Academia is one of the last professions where a personal web site is...well, more or less professionally required. Especially if you're on the techie side. I've started working on one, including a new WordPress blog and various other bits of hey-it's-not-2003-any-more goodness, but it's going to be awhile.

So hey, there's this LiveJournal thing!

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New York, it turns out, gets easier with practice.

( Neighborhoods )

I've been to New York many times, but this is the first time I've been here for an extended stay. Almost two and a half weeks all told.

Of course, I've got nothing on bubblesutonium, who is here for nine months.

H is living in Greenwich Village in NYU law student housing. We're still getting used to the neighborhood. It isn't what it used to be. Gentrification and NYU have taken over. Gone are most of the old run-down buildings and funky head shops. You can still hear jazz trios playing impromptu concerts in Washington Square, though, or visit one of the thousands of restaurants, or smile at the gay boys holding hands, or hear 10 languages while walking the space of one block.

It's a good place to live without a car. Subways & taxis everywhere. Everybody delivers everything--furniture, bottles of wine, you name it. There are half a dozen markets in the space of four blocks. Getting groceries is a matter of deciding what you want for dinner that night, taking a short walk, and filling up your backpack.

Between bubblesutonium's healing foot injury and all the unpacking, we haven't been exploring as much as we'd like. (H: "We haven't made it past 18th yet!" Me: "Speak for yourself. I went jogging up to 30th yesterday.") We've got time, though.

The only bad development so far was the timing. I can't believe how much we missed in Seattle this weekend. strahd72 and Gina's wedding--and how come none of you people have posted accounts of the party yet? Brook and Ninad's wedding. The party at vixyish and gfish et al's place. And on, and so forth.

bubblesutonium is off to her first law school orientation event tonight. Ever onward....

Once you get to my stage of life at a major research university, academic progress gets measured like this: "So what have you published lately?"

Actually, in my field, it's rephrased. "So where have you presented lately?"

Academics from other fields consider this a little odd. Normally conference presentations get filed under "well, that's nice" compared to "Ooh, you're so professorial, let me shower you with money and tenure" for journal articles. In my discipline, it's the other way around.

As may be, this means: if you want to do research in my field, you have to go to conferences. A lot. Expensively. (Sigh.)

I've been to two so far this year. April's conference in Boston was an 3500-attendee, week-long exhausting affair that was, oddly, one of the most lonely professional experiences I've ever had. Useful, and fun, but when you don't know most of the people there, it's easy to get lost.

I envied the "old heads" who couldn't move down the hallway without being hailed by someone they knew. "Yeah, I never go to the sessions any more," said one mentor of mine. "I can read the research notes later. I just meet up with people I know." Lucky man.

Last week's conference at Google's main headquarters (motto: EVEN OUR BUILDINGS ARE IN BETA TESTING) was about 150 people. We could all fit into one conference room. By day 2, everyone knew everyone else, at least by sight. Much more congenial.

If everything goes to plan, I'll be presenting my first solo paper at a conference in October in the great metropolis of Bloomington, Indiana. I haven't been to this one before. I'll be interested to see where it falls on the size-and-insanity scale. I'm also taking bets on how many people show up for my talk. I'm betting on about five people.

Flashlights, hell: you could use the moonlight tonight to walk clear across the island and never miss a step. The water is an eerie, shimmering sea of diamonds on a blanket of night.

And since I'm not utterly at peace with this sight, it's time to go home.

We had a running ha-ha-only-serious joke at Microsoft: when you signed your employee agreement, it was said, the company's agents quietly inserted a small surgical implant near the base of your brainstem. (This operation was why we all had chronic neck pain, you see.) This implant was designed to remind us of our obligations. Any time we felt like slacking, goofing off, or taking the proverbial three-hour lunch, our implant would register the emotion and would remind us that we had work to do.

"Well, gotta get back to the office," one of us would say. "My implant is going off."

Mine's been getting warmer ever since bubblesutonium left. Spending days on the island at slow-working-vacation pace is wonderful, but school starts next week, and it's time I got into gear. Also, I need a haircut. Also also, I miss my wife.

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And now, a free hint:

Maybe your lifelong dream has been to strap on a diving helmet with attached air hose and jump into the shallow waters off one of the islands. Perhaps you even have one of those fancy diving helmets that includes a radio, allowing you to talk to the guys on the boat above who control your air supply.

More power to you!

However, if you decide to do this close to shore, remember that your microphone is going to be switched on the whole time. That means every breath you take (and every exhalation you make) will be broadcast over the radio.

