So you're in an airport.

You're in LAX, one of the country's busiest airports, after 22 hours of intercontinental travel, waiting for the last puddle-jump that will take you back home.

Except the return flight is delayed two hours, and after watching The Terminal over the last hour on the Pacific flight and the first hour stuck in Terminal 8, both of you are punchy and in a weird airport headspace.

You also both have Nikon D70s, one with a 28-70mm and the other with a 105mm portrait lens. Huddled behind and under the departures monitors, what else is there to do but people-watch and document the event?

I've always felt that airports are strange, magical places outside of realspace. O'Hare and Denver remind me of the 'woods between the worlds' in Narnia, where each portal (gate) leads to another reality, and there exists no indigenous reality except a generalized amalgam of miniaturized chain stores.

This is Rachel's and my first joint album, but now that we are both so digitally-equipped, I'm certain that it won't be the last. We'd love to read your comments.

Comments?

I'm at Rachel's parents' house in rural New York outside of Rochester, with a large contingent of family (and bulldogs) below. For the moment I'm hiding out in the upstairs bedroom, taking a quick break to check email and blogs and, apparently, to write a quick post.

We're coming back to California tomorrow. In the last few days we've played in a 34-person poker tournament (I came in 5th), had Thanksgiving at Rachel's aunt's new beautiful home, visited with more relatives than I'll ever remember, but enjoyed meeting each one, lusted after the inexpensive homes and land while lamenting our lack of teleportation for commuting purposes, raked leaves for Rachel's grandparents, had some snow, raked soggy leaves for Rachel's parents, been french-kissed by an english bulldog, taken a whole slew of photos, played Monopoly for the first time in over a decade, and been offered a free horse with full tack.

Quite a busy Thanksgiving holiday! Anyhow, I'm told I'm missed downstairs and I need to get back. How was your Thanksgiving?

Comments?

As if to prove the rule about the timely dissemination of information I'm talking about in the previous post, my mom called me about an hour ago from Thailand where she and my sister Susie have been travelling for the last two weeks. Though they were scheduled to come home tomorrow, Susie's been diagnosed with appendicitis and at this moment is in surgery in a Thailand hospital having her appendix removed. They don't have the facilities for a laproscopic procedure, so her recovery will be a few days in the hospital and a few more in a hotel before she's fit to fly home.

I'll tell you more when I know.

Susie's out of surgery and there don't appear to have been any complications. They're going to keep her under observation for a few days, then she'll go back to the hotel if all seems fine. Ack. Ack.

Comments?

Well, I'm a Kevin Fox, but if you're from the Chicago area and this is the first time you've come to the site, I'm probably not the Kevin Fox you're looking for.

Seems another Kevin Fox has been arrested under suspicion of murdering his 3 year old daughter, in a story that's gotten quite a lot of media attention, at least according to Google News.

I have no feeling as to whether the guy did it or not. Being my namesake doesn't mean I'm prejudiced towards him, though I hope he didn't do it if for no other reason than it would lessen the chance of my being stopped at airport security because my name matches that of a suspected murderer.

CAPPS II, the airport security system that causes anyone whose name is similar to that of a 'person of interest'to be flagged for extra security measures or barring from flight, is one thing I would be really happy to see eased or eliminated under a Kerry victory. As it is, I'm selected for security screening when I purchase my ticket less than two weeks in advance, but not in other cases. I'll keep you posted on whether I get screened more frequently on my upcoming flights. It's an interesting test.

Three more days. God, just three more days...

Comments?

From seat 24-A I can just see the exhaust port under the wing of this Airbus A321. The sun has just set over the world and the thousands of miles of desolate brown heartland are now overlaid with a slowly brightening spidery lattice of towns, emerging in the accelerated dusk.

I'm on my way to Pittsburgh, where I'll stay through Saturday recruiting for Google. This will be the first time I've been back to Pittsburgh since I drove to San Francisco right after graduating in August of last year.

