"Fifty Dates in Fifty States"

A Lutheran single takes time off to travel America, journaling her experiences, and...oh, yeah, dating a different guy in each place. No, real dating...you know, just going out someplace with a member of the other gender, enjoying their company and learning something about them.

planes, trains, automobiles, and beavers

I'm giving a talk at Yale tomorrow. For this, I am taking the first flight out tomorrow to Boston, and then taking the train from Boston to New Haven, so that Friday I can take the train back up to Boston and spend the weekend re-visiting Boston and Cambridge.

I talked to my mother earlier this evening. She was impressed to hear I am giving a talk at Yale. She talked about how proud my grandfather would be if he were alive, that a grandson of his would be flying to the east coast to give a talk at Yale. That cinched the conclusion that I really need to wear a jacket and tie for this.

Yale asked me for a title months ago, and the result is that I'm talking about a project I thought I would have returned to by now but have not. Really, the talk is going to be two, not-yet-published, conference-length talks spliced together into one colloquium-length talk. I wish I was farther along on the projects in question, but I think the talk will go okay if I am not too exhausted from the lack of sleep and traveling. Also, having the research be not what I am working on right now means that I will probably be less adroit in answering any questions than I might otherwise be.

Unrelated: A friend of mine is looking for apartments and saw an ad for an 8th floor unit in a building that a rate-your-apartment service online had a report of some "small rodent" problem. She wondered whether a building with a rodent problem could have rodents all the way to the 8th floor. I said yes. Correct? I also said the only thing for sure ruled out by the phrase "small rodent" was beavers, since beavers are the largest rodent. However, Wikipedia says I'm wrong, and that beavers are only the second-largest rodent, after the capybara. So, question 2: if somebody complained on a rate-your-apartment site about a beaver infestation problem, would an eighth floor unit be safe?

dispatch from the syracuse airport

My talk went okay, as these things go. My tendency not to sleep well when I travel continued, and so I was tired. I'll be happy to be back in Chicago, where I won't be doing any plane travel for a month and have a good chance to settle in and find a productive equilibrium.

Before the talk, I got an e-mail saying that it was a good thing I wasn't giving the talk two days later, as Wednesday is International Talk Like A Pirate Day. Although having a parrot on my shoulder might have added some color to otherwise bland slides.

After the talk, someone came up and asked me if I knew that four out of the five people who voted to delete my Wikipedia entry are, according to their profiles, members of the Singaporean Defense Forces. (?!)

In perhaps a related phenomenon to how you only get free wireless anymore in cheap hotels, free wireless here in the Syracuse airport.

for whom the belle trolls

First, my Wikipedia entry gets deleted for lack of notability. Then, I discover that the mysterious troll prone to leaving especially abusive comments on this blog isn't even my troll at all, but someone else's troll who just comments here because the other person doesn't allow anonymous comments and summarily deletes all of hers. (I did some investigating after the troll's penchant from using details I've revealed about my family to criticize me escalated to invoking my deceased sister. Batbother crazy, I know.*) So, anonymous comments are off, permanently, and any comments from Mary or a Mary-like substance will be immediately and forever deleted, as however bad it is to have an abusive troll, it's way worse to feel like some abusive troll's sloppy seconds.

Hmph. I now feel even more stupid for whatever mental energy was used up contemplating this person's past remarks (or, even, writing this post). It's one thing to wonder why somebody could go from reading various innocuous things you post to drawing all kinds of negative conclusions about you as a human being; it's another just to realize that all along the person only baits you because of your perceived connection to someone else. Oh, well, I suppose I can keep pining for a mentally imbalanced person to walk into my blog life who will hate me for me and be trolly-true to me alone. A boy can dream.

To certain people that I value as commenters but who stop commenting when I turn off anonymous comments because they are too lazy to set up a Blogger account: come on, I can help you set one up if you want.

Another thing I really liked about having anonymous commenters was that, when I would talk about academia, graduate students would comment anonymously because they didn't feel comfortable posting under blogger-identities. I regret this, as many of those comments were insightful and instructive. But, even setting one psycho troll aside, it's probably time to stop anonymous comments. I'm starting a new chapter of my life, and have uncertainty where this blog fits in it anyway, but I might as well scale back on providing opportunities for defamation by complete strangers.

I'm otherwise happily visiting Cornell, btw, where I am giving a talk later today on health disparities. I'm staying in the hotel that is run by the hotel management program, which means especially energetic service from fresh-faced college kids. Three people immediately greeted me as I got out of the car that brought me from the airport, and the person who came around for turndown service was oddly persistent when I said I did not need turndown service (which I've never understood anyway) or any extra water. Even so, it hasn't been as striking here as at the equivalent institution at Penn State, where the servers for breakfast looked so nervous about making a mistake that I would not have been surprised to learn they were wearing shock collars under their uniform.

