deodorant and travel misadventures

Many people collect souvenirs when they travel. Some collect mugs; some collect decorative spoons; others collect artwork. I collect deodorant.

This has never been an intentional hobby of mine -- I've just historically been extremely bad at remembering to pack deodorant. And then I always forget about my extensive deodorant collection when I go to the store, so I buy new deodorant and don't use up the stuff I already own. My collection currently includes Arm & Hammer deodorant from a Cheyenne truck stop, Dove deodorant from a Denver drug store, and a Suave stick from a Southern California convenience store. The most unusual item in my collection, though, is one I picked up in the San Francisco airport.

It was during my harried second year of law school, with its incessant law firm interviews. On this particular interview trip, I had only an hour-an-half between my last class of the day and my flight, which gave me very little time to make it home from school, pack, take the bus to the Metro station, take the Metro to the airport, check in, get through security, and board the plane. I managed to make the flight, but I unsurprisingly ended up forgetting a few things, like deodorant and pajamas and a change of clothes for the next day. (You may be wondering whether I traveled to San Francisco with a completely empty suitcase. Be assured, I did bring toothpaste and a toothbrush, my scriptures and journal, and my interview suit and dress shoes. That may have been it, though.)

By the time I arrived at my hotel in San Francisco, it was too late to think of looking for a store. And there wasn't enough time the next morning either. I just hoped and prayed the law firm had good air conditioning.

The interview went as well as could be expected. That is to say, it was a horrible five hours of attempting to talk to people I didn't know about a job I wasn't convinced I wanted. The lack of deodorant wasn't an issue. What did end up being an issue was the meal at the end. Specifically, one of the attorneys decided that he wanted dessert, mostly because the law firm was paying for it, and he didn't care that I had a flight I needed to catch that afternoon. Dessert took a long time to arrive, and the attorney took a long time eating it. When we finally left the restaurant, one of the nicer attorneys called the firm to tell them to order me a cab. Unfortunately, the secretary called the slowest taxi in the world to take me to the airport.

About twenty minutes after I got back to the firm, the slowest taxi in the world finally showed up. I hurried inside and told the driver when my flight was leaving (probably about an hour and fifteen minutes from then). She calmly said, “Oh, you're probably not going to make it. You should have called earlier.” She then started gossiping about something boring that I wouldn't have cared about in the best of circumstances and certainly didn't want to hear when I wanted her to focus on her driving. A little while later, as we slowly puttered along in the right lane of the freeway, I asked her if we could possibly go a little faster. She tapped her long acrylic nails on the dashboard clock and said, “Oh, your flight is leaving in less than an hour now. You're definitely not going to make it. Why ask me to risk getting a speeding ticket when you won't catch your flight anyway?” She then switched back to boring me about something inconsequential.

We finally made it to the airport about forty minutes before departure time. This would have been sufficient to catch a flight in St. Louis. Unfortunately, the check-in line at this airport was relatively long, and I'm not one to cut in line even if I have an excuse. By the time I made it to the front of the line, it was 28 minutes before my flight, and that was too late for me to get checked in. Even more unfortunately, this was evidently the last eastbound flight for the next seven hours. I finally got rebooked on a red-eye flight to Chicago that was leaving after midnight, with a 9 am flight to St. Louis the next day.

At this point, I realized that the lack of deodorant might be a problem, especially since my clothing choices were limited to my uncomfortable interview suit and the rumpled clothing I'd traveled in the day before.  While it's nice to have extra space at the airport, it's not so nice to have this space only because other travelers suspect that you may be a crazy street person who somehow wandered into the airport by mistake. I wandered the airport halls for a while, like the disreputable vagabond I appeared, before finally discovering a small airport shop that sold deodorant. However, the person who stocked this shop had apparently bought into some kind of gender stereotype about women being less forgetful than men.  Or perhaps this individual was the same kind of person who believes that clothing can be "one size fits all," and he simply didn't realize that women who forget their deodorant might want an option without an overwhelmingly masculine smell.  Either way, the only deodorant option in the entire airport was very manly smelling deodorant.  Still, this was better than nothing, so I reluctantly purchased an overpriced stick of men's deodorant.

This led to a very disconcerting night. As I uncomfortably attempted to sleep on the hard airport seats, I would suddenly become aware of a very masculine scent that appeared to be coming from just behind me. I'd look behind me in search of the man who was evidently invading my personal space, only to realize that I was the man, figuratively speaking. It was better than being stinky, but it was still a very odd experience.  Whenever I see my deodorant souvenirs, I remember my travel misfortunes of that day and night. 