This trip resonates nostalgic in so many ways. Though it's only been a little over a year since I left CMU, virtually nobody I know is still there. I'm getting here a day before most of the rest of the Google bunch and so, like when I arrived in Pittsburgh two years ago, it's just me and the campus. Having built so many relationships with people during my time there, it seems eerie to think about walking among the buildings washed clean of any relationship I have with them. Rob and Kerry's offices are occupied by strangers now and the masters labs, still teeming with eager students who are probably bitching about their GOMS assignment in HCI Methods class, would only welcome me as a stranger, the ratty sofa and desk will refuse to acknowledge our all-nighters, but I'll visit anyhow.

A large city has just passed below. Given that we're about 40 minutes from touchdown, I'm guessing that it's either Cincinnati or Columbus. In about an hour it'll be 10pm local time and I'll be outside waiting for the 28X bus to take me to the Holiday Inn, across the street from the Cathedral of Learning; the same hotel that Marissa and Nate utilized when I interviewed with them a year and a half ago. It'll be at least 11pm by the time I'm checked in, and I'll probably walk in to Oakland to grab some half-priced dinner at Fuel and Fuddle amidst youth-heavy Pitt students.

In the morning I'll have a fair portion of the morning to myself and I'll start off with a walk down to Craig Street for some Kiva-han chai, then I'll see about getting wireless access for my laptop on campus and doing a little work and probably some more writing.

There's nobody in the center seat and the guy on the aisle has faxes and contracts spread out all over the place. God I have to pee...

Comments?

Rachel and I spent the weekend in Las Vegas with her parents and had a blast. Amazingly, this was my fourth trip to Lost Wages in the last calendar year and amazingly I didn't lose my wages. I actually turned a profit!

Las Vegas is truly a different world from the Bay Area. Was it the flashing lights? Nope. The casinos? Un-uh. It was the Kerry commercials on TV every 10 mintues. Hello, swing state! I don't think I've seen a single presidential commercial outside of a news show airing it to comment on it since the primaries ended.

I get riled up enough by the election already. I can't imagine what it would be like with a constant barrage of ads for the next three months.

Comments?

My Grandma Kitty is going to die today.

I don't state this for shock value, but rather because any forthcoming narrative about my own life over these past few weeks would trivialize Katherine if she was treated as a plot point, an element in an interest curve, or a catharsis amid a story about my own inconsequential troubles. Grandma Kitty is none of these things. She's my mother's beloved mother, and later today she's going to die.

Up until last month Grandma lived in Santa Ana, about an hour away from my mom in Encino, in a condominium my mom bought for her 16 years ago. There she acted as a caregiver for those who needed a little help in life. While a decade ago my Aunt Judy and her family lived nearby, over the years the husband was divorced, the kids grew up and scattered over the southland to start their own families, and Judy moved to Phoenix. And so Mom and Grandma decided that it would be a good thing for Grandma to move closer to my mom, and they went real estate shopping for her new home.

After a good deal of looking, they found just the right place a little over a month ago. Just a few miles from the house where mom raised my sister and I, this two-bedroom condo would still afford Grandma her freedom while bringing her and mom closer together geographically and emotionally. Through careful planning and a fair bit of luck, Mom sold the old place and both places were in simultaneous 30-day escrow, and both closed this week.

My grandmother's health hasn't been the best over the last year, and there have been a few bouts of illness that could be chalked up to having a body that isn't as sturdy as it once was. Three weeks ago she felt ill and visited the hospital, and was put under observation for what initially appeared to be a kidney dysfunction.

The next several days were a roller coaster of tests, changing diagnoses, and shifting predictions. At first, she was diagnosed as having failing kidneys and might have to undergo long-term dialysis. The following day tests indicated that her renal functions were almost normal and the illness may have been due to an infection in her blood. The next day they decided to perform an MRI which showed a spot in her bladder that needed further diagnosis. An MRI 'with contrast' couldn't be completed because she wasn't able to drink the ounces of barium-laced fluid needed for the procedure.

The timing of all these events is fuzzy to me since I was in Northern, not Southern California, and my mom was relaying the news on a daily basis. This was still about three weeks ago, and Rachel and I had plans to come down to Los Angeles on the weekend of June 26th (last weekend) to attend my father's burial marker dedication ceremony on the 27th, and to be with my mom and sister on the 28th, my mom's birthday. In light of Grandma, Rachel and I change our plane tickets to return on Wednesday instead of Monday, to spend more time with Grandma and family.