If the guys in the boat decide to blast that radio at top volume, that means that everyone in a three-island radius will be wondering when Darth Vader decided to go explore the local kelp bed.

Consider headphones. They're a newfangled invention, but they work really well.

bubblesutonium joined me on the island for the weekend, and had a couple observations worthy of being repeated:

On Roche Harbor: "I have to admit, I was blinded by all the white fiberglass." (Roche Harbor is a yachting resort, home-away-from-home for middle aged white people with very very expensive toys.)

On island cars: "The 20-year-old Porsche owned by the guy across the street is a little silly, but what's up with that Ferrari Testarossa?" (Island top speed: 45 MPH. Percentage of roads not made of dirt: about 70%. Percentage of roads not made of dirt or very loose gravel: 0%.)

On watching the M's on TV: "Hey, there was a ball and the field was green. It could've been football."

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I feel kinda terrible about the passing of the writer David Foster Wallace, not least because--he said, shuffling his feet in embarrassment--I'd never heard of him. A few of my friends, including at least two who aren't literary nerds, are absolutely devastated. Clearly I've been living in my cultural Skinner box again. For those in mourning, I'm very sorry.

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I've never lived in the South, so maybe I just don't have the right perspective on this stuff, but hurricanes scare the crap out of me. All the footage from Ike isn't helping. For those who live or have family or friends in the area, good luck and prayers to you all.

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Five more days on the rock. Lots to do. Most immediately: sit outside, listen to the gulls, and watch the full moon rise over the water.

As mentioned earlier, I've been living on my own at my parents' house on an island, trying to get some schoolwork done. As noted, this is kinda different for me. I've never been on a rock this long before. I haven't lived alone in a house for two full weeks since 1995, and back then I didn't have any dogs to take care of.

So, how's it going?

In reverse order:

The dogs have been great. They've been on their best behavior. More, their usual four-walks-per-day routine is giving me a lot of structure while I'm here. Some days it feels a bit like the Benedictine monks, getting called to prayer every four hours or so. Very contemplative.

Living alone: not awful, but kinda strange, honestly. I miss bubblesutonium. Also, I keep forgetting to eat. (There's a reason I weighed less than 150 pounds when I was in college, and it wasn't just freefloating mild anorexia.) That's especially stupid because the fridge is stocked; when I do get around to making meals for myself, they've been lovely.

I wandered into town for awhile today and discovered that it took a bit of mental effort to remember how to have casual conversations with people.

Living on the rock: Well, there's no more beautiful place on Earth, but it does have its disadvantages. I haven't had an espresso in almost a week. Haven't stopped by the pub of an evening; too far to drive, especially after a couple of beers. And you do feel incredibly dissociated from, well, everything. I was reading the paper online with a vague sense of unreality: oh, yeah, Bush is still president, isn't he? Pity.

Still, there's a wonderful sense of peace here.

Oh, and the sun just set in about 80 shades of lavender and mauve, making San Juan Channel look a bit like the world's largest Victorian lace curtain.

Now maybe I oughta go make some dinner.

Now we find out just how much of an introvert I am.

( Hiding on a rock )

I suspect I'll be posting a bit more than usual while I'm here.

Last week my father sent me a yellowing, much-folded copy of a newspaper article on my maternal grandfather and the company he ran in the early 1970s. God love Grandpa, but pull quotes were not his specialty. Of his years at the company, he said, "It's been interesting and I've enjoyed it. I think the results have been satisfactory."

It's not quite "The nourishment is palatable," but it's up there.

I miss Grandpa terribly, but he's long gone. My other grandfather, though--I call him Granddad--is alive, reasonably hale, and one of my favorite relatives. Yeah, he's nearly deaf, and not moving too fast, but his mind is still sharp and his humor wonderful. bubblesutonium and I just returned from a short visit with him at his home outside Milwaukee.

It was a lovely weekend, with good food and great conversation and one hell of a lot of motorcycles. Turns out over 100,000 bikers and their companions poured into town this weekend for Harley-Davidson's "105th Anniversary" party. I have never seen so many motorcycles in my life, all with the signature potato-potato-potato-potato sound of a Harley engine.

All the hotels had large sections of the parking lot blocked off for the bikes. Our hotel had set up a free bike-washing station with lots of extra shop towels for polishing up the chrome. Every business had a WELCOME BIKERS sign outside its front door, not excepting the local concrete company.

I missed my old bike a bit, but I don't think my BMW would have gone over too well with the Harley crowd. They're not as impressed with German engineering as I am.

It occurs to me that between the two of us, Bubbles and I have now been to every state in the union except for North Dakota and Arkansas.