Maybe I should start collecting decorative spoons instead.

relaxation (or not)

For FHE on Monday, a guy who's getting a PhD in public health education led us through some meditation and relaxation exercises.  One exercise, the "body scan," involved thinking about and feeling grateful for different parts of the body.  He had us repeat to ourselves phrases like "I'm thankful for my brain.  I esmile at my brain."  [He's from Spain.   I figured maybe the Spanish accent was the variable that would make this exercise work, so I repeated exactly what he said without Anglicizing the pronunciation.]  Then he told us to think about how great the human brain is and all the things it can accomplish and so forth.  We moved on to the eyes and heart and stomach, thinking about how great they are and repeating phrases about how we're thankful for them and esmile at them. 

He told us that he does this body scan every night before falling asleep.  Thinking about his gratitude for various parts of the body helps him to fall asleep quickly and have a deep, relaxing sleep, he said. 

When I went to bed on Monday night, I thought to myself, "It's stupid, but I'll give it a try."  So I feel asleep thinking about how great the brain is and how grateful I am for mine.

I had troubled dreams all night about aliens abducting humans and removing their brains for research and experimental purposes.  In the dream I remember most vividly, aliens wanted to implant portions of my brain into mosquito larvae to see what would happen.

I watch too much science fiction to make a good hippy.

why I boycott Ace Hardware

A man walks into Ace Hardware and asks where he can find plumbers' putty. 

"Right down aisle 12," comes the helpful response.

A woman walks into Ace Hardware and asks where she can find plumbers' putty. 

"What kind of project are you working on, ma'am?  Let's make sure we find you what you really need."

Womenfolk, you see, can't be trusted to know what they actually need.  A girl may tell you she's looking for plumbers' putty when she really wants a monkey wrench.  All of these manly terms tend to get jumbled up in a girl's pretty little head, which is why Ace Hardware is there to offer assistance to all those poor misguided females who want to try doing a man's work.


The final nail in the coffin of my customer relationship with Ace Hardware came when I was repairing my toilet.  I had already hacksawed off the rusty old bolts and removed the toilet when I discovered that the toilet bolts I had previously purchased were too large to fit in the bolt holes in the floor.  Since I was in the middle of the project, I decided to make to make a quick trip to my nearby Ace Hardware store to buy new bolts, despite my reservations based on prior bad experiences there.  I soon began to regret that choice.

When I arrived at the store, I could only see toilet bolts in the size I'd previously tried.  The young male employee spotted me looking around for smaller bolts and came over to ask if I needed any help.  I showed him the old bolt I'd removed from my toilet and told him I was looking for this size of toilet bolt.  "Oh, the toilet bolts are right here," he told me, showing me the large bolts I'd already seen.

"Those are too big," I told him.  "I need this size."  I again showed him the rusty old bolt from my toilet.

"What are you working on?" he asked me.

"I'm replacing the wax seal at the base of my toilet.  I already tried that size of bolt, but it was too big for the bolt holes.  I need this size -- this is the bolt that was on my toilet before."

"No, if you need toilet bolts, you need to get the ones I just showed you.  Those are the toilet bolts."

"That may be the standard size, but those bolts don't fit.  I need this smaller size."

"Ma'am, these are toilet bolts, and they'll work for your project.  Do you want me to refer you to someone you could hire to repair your toilet for you?  It sounds like you're having trouble doing it yourself."

"All I need is some help finding the right size of bolt.  I removed this bolt from my toilet earlier, so I know it'll work."

"You must be mistaken.  A toilet bolt would never be this short.  Let me explain how this works.  You see, the toilet bolt has to go through the base of the toilet to attach the toilet to the ground, so it needs to be longer than this."

"Yes, I know.  The reason this bolt appears short is because I hacksawed it off my toilet earlier. What I need is a bolt that has this diameter.  The ones you've shown me are too big diameter-wise to fit in the bolt holes in my floor."

"No, these bolts will fit into toilet bolt holes.  Are you sure we're talking about a toilet here?  You seem to be confused."

"Look, will you please just show me where I can find this size bolt -- and by that I mean a bolt with this diameter.  If I turn out to be mistaken, I'll come back and buy the bolts you think I need."

At this point, the employee apparently realized that there is just no reasoning with irrational females, so he decided to humor me and look around, although not without some loud sighs at my evident stupidity.  Finally, he discovered a smaller diameter of toilet bolts tucked away on some obscure shelf.

"Okay, I suppose these look like the same width, although they're not as short as the one you seem to be looking for.  Is this what you think will work?"

I politely and insincerely thanked him and left for the check-out stand, but not without receiving yet another suggestion that I should hire someone who knew what he was doing to take care of this repair job for me.  I then went home and finished the project without incident, with the help of a female friend of mine.




