very simple

It’s been about a year and a half since my last real vacation (diving in curacao). Sure, I took a few days off last February/March and stopped off to visit my brother in Vail, and I took a week of last July to move, which was technically vacation time (although certainly more stressful than actually being at work), but I haven’t taken a real, honest to goodness, sit on my ass, do a little scuba diving, no cellphone reception vacation in quite some time. Plus, the crazy work related travel that I had to do all last fall completely bit into my normal vacation scheduling (I usually go away in October). Needless to say, I’ve been feeling a bit…not relaxed.

So anyway, even though I’ve got a million different things going on at work, I decided about a week and a half ago to put in for vacation time. I actually had no idea what I was going to do yet, but with more school vacations coming up, plus spring rapidly approaching, I thought it would be good to just reserve some time and come up with a plan later. I’m taking the last week of march and the first week of april off, and after much consideration, and even more e-mails back and forth, I’m actually going to fly 25 hours in each direction to go visit my brother in Palau. Which is about as far away from here as you can actually get without taking a spaceship.

And I’m stuck in coach (nevermind that I have a gazillion miles – Continental has a stranglehold on the micronesia routes, and apparently you can’t upgrade if your life depends on it). This should be fun.

Actually, I’m really looking forward to everything but the flight. I’ve been to Europe a bunch of times (both for fun and for work), but I’ve never been anywhere in Asia or the South Pacific. I’ve already started reorganizing my dive equipment, making lists, and generally hopping around in a giddy mood. I have a giant world map hanging on my office wall, and I spent a good 40 minutes staring at it on Monday – granted one of my bosses was in my office with me, and we were actually having a conversation about the trip, so it wasn’t that weird, but still.

I’m excited. And the tickets are nonrefundable.

So, someone over at TV Squad is positing the theory that those wacky numbers on Lost are actually longitudinal and latitudinal coordinates, which made me laugh very very much, because the "small strip of islands northeast of Australia" that they point to are where my brother is being stationed with the Peace Corps for the next two years.

I mean, we’ve been joking about how he’s going to the middle of nowhere, but…heh. Maybe I should tell him to look out for polar bears. And crazy french ladies. 

My latest computer project is less about the internet and more about family. When I was a kid, my dad had a Super 8 camera that he was pretty addicted to, and filmed tons of movies of my mom, myself and all of their friends when they were young (my personal favorite shot of course is my mother, 8 months pregnant with me, at her baby shower, with a cigarette permanently attached to her hand). About 15 years ago, my mom had all of these films converted to videotape, because we just had no means of watching the old reel-to-reel 8mm film anymore. I, of course, realizing that video is worse than 8mm film for preservation purposes, have meant for some time to take the videos and digitize them. We finally found them over Memorial Day weekend, and one MovieBox purchase later they were all on my computer (or, more realistically, my external backup drive since there’s about 35GBs of material). The picture quality is terrible, and my next purchase will probably involve FinalCut Express or something else like it because iMovie just doesn’t have the tools needed to restore the images.

Anyway, the actual reason for my post. On one section of the tapes was footage from a trip my folks took with me when I was three. My dad’s best friend got a job driving a van across the country, so my parents (being much more carefree back then) grabbed my 3-year-old self and decided to go with him. Some of my first memories involve this trip, but they’re really just fragments, some of which may actually be memories of watching the playback of these films when I was young. So I’m chopping up the video into separate clips because they were all jumbled together, out of order, when they were put on video, and I come across this image from the trip:

And I’m looking at it thinking that it looks really familiar.

And I realize, after a minute, that I was standing in almost the exact same spot, on a balcony in the same hotel, where I stayed when I went to visit my brother this past February:

Almost everything else has changed, but the pool and that building with the angled roof (on the right side of the image) are still there. My parents were obviously in a room much closer to the pool, but otherwise, it’s the same place (other footage also confirms what the balcony looked like, so it was definitely the same place). This past season was that hotel’s last, and they’re tearing it down to build a Four Seasons. It was kind of a dive (a cleaner and more comfortable dive than my brother’s couch, however), but I imagine that 30 years ago it was pretty much the only game in town.

It’s just weird when these little moments from your past and present coincide. I mean, my brother wasn’t even born for 3 more years after the first image, yet he was the reason for my (second) trip.

I’ve been somewhat lackadaisical with the updating. Truth is, I haven’t had much to write about this week. Plus, I’ve been free-form writing for a presentation at work, and that seems to be sapping my creative energy (and let me tell you, it takes a lot of energy to be "creative" when writing about SEC communications reform proposals).

My brother is in town this week – a brief pit stop between a month of volunteer work in Nicaragua and touring around India and Nepal for the summer. But he found out on Monday that he’s been invited to the Peace Corps, so that’s awesome. Starting in September, he’ll be spending two years in Micronesia and/or Palau. Which is even more awesome. It’s kind of funny – when we were younger, I was always the crazy idealist, but he’s the one following through. I’m just really proud of him.

This weekend was one of those supremely awesome weekends – yesterday in the 60s and today in the 70s, no humidity, and real sun. It’s one of those weekends which, after a crappy northeastern winter, really makes you feel alive again. Yesterday I spent the day at Ikea with my best friend from high school, where we obsessed alternately, over my possible kitchen layouts and her newly announced pregnancy. Since she moved up the ‘burbs with her husband, we don’t see each other as much as we used to (particularly not as much as when she lived 2 blocks from my office – it was a lot easier to drop in for dinner back in those days), and it was just really great to spend an entire day with her, driving with the sunroof open, with happy things to discuss.