I'm suddenly overwhelmed with the temptation to schedule weekend trips to Fargo and Little Rock, just to complete the collection.

They had about two feet of snow in Anchorage two weeks ago, the locals tell us. It was all gone by the time we arrived, but still cool enough that we needed fleece coats and an extra layer or two most of the time that we were there.

It's a no-bullshit kind of town. 1960s and 1980s functional architecture, jeans and work boots, lots of pickup trucks and SUVs, good beer and straightforward but wonderful food. I've never had better halibut and prawns, and there aren't a lot of places in the world that you can buy Copper River salmon for 8 bucks a pound.

We never saw nightfall. Too close to the solstice. Anchorage still has a few hours of night, mostly between about midnight and 3 AM, but the twilight is so long that night isn't worth discussing. It's impossibly strange to force yourself to go to bed at midnight with twilight still glowing through your window shades.

wings2speak lives in a cute basement apartment not far from downtown, and was sweet enough both to put us up and keep us company while we explored a bit.

Many of the native Alaskans, we learned, traditionally did most of their hunting on cold sea water in kayaks, and used parkas made of seal gut for waterproofing and warmth. You do not appreciate this until you stand in the middle of a driving rainstorm with the temperature hovering in the low 40s, shivering in your best North Face gear, looking out at the icy waters at the base of a glacier. "Now you understand why steam baths are so important," said wings2speak. "My family has always embraced new technology. Helly Hansen is a god."

We drove south to Seward, a small coastal fishing and tourist town, and stopped off to see that glacier. Another day we drove north to Big Lake, a small town known as a vacation spot for Anchorage residents, and relaxed with wings2speak's family at the kind of barbecue where you munch on a trout that a ten-year-old fished out of the lake about 45 minutes before it was set onto your plate.

Thanks, wings2speak. It was great fun.

bubblesutonium and I went to Portland for the first time in, I think, about 1997. Parts of the city were spectactularly beautiful, like everything in the Pacific Northwest. Nob Hill and the area around Portland's legendary rose gardens and Japanese garden were unmatched, even in my own beloved Seattle.

We were less impressed with downtown. Powell's Bookstore was already there, a block-long multistory bookstore hidden in the Pearl District near a couple of breweries, but the rest of the Pearl District was a mishmash of run-down buildings and abandoned warehouses. Street kids were everywhere, high-school and middle-school aged kids in tattered punk clothes with weary, pain-filled eyes, desperately looking for their next fix.

There were a few good restaurants, and the microbrew scene was coming into its own, but Portland's air of postindustrial decay made it feel more like one of the aging East Coast cities.

I've been back twice in recent months, the first time I've seen the place in about ten years. Much of the city, especially the downtown, has changed immeasurably. The Pearl District is almost completely gentrified, full of upscale restaurants and shopping and condos. Portland has built a light-rail and streetcar system that makes getting around town trivial. The homeless population seems to have dropped dramatically.

We'd been sufficiently unimpressed with Portland to stay away for ten years. It's amazing what a difference a decade can make.

I returned today from a long weekend in Flyover Country, visiting with my grandfather and playing tourist. When I left, it was sunny and we were wearing short-sleeve shirts. When I got back, the air was like breathing through a moist towel. The first thing I did on getting home was to change into a sweatshirt.

Right. Autumn.

Once in awhile my trips have themes, such as Baseball. I spent some down time reading another book of Roger Angell baseball stories, Once More Around The Park. I tried going to a Friday night Brewers' game at Miller Park, but the Brewers are for once in a pennant race, and the game was completely sold out by the time I got to the park. So instead I found myself in a chain restaurant bar, watching the Brewers' Ben Sheets get completely lit up in the first inning by Cincinatti's hitters, notably red-hot first baseman Joey Votto and left fielder Adam Dunn.

It didn't have the pleasantly seedy air of a real Milwaukee neighborhood bar. Real bars in Milwaukee don't serve pizza skins, for one thing. But the smoke hung heavy in the air, the Leinenkugel's Red was a crisp and tasty lager, and the banter was entertaining. ("Hey, at least the Brewers haven't had an error yet," I commented optimistically. "Thanks for jinxing us, jerk," said the bartender cheerfully.)

Baseball fans are an assorted and entertaining lot. "Hey, have you ever been to a Rennaisance Fair?" asked the guy a couple of seats down, and whipped out a picture of himself in a costume that combined the best elements of Edwardian dandy with Dread Pirate Roberts and a 70s pimp.