When I told one friend this story, he commented that this employee's real problem appeared to be idiocy, not chauvinism.  I'll concede that this individual was an idiot, but I certainly don't think idiocy and chauvinism are mutually exclusive.  At Ace Hardware, you can experience both. 


Disclaimer:  Maybe my local Ace Hardware store is anomalous.  Maybe the downtown Salt Lake City store is the only one in the country where they've had the misfortune of hiring a whole passel of male chauvinists.  I don't know, but my local store has annoyed me enough that I don't care to find out. 

Disclaimer the second:  There was one time when I went to my local Ace Hardware store and the employee who helped me was extremely helpful and not at all chauvinistic or patronizing.  But the rest of the employees I've encountered there on various occasions have treated me in a very different way than they've treated the male customers who were in the store at the same time.  So, I'm not saying that every single Ace Hardware employee is a chauvinist.  Just most of them.

dream a little dream

My dreams can really throw me sometimes. I'll wake up feeling incredibly guilty and wondering, "Why on earth did I cheat on my taxes/steal that train/kidnap that baby/let the aliens onto the spaceship? I'm such an idiot!" It'll take a few moments for me to realize that I'm not actually headed for life in prison (or death by aliens, as the case may be).

I've recently had some success with figuring out that I'm dreaming before I reach the disorienting waking-up point. When things start straying from normality, I try to remember to ask myself (1) whether this seems like something I'd be likely to do and (2) whether I can remember the events that led me to this point, or whether the memory instead seems to start in media res. If I decide that I'm probably dreaming, I test my theory by attempting to wake myself up. Of course, while this approach helps with the unnecessary guilt, it's more disruptive of my sleep. Last week, I woke myself up twice in the middle in the same night because my dreams were so implausible: I kept dreaming that I was un-self-consciously flirting with random guys, and I knew that couldn't possibly be right. Sure enough, I always woke up when I questioned the plausibility of this scenario. (I told my friend this, and she thought it was both hilarious and very sad. She's probably right.)

And sometimes my subconsious gets tricky on me. I recently had a dream that I somehow got mixed up with a Chinese spy ring. I went on the run, while the Chinese agents tried to track me down and kill me before I could spill their secrets. And then I suddenly realized, "Wait a minute, this all seems like somewhat unlikely." Sure enough, I immediately woke up. I then ate breakfast and went to work, where I told my co-worker about my dream and how glad I was that I wasn't actually being chased by Chinese spies in real life. Just then, my cell phone starting ringing. When I opened it, Chinese characters appeared on the screen, and I heard a voice saying, "Ni hao" over and over again (probably because those are the only Chinese words my subconscious could come up with). For a minute, I thought, "Oh no! That wasn't a dream after all! I need to contact MI-5!" (Hey, I watch more British spy shows than American ones.) But then I realized again that this scenario was just not plausible, so I attempted to wake myself up for the second time. It worked, and this time things stayed normal after I woke up. At least, so far they've seemed normal. If I start hankering to steal another train, though, I'm going to try to wake up again.

P.S. Diligent followers of this blog may note that this is not the first time I've had a dream within a dream (but not the marriage kind) in which I dreamed that I told my co-worker about a dream, only to discover that it had really happened. Apparently my subconscious thinks this is funny. I disagree.

call someone who cares

Dear Bank of America,

It may surprise you to hear this, but I actually know how to use a credit card. In fact, I manage to use my very own Bank of America credit card several times a month without any difficulties. I pay the bill every month too, and I've redeemed cash rewards on multiple occasions. So, it's really not necessary for you to call me every three weeks to explain how my credit card works. Perhaps you have some customers who forget such things in the course of a few weeks (although I question the wisdom of letting Alzheimer's patients retain their credit cards), but I'm not one of them. I doubt many people in my demographic are.

I can understand your desire to improve your poor reputation for customer service, but this seems like a very ill-conceived way of going about it. Hassling phone calls that insult my intelligence are an improvement over the putative customer service provided by actively evil companies like Gateway and Amtrak; however, simply leaving me alone would be even more of an improvement.

If I sustain a sudden head injury that causes me to revert to the intelligence of a five-year old, I'll have someone let you know, and then you can call and explain credit cards to me to your heart's content. Until then, please take my regular use of your credit card as a sign that I know how to use it.

Sincerely,

Cindy

very dull indeed

This is an old post that I started writing more than two years ago but never published because I decided it was stupid. However, in my efforts to update my blog more and to be less self-critical, I'll go ahead and publish it now.