Back to three weeks ago, and my mom's been informed that while in the hospital the previous day, Grandma had a minor heart attack and now had problems with four organs: heart, kidneys, bladder, and I believe something else, possibly liver. She now also has come down with pneumonia. Where the day before things seemed manageable, things are now in serious doubt, and Rachel and I decide to drive down the next morning (two weeks ago, Friday) and spend several days down south, to spend time with Grandma and to help with whatever needs arise.

Saturday we get to see Grandma, along with my Aunt Joanne, Uncle Joe, and cousins Janice and Joel, whom I'd only seen once in the last 20 years. It was really good to see Grandma, and because she didn't have a room to herself, we had to go in shifts of 2 visitors at a time. Grandma was lucid, very happy to see us, and though she was very tired, had six IV drips and a feeding tube, surprised me with her energy in talking to visitor after visitor. Rachel brought copies of flower photos she had taken, including a matted daisy print that's especially beautiful, and Grandma was thrilled to have them on the windowsill.

We spent the next three days at the hospital, generally taking turns being with her and being in the 'solarium' (aka 'waiting room'). The room, with about 12 chairs, would usually sit empty, and sometimes fill to capacity. After a few days there though, it felt like our space, and it felt weird when anyone else would wait there as well.

By the third day it was clear that she was responding well to treatments. She seemed to be overcoming the pneumonia, and after two physical therapy sessions where she got on her feet and took one step, she proactively started exercising in her bed, lifting her arms and legs, doing exercises until she got out of breath. After a week of not being able to eat any food, the doctors let her have some jello, ice cream, and even bits of cookies, and it seemed likely that she could be out of the hospital within a week or two, and possibly living on her own again after a month in a caregiver environment.

When we left on Tuesday, Rachel and I looked forward to seeing her again when we got back into town for our originally scheduled trip the next Sunday.

There are so many things I'm glossing over here that deserve mention:

Over the course of this long weekend, Rachel became a granddaughter in my eyes. Her caring, not just for my grandmother, but for me, my mom, and everyone else involved, was and is incredible.

Also, At the same time that all of this is going on my mom had to plan and act on what would happen to all of Grandma's things. Everything had to be out of her condominium by the 28th, and we couldn't move new things into the new place until the 29th or later, and we were all dealing with the real possibility that she wouldn't make it through, or might never be able to live on her own again. The end solution was to move everything into storage, since no matter what it would be at least several weeks before she could possibly need the things at her new place.

Lastly, we got word that Monday that my father's burial marker wouldn't be ready until at least two or three weeks after the scheduled unveiling date, so that would have to be pushed back as well. The unveiling of the burial marker is a Jewish tradition commemorating the first anniversary of a loved one's passing. Until that time the resting place is demarked by a temporary marker, and while the permanent marker doesn't have to be dedicated exactly on the anniversary, it also marks the closure of the traditional year of mourning, so should be reasonably close to the date. All in all under the circumstances, both Mom and I were relieved to have one less thing to deal with at the moment.

Back at work after being out for three days, I fielded several inquiries and well wishes for my grandmother, and felt generally optimistic. She was getting strong enough now that they were going to continue on with the laparoscopy to investigate the mass in grandma's bladder, to determine if it was a blood clot or a tumor, and if it was the latter, what was its stage and nature.

After performing the procedure, the doctor was inclined to think that it was a cancerous tumor, but was waiting for the lab results before drawing a conclusion. The results came last Thursday, when we found that the tumor was malignant and advanced. Under the best circumstances, Grandma would be unlikely to survive the Summer, and quite possibly not the next month.

I wasn't there when the doctor told Grandma the findings, and I consider myself lucky for this, though I wish I was there for her. Grandma, considerate, lost, and scared, told her doctor "I don't know how to die," bringing her doctor to tears, as it did me when I was told.

Rachel and I arrived back in Los Angeles on Sunday morning, and Aunt Davine drove us to the hospital to a changed person. There was a presence that had diminished so much in the intervening five days. The brief moments of lucidity we saw over the course of that day were when we arrived and she smiled and said "you came back!" and a few moments when she tried to speak but didn't have the energy to be understood. We stayed with her, read to her, sang to her, and held her hands. Grandma was in constant pain now and there was only a small morphine-granted window between her pain and resting.