I caught a couple of the Yankees/Red Sox games as well. Sadly, though, I was distracted in yesterday's seventh inning and missed the moment when a fan decided to help Bosox hitter Eric Hinske along to second base by chasing him down, stealing the cap of the Yankees' second baseman and running like hell. ("He was apprehended, roughly, by security," the AP story noted later.)

Baseball and loved ones. A fine weekend all around. Even if my sinuses complained when I came back home.

Among the discoveries of our recent trip north is that Vancouver, like LA, has become a city of Beautiful People.

The rest of the Pacific Northwest wears simple short haircuts and Eddie Bauer or REI and sandals or cheap flip-flops. Vancouver wears designer jeans and t-shirts and expensive sandals that cost more than my last pair of boots. Flip-flops? A few people are wearing last year's designer brand but flip-flops are clearly heading out, thank God.

I blame the movie industry. That style-over-substance thing they do so well in LA has migrated up to Canada in search of tax advantages.

Worked properly, this system can provide you some benefits. bubblesutonium and I picked up a couple leather jackets and some boots that will make us look far cooler this winter than we actually are. Still, it's safe to say that Vancouver is more fashion-forward than Seattle, so this brings up a small concern:

Beards are out.

Really out. Really, really out. Even the crazy guys on the corner of Robson and Granville found a razor and a mirror somewhere.

The only acceptable beard these days, according to the current Vancouver fashion barometer, is a 90s-style goatee, kept very short. You must be at least thirty years old to get away with it.

Now, I've never claimed to be a fashion plate, but if this trend winds its way down to Seattle, I could have a major problem.

So, it's time for a poll.

Poll #1045964 Facial hair
Open to: All, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 26

Beards for men are acceptable. (1=Never, 5=Absolutely)

The best beard style currently is:

You, waysofseeing, should:

In conclusion:

I was going to muse a bit about the joys of life as a part-time consultant, but it'll have to wait for tomorrow as I'm exhausted and nearly nonverbal.

So instead, I bring you the following public service announcement:

If you're not reading chanphenglew, you're missing out on images of Lao like this:



If you're not reading Rebecca's blog on Krygyzstan, you missed out on this:



You're welcome.

My father's family tends to be very much alike: Short--achyvi and I are the exceptions there--with brown hair that shades quickly and early into grey, a slim build and an intense gaze.

We're also literate, opinionated, independent, and well-traveled. And my family is fiercely smart. To misquote the good Dr. Watson, I trust that I am not more dense than my neighbors, but I frequently have trouble keeping up with my relatives.

Given a family gathering, we can also put away astonishing amounts of expensive alcohol.

Quite a few of those items can be traced back to my grandfather, the last family survivor of his generation still living, ninety-*cough* years old and getting on, getting on. He doesn't move too quickly these days and is very hard of hearing, but his mind is still sharp and he still has a wit as dry as the Sonoran desert.

I've been out visiting him in Wisconsin for the last several days. That's not totally unusual; I try to fly out to visit about once every six months or so. What is unusual is that I was joined by my two cousins: nomadicshiner and his younger sister, W.

nomadicshiner currently lives and works for the UN in Sudan. W. is leaving with her boyfriend in five days for her graduate school in Australia.

You can see where getting all of us together at the same time is a bit of a trick.

It was good to catch up with them all, and Granddad seemed to be enjoying himself. He took us out to dinner at a local high-end steak-and-seafood place. We ate like kings and went home with enough leftovers for four good meals. I felt badly for the people at the nearby tables, as we were talking much more loudly than usual to include Granddad in the conversation, but our neighbors seemed forgiving. One of the waiters stopped to take a picture of the four of us, and somebody at the next table pointed out that Granddad was the best-looking one in the frame.

I am, however, now desperately tired and a bit emotionally worn, for any number of reasons. And I need to be at the airport before sunrise tomorrow morning. It's time to go home.

Spent most of yesterday wandering around Baltimore's Inner Harbor. Among other things, zauditu gave me a tour of one of the ships she used to work on, the Coast Guard cutter Roger B. Taney. Pretty ship, but another lesson in Why WoS Never Joined The Navy. They build their ceilings too low. I'd be hitting my head constantly.

We had dinner last night with the quirky and fun nireena, who kept us in hysterics with stories of cooking disasters and oddities of travel. Our favorite: jumping off a moving train to land facefirst on a train platform while carrying a betta fish in a travel jar.

Off today to an O's game. Where's my sunscreen again?

Ah, summer on the East Coast. The haze. The heat. The humidity. The inability to walk outside without breaking into a sweat.

Overheard at the panda exhibit of the National Zoo: "Cuddly, yeah, but only from a considerable distance."