Today I came across a quote which I think does a fantastic job of expressing a common-place idea. In discussing the problems of presuming that jury instructions will cure trial errors, the Fifth Circuit wrote: "[I]f you throw a skunk into the jury box, you can't instruct the jury not to smell it." Dunn v. United States, 307 F.2d 883, 886 (5th Cir. 1962). Vivid, to-the-point, and memorable.

It's brilliant writing like this that makes me feel all the inadequacies of my own writing. I may be able to string together a grammatically correct and logically sound sentence, but I don't feel like I've ever been good at conveying normal ideas in a vivid, interesting manner. That's not to say that I never find things I've written interesting -- I've been known to reread old journal entries for hours, after all -- but it's the subject matter, rather than the writing itself, that draws my attention. After all, it's hard to go wrong when you're writing about, say, the time you were car-shopping and drove the car into the wall at the dealership when you returned from your test drive.

Actually, on second thought, I take that back. I once had a roommate who could have made any story boring. She could have been telling you about how she walked on the moon, and you'd have been bored.

. . . So then we got onto the spaceship. It was a big spaceship. You might have seen the pictures of it. I said to John -- he was one of the astronauts, you know -- well, I said to him, "John, don't you think this is a big spaceship? I think it's a big spaceship." And he said, "You're right. It is a big spaceship. In fact, that's just what my wife told me when she dropped me off at the spaceship this morning. She said, 'John, this is a big spaceship.' And I agreed with her." Then I said to John, "Your wife is smart and observant. I'm so glad you married someone smart. Oh, weren't you telling me the other day that she was an accountant?" John said that she was, but she was between jobs at the moment. You know how the economy is these days. But she had had a good interview recently, and John really hopes she'll be getting that job. It would be so great for their family if she could. You don't know John, do you? Well, I guess you don't need to hear all the details of that, then. So, like I was saying, the spaceship was big. At least from the outside. When we got inside, we saw that it was smaller than it looked from the outside. I mentioned that to John, and he said, "I don't know about that. I think you just thought it was bigger than it was." And I said, "No John, you agreed that it was big. It looked bigger from the outside than it does on the inside. I don't know why you want to argue with me about this." You know, John is a nice enough fellow, bless his heart, but sometimes he doesn't observe things as well as he should. So anyway, the floors of the spaceship were gray. Not a really light gray though. It was sort of like a gray cellphone color, if that makes any sense. Not the color of your cellphone, though, so I guess that's not an accurate description. It was gray like the color of the TV, except maybe a little darker, so maybe it was closer to . . . ."

I'm not sure that I ever heard this roommate complete a story. I would make up an excuse to leave or tune her out long before she got to the part where anything started happening, if she ever did tell a story in which something happened.

So, I concede that my writing isn't as boring as it could be. However, I generally find it to be far from scintillating. For the most part, I don't get too hung up on this. Although a major portion of my job involves writing, it's much more important for this writing to be legally and analytically sound than for it to be interesting. I do sometimes think that my writing could stand a bit more color, but I usually decide that I'd rather just finish the work than try to make it all interesting and fancy-like. When I go to write on my blog, however, I really wish I could come up with something interesting to say, and an interesting way to say it. And that is why I have not updated my blog in some time. (Well, that and extreme laziness.)

"[J]udges are not like pigs, hunting for truffles buried in briefs." Gross v. Burgraff Constr. Co., 53 F.3d 1531, 1546 (10th Cir. 1995). Bloggers, however, are quite often like pigs hunting for the interesting tidbits buried in the woods of mundane every-day life. Whether they succeed, however, is left to the reader to decide.

something new

I feel like I've been doing a fairly good job in recent months of getting out of my comfort zone a little bit and doing things I've never done before.

Exhibit A: taking my first international trip (and to India, no less)
Exhibit B: going skeet shooting
Exhibit C: doing lifts while swing dancing. (Seriously, this one was a big deal for me. I have a phobia of falling backwards, and I've never even successfully done a dip before.)

The secretary at my work agrees that I've been leaving my comfort zone more than usual, and she's got a theory about what comes next. "Shooting last weekend, and swing dancing this weekend? Next thing I know, you're going to tell me that you've fallen in love!"

I'm not entirely sure I see the correlation, but I could go for that.

I'll keep you posted.

playing church

Some people in my family like to play volleyball. I am not one of those people. When we have family volleyball games, I prefer to look after my adorable nieces so their parents can play. I find this much more entertaining and far less traumatic.

Volleyball

Adorable nieces

When we stay around the house, it's easy enough to find something to do while the others play volleyball. When we all go over the church meeting house, however, we sometimes end up with limited entertainment options for the kids. And thus it was that I found myself "playing church" at our last family reunion.