Today, I spent the day with my dad, obsessing some more about the kitchen layout, debating which cabinets to buy and where to find appliances in miniature – my new kitchen is going to be extremely tiny – it’s a separate room, but the entire room is only 35 square feet and currently doesn’t have any counter space – right now it’s a 23" refrigerator next to an enourmous double basin porcelain sink next to a 20" stove. It’s pretty old school, and I’ve become somewhat obsessed about how to move things around to make it more practical. Oh, and I got to see my dad and stepmom’s new place again – they’re moving in in three weeks, and it’s almost complete. It’s pretty gorgeous. Of course, their living room is bigger than my entire current apartment, so it inspires a bit of jealousy as well. But the best part of the day was wandering around the Upper West Side, eating lunch at an outdoor table and actually getting so warm that I had to tie my jacket around my waist. Tomorrow it should be miserable, so I’m glad I got to enjoy it.

The last of my Christmas/Holiday related parties was last night – My friend Vinnie closed his restaurant and cooked a lot of food, and invited a bunch of friends to partake. Certainly the best tasting party that I’ve been to this season. And the only one that had nothing to do with work. I went with my dad and stepmom, who is actually the reason we know Vinnie (they’ve known each other for about 15 years). Anyway, it was fun – we all drank too much and ate too much, and today I’m going to do the traditional “jewish christmas” which consists of going to see several movies (I’ve already bought tickets to Ocean’s 12 and The Life Aquatic) and eating Chinese food for dinner. I found out last night that there’s also a New York City coda to that – you can eat Indian food instead of Chinese, so that opens up the options a little bit more.

Some pictures from last night:

New York City in the weeks leading up to Christmas is generally overfilled with tourists (who I’ve complained about before), but all of a sudden, Christmas Eve actually shows up and the entire city empties out – I walked over to Gonzo at around 8 p.m., and this is what 5th Avenue looked like:

Here’s Vinnie – the bestest Italian chef (and I don’t just say that because he gives me free food whenever I stop by):

And finally, me and my dad, and my dad and stepmom, who are now on their way to Buenos Aires and Patagonia for two weeks, and as of dessert last night hadn’t finished packing. Travellers after my own heart:

Since it’s actually Christmas today, I’ll just sign off with a Merry Christmas (and Happy Holidays) everyone!

Well, Thanksgiving is over in my house, after a rousing game of Trivial Pursuit. well, it was rousing for the first fifteen minutes, and then everyone wandered off to get dessert and have side conversations, and the game eventually had to get called due to people having to leave.

In computer related news, we did eventually manage to get my stepmother’s computer working on the wireless network, thanks to some help from my stepmother’s nephew, who actually works in IT for ESPN. It always helps to have someone who knows what they’re doing (as opposed to a lawyer with some technical know-how) around. What he did involved rooting around the DOS menus though, and I’m pretty sure that’s more than what’s expected of the average computer user.

And now I’m already locked in my room, under to covers. Cough still hasn’t gone away, and I’m bordering on antisocial. Tomorrow I’m going to try to take the car and spend a few hours by myself, maybe do some shopping. I still have to get a wedding gift for one of my best friends who got married this summer, and I have in my head the idea of what I want to get, but actually executing the plan involves a little work, as well as compliant antique shops (which are much easier to attack in the Berkshires than in Manhattan). If I can’t find what I want, I’ll have to come up with a Plan B, since I’m sure there’s nothing left on the registry at this point…

Goodnight y’all. I’m going to bury myself under the covers and watch the PBS documentary about Broadway…They’re up to the last 25 years.

…on Thanksgiving: no one wants you within 100 feet of the food preparation, so they just keep bring you snacks and you get out of any cooking.

Finally made it to the country, after a few false starts in trying to leave the city (note to self: when dad calls and says be at his apartment at 1 so that we can leave, show up at 2:15. It won’t make a difference).

My hacking cough is entertaining everyone. I think they’re all worried that I’m literally going to cough up a lung. pleasant, huh?

And the computer situation has been figured out, sort of. In that it can’t be figured out. The wireless network works (as evidenced by my ability to publish this entry), but apparently the brilliant IT guys at my stepmother’s office configured her computer so that it only can connect to the internet through dial-up to her Company’s VPN. They appear to have removed the ability to set up new network connections. Because even though she bought the computer herself, the couldn’t conceive of the thought that she might want to be able to something other than access her work e-mail through the phone line. In 2004. I’m going to try a few other backdoor things over the weekend, but I think she might be stuck until they can reinstall the correct software programs.

And now my dad is feeding the dog a peanut butter sandwich filled with medication (the dog is old and arthritic). Exciting, huh? And I wonder why, by the end of the weekend, I’m always jonesing to get back to my little apartment in the middle of a construction site…

Happy Thanksgiving everyone! (and thanks, Rick, for the warm wishes).

I manage to get myself sick. Nothing like a little bit of the flu to make the Turkey taste that much better. Anyway, I’m off to the country house to recuperate (and infect the rest of my family).

Project for the weekend? dragging my dad and stepmom into the 21st century by setting up the wireless network in the weekend house. The last time I tried to talk them through it on the phone, I spent 20 minutes asking questions, only to ask, "ok, now what color is light light on the Airport?" and get the response "oh, you mean that thing has to be plugged in?".

Yeah. They’re not allowed to touch things.

In other news, we did go to see Twelve Angry Men, last night, and it was great. I’ve read it several times, and it’s like an entire evidence class rolled into one 90-minute theatrical exercise. One downer – Philip Bosco was out sick. His understudy was great, but Juror Number Three is the heart of the show, and I just kept imagining Bosco’s utterly distinctive voice saying the same lines. The best part about going to see shows like this on Broadway? realizing that every single one of these actors has credits from Law & Order in their Who’s Who. Ahh, the incredibly tiny New York-based acting community. It was like a room full of male Tovah Feldshuhs.