* "Batbother crazy" is one of my two favorite expressions for insanity that we used back on the farm; the other is "Kookier than a cack-handed cricket bat."

time has come today (time!)

I know a guy who spent some years working intermittently on a novel about time travel. He might still be. Once, he was talking about it, and he said a big problem working on it has been that new novels about time travel keep coming out. He kept having to go back and revise what he had already written to take into account ways that other original ideas that were coming out in these new novels made what he was doing not original anymore. When I was doing short short fiction, I thought about writing a story about a guy trying to write a novel about time travel who keeps getting thwarted by an evil time traveler from the future who gives other, struggling-but-speedier novelists the guy's good ideas.

I kept thinking of this guy yesterday, because I read The Time Traveler's Wife on the plane back from Chicago. I thought it was quite original: it's a love story, the man has a disease akin to epilepsy only he time travels instead of having seizures--digressive link to everybody's favorite epileptic here--and the book basically permutes through all sorts of different clever ways this allows the lives of him and his true love to be tangled up with one another.

I really enjoyed reading it, although the prose itself is middling sometimes to the point of distraction. Even then, there was this sad part that had my eyes well up and me willing myself urgently not to have tears start down my face while in the middle seat on an airplane. I succeeded. I do worry I am going to become one of those people who is strange to sit next to on planes. My last plane trip, I read The McSweeney's Book of Lists, and thought the person next to me must think I was insane because of how I kept giggling uncontrollably.

he shoots, he scores

So, part of being the Italy of academia is that I am not very good with my financies, either in terms of being especially thrifty or in terms of being organized. I will spare you any specific horror stories as part of my new skittishness about giving once-or-future trolls too many deprecating details about my life, but suffice it to say the horror stories are horrific enough to make a Suze Orman fan sleep with the lights on. Granted, I do have the compensating advantages of a professional income and no kids, no pets, no layabout significant others, and no drug/gambling/designer-shoe addictions. Still.

Anyway, I'm in Evanston now, and one of the things I did today was talk to a banker about what kind of mortgage I could be pre-approved for. This involved her looking up my FICO score. A friend of mine has been fond of saying that one's FICO score is the most important number of one's life, excepting only perhaps one's Real Age.* Me being as I am, these statements have only contributed to my general knowledge to avoid knowing my FICO score or my Real Age for as long as possible.

Turns out, I have a fabulous FICO score. Certain things over the past few years for which I've wondered, "Hmm, does this kind of 'mix-up' end up showing up on one's credit report?" apparently do not, in fact, show up on one's credit report. For decorum's sake, I tried to express looking surprised and bemused about this.

When one actually goes ahead and applies for a mortgage, incidentally, they ask for the last two years of one's tax returns. So, if it does come to that, all the more reason for me to go ahead and finally file my taxes for this year.

My thinking presently is that, renting or buying, I'm hoping to live in Evanston if I can, as one part of my Cambridge life that I really like is being able to easily walk to work (and to whatever else). In hindsight, I regret that I never lived downtown during my time in Madison.

* I know someone who has spent some time considering the innards of Real Age, and it turns out that while in their advertising Real Age gets you to do their test with the idea "You may be younger than you think", most people who do the test are told their Real Age is older than their chronological age, which of course is more helpful for motivating people for Real Age services. From a scientific standpoint, of course, there is no external referent for age and so it would be hard to justify scaling age in any way other than to have a real age of 41 being other than the average real age of all 41 year olds. This actually comes up repeatedly in the history of cognitive ability testing, which has featured recurrent statements like, "75% of ten year olds have a mental age of eight or less."

they tried to make me go to prehab, but i'm not going anywhere until i have my luggage

Assorted:

• The wordsmith.org e-mail Word Of The Day for today is "premorse," which turns out to mean "Having the end abruptly truncated, as if bitten or broken off." I was hoping it meant to have regrets about an action even before one has done it.
• Sal has sent me a couple updates from Day 1 of the Lifecycle ride, and all appears to be going well.
• I have not, on the other hand, received an update from Northwest about my luggage. I tried to call them today to ask about it before going out to meet someone. Before being connected with the agent, I was told at the beginning of the call I would be asked to do a brief customer service questionnaire at the end. I went through whatever to get the agent to find my record -- to give an example of the incompetence I was dealing with at the airport last night: despite my having filled out the form accurately in very clear capital letters, my last name was entered in the system as "Jeremy" and my address as being on "Suum" rather than "Museum" street -- and then the agent said, "The computer is being slow today." And then a minute later I got a recording saying "You are now being transferred to our customer service survey" and I was dumped out of the call and into the survey. The survey turned out to be just one general satisfaction item, but I pressed the button on my phone corresponding to "Very Dissatisfied" extra hard.
• Ron from my last post never called to clarify, despite the tease in my comments.
• Chris has posted his summer songs with its 2007 additions, with Amy Winehouse's "Rehab" leading the list. O, how I love the first line of that song ("They tried to make me go to rehab, and I said no, no, no"). I feel almost like it's reached personal anthem status, which if true would mark the most recent anthemly song I feel identified with despite having no justifiable reason to do so, displacing Kelly Clarkson's "Miss Independent."
• If I am repeatedly deleting your comments, I've concluded you are a troll. If I've concluded that you are a troll, I'd prefer you not read my blog, much less comment. I understand that I can't stop you, and I don't feel like turning off my anon comments once again just yet, but you can reflect on whether you really want to be the sort of person who hangs around a space where they aren't wanted just because you can. Presumably, I guess, given that you are a troll, you are exactly this sort of person, but still I feel like pointing that out.

dispatch from aspen

("thank you" slide at the end of my presentation today.)

I'm here for my third and final conference for my fellowship program. I'm sitting on my patio doing e-mail rather than hiking or any of those other associated activities that I feel like I'm really supposed to enjoy but, beyond the sunshine, really don't.

Because the Aspen airport is closed for repairs, we had to book flights to Denver and then drive. My flight left early Wednesday morning. I arranged Tuesday night for the cab to pick me up at 6:45, and, unlike my usual last-minute style, I packed most of my things the night before. I still set my alarm for 5:45, and when I woke up with the alarm I thought, "I probably can be ready in 20-30 minutes. What the hell am I going to do for an hour?" So, then, next thing I know I open my eyes again and the clock says 6:45 and there is a taxi honking outside. I sit up in bed, and for whatever reason I've got a nosebleed. So, then, I put on pants and run downstairs and outside shirtless holding my nose, to tell the cab driver to wait 5 minutes. (Me, going outside shirtless, I don't know if I've done that since high school, so you know we are talking desperate times.) I run to go back up to my apartment, and I realize I have locked myself out.

And, yet, everything managed to work out okay and I was on my flight in time. Moreover, for those who wonder from my recounts of misadventures whether I am completely hopeless, my talk today seemed to go over really well.

dispatch from dc

I am here to attend a workshop associated with the National Science Foundation. When I get back, I have this paper that is overdue and really must be done, which is not even to mention the other paper that is overdue and really must be done. Also, however, I am publicly saying as a matter of committment via this blog that I will need to restart my diet. I was doing well but not really so much tracking, but the last few days have seen that fall more by the wayside through a combination of certain unblogged stressors and traveling.

I should insert something wry or hilarious here, I suppose, but I'm tired.

Oh, and: When I checked into my hotel, the clerk got this strange smile as he was looking at the screen while checking me in and said, "Because you are the 100th customer of the day, I'm going to upgrade you to the club floor." I thought he was joking, but then I was, indeed, upgraded to the club floor. Would Hilton really be having something where they were upgrading the 100th customer, or is it more likely that they upgraded me for some other, possibly random reason and he was just joking/dissembling about why?

left behind

I just took a break here in the office by reading the whole of Anthropology: 101 True Love Stories by Dan Rhodes. The stories are all around 100-150 words, and while some of them turn a too much on a cutely warped last sentence, the book on the whole is a fun bag of prose popcorn that is well worth the forty-five minutes it takes to devour it. Anyway, as I don't have any great ideas for posts and the continued rain in Cambridge brings out a melancholic turn, I'll instead here promote the book by reproducing three of the stories about being dumped:

Xanthe left me. I found out her new address and returned the kettle she had left behind. The next day I took her a book she had lent me. I found a box of hairgrips, and delivered one each day. If she wasn't home I would post it with a long letter explaining how I had found it on the floor. When I had returned them all, I took her, on the tip of my finger, a tiny ball of dust. "I remember seeing it fall from your dress one afternoon," I said, "The pretty one, with the flowers on it."

After Firefly left me I presented her with a video recording I had made of myself, so if she ever felt down she could be reminded that there was somebody out there who loved her more than anything in the world. I met her in the street, and asked her if she ever watched it. She said she did, and that it always cheered her up. She told me she particularly liked the part where I kissed and caressed the tiny black skirt she had left behind, and cried like a new-born baby. She said that always made her smile.

