Exploring more of the Mid-Atlantic with friends and colleagues
This weekend marks the start of spring break for me and Maria, but the end of spring break for Maria's friend Allie. Today we planned a day trip into Baltimore to visit the Cheesecake Factory and the National Aquarium. Because Maria and I typically wake up several hours before Allie, this morning Maria's dad drove us to the Russian supermarket and began teaching me about Russian cuisine. At the same time, Maria's mom made a trip to another grocery store, so when we all got back to the house, nearly ten bags of groceries needed to be unloaded into the pantry and refrigerator.
Allie arrived around 11:30, and she drove us to the subway station in Owings Mills. We ran into a bit of difficulty purchasing tickets, because we did not have bills in the right denominations for the machine, and the ticket agent required several repetitions of our request for one-way tickets before she understood what we wanted of her. Even on the platform waiting for the train, it was obvious that this subway system lacked the polish of its metropolitan D.C. counterpart.
I nearly drifted off to sleep on the slow train ride into Baltimore. Allie and Maria entertained each other with conversations about school, shopping, and New York City. Eventually we arrived at our destination, and the three of us surfaced to the street.
A short walk brought us to the waterfront, where people of all ages were enjoying the restaurants, tourist attractions, and live entertainment. We first put our names on the waiting list for a table at the Cheesecake Factory, and business was so good there that we would have to wait 45 minutes to be seated. During the wait, we stood in line for tickets to the Baltimore Aquarium.
With tickets purchased and pocketed until after lunch, we returned to the Cheesecake Factory and waited for our table to become available. Our host seated us at a table next to a long bay of windows. Conversation about spring semester courses, post-college plans, and Allie's spring break adventures filled the gaps between visits from our server.
The main courses filled us up to the point where nobody had any appetite for dessert. We were grateful for the incentive to curb our spending on this already-expensive day trip, so when the server came to collect our plates, we asked for the bill instead of the dessert menu.
An afternoon in the Baltimore Aquarium gave us a chance to stretch our legs and compensate for the heavy lunch with some exercise. By the time we had ascended to the fifth level, I was starting to miss the sunlight, and I was grateful that the walk down to the exit level would not take as long as the meandering upward journey. Walking past all the aquarium exhibits had put quite a strain on our feet, so we sat for a while near the entrance before leaving the building. Allie's dad responded to her call for a ride home, since none of us felt like walking back to the subway station so late in the day.
Maria's dad took the day off work in order to drive us to College Park, where we would leave the car and ride the Metro into D.C. for Maria's interview at Child Trends. Maria's dad paid for three Metro passes with his credit card, allowing us unlimited use of the subway system for the rest of the day. Following the directions of Kevin Cleveland, the senior research assistant who has been corresponding with Maria about the internship, we rode the subway to Van Ness/UDC and then ascended to street level to find the Child Trends offices, which share a building with CVS and Giant.
Maria entered the office for her interview, leaving me and her dad free to explore the surrounding neighborhood for a couple hours. We walked past the row of shops lining Connecticut Avenue, wandered around the nearby residential communities, and briefly stopped at Burger King to use the restrooms and eat a small snack. Returning around noon to the building where Maria was interviewing, we waited outside for her to emerge or call one of our cell phones.
Maria came away from the interview with mixed feelings about her chances of getting the internship. She described her participation today as mostly listening, answering very few questions during what amounted to little more than a guided tour of the Child Trends work environment. Maria wondered whether she might have made a better impression by asking more questions of her own, but few opportunities for questions arose while the talkative Child Trends president delivered her spiel.
Lunch at a nearby Italian restaurant, Tesoro, gave us enough energy to make the most of our all-day Metro passes, with excursions to the American University, Best Buy and the Container Store in Tenleytown, and the White Flint mall. By 16:30 we had worked up an appetite for late afternoon dessert, so we ordered milkshakes at the Smoothie King in the White Flint mall before heading to the Metro station for our long commute back to Reisterstown. We contacted Maria's mom by cellphone to let her know our estimated arrival time and our requests for dinner.