Following a rousing rendition of "Head, Shoulders, Knees, and Toes," my six-year old niece presented the lesson. Our lesson for the day, she told us, was going to be about waiting. It turns out that waiting isn't very fun, but we've got to do it anyway, and we shouldn't complain about it. My niece then illustrated her point with an example:

If you're at the restaurant and you're really hungry, you want to go back to the kitchen and yell, "Where's my food? I'm really hungry!" But you can't do that. You need to sit and wait and hope they bring you your food soon. That's better, because they might trip on you if you tried to go back into the kitchen.

Words to live by, my friends, words to live by. And if you've got a friend who doesn't blog very often, you might want to say, "Where's the blog? I want to read something funny!" But that might not help, and they might just trip over their writer's block. On the other hand, maybe they'd come up with something. Stranger things have happened.

worth a thousand words

Although I've already posted hundreds of photos on facebook, there was one sequence of photos that was too awesome to be relegated to the depths of a facebook photo album. No, not our pictures of the Taj Mahal, not the beauties of Kerala, and definitely not the photos of our camel's backside in Rajasthan. This is something far more wonderful.

It all began when my mom decided to take a picture of my dad in front of a tree. Not a bad idea, although I don't know what was so special with this particular tree. Unfortunately, all did not go as planned.



Making lemonade out of the lemons, my mom decided to do a retake, this time with Becky added to the picture in more formal fashion. Unfortunately, Becky still hadn't quite reached formality when my mom snapped the photo.



My mom decided to make one more try. But she was again foiled, this time by me doing my best impression of an injured baby velociraptor. (That, or I was trying to fix my churidar in the most awkward fashion possible.)



I guess at this point my mom decided that it would be impossible to take a good photo with her ungainly children wandering into every shot, so she just gave up. Which is a real pity, since I would have liked to have seen what Rosie would have done in the way of an awkward entry.

I'm sure it would have been hilarious.

in perspective

One of the great things about traveling to India is that it gives you greater tolerance for the dumb things about your own country. For instance, I think airport security in the US is frequently stupid, pointless, and needlessly violative of privacy. But when you compare it to being groped by a handsy Indian policewoman, well, it definitely could be worse.

(Now hopefully this post isn't giving TSA any ideas.)

commercial interruption

Ammo: $10
Gas to drive to the shooting range: $15*
Aloe vera gel to slather on my sunburned skin afterwards: $8
The look on my coworker's face when I told him I went skeet shooting this weekend: Priceless

*Okay, so I got a ride from someone and didn't actually pay for gas. But I needed a third item for my list.

Puttin' on the Ritz

Traveling for work, I end up staying in much more high-end hotels than I would pick out on my own. I don't dislike the experience, but I've decided that the marginal difference in quality is, for me, definitely not worth the marginal difference in price between a place like the Ritz and a budget hotel. I know some people would love it, but the experience is really wasted on me. For example:

• Every night, I walk past the swanky hotel restaurant with my bag of take-out Subway or McDonald's food in hand.
  
• I only ask for the turndown service so I can get my chocolates. Otherwise, I think it's a waste of the maid's time to come "refresh" the room before I go to bed.
• As soon as the maid leaves after doing the turndown service, I strip all the bedding off the bed so I can get rid of the annoying feather padding. The bed is still far too soft with just the mattress, but it's more tolerable this way. (True story: the first night of my hotel stay at the Ritz, I ended up sleeping on the floor because the softness of the bed was bugging me so much.)
• I never use the large flat-screen TV, since I'd rather just watch Indian films on my laptop. (Of course, I'd prefer to watch movies on the TV, but the powers that be don't see fit to equip rooms with DVD players. At least, not the cheaper rooms I usually end up in.)
• I've never even seen the purportedly great fitness center, with its climbing wall and salt-water lap pools and other extravagencies.
  
• I shove the exorbitantly priced mini-bar items out of the way to make room in the fridge for the carton of chocolate milk I bought at the corner convenience store.
• I walk through the hotel lobby in my faded blue jeans and tennis shoes, in direct defiance of the hotel's snooty dress code. (I don't wear business casual at work, for heaven's sake. I'm not going to wear business casual clothes just to walk through the hotel lobby on my way to the homeless people's McDonald's.)
• I always wish there were an alternate way out of the hotel where you could open your own door and not have people constantly bowing at you and saying polite things to you. (I always feel compelled to say polite things back, which is really tiring at 8 in the morning.)
  
• I find it annoying that they leave the radio on in your room, apparently to make it feel more home-like when you get there. This wouldn't be so annoying if their radios had an on/off switch, but they're far too fancy for such a utilitarian feature.