Best line from last night's dinner with zauditu and a couple friends: "Seriously, only in the D.C. area do you start dating a guy you met at a party and discover that he's a CIA spook."

zauditu and I enjoyed a lovely excursion up to Longwood Gardens and a leisurely drive through rural Pennsylvania and Maryland before her poor, beloved car started making entirely unhealthy noises about five miles from home. Think kind thoughts.

Several of my friends are graduating from UW today, and if I have a regret about this trip, it's that I'm going to miss the graduation. Congratulations to you all. I'm thinking purple and gold today, or at least black mortarboards and orange master's hoods.

Off to be social and tourist-like. Happy weekend!

Grading: done.
Research poster: done.
Research paper: done.
Research data entry: not even close to done. But it can wait until summer quarter.

Tomorrow I'm off for a week on a multi-city adventure to spend time with some beloved friends and family. First, though, I get to play tourist for a bit. I'm still debating between the National Zoo and one of the Smithsonian museums.

Be good to each other while I'm gone. Spare a kind thought for bubblesutonium, who gets the full and undivided attention of the whole household while I'm away.

I'd had it in my head all these years that New Mexico was a slight variant on Arizona, where I spent my early childhood. A bit less populated, maybe a few more nuclear test sites, but essentially the same culture.

Wrong.

I think the difference is the sense of history. For most places on the U.S. west coast, and my own beloved Seattle is included here, there's a sense that the cities popped out of the ground about a hundred years ago thanks to Intrepid Pioneers in their Conestoga wagons with John Wayne riding shotgun.

New Mexico, by contrast, has pueblos that claim over 1000 years of continuous settlement. The heart of Albuquerque and Santa Fe are the Catholic churches, old beyond the telling. Santa Fe's San Miguel Mission is only three years younger than fabled Jamestown, Virginia. Construction started in the same year that Galileo discovered Jupiter's moons. You can look through holes carved in the floor at the worn adobe bricks of the original altar steps, nearly 400 years old. One of the central support beams is dated: it was installed in 1710.

Catholicism is strong here. You see it in the crosses many wear on their necks, in the reverence and respect they pay to the churches. In the middle of the long holiday weekend, half of tourist-dependent Santa Fe was shut for the Sabbath. The local archbishop had just finished celebrating mass, a confirmation and a baptism at Santa Fe's cathedral today when we arrived. Crowds of people stayed around him, hoping for a handshake, a blessing, or a photograph.

Native and Hispanic and Anglo culture blend here in a way I've not seen before. While wandering through Albuquerque yesterday I saw two women chatting in Spanish; one was a blond Anglo and the other was an American Indian. In Seattle, this would have drawn curious glances at the least. Here, no one gave a second look.

Our friends Jennifer and Kevin have been playing host, showing us around, and letting us play with our old friend Sammy the greyhound. It's been a great weekend.

There are certain milestones in life, and today I hit one I didn't know about in advance.

I have now seen the National Atomic Museum.

It's an unassuming sixties-era building in Albuquerque's tourist district, marked primarily by a rocket that on first glance looks entirely fake. The door is guarded, not by Cerberus, but by a lonely and garrulous old man who once stood guard over the missiles aimed at the Soviet Union's doorstep. Once you've listened to him for awhile, you're admitted to the rest of the museum, a fascinating grotesquerie of physics gone amok.

They have a fluoroscope that took an unshielded X-Ray of your feet to "properly" measure your shoe size. There is a 1920s vintage device that provided radioactive drinking water by immersing a bit of radium into it. ("Recommended for at least six glasses per day," said the ad.) There are exhibits on Roentgen, and Marie Curie, and Einstein, and Bohr.

They have the test casing for Fat Man, the second atomic bomb dropped on Japan. They have a disassembled Trident missile. They have the casing for two of the four hydrogen bombs recovered near Palomares, Spain in 1966 after a B-52 bomber had an unfortunate close encounter with the refueling aircraft.

No worries about coming home with a healthy glow. As signs reminded us about every ten feet, "THERE IS NO RADIOACTIVE MATERIAL PRESENT IN THESE EXHIBITS."

Good to know.

They're apparently working on an expanded version of the museum that will include a B-29 bomber, an F-105 jet, and an atomic cannon.

Years ago Holly and I were invited on a tour of the USS Nevada, a still-in-service ballistic missile submarine based out of the sub base in Bangor. I remember staring at the orange-painted launch tubes with a mixture of awe, fascination, and terror. ("So this is the way the world could end.") This place is like looking into two generations of those moments.