie down in bed, and read my book, letting my natural tiredness dictate when naptime starts ("reading with my eyes closed"). When I get up (thanks to an alarm), I sometimes wonder how long have I been asleep. 30 minutes seems too short for the grogginess that I feel, or the long, complicated dream I had.

I know some countries have instituted the afternoon nap, called a siesta, as a way to stay cool during the hot weather months. The United States is not one of these countries (though some companies are open to corporate naptime). Productivity at all costs, even if you have to nap in your car! At least I can nap guilt-free on the weekends.

Directions II

A few weeks ago, I was at a stop light, take out food on the passenger seat. A pickup truck pulled up to my right, and the driver honked his horn. I pressed the button to lower the passenger side window. The driver, an older looking man wearing a cap, leaned out his window. "Do you know how to get to Route 495?"

Route 495 is an outer ring beltway surrounding Greater Boston. From where we were, the most direct route to Route 495 is North. But, since Route 495 is a half-circle around outer Boston, once you reach it you could either go North (Chelmsford, Lowell, Andover, Lawrence) or South (Marlborough, Hopkinton, Franklin).

"Yeah, 495," I began. "Just get on Route 3, which is straight ahead. Take it North, and you'll get to 495 in 10-15 minutes." He squinted at me, and said "Route 3?" I pointed straight ahead, and said "It's after the next light, straight." He nodded. "OK. Thanks!" As if on cue, the light changed. I turned left, and he went straight.

I drove home down Middlesex Turnpike, pondering our exchange. I thought to myself: "Who drives around without a GPS these days?" But then I remembered my own GPS-free drives. On those drives, if time is short and I can't work out where I am, I'll open the phone and have it rescue me. "Navigate home," I'll tell it, and soon I'm told where to turn.

(The last time I wrote about giving directions was December 2001!)

COVID-19: One Year Later

It feels like forever-ago that we all first heard of COVID-19. As I posted back in March 2020, I was a skeptic in the beginning. I reread some of my diary entries from that time, and I laugh about musings like this (from March 10 2020): "So help me, if we're still talking about the [beep] Corona Virus [in November], I'll STICK MY [redacted]." You get the picture.

Now the vaccine is imminent for my age group in my state, so the end feels close. However, what awaits on the other side is the new normal that this virus has forged. Here's what the new normal means for me:

• Crowds. I am less social than when I was younger, but with mandates to stay at home, and avoid large gatherings, I realize how easily I used to be in a crowd. Now, being in a small group when I'm picking up take-out food feels fraught, never mind being in a restaurant or an airplane. It'll take some time to make crowds familiar again.

• Keeping in touch. I reached out to more people via phone, FaceTime, TXTs and email than I had before. Nothing major, just a simple greeting and hello. Everyone's lives were upended in one way, shape, or form, and touching base to hear different stories and perspectives helped. I'll be in touch more I think!

• Wearing masks. I have become accustomed to wearing my mask, of late even double-masking. I have not had a cold or a runny nose since March of last year, which is remarkable, though avoiding people is probably the reason for that. Once things open up, I probably will still bring one to wear if I want to cut down risks from airborne droplets.

• Sports Television. I experienced many evenings when I didn't even turn on the TV, mostly because my usual television consumption was sports. When sports shut down last year, I switched to video games. When sports came back, it looked strange. Things have gotten better since the World Series, through the Super Bowl. More sports TV is in the future for me.

• The Library. What have I been doing instead of watching TV? I've been diving into the local library. Our library has plenty of online resources that I explored including streaming music, online books and magazines. I also attended a handful of talks hosted on Zoom. I'll continue maximizing the library after discovering all it has to offer.

• Work. Throughout my career I've met many co-workers who worked out of satellite offices (aka a home office). They were usually salespeople or consultants. How did they get things done, I wondered. I've always worked at a company's main office. Now I know how remote workers work. For office workers like me, work has experienced a seismic shift. I anxiously await the new normal in this front.

The past year has been suffused with a vague sense of loss, even among the fortunate, or the nay-sayers. The past year was off in some way. We've all had to adjust. I can only hope I'm not talking or thinking about COVID one year from now!

Picture Credit: Chad Davis

A Business Anniversary

Over the weekend, I received a Thank You card from my bank. It was one of those form letters to say 'thank you for your business', but at the bottom was this in handwriting: "Thank you for trusting us for the past thirty years." Thirty years? Really?

When I first moved to Boston in January 1991, I knew one of the very first things I needed to do was get a bank account. Some of my co-workers at the time recommended Cambridge Trust, because it was near the office. Back then it was next to the train station (Kendall Square, inbound) that I used to go home. If I close my eyes, I think I can remember the tellers there, back when everyone used to regularly step foot inside banks to make deposits.

I opened a safe deposit box with Cambridge Trust a few years later, in their Harvard Square location. I stuffed the box with my "important papers". Mostly I liked the ritual of visiting the box inside that large musty safe. The attendant would usher you into a little room so you could examine the box contents. When I was done, I'd stroll around Harvard for a bit, feeling grown-up.

Thirty years is a long time. I've worked for seven companies and I've given all of them the same bank account and routing number. (Three of those companies have since dissolved.) I've stuck with the same design for my checkbook even though practically every financial transaction is electronic now. A lot has changed in thirty years, so it's nice to be reminded when things stay the same.