When we came back to the hospital the next morning, my grandma was gone. Her body was still there, breathing, fevered, but from the moment I entered the room, it was clear she wasn't there. Her presence was never so obvious as it was in its absence. All I was left with was the feeling that though she didn't know how to die, she was trying to escape the painful prison her body had become, and what remained would soon follow. In the following days, leading up to today, the doctors have confirmed this deteriorization, sought to ease her pain by putting her on a morphine drip, and they believe that in less than a day she'll be gone.

In my own mind and soul I had been paying what I would be satisfied as my final respects every day that I saw her, in case things should turn before I saw her again. In this I found an inner solace. Nearly a year ago my dad died suddenly, alone, and completely unexpectedly of a heart attack, hours after my birthday. This year is a mirror image, reflected over the calendar date of my birth. Where my father's passing was sudden, giving rise to passion, pain, grieving and coping after the fact, Grandma's impact is like an earthquake in reverse, building up slowly and culminating just before the anniversary of my own birth.

We have been grieving, smaller growing to larger, with foreshocks months ago building in volume and strength to the present, when her passing will be an exhalation instead of a burst. Not to pretend that grieving will end with her passing, not at all, but I appreciate the difference between a passing and a tearing.

Susie, Mom, Rachel and I had planned for months to go to San Juan Island for our summer vacation from this Friday through to Wednesday with my father's side of the family. Now, as has been the rest of the month, I'm up in the air. My mom needs a break more than any of us had ever expected that she would, having organized three times as many things as any person should, before even considering that one of those things is the caretaking and memorial services of her own mother.

It's the planner in my mother whose traits I've inheirited that let me understand that even in the most difficult circumstances, situations don't handle themselves. It's almost amusing in a stupid, cynical and detached way, that the mortuary charges overtime if the service is on Saturday or Monday (this Monday being a federal holiday). They don't perform services at all on Sundays (whether for religious or vocational reasons I'm not certain), and that the city has to certify a death certificate before a memorial service can take place. It may be the case that the city will not perform this task over the extended weekend, or that the service might take place any day from tomorrow through to next Tuesday. Both Judy and Joanne have left their lives and vocations to be out here and need to return to Phoenix and Dallas, respectively, as soon as they can. Like everyone else involved, they also need the rest.

Rachel is at this moment scanning photos from Grandma Kitty's life to prepare a vignette slideshow for the memorial service, a task ironically mirrored by the fact that I helped Ammy do the same thing only two weeks ago for her grandparents' 60th wedding anniversary. Janice, an accomplished vocalist, has recorded three solos that we'll be incorporating into the slideshow as well.

I'm coming to terms with the ineffable nature of the universe, the awareness that planning is so often a fiction, and that still waters are a true blessing, those times when something as ethereal as a plan, a mere intention, can dictate the course of events. Sometimes the waters are calm long enough that you forget that it's simply an aberrance, and that the true nature of the world is chaos. Your plans will always have an impact on the greater whole, but in the end the outcome is just an interference pattern of hills and valleys, bearing little if any resemblance to your intention.

This morning, shortly after midnight as it is, I'm postponing grief. I'm planning through chaos much as a pilot flies through turbulence, both over- and under-compensating, buffeted by invisible forces beyond my control, by the knowledge that this, too, shall pass, and the awareness that even unstable systems reach points of equilibrium, of calm waters, however distant or brief they may be.

Thanks for listening.

Comments?

Sorry for the silent treatment for the past several days. Rachel and I have been in Los Angeles, where my grandmother's been very sick and we've been helping watch over her at the hospital, giving love and encouragement. I'll write up more later, but at the moment it's after midnight and I need to go to bed. Driving back up the state to come back home tomorrow, and back to work on Wednesday.

Comments?

Two by two we sallied forth, Karen and Crystal to the British Isles nearly two weeks ago, Ammy and Rick to Washington and Western Canada last week, and tonight Rachel and I fly off to the City of Sin (to meet up with my mom and sister). We're all coming home within about a day of each other though, pringing plenty of photographic evidence with us.