Today my sister's graduation weekend diverted me to Bryn Mawr. Meanwhile, the rare opportunity to do some Saturday shopping with her roommate took Maria to Pentagon City. We arranged to leave on the same train from the College Park metro station, so at least we could say our goodbyes before going our separate ways. At Gallery Place/Chinatown, Maria and Amy switched to the yellow line, heading toward Huntington, while I rode to Union Station along the red line.
I arrived at Union Station just half an hour before my 11:25 departure. At 11:17 the doors to the platform opened, allowing the passengers to board so that the train could leave promptly at 11:25. I walked to one of the front coach-class cars and sat down in the window seat of an empty row. Soon the seat beside me was taken; a man who would later spend most of the ride reading A Review of Radiation Oncology Physics asked if he could sit in the aisle seat.
The train seemed glacially slow as we traveled north from Washington, D.C. I enjoyed the contrasting scenic view of open country and industrial parks, although the latter became more frequent as we passed from Maryland into Delaware. After two hours we pulled into 30th Street Station in central Philadelphia.
Following the signs to the local rail system, I carried my duffel bag to the SEPTA entrance and bought a ticket to Bryn Mawr. I then climbed to the platform and waited for the next R5 train, calling my parents in the meantime to let them know I had arrived safely in Philadelphia. My father said he would meet me at the Bryn Mawr station, and together we would walk to the college and take our seats at the convocation ceremonies.
Although the R5 train was about ten minutes late, I made it to Bryn Mawr in time to see all of convocation. After the academic procession and a few musical selections sung by the Haverford/Bryn Mawr Chamber Singers, we heard speeches by some of this year's graduating students, followed by guest speaker Anne Garrels, a foreign correspondent for NPR. The remarks of the two representative graduate students, Allison Taite-Tarver of the Graduate School of Social Work and Social Research, and Mary Beth Ertel of the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, focused more on their personal growth at Bryn Mawr than on themes common to their fellow graduates. In contrast, the two senior class presidents had prepared more universally applicable speeches, including splashes of humor that brought hearty laughs from the audience. Anne Garrels offered a mix of serious advice and witty insights, returning frequently to the metaphor of trying out different outfits from a diverse wardrobe in order to meet the challenges of life's rapidly changing circumstances. The afternoon ceremonies concluded with a reading; then the faculty and this year's graduates paraded out of the tent in the academic recession.
At a garden party after the official ceremonies, the graduates got a chance to shed their staid personas and socialize informally with their friends and families one last time before clearing out their dorm rooms and saying goodbye to Bryn Mawr. Katherine introduced me to a few of her friends and their parents, all of whom relished the opportunity for small talk about their careers and life after college. I contributed minimally to these discussions, but I listened intently and heard some very interesting stories.
Katherine had wanted to spend all evening with her friends, but when it became apparent that they would be going out with their respective families, Katherine followed suit and joined us for dinner at Denny's. Afterwards we delivered her back to her dorm and wished her a fun evening packing up her stuff and hanging out with friends. We then drove to our hotel in Wilmington, Delaware, getting lost once or twice on the back roads we took in order to avoid I-95 congestion.
Thankfully the hotel provided a warm welcome, complete with three warm cookies and a platter of chocolate-covered fruit. The luxurious hotel beds, equipped with thick comforters and soft pillows, made it difficult to resist an early bedtime in compensation for recent sleep deprivation, but I decided to call Maria and learn how her day had unfolded after we parted ways in the Gallery Place/Chinatown station.
This week my father came to the capital for a conference consisting of various companies presenting their recent work on energy issues. He invited me to spend a night or two with him, so we arranged to meet for lunch today, and again for a movie at Gallery Place after the catered buffet dinner to which he was invited in connection with the conference. A few observations from today's activities:
1. While waiting in the lobby of the Marriott hotel, I read two short stories from the Vonnegut collection Bagombo Snuff Box: The Powder-Blue Dragon and A Present for Big Saint Nick. In the first story a girl comes up with a really snappy comeback to a question from a boy who is trying to impress her with his new car. In an attempt to develop a talent for snappy comebacks and one-liners, I took a mental note of two situations today and witty responses to both of them.
