Surprise!

Some of you may have heard that I've been out sick. It's true.

On Sunday morning, I woke up at 5:00am with the same projectile vomiting I've had in the past that I thought was food poisoning. This is the third or fourth time in a couple of years that I've had this, and every time, I thought it was something I ate.

But this time was different for one very crucial reason: in between bouts of projectile vomiting that approached competitive standards, I couldn't shake the idea that Addis Ababa, capital of Ethiopia, had been moved to Poland. That's right. Poland. Every time my stomach got me out of bed for another round of barfing, there it was: Addis Ababa is now in Poland and neither the Ethiopians nor the Poles are terribly happy about it.

By the wee hours of Monday morning the vomiting was over, but the pain wasn't. I was so miserable that by Monday night, my defenses shattered by pain and suffering, I did something that I would normally never do in a million years - consented to see the doctor.

We just changed insurance at work, so I took advantage of the opportunity to change doctors - I found one right down the road from us. We went in for an appointment and the guy said "From what you describe, I think you need to have your gall bladder out soon."

"How soon?"

"I'd like you to drive to the emergency room..."

The Pirate sweetly drove me to the emergency room and ran interference for me while a host of doctors and nurses too numerous to count poked, prodded and otherwise assaulted my dignity. I could tell that everything was going to be okay when the first thing they said was "We're going to get you some antibiotics and some morphine." They went on to take blood tests, EKG, ultrasounds, and all that stuff in order to get me into the OR before 5:00pm.

You had me at "morphine."

When we met the surgeon and he told me that he'd be going in through my belly button, and the Pirate and I had the same thought: maybe he could take my belly button off! I've had problems with it for more than 20 years, and I've been dying to have the thing gone. Unfortunately, I proposed it to him and the poor surgeon just looked confused and flustered by the suggestion.

I do have to point out one shortcoming of the insurance system. I asked for a pedicure and a Brazilian wax once I got into the OR, and it seems that I got neither. Bastards! I did ask which of the OR staff would be responsible for Twittering the operation, and he told me that I was. Unfortunately, I was unable to use both thumbs, so I didn't manage live surgical coverage. Sorry, everyone.

The crappy thing about hospitals is that they're full of old, sick people. The woman in the room next to me was up all night asking - screaming, really - for Jane. She screamed for Jane and Allison came. She screamed for Jane and Sarah came. She screamed for Jane and Alberta came. Apparently, the poor lady had slept all day and now found herself wide awake and scared in her hospital bed alone at night. Neither one of us slept.

But I was discharged yesterday at lunchtime, and I've been home and doing just fine. I'll likely be back at work (remotely) tomorrow, and back at the office on Monday.

And on the record, if you're ever sick in my neck of the woods, Dominican Hospital is AWESOME. I want to marry it, it's so nice. And I know that Addis Ababa is not in Poland.

Extra Digits

Friday night the Pirate and I took the girls to see the new Harry Potter movie, and I was reminded of something I've noticed before. Michael Gambon, a wonderful actor who plays Dumbledore, has the most freakishly long hands I've ever seen. They're unnaturally long and skinny and always make me think that they've been digitally re-touched, except that there was nothing in the books that mentioned Albus Dumbledore having foot-long fingers.

Then I got to thinking about what it would look like if everyone had really long hands. But not just the requisite three joints, each joint just being a bit longer. What if you had four joints on each finger? And then I realized that if you had four joints on your fingers the only way you'd be able to make a fist is if you had another joint in the middle of your hand - effectively, another set of knuckles in the middle of your palm so that your hand was jointed in the middle.

How would that change things like basketball, where everyone would be able to palm the ball? How would it change the layout of typewriters? If all your fingers are another inch longer, would keyboards look the same? How about things with handles? Everything would have to be larger, because gripping slender things wouldn't work. You could make things into spirals to make them easier to grasp, though.