This is the first in a whole bunch of quick trips over the next couple months. Southwest is our friend in the skies.

Comments?

Updating last week's post where I wondered what would happen if traffic rules were relaxed in the US as they are in China, here's a counterpoint example in the form of a video of looser traffic regs in Bangkok (wmv file).

If this doesn't promote alternative transportation, I don't know what would.

Comments?

It's one thing to find someone cute in Trader Joe's or the subway, and wish you'd had the guts to go beyond eye contact, but it's quite another to spend more than a third of your life following someone around the world. (Probably fake. God I hope so.)

Comments?

What if traffic lights disappeared? What if bikes, pedestrians and cars had equal rights on the road? It turns out, at least in one case study in China, that there are less accidents[*].

What's the catch? The drivers have to think. Oh well.

* Sorry for the Salon Magazine link. They'll want you to watch an ad for a day of 'premium access' to read the article. Actually, I went ahead and bought the 1 year subscription last month and I really enjoy it. I can't think of another news site I pay to access, aside from the occasional Slashdot donation.

That said, it would be pretty revolutionary if I could, as part of my subscription, link to an article and get a quota of registration-free clickthroughs, so the first 500 people could read the article via my special URL without having to watch an ad.

Hmmm... I'll have to think about that one some more...

Comments?

A photologue of a Japanese student's 1996 visit to North Korea.

Cherry blossoms were so beautiful,
but they only doubled our confusion.

Comments?

No, it wasn't a sponsored event or anything, but the weather's beautiful, Rachel was an angel a few weeks ago and got my bike tuned up, and I was craving some exercise, so I took my bicycle to work today.

It's only 3 miles to work, and is mostly a straight-shot up Shoreline. In a testament to alternative transportation, Mountain View has plenty of bicycle lanes [1.9mb PDF], including lanes on every street on my shortest route.

Rachel saw me off, and less than 20 minutes later I was at work, feeling totally energized. Woo-hoo! This is definitely going to become a regular thing.

Comments?

First I stop posting but everyone keeps commenting, now I start posting again and everyone's all hushy, even though more of you are reading than ever!

In Malibu for the weekend for my Uncle Alan's birthday, back tomorrow. I love airplanes.

Comments?

Heya, sorry for the lack of posting. Google's annual ski trip was Thursday and Friday, and Trisha, Benjy, Karen, Crystal, Rachel and I all went to my Uncle's place on the North Shore for Friday through Sunday.

Between us we went snowboarding, skiing, sledding, hiking, and more, and all told we had a really good time. I'm certain that photos will ensue soon.

We took the Prius up to Tahoe, despite my fears of snow that would require me to shackle my new baby in chains. As it turned out, we got through Donner Pass yesterday when chains were still imminent, but not required. It was a real joy to drive the 80 miles from the peak of Donner Pass to Sacramento on a single gallon of gas, the fuel economy graph maxing out at 99.9 MPG for most of the downhill ride.

Thanks to the Superbowl we made better time into the Bay Area than one could reasonably expect on a Sunday afternoon, but I forgot to have Tivo record it. While we missed almost all of the game itself, thanks to my media-equipped friends I got to see the Timberlake/Jackson incident ('wardrobe malfunction' my ass (warning: NSFW)).

Thankfully, we got to watch the last 10 minutes of the game, which were the most exciting by all accounts. It sounds like even the ads mostly sucked, though I was glad to see the Pepsi-iTunes ad hosted at Apple.

Now it's Monday again, start of another week. This week looks to be pretty dance-heavy, with hip-hop class on Wednesday, our last Waltz class (Redowa!) on Thursday, and Friday Night Waltz the day after that.

And, of course, tons to do here where, once again, I'm thankful to have the best job in the world.

Comments?

Okay, the Clif's Notes version of my last five days (take two).

Thursday I was signed up to go to a philanthropic luncheon and in the evening join up with Ammy and Karen to see War Daddy, the play that Rachel was stage managing at the Zeum.

Midday Wednesday I knew that things would get too busy so I bowed out of the luncheon and had to postpone going to the play until this weekend. It turned out it was a good thing that I cancelled because I ended up staying at work all day and all night on thursday, not coming home at all, and grabbing a quick 90 minutes of sleep in a coworker's office. First time pulling an all-nighter at Google, and hopefully not a frequent occurance.