"When you dress as if you're going places, you end up spending more time adjusting your uncomfortable footwear than actually going places."
"No thanks; I'll just crawl back where I came from and lament the fact that in the midst of an obesity epidemic, hotels eagerly spend their budgets on extravagant fitness rooms but never consider putting their stairwells in more conspicuous locations, as opposed to some dark corner where they fall into disrepute as if unfit for use except by second-class citizens."
2. Cold Stone Creamery serves rich, delicious ice cream, as I learned when I ate there for dessert after today's lunch. The rigidity of their waffle bowls exhibits a rather large variation, though, if the contrast between my father's bowl and mine is any indication.
3. Virginia sales tax has apparently risen to match Maryland's: 5 percent as opposed to the 4.5 percent I remember from just a year ago. Either that or the Staples that I visited in Franconia/Springfield recently acquired new checkout registers and neglected to reprogram them before putting them to use. If the first explanation holds, then there's no compelling reason to leave Maryland for any small-scale shopping trips in the near future. Even a road trip to Delaware would incur fuel costs so high that only big-ticket items worth more than several hundred dollars could possibly justify the extra hassle.
4. There are quite a few interesting places accessible to someone who knows how to pull open a door from a side that has no handle. I found one such place while exploring the hallways of Gallery Place in the hour or so before my father arrived for tonight's movie. An unlocked door with no handles facing the hallway led into a vast construction area, in which the Rollins contracting company had begun work on the rooms that would eventually house new shops on the second storey of Gallery Place. I tiptoed around the construction areas quietly, exploring the work in progress and the random pieces of trash that the construction workers had left behind, including cigarette butts, half-finished bottles of Coca-Cola, wrappers from M&M candy, and empty carry-out bags from McDonald's. From some of the rooms I had an elevated window view of the street and its array of chinese restaurants, and from another room I could look down into the Gallery Place lobby and observe the customers buying tickets or eating at H�agen-Dazs. I exited the quiet construction area around 19:10, descending to the busy lower level where crowds of excited movie-goers stood in line to buy Star Wars tickets.
Last night's Anna Nalick concert at the 9:30 Club finished early enough to allow a decent night's sleep, but not early enough for me to feel safe walking home from the College Park metro station alone. Instead I walked with Maria to the UMD campus, refreshed by the cool autumn air.
Leftover rice and beans, which I had stashed in the office fridge, served as today's breakfast, fueling a few
morning errands on the south side of campus.
By a strange coincidence, I decided to finish reading The Sense of Being Stared At (which I had put on hold indefinitely after returning from the Singapore vacation last winter) just a week before my sister asked if one of her college friends could borrow it. My mom sent me the mailing address by e-mail, and I shipped the book during the lunch break between classes.
The Math Club held a pizza party/social event this afternoon at 15:00, and I showed up to enjoy the company of
precocious undergrads. I played a bit of table tennis at the beginning, before the room filled up with more people. Later I ended up talking about a problem from advanced calculus, but the discussion had mostly petered out by the time I made my exit to do some grocery shopping at the food co-op.
Tonight I got a late start on the formal write-up of the MATLAB project for tomorrow's METO614 class, and I ended up working until 2 in the morning to finish it. Still energized from this blatant exercise in procrastination, I rode my bike to campus and camped out in the math building, where I can hope to enjoy only three hours of sleep before tomorrow's four discussion sections.
The Hoff theater's latest promotion demonstrates that the way to a man's wallet is through his stomach. Bringing in a fountain of liquid chocolate on the occasion of the Friday evening showing of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory could not fail to entice participants in the Ramadan fast and minimalists who try to heed the words of the prophet Isaiah (Chapter 55, verse 2: "Why spend your money for what is not bread; your wages for what fails to satisfy?"). The $3 ticket price could easily be construed as a charge for the food at the chocolate fountain, thus conforming to Isaiah's warning, while the evening time slot aligned nicely with the breaking of the daytime fast after sunset. Somebody in the theater management has good business sense. Imagine how much today's sales would have dropped if the free afternoon movie Must Love Dogs had switched places with Charlie and the Chocolate Factory!