Treasure left me. "I'm so sorry," she said. "I understand how awful you must feel." Choking, I told her she couldn't begin to understand. She insisted that she could. "You know you'll never find anyone as pretty as me," she explained, "or as nice, and your every moment will be clouded by nagging recollections of times we spent together; times when you wrongly believed we had some kind of future. Believe me, I understand." she said, gently." A part of you has died, the part capable of loving and trusting, and you know you'll never get it back. Stuff like that."

BTW, for the trip to Madison, I was going to bring my jacket, but then because the forecast called for several inches of snow I decided to bring my big winter coat instead. While the snowstorm did strand me in Detroit for several hours, I never wore the coat during my visit. Several times I wished I had my jacket, but chose being cold to cavorting around in the cumbersome coat. Last night, as my flight from Detroit to Boston was taking off, I realized I had left my coat in the in the overhead bin of the plane going from Madison to Detroit. Story of my life.

fun back in middle america

I hang out with Sal for less than a couple hours on Wednesday night, and that was all it took for me to be committed to a festive idea for this weekend that promises to involve me spending several hundred dollars and perhaps a mild amount of dignity. Stay tuned.

Before getting together with Sal, I got together with another friend who, in place of whatever highbrow leisure pursuit, really wanted to play whack-a-mole. My replying that I didn't know where one could play whack-a-mole in Madison was met immediately with "Chuck E. Cheese." I had never been in a Chuck E. Cheese before--indeed, I was pretty ignorant about the entire "Chuck E. Cheese" concept--but sure enough, they have whack-a-mole:



And, better still, skee-ball:



And, better still, pop-a-shot:



And we were there late enough on a school night that there were few actual kids there. Those that were seemed only interested in the video games. Alas: no wonder you never see Americans taking home the gold medal in skee-ball anymore.

(Thursday night I drove from Madison to Evanston, where I'll be spending the day Friday and then returning to Madison on Friday night.)

dispatch from the detroit airport

Because of the snow lamented in the last post, the Detroit-to-Madison leg of my flight was cancelled and I have been stranded in the Detroit airport for the past 5 1/2 hours. The flight on which I was rebooked looks like it might actually leave approximately on time, and people have been crowded right around the gate for at least the last half hour. I would think would be for some demented person to shout "There's a gremlin on the wing! They're going to cancel this flight, too!" in order for them to riot.

I can't believe I booked a spring trip to Madison and they went ahead and held a snowstorm anyway.

travel tips

Arrived this evening back in Cambridge. So I have this problem where I will often space out at luggage claim and end up missing my bag as it goes by. Today I learned that no matter how determined I am to keep my attention focused on the JetBlue conveyor belt, it still doesn't really do any good if my flight was on United.

dispatch from lax

(giant robot store in LA)


(condominium complex called "The Jeremy" in LA)

Sitting in the LAX McDonald's eating a fruit and yogurt parfait. I had a great visit to LA, which did include a trip to the Giant Robot Store (photographic proof to follow). Two very brief observations of a more sensational nature about my LA experience:

1. Walking around in all the early April sunshine made me feel like I was being continually irrigated by this light mist of joy. It was all I could do to keep from skipping as I walked between buildings.

2. I had occasion while I was here to acquaint myself first-hand with the condo market in LA. I was reminded of this time I saw someone eating at a sushi restaurant for the first time who mistook wasabi for guacamole. At least judging from the look on their face, that of someone whose sinuses had just been completely and searingly cleared, perhaps permanently, makes me think the sensation was something like what I felt upon seeing the prices. It's one thing to hear a housing market is "very expensive," another to see it firsthand.

Incidentally, I also took a taxi from a taxi stand at one point on my trip. I walked to the first cab to get in, and was told that the last cab in line was actually the first. The way I was told was as if this was something they thought I ought to know, so I'm not sure if this is the common way for taxi stands to work in LA. If so, maybe it's a south of the equator thing--I didn't check whether the water spun the wrong way down my shower drain.

Update, next day: I do, truth be told, know both that LA is not actually south of the equator and that water does not spin the other way down the drain south of the equator.

dispatch from los angeles

So, my flight from LA was scheduled for 7:30 this morning. I arranged for the cab to pick me up at six, and had things packed so that I could set my alarm for 5:30am and still be ready to go in time. Of course, it took me being awake packing and whatever until 2:30am so that I could have the luxury of sleeping in until 5:30am.

Instead, at 4:30am, my phone rang. I presumed somebody I loved was dead. This didn't mean I was able to rouse myself fast enough to actually answer the phone, but I did immediately check my voicemail. The message was an automated voice from Orbitz, which I had used to buy my ticket. I heard the words "flight status" and was less annoyed, as I could understand the utility of getting a notification of a flight delay even if it did come at 4:30am. However: Orbitz was calling to tell me my flight was on time.