Incidentally, we're moving offices this weekend, and cardboard boxes and stickers were passed around earlier in the week. Anyhow, I worked pretty much solid until 5pm when I found out that 'be packed by the time you leave for the weekend' actually meant 'be packed by 6 when the movers start moving' (my fault, didn't read the faq closely enough). So, by 6:15 my GoogleLife is in boxes and stickered, and I'm out the door.

I was supposed to go to Liz's birthday/housewarming party on Friday night, but running on only 90 minutes sleep in the previous 40 hours, I knew I wasn't fit to drive the 140 miles to Sacramento, especially when I knew I'd have to drive back that evening to be ready to go to the Big Game (Cal vs. Stanford) on Saturday morning. So I went home and tried to sleep for about an hour before waking up to answer the phone.

After that I didn't get back to bed until after midnight, my circadian rhythms in direct opposition to my serotonin levels, making everything feel a little distant. Friday Night Waltz was at the same time, and 100 miles closer, but I didn't even think of going. Home was my final destination for the night.

Saturday morning Karen and I made an easy journey to Stanford, thanks to Rachel dropping us off on the way to work. Good thing to, since this is the first Stanford Big Game in decades without CalTrain access, since they've shut the train down on weekends for the last year and a half and didn't change the schedule for the event. (This is stupid because the way most public transit agencies increase ridership is when they introduce new potential riders to the system when they do one-off events like games and concerts. If you only run on weekdays, then only those people who use your train for commuting find out about your train. Chicken, I'd like you to meet egg.) Anyhow, Palo Alto was a resultant mess that we got to glide through relatively unscathed.

The game was a lot of fun. Both teams played badly at first, but it was nice to come from behind and pound the other team. This was also the first time I'd actually gone to a Big Game as a bona-fide alumnus. Karen wrote up a bit more on the game and the aftermath.

Karen dropped me off at the Zeum at 7:27pm for a 7:30pm curtain and I'm so glad I made it on time, though I'm so sorry that my own planning ended up making Karen sick so that she couldn't go. The show didn't actually start for another 10 minutes or so, so I even got to catch my breath.

Watching theatre alone is such a different experience for me than watching in a group. Somehow experiencing art with others, I feel that I have to immediately encapsulate my feelings and opinions into communicable nuggets, like I'm writing an essay, or at least that I have to have formed an opinion by the time the curtain falls. Seeing a play on my own I feel freer to experience it, rather than judge it.

While experiencing the play I realized a few things about my own approach to creative endeavors. I don't like anything I make to go out into the world until it's perfect. I realized on Saturday that this isn't because I'm so much a perfectionist, as it is that the kinds of art I produce are ones that stay up for a while, where imperfections are more glaring, and where the work is such an intentional act that improvisation is almost impossible. The musician can change a riff on the fly, or a painter can be very free with their brush, knowing both that the randomness and carefree effect can boost the work, and that the act itself is quick. Inspiration does play a large role in web design, but improvisation is harder to pull off, since every effect on the page is time-consuming enough to be deliberate by nature, and the best that one can hope for is for carefree inspiration that they can hold on to while transforming it into code.

Even then, if you make tools that people will use thousands of times, utility has to take a front seat to free-expression, and while aesthetics are vital, possibly even more important than in the more ephemeral disciplines of the performing arts, they're there to indicate the piece's function, or to create an emotional space to frame the work in.

It's probably a good thing I don't go to plays alone very often.

But even so, all that said, this is one of the reasons I so enjoyed riding Amtrak to and from Yahoo, more than a year ago. Setting myself to start writing in Oakland and to have a finished piece by Santa Clara, I started to see writing as an impromptu performance art, instead of a crafted and re-crafted tailored work to be scrutinized. I don't expect anyone to read what I write twice, or to write about what I write.