What would hand implements like pencils and screwdrivers and forks look like? How about things that require both finger strength and dexterity? The further out you go, the smaller the muscles and the less strength the joint has (the shoulder is stronger than the bicep, which is stronger than the forearm flexors, which are stronger than the thenar muscles of the hand, which are stronger than the tiny muscles of the fingers, which get smaller the higher up on the finger they are). Add another joint, and while you still have fine motor control, you lose some of the strength of the fingers. Manual typewriters, for example, would be very different.

Hmmm...I'm going to be thinking this one over for a while.

You and the Federal Bailout

Ever since Monday, when I met a homeless man whose sign said "Tell me off for $1," I've been thinking about him. Whenever I get the sharp side of someone's tongue at work, I always think the same thing: "They don't pay me enough to put up with this kind of crap." I saw this man offering to let people chew him a new one for a single dollar, and it makes me sad that he values himself so little that he believes that his humiliation is only worth a single dollar.

But what would be enough? Part of the problem is that I don't know this man. It's hard to read the riot act to someone that you don't know and who is obviously not in a position to have ever done you harm.

And then I was talking to the Pirate about how my sister and I are alike in one respect: that we will give anything to those who ask, but we're both angered when people take things from us without asking.

For some reason, it made me think of what that man could do to really up the amount of money he earned by letting people yell at him. If he did some grooming, put on a suit and tie and clipped a badge to his chest that said "AIG" and his name, along with a suitable picture, he could hang out a sign that said "Tell me off for $10" and have people lining up around the block to yell at him.

And then I thought: THAT'S IT! That's what would not only take the sting out of the Federal bailout, but would help ensure that it never happened again. If, instead of just going back to work or living large on their outsized pensions; instead of having to pay fines or do jail time, what if the *actual* executives of AIG, of every failed bank, of GM, etc., had to spend all day every day having every single person in America bawl them out.

For AIG alone, the U.S. government is forking over $85 billion dollars, which translates to just over $279 for each and every one of us. If someone hung a sign around his neck that said "Tell me off for $279" what would you have to say to him? Every man, woman and child is giving GM about a quarter of that - about $70 each. What would you say to someone for $70? I think that I would feel better about the whole bailout thing if I were allowed to spend a few minutes with each executive, telling them what I could have done with that money had I not had to hand it over for their bailout. Buy my kids schoolclothes...pay my electric bill....pay for my kid's entire two years of tuition at a community college...

If you were allowed to talk directly to one of the AIG executives before handing over your tax check, what would you say?

I Want My MOMA

Most of our last day in New York was spent at the MOMA. Our journey there was uneventful - breakfast at the same place as every day (next door to the hostel), train ride up to 82nd St., walk through Central Park and over to MOMA. On the way through the park, I saw a woman with a big, mongrel-y dog whose tail was entirely bald and a little scaly looking. It gave the dog the look of an enormous, deformed rat, and it had a downcast, dejected air about it as though aware of and embarrassed by its situation.

One of my favorite parts of just showing up at a museum is being surprised and delighted by whatever special exhibits they have going on. Currently at the MOMA, there's a special exhibit of the Afghani gold that was thought lost when the Taliban raided the Afghani national museum in 2001. It was well worth the extra seven bucks to rent the headphones and hear all of the professors and curators talking about the things in the exhibit. The point they made over and over was that Afghanistan culture, as early as 4,000 years ago, showed Buddhist, Greek, Chinese and Indian influences.

We also spent a couple of lifetimes at the Francis Bacon exhibit. While I understand that he's a pivotal figure in the art world and can see why, it certainly doesn't make his art particularly nice to look at. Screaming mouths, flayed bodies, streaky gray canvas - it's all rather depressing. Then again, listening to the commentary that accompanied most of it, so was his life.

On the way home, we saw a sight that's both familiar AND quintessentially New York - a big, fat old rat. This one was crawling around the subway and peaking the interest of two little boys waiting with their families.