In other news, I helped proctor the second midterm in MATH220 today. This time I have six days to grade half of the problems before returning the exams in discussion sections next Thursday, so I've taken the liberty of enjoying a relaxing afternoon away from the pile of papers that await grading starting this weekend.
The hat trick of parties leading up to a hectic second half of exam week comprised Thursday night's grading party in MTH4202, yesterday's math department holiday party, and a birthday party for Fernando tonight. Sharing laughs and memories with friends of two and a half years, I reduced my anxiety about next week's challenges more effectively than if I had spent the time studying with Matt Hoffman and other meteorology students.
On my way to the Lakeside North apartment complex where Fernando lives with Carter and Ryan, I took an extended detour into Old Greenbelt. I graded one more section of the MATH220 uniform final in the public library, and then I finished grading the last section in the New Deal Caf�. To celebrate the completion of grading final exams, I ate a late lunch in the New Deal Caf�, consisting of vegetarian chili and a vanilla milkshake. I then proceeded to the Greenbelt Co-Op to buy baked goods for Fernando's party.
Arriving early at the Lakeside North apartment, I lurked around outside for a while before calling Carter and asking if I could come in. Carter opened the door and invited me into the living room, where we chatted for a while before the duties of hosting a party required his attention again. More guests began to trickle in over the next few hours, gradually building up a crowd of math people and other friends. Lively conversation and story-telling filled the night, sometimes degenerating into harsh caricatures of colleagues and professors.
American suburbia lacks the extensive public transportation options of New York City, but living without a car is still possible even there, as illustrated by an article in today's Detroit Free Press. The family in this article should definitely improve their sales pitch if they intend to attract converts to their carless way of life.
"We've gotten asked the weirdest things like, 'How did you take your sons to Little League?' or 'How do you buy ice cream?' Well, you know, we go to the store for ice cream. Just like anyone else," said Christine Peterson, 49.
I think the questioner meant to ask, 'How do you prevent the ice cream from melting on the way back from the store?' Mrs. Peterson's interpretation is literally correct but fails to address the spirit of the question. In my carless experience the answer has varied among:
Constructive solutions like these, unlike Mrs. Peterson's flippant answer, would give the carless position a more positive image in future articles. Reporters on the beat in D.C. suburbs could easily write a better story by interviewing members of the group house on Fox Street (at least two of whom live without a car).
If your desires are not extravagant, they will be granted.
-- fortune cookie message at Beijing Restaurant in Greenbelt
When rewritten in the contrapositive, this fortune cookie message diagnoses with uncanny accuracy the source of my continuing conflicts with housemates at my current address. Maybe I've demanded too much by asking that they turn down the stereo and respect my acute sensitivity to the slightest bit of noise. Maybe I'm overly sensitive to their enthusiastic conversations and gossip sessions because it reminds me of the social life I've been missing by sharing a house with complete strangers rather than friends with common interests and goals. I hope my upcoming relocation to the house on Fox Street results in a more amicable living situation, and tomorrow's party there will provide the perfect opportunity to determine whether it's the noise itself or the lack of connection that explains my sensitivity to enthusiastic conversations and crowded living rooms.
I picked up two new pairs of glasses yesterday: one for distance viewing, another for reading and computer work. My previous pair of glasses is by now almost three years old, and they came with the allegedly harmful advice that I should remove them for reading and computer work. The eye doctor I visited last week said that my near-focusing mechanism, still quite responsive at my young age, fooled the previous eye doctor into prescribing too strong a lens for my right eye and failing to notice my poor close-range vision. Nearly three years of reading and computer work without corrective lenses probably contributed to heavy eyestrain, according to Dr. Feinberg, so he recommended a specialized prescription for those tasks when I saw him last week.