I presume I checked some option or something about giving my updates by my cel phone, although I don't remember this and certainly didn't know the result would be my getting phone calls at 4:30am.

P.S. I'm too tired to write a separate post about this, but: For followers of my diet, we are through week five. My weigh-in was down three pounds, meaning I'm down 12 pounds overall. I will not, however, be tracking during this week's (Sunday through Thursday) travels, but I will endeavor to remain faithful to the basic plan. I'm not sure how I will count this in terms of my general ten-week committment; it will probably depend on how well I do.

trapped in a tin can!

I am writing this from my phone from a train at the Route 128 stop
outside of Boston. We have been stuck here for more than an hour. I am
supposed to be feeling lucky that I didn't fly to Philadelphia as
maybe then I would be stuck at the airport. I am out of reading
materials. The guy in front of me has these strange pimples on the
back of his head that I have studied in way too much detail. I want to
be home.

dispatch from philadelphia

Sara and I took the train here together for the Eastern Sociological Society meetings. I bought a salad at the station but forgot to grab a fork. I picked up my ticket off the tray and went back to the cafe car for one. When I came back, the conductor was coming down the aisle to take tickets. I reached into my pocket for my ticket and it wasn't there. I looked all around my seat, in my bag, in my coat pocket. I went back to the cafe car and looked to see if I dropped it. The conductor went by, clearly hoping I would just find my ticket and not have to call into motion whatever Amtrak machinery there is for lost tickets. I looked all around my seat again, my bag again, my coat pocket again. I had Sara stand up so we could look and make sure it somehow hadn't fallen underneath her or into her backpack. I looked all around my seat, in my bag. I checked my cell phone to make sure that I had the Amtrak confirmation number in case I needed it with the conductor. I looked all around my seat, in my bag, and there the ticket was, right there the first thing I saw when I opened my bag. I understand the logical inference is that it had been in my bag all along and I just didn't see it when I was going through my bag looking specifically for it, as opposed to the ticket having some kind of magical invisibility or teleportation properties.

I said to Sara, "Welcome to my world. This is every day for me. It's like you just got to witness the ten minute abridgement of the story of my life."
"I'm not that surprised. You have told me how in the last year you've lost your iPod, cell phone, coat--"
"Did I tell you I lost an air conditioner?"
"How did you lose an air conditioner?"
"Remember how I bought two air conditioners, even though I ended up only installing one. I put the other one down in the basement and--"
"Later you took it back to the store."
"Oh, wait, you're right. I forgot that's what I did. Well, I can stop being perplexed about that."

the boy detective in manhattan

Writing from a suspiciously large hotel room in the Hotel Lucerne on West 79th. Walking around New York City is less fun when it is really cold outside. And when you are by yourself. So I'm sitting here with room service and a book about the history of economics.

It's a lot like staying in hotel rooms in other exciting places I've traveled to for work-related purposes, only with much more honking and shouting outside.

back in cambridge

I'm in bed, just like the blank slip of paper inside my fortune cookie predicted I would be. Aspirations of making a quick trip up to Madison faded after Carly downgraded her claims about being able to set up dinner with Sarah Vowell from "probably" to "maybe" and other people started offering comments about my prospects with Sarah's dizygotic twin Amy. You would be amazed at the number of times in my life I have made a remark that somebody has chosen to interpret as indicative of a crush and then that person has immediately followed up with something like, "She's out of your league. However, did you know she has a less appealing dizygotic twin who has a history of unaccountable taste in men? What about her?"

dispatch from evanston

I was in a hurry and so had fast food in the airport for breakfast. Then I got fish and chips for lunch here. I had a family-style dinner at a Chinese/Japanese restaurant. I also had a chocolate malt late this afternoon. I shared a dessert at dinner. And, as I was leaving the restaurant, I grabbed a couple of Hershey's kisses from a platter they had sitting out.

I remember meeting a friend's father who had to travel all the time for his job. He weighed like 400 pounds. I thought, "I bet if I had a job where I had to travel all the time, I would weigh like 400 pounds." Now I think if I had a job where I had to travel all the time, I would be lucky to keep myself at merely 400 pounds.

I'm enjoying my trip here, btw. They've put me up in a nice hotel. I wonder if there's room service...

Update: Meanwhile, I just got a text message from my alleged pal Sal up in Madison: Guess who I'm spending Wed evening with? Sarah Vowell! That's right baby, I'm spending some quality time with her (plus 100+ guests) at the Memorial Union Theater.