Okay, now I'm feeling kind of bad for bashing the Ritz, so let me finish up by listing all the ways in which the Ritz is better than my true Denver nemesis, the dreaded Hotel Monaco:

• Peace and quiet! This difference alone is enough to make the Ritz a million times better than the Monaco. At the Monaco, you've got drunken guests talking in the halls and banging their doors at all hours of the night. And, if you're me, you always get put in the room that wraps around the elevator shaft, so you can hear obnoxious pinging all night, or the room that's directly over the supply docks, so you can hear trucks driving up and dropping off provisions all night, or the room that's over the dumpsters, so you can hear glass bottles being thrown around all night. I've spent many nights at the Monaco, and most of them have been sleepless ones. Both times I've stayed at the Ritz, by contrast, my room has been very quiet, even if the softness of the bed did hamper my sleep a bit.
• Along the same lines, the Ritz's refrigerators are very quiet. The fridges at the Monaco kick on every few hours throughout the night, and they always wake me up if I've forgotten to turn them off or unplug them before going to bed (assuming I was able to fall asleep in the first place, between the elevator pinging and the drunken guests and all of that). Sometimes I've even been woken up by the fridge in the next-door room.
  
• Although I don't like the Ritz's pretentious snootiness, I'll take it any day over the Monaco's tacky trashiness (see, e.g., the icky faux fur throw at the foot of the bed, the sleazy animal-print lingerie for sale in the closets, etc.)
  
• At the Ritz, I'm not afraid that I'll contract some terrible disease if I let any bit of my skin come into contact with the carpets. I'm not saying that I have any facts to base this opinion on -- I'm just saying this is how I feel.
  
• At least the Ritz gives you chocolates, even if you have to accept an unnecessary turndown service to get them.
  

inconsequential details

As many of you may know, I recently got back from a month-long vacation in India. That's a long vacation, especially in such an overwhelming country as India. And yet, when people ask to hear my stories about India, I never really have any. After all, saying, "I rode an elephant" isn't particularly exciting, even though it was a very fun experience.



I've been thinking about this a fair amount recently, since I finally caved in to popular demand and invited several friends to come over on Sunday for dinner and a vacation report. Thinking about which pictures to show and what to say about them has make me reflect on the vacation reports I used to endure as a child. It's not that I minded hearing about other countries or seeing pictures of other places. In fact, I quite enjoyed my dad's pictures and stories of Italy.

It was my grandparents' (bless their hearts) vacation reports that were so painful. Their pictures were fine, but you'd have to sit looking at the same picture for five minutes while they argued about inconsequential details that no one except them cared about.

"So, this is a picture of a large tree we saw in SomeRandomVillage."

"No, dear. I believe you're mistaken. That's actually a tree we saw in SomeOtherPlace."

"No, that's not correct. SomeOtherPlace is where we visited that nice church, and we didn't see the tree there. We saw the tree at SomeRandomVillage, where we also were shown that one well."

"No, dear. The well was at YetAnotherPlace, the church was at SomeRandomVillage, and the tree was at SomeOtherPlace."

"I'm sure you're mistaken. YetAnotherPlace is where we met that one guy who told us that one story. The church was definitely at SomeOtherPlace. We visited there on August 15, and that's when we saw the church."

"No, dear. We were in YetAnotherPlace on August 15. We visited SomeOtherPlace on the 14th. You should remember that. It was right after we celebrated the village festival at SomeRandomVillage on the 13th."

By this point, I would no longer be paying attention. I'd be vowing yet again that I would never get argue about inconsequential details, at least in front of other people who didn't care about them.

I made this promise to myself several times in my childhood, and I feel I've done a fairly good job of keeping it. (My family can feel free to disagree with this statement, if they want.)

The trick, of course, is deciding which details are really inconsequential. For instance, sometimes I decide that my name isn't all that important, so I won't bother correcting the people who call me Christie or Sarah instead of Cindy. But this has sometimes resulted in confusion when these people have turned around and introduced me as Christie to people who already know my real name.

Or, there was always the time that some girl called my apartment and said something that made me think she was one of my roommates' friends. As our conversation continued, I began to have my doubts, but I didn't realize for sure that she wasn't who I thought she was (and I wasn't who she thought I was) until a few minutes into the conversation. She had apparently dialed the wrong number, although her imbecilic identification of herself only as "me" at the beginning of her conversation had not given me enough information to figure this out from the onset. It seemed, though, that it would probably be easier to just go along with it than to correct her misapprehension at this advanced stage in our conversation. So, I just gave what seemed like reasonable but short responses to everything she said, hoping that she'd hang up the phone soon and I could get back to my studying.