Having never used prescription reading glasses before, I had no idea what to expect or even how difficult the accompanying lifestyle adjustments would be. My short attention span and tendency to interrupt long sessions of reading and computer work by looking briefly into the distance now rewards me only with a blurry view, rather than the eyestrain relief I used to enjoy. I should have known that unlearning the old habits of eye relaxation would take some time, but in my impatience I decided to pester the eye doctor for advice and assurance after only one day with the new glasses. I biked to the Beltway Plaza Mall and waited at the doctor's office for half an hour until he had time to address my concerns.
After pestering Dr. Feinberg with my paranoia about steadily-worsening vision, I biked straight to campus and released some nervous energy at the CRC, to which I had access after having purchased a summer membership in order to play badminton with my housemate Dave Bourne last Saturday. Then I cooled down in the student union, staying late enough to enjoy the 18:00 free movie (Raiders of the Lost Ark) in the Hoff Theater. On the big screen I noticed a detail that small TV sets never revealed when I watched the movie before: a German graffito in the map room that says Nicht st�ren (do not disturb).
Thoughts on why I no longer cook rice and lentil curries as often as I used to
In a nutshell, the common element ever since moving out of Berwyn House and Belcrest Plaza was the necessity of sharing the kitchen. While it's great in terms of cutting down costs, sharing a kitchen doesn't encourage as much elaborate experimentation as having my own kitchen did. In an attempt to heed the golden rule of "what is hateful to you, do not do unto others," I end up trying to minimize the number of pots/pans/utensils I use to prepare each meal, simply because I prefer very little clutter in the drying rack. When I was the only one cooking in the kitchen, the clutter from elaborate food preparation could easily be contained, but when five people all use the same space to make their meals, I consider it courteous to leave a smaller footprint from my kitchen use. Thus I make simple dishes, like peanut butter/apple butter sandwiches and garlic mashed potatoes, which require at most one heavy pot or one large plate. Cooking rice, lentils and vegetables would result in two heavy pots taking up space in the drying rack, and I subconsciously try to avoid such an imposition on my housemates.
With the addition of Domingo to the house, I've seen a few more extravagant meals being cooked over the past couple weeks, but the accompanying mountain of dishes in the drying rack is pretty strong incentive for me to add as little as possible to that mess. When I wake up before everyone else and go to the kitchen, often the drying rack is so full that I can't even place a small dessert plate on top without causing something to topple and make a loud crash. Then I try to set a good example by hand-drying the most precariously-balanced dishes and leaving plenty of space in the drying rack for the next cook. I spend too much time maintaining such exacting standards of kitchen tidiness that I then fear to disrupt it with my own cooking mess, and as a result I end up eating very simple meals. My housemates have greater tolerance for day-to-day messes in the kitchen (opting for a thorough scrubbing job every week or two instead of daily cleaning to eliminate the macroscopic spills of cooking and other kitchen use), so they're not as reluctant to prepare foods that leave three or four dirty pots and pans lying around.
Inspired by:
You sent the attachment in Microsoft Word format, a secret proprietary format, so it is hard for me to read. If you send me plain text, HTML, or PDF, then I will read it.
Distributing documents in Word format is bad for you and for others. You can't be sure what they will look like if someone views them with a different version of Word; they may not work at all.
-- Richard Stallman
Last night I cheerfully agreed to print three copies of Maria's 45-page senior thesis using my laser printer, thereby saving her the trouble of running to Kinko's for her printing needs. Dealing with mail server delays presented enough problems for one night, so I forgot to ensure that her document looked the same when loaded in OpenOffice.org as it did when she saved it in Microsoft Word. Most of the formatting carried over intact, but OpenOffice.org failed to preserve the correct vertical spacing. Starting with the very first page of content, everything I printed turned out to be unsubmittable. In my preoccupation with the e-mail delay problem, I forgot to ask for the thesis as a PDF (hardly an unreasonable request now that Windows users have free tools that can do the conversion).