We had a lovely dinner and then went back early. Our plan was to get to bed early because our ride was due at 4:00am, but I have to be honest, getting to bed early, even here on the West coast, is hard for me. Getting to bed early on East Coast time was utterly impossible. As it was, I ended up sleeping on the plane for much of the trip (although, like car sleep, plane sleep doesn't count).

Driving into San Francisco right after leaving New York made me keenly aware of how comparatively tiny (and therefore easily navigable) San Francisco is. And seeing both of those places made me realize that neither of them suits me as well as living in the middle of the woods.

Museums and Churches

Notes from 7/14

While at the United Nations yesterday, we noticed (because we're unusually keen, clever & observant) about 4 million cop cars lining the streets in front of the U.N. Turns out, those cop cars are part of something called a "community response vehicle surge," and the cops do this sort of thing all the time just to remind New Yorkers that yes, they are safe and no, they can't park here.

Before we left this morning, I had a genuine New York bagel. I have to say, while I could tell a marginal difference, it just wasn't worth getting all het up over. It's still a big hockey puck.

We left and went to 7th St. to catch the 2-3 to the Financial District, but we got ourselves turned around the wrong way. After a few blocks we stopped and got out our map, and a helpful toothless guy came up shouting "Where are you going?" over and over. We told him, and he pointed out that we could get to Wall St. on the R line, and it would get us to Wall & Rector, a few blocks away from our destination. I told him that we'd already gotten lost just on the way to the train, and he helpfully pointed us to 42nd St. where we could catch the 2-3. Very nice man.

Fashion Notes

The style of the East Coast is legendary, and I expected the place to be crawling with supermodels, but that really isn't the case. In that regard, San Francisco isn't much different, but there are a few things that stand out.

First, there's the tendency to wear shorts (or short skirts), short-sleeved or sleeveless tops, strappy sandals and giant pashmina scarves. As though from the ground to an altitude of four and a half feet it's summer, but there's some kind of arctic air layer at neck height. I see the look everywhere and it's uniformly disconcerting. It's a lot like miniskirts and Ugg boots, which I thankfully have not seen.

Second, and much nicer, are strappy sandals with gladiator ankle straps. Funny, they seem to be offered on the West Coast every year, but I never see anyone wearing them. Here they're everywhere and they're very fun looking.

Third, men in women's clothing. I'm not talking about actual men trying to pass as women. I'm talking about men wearing some mix of men's and women's clothing to disastrous effect because apparently they don't realize that men and women are, in fact, built differently. Twice we've seen men wearing women's clamdigger pants, and both times they looked awful. They were the right length (for clamdiggers), but they didn't have quite enough rise. They fit okay in the waist, but the hips were nearly flapping with extra fabric. Both men looked as though they had just undergone hip-removal surgery but hadn't bought a new wardrobe yet.

Lastly, eyebrow shaping for men. I've never in my life seen so many carefully manicured, well-tended eyebrows. Plucked, shaved and beautifully sculpted into smaller, tidier versions of men's eyebrows. I saw it on the Dominican kid sitting next to me on the Staten Island Ferry, I saw it on many of the men walking around Wall St. in suits, I saw it on two out of three of the men working at the FedEx on Wall Street. It's everywhere. And it looks sharp, boys - very sharp!

With that last bit of fashion advice, I'm heading for bed. Tomorrow, we take on Central Park and the MOMA, with a side trip to The Land of Finding the Pirate New Dress Shoes.

And what does this have to do with museums and churches? Well, we saw many of them today. Go look at the pictures.

Our Foreign Correspondents

Notes from 7/13

New York is presumptuous. The tea comes already sweetened to a syrupy degree, the coffee with cream. At breakfast I ordered turkey bacon and got, not 2 or 3 slices as I'm accustomed to receiving back home, but five slices. It's as though they were afraid that nobody else would order bacon that day and wanted to get rid of it all.

We walked over to the United Nations and took the guided tour, which was lovely. The Pirate and I made a good showing for the the Americans by knowing how many member states there are (192), the name of the current Secretary General (Ban Ki Mun of South Korea) and the five permanent members of the Security Council (US, France, Russia, China, UK). We're such pedantic gits.