It soon became clear, however, that the minor detail of misidentification might not be so inconsequential after all. She began asking about some planned "grocery store scheme" that she herself described as "sketchy," and she wanted to know whether I was having second thoughts about doing it. I was beginning to feel rather more uncomfortable with my inadvertent deception, but it seemed that telling her she had the wrong number at this point might introduce more problems than it would solve. Not wanting to condone any sketchy behavior, I simply told her that I'd decided that we'd better not do it -- I thought it would be best to avoid anything bordering on sketchiness. (Perhaps a rather ironic statement considering my situation at the moment.) Fortunately, the conversation ended soon after this, although the awkward feeling lingered a little longer.

So, perhaps the goal to avoid correcting people's errors can be taken to an extreme. And sometimes those details really do turn out to be important.

I've also realized that details can turn a dreary story into an interesting one. I think I finally told the elephant story right on Monday. Not that there is much of a story to it, but almost anything is an improvement over "I rode an elephant and it was fun."

On Monday, I realized that my audience was interested, so I described the scene for them -- the lush jungle, the quiet elephants, the mahouts in their brightly colored shirts and dhotis walking alongside and taking pictures with tourists' cameras in exchange for modest tips, and, in particular, our mahout,who walked along beside us reading his newspaper and drinking his cup of tea, while occasionally yelling out commands or singing softly to the elephant.

Rather than being inconsequential, those details really convey the essence of the story. But if my sisters want to correct me about any of the details, I won't disagree (even if I think they're wrong).

Wouldn't It Be Funny If . . .

Or, The Curious Adventures of the Broken Car Key

A few months ago the plastic part on the top of my car key broke. The key still works fine, but I can no longer connect it to my key fob. This has turned out to be more of a problem than originally anticipated.

Let's first discuss the trip back from my family reunion in Albuquerque. Things were going along fine, at first. And then, as I turned on the cruise control and moved foot off the brake, the hazard lights suddenly began blinking. This freaked me out a bit, and I quickly turned the cruise control off and stepped on the gas to see if it would help. It did -- the hazard lights turned off as suddenly as they'd begun. Things were fine for another 20 minutes or so. And then the hazard lights began flashing again. I didn't have the cruise control on this time, but I started to think that maybe there was something going on with the electrical system, so I turned off the air conditioning and the stereo. This seemed to solve the problem, at least temporarily. But soon enough, there were those hazards again. They began going off more and more often, as I kept trying to make adjustments to see what would help. And then another problem popped up. As I was passing someone, my horn suddenly started honking repeatedly. I tapped it, and it shut off. But maybe 15 minutes later, it started honking again, and this time I couldn't get it to turn off for probably a full minute.

Early on in these difficulties, I said that I hoped this wouldn't be so serious that we'd need to stop and have someone look at the car, since I'd rather have my own trusty mechanic look at it. And I mentioned one of the benefits with my mechanic: if it turned out that I was just being an idiot -- like, say, the time I drove around with my window down for a whole month because I thought the mechanism wasn't functioning, and it turned out the window was just locked -- he'd tell me, in the nicest way possible, that there was nothing actually wrong with the car, rather than making something up and charging me to fix an imaginary problem. Wouldn't it be funny, I thought, if this turned out to be something equally stupid.

Some time later, after making frantic phone calls to my parents and to some relatives who lived down the road, I suddenly started connecting the dots. There were only two weird things going on: the hazard lights blinking and the horn honking repetitively. And these two things have one main thing in common: the panic button. Because my key was broken, only the key itself was in the ignition, while the key fob was in my pant pocket, being jostled every time I moved my leg to, say, let off on the gas when I turned on the cruise control. Although the horn and the hazards weren't going off at the same time like you'd expect, it still seemed like there was probably a connection here. So, to test it out, I pulled the key fob out of my pocket and put it somewhere safe. Sure enough, it was smooth sailing from then on. And we had a very nice visit with the relatives. I was also glad that I solved this mystery before bothering my mechanic once again with my stupidity, even though he's very nice about it.

This was the most dramatic problem, but I've had much more trouble with misplacing my keys recently, now that they're not all connected. That car key is also kind of slippery, so I've dropped it in countless places. Luckily, I've always heard it fall and been able to retrieve it immediately. I have not always found it so easily when it's been lost, however.

A few weeks ago, I lost my key and couldn't find it anywhere. I ended up pulling out my spare key and using that. Just a month ago, one of my college roommates reminded me of the time I lost my dorm key for about a month and then found it, quite by happenstance, in my backpack. With this story in mind, I searched my backpack for my car key, thinking that it would be funny if I'd managed to lose my key in my backpack again. But I had no luck.

And then today, while walking out of the church building with a friend, I realized that the key I'd just pulled out of my purse was my regular car key, not the spare I thought I was going to see. It took me quite by surprise. When I looked in my purse later, though, I now couldn't find the spare. And then I remembered that I'd gotten this key from my backpack earlier in the morning. I wondered if possibly I just hadn't realized that it was the regular key when I retrieved it from the backpack. Sure enough, the spare turned out to still be in my backpack. So yes, I apparently did lose my key in my backpack for a substantial amount of time yet again.

They say those who cannot remember the past are doomed to repeat it. I remember it all right, but despite my best efforts I seem to have a knack for repeating my more stupid moments. It's a gift.

the jinx

(If you're also one of my facebook friends, sorry for the repeat.)

This morning, I sliced my finger open on a can lid, dropped most of the band-aids in the toilet while dripping blood all over the bathroom, and went to work without my badge, which meant I had to wait in line at the metal detector and wear a visitor nametag. (Incidentally, the security guard who looked at my driver's license did not just verify my name. He was seriously reading everything on there. I felt like asking him if he was planning on sending me a birthday card or something.)

As I reflected on my misfortunes, I thought to myself, "Wow, this really was not my morning. Well, it could have been worse. At least I didn't burn the house down." As soon as I had this thought, I realized the folly of thinking such things and immediately tried to mentally retract this thought so that I wouldn't jinx myself.

And, I think I half succeeded -- although I apparently also forgot to turn the oven off this morning, the house is still intact. Just really, really hot.

It's too bad my mental ability to jinx myself is so much stronger than my mental ability to actually think and not do dumb things in the morning.

inheritance

This might just be funny to genetics nerds, but it made me laugh.


For some great hypotheses about the modes of inheritance that could explain this pattern, see the blog comments on the Volokh Conspiracy.

something to read

I've been on a Jane Austen kick this month, and today I came across some of her work that I'd never read before. It's a parody of a history book that she wrote for her sister at the age of fifteen, and it made me laugh. Here's a sample:

Henry the 4th

Henry the 4th ascended the throne of England much to his own satisfaction in the year 1399, after having prevailed on his cousin & predecessor Richard the 2nd to resign it to him, & to retire for the rest of his Life to Pomfret Castle, where he happened to be murdered. It is to be supposed that Henry was married, since he had certainly four sons, but it is not in my power to inform the Reader who was his Wife. Be this as it may, he did not live for ever, but falling ill, his son the Prince of Wales came and took away the crown; whereupon the King made a long speech, for which I must refer the Reader to Shakespear's Plays, & the Prince made a still longer. Things being thus settled between them the King died, & was succeeded by his son Henry who had previously beat Sir William Gascoigne.

You can access the whole thing from this link.

wheelchairs

Have you ever looked at a person in a wheelchair and thought, "Why is life so unfair sometimes?"

I just did. I thought, "Why can't I be in a wheelchair? I'm too tired to keep walking home. Why does that person get a motorized wheelchair and I don't? Life's not fair!"

Hopefully this will not cause karmic retribution like joking about people with turf toe did.

how to obtain help in life (without even trying)

Today's helpful hint is a way of getting people to volunteer to help you without ever having to ask them. I discovered this quite by accident last night, but I think it should prove very effective in the future as well.*

Here's what you do: Simply describe the activity you need help with in such a way that people will not want to to miss out on seeing you attempt it. The following sample conversation may give you some guidance as you attempt to incorporate this technique into your own life.

Friend 1: Hey Cindy, what are you plans for the holiday tomorrow?

Cindy: Well, I'm going to replace the wax seal on the base of my toilet.

Friend 1: How do you do that? Just put it around the bottom?

Cindy: Not exactly. You see, first I've got to go to the hardware store to get myself a hacksaw. Then, after hacking and sawing off the bolts that hold the toilet onto the floor, I'll pick the toilet up and flip it upside down. I'll put the wax seal on the bottom, grab the toilet and flip it back right-side up, and put it back in place. And, that's basically it.

Friend 1: Um, okay. I hope I don't get a phone call from the elder's quorum tomorrow asking for help stopping a major flood in your house.

Cindy: Oh, I don't think that'll be a problem. It's more likely that I'll accidentally hack a limb off or get crushed by the toilet when I try to flip it over.

Friend 2: Can I come watch!?! I mean, help?

*Results may vary. Nice friends are required. Favorable results may be more difficult to obtain if you are not a hapless female known for doing things like giving yourself a concussion just by opening a door.

next up, Everest

Today I achieved a life-long goal.

That's right -- I won a game of Hearts with a grand total of 0 points in the end. Check it out:


And all while I was being distracted by the Prabhas DVD I was half-watching.

I think I'll celebrate by fixing the toilet I was supposed to start working on when I got up seven hours ago.