For some reason, when I leave home, I expect either to totally familiar (which I've found everywhere west of Nebraska) or the utterly alien. NY is really just a big collection of neighborhoods in San Francisco that I've never seen. The buildings have the feeling of the San Francisco terrain spread out flat and everyone is dressed like they're in the Financial District. I've been here less than 24 hours, and I already know the neighborhoods I've been to better than the ones in San Francisco. What does that say?

The Pirate writes: The terrain is flatter than San Francisco and everything seems like SF only BIGGER: the sidewalks are wide, the streets are wide, the buildings are tall, and the knishes are huge. Only in the arena of clothing disasters can California compare, although even that is a close contest.

The Chrysler Building is gorgeous inside. I love the papyrus pattern inlaid in the elevator doors. Oh, and the gift of a mosaic that Morocco gave to the U.N. is beautiful; I want to have a room like that at home: the Moroccan room.

Nobody here dresses like programmers in San Jose.

While I'm Away

I'm in New York for a few days, and I've been taking notes. What I realize from reading them is that I don't travel well.

At all...


Notes from 7/12
Packed last night. We're only gone for a few days, but we've spent tons of money just getting ready.

Our flight leaves SFO (an hour and a half away) at 7:00am. We got to the airport in plenty of time because I'm a terrorist. The overly-helpful guy at the gate, who doesn't know I'm a terrorist just be looking at me, exhorts us to check in using the kiosk thing. "It won't work," I say, but he just smiles. It doesn't work. He keeps smiling.

The helpful woman at the desk doesn't bat an eye at checking in a terrorist, but complains about the music thumping in the background. Yup, they force me to listen to crappy music on a pink-lit plane and I'm the terrorist.

There are perks to being a terrorist, like the free pre-flight massage. Before I can get my stuff at the end of the security checkpoint, someone needs to touch my butt. And for this, I don't have to pay one extra penny!

We're in the absolutely ass-end of the plane - the spot reserved for terrorists and children. We haven't yet taken off and the woman sitting on the other side of the Pirate has spilt coffee all over herself. I was planning to do that later on in the flight, but now I won't because it'll just look like I'm copying her.

The people on this flight are all smiling and talking like they don't know they're about to die. I do know, but I'm smiling anyway so as not to seem antisocial. I do know, though. I do.

The Pirate writes: The safety video [on Virgin America] tries to be ironic - or at least mocking - with comments about how many people don't already know how a seatbelt works. But I still laugh that it talks seriously about a "water landing." The plane is full of smiling people in denial.

We're going to New York! I'm excited!

Me again: Mid-flight ground check. Yup. Still there, reassuringly far away.

We landed and spent a pleasant 45 minutes in a limo with a driver from Ecuador whose business card said "John," although I doubt that's what his mother calls him. Because of his phenomenal amount of hustle, he'll be picking us up at 4am on Thursday to take us home.

Our room at the hostel is exactly what you'd expect: like a dorm room, only less luxurious.

We left our room in search of food & lotion (which I forgot), and found out that our room is 30 yards from Times Square. For some reason we couldn't fathom, there are banks of green plastic folding chairs facing into Times Square, and the people in them are sitting there, looking at...?

We walked over to Bryant Park, and there are lots of people here in the park talking on their phones as though their houses are too small for privacy, so they have to come here.

On the way, there was a man with a sign that read "Tell me off for $1." I handed him my dollar and told him "I love you and think that you're probably a worthwhile person. I hope things start looking up for you." He smiled in a way that led me to believe my gesture is not uncommon.

The Pirate writes: There's a giant screen set up in the park and people are sitting around as though they expect something to happen on it, but they're carefully not sitting on the grass. Why not? Killer gophers?

When we got to the park, we saw a lady with a full-on beard. A goatee, really, but thick and wiry looking.

I love this scene. It's a mild evening and people are out in the park. Families, friends - it's a scene of community and it makes me happy.