Back to my weekend, I enjoyed the play. I was impressed by many of the youth actors, though I felt that the playwriting lacked significant differentiation in most of the characters' dialogue. I love the Zeum's theater. It's just intimate enough to saddle the line between a performance to the audience and a performance with the audience. And of course it was technically great. After all, it had a great stage manager. :-)

Today was a day of relative sloth. There were many small things that needed to be done around the house, and Rachel, angel that she is, got the day started for us with omelettes in bed! Add on my organizing and archiving files off my powerbook before installing OS X 10.3, catching up on a little TV, a little email, and a little websurfing, and suddenly it's after midnight and I'm wondering where the day went.

In the morning I'm heading over to the new office to unpack my boxes and set up the computer, find out whether the new office has a bathroom closer than my old cube's 79 paces. We're right next to the kitchen area, which means far too many snacks in far too close proximity. Virtually nothing will get accomplished Monday, what with everyone unpacking, learning the lay of things, and with so many of us making ready for early Thanksgivings.

Rachel and I are flying out tomorrow night for Los Angeles where we'll stay a night before flying to Kauai with the greater family for Thanksgiving in Hawaii. It'll be nice to get away.

For the past few weeks I've been feeling a little growing ennui, especially when I'm alone. I don't know if I'm experiencing it more now, or if I'm just noticing it more now, but as I sit at home when Rachel's off shopping, visiting Nym, or off running a show, I sometimes compare the mental me to the person I'd expect I'd be and I seem muted. I'm not looking for sympathy, but I feel that acknowledging this alteration is probably an important step in changing it, and so I put it here to pin this acknowledgement down.

So yeah, Tomorrow night is LA, then Kauai, then back to LA and back here on an unspecified flight.

Overall, life is very, very good. Trouble is, I can usually identify problems and fix them when things aren't going their best. Right now though, I feel like fixing the problem involves letting go of something I don't yet want to let go of, because I feel like if I loose my grip I'll forget what it was like to hold on to it.

I'm sorry if this doesn't make any sense to newer readers, or even those who have been here for a while. Maybe it makes a lot of sense. I don't really know. I'm just looking forward to Thanksgiving and Christmas. I have so much to be thankful for, and though I may have less now, I value it so much more.

Anyhow, next week Rachel starts work on her next gig, a production of the Santaland Diaries, I have my company party, we might get to go to Dickens Fair, and then the next week I'll be getting my new car, and then it's only a few more weeks to Christmas.

And, as I've thought every Sunday night since I came back to the Bay Area three months ago, I know I'm lucky when I remember that tomorrow's Monday and I need to go to work, and it fills me with excitement.

I hope y'all had a good weekend.

Comments?

So as I wrote and was wondering about where my car was in the space-time continuum (or rather, the part of the ST continuum that's closest to me in time), it was indeed chugging across the Atlantic ocean. It's built. Complete. It's coming to America.

December 8th (+- a few days) is the day! It'll be so hard getting it on a Monday when I'll have to wait all week to just drive and drive. But then maybe I can take it to Plough.

Which brings me to Mutant, my beloved Honda Civic. I've got to sell her, much as I love her. Bobbi the dashboard hula dancer is optional, but I hope they both find a good home.

And the license plate. I still need to replace the front plate but then I need to decide whether to keep the plate with Mutant (because what's a mutant without a "GRR ARG"?) and get a new personalized plate for the Prius, because my Prius is red, and not as mutant-like or enemy-ish.

What plate might I get instead? Well, 'GRR ARG' was pretty obscure for the uninitiated, but it was at least parsable as a phrase. My leading frontrunner for personalized Prius plates is '10E100'.

Too geeky? Is too geeky better in this case?

Comments?

So after test driving the Prius, two Outbacks, and a Lexus RX330 I've opted for the Prius. I actually put my deposit down two weeks before the car came out, with the intention of having it refunded if I decided to go another way.

Well I've done my research and my test driving, and I'm definitely on the Prius bandwagon. Now I have a promise from my dealership that I'll make it to the top of the waiting list before Christmas, and perhaps a lot earlier.

Now I'm wondering where my car is. I don't mean 'why isn't it here yet' but rather I'm fantasizing about where it is right now. Is it on a barge chugging across the PAcific, just north of Hawaii on its way from the Japanese factory? Is it on the assembly line right now being crafted for me? Is the stereo being assembled, and the aluminum being smelted in preparation for rolling into sheets that will eventually become my doors?

I don't have it yet, but it exists, in some for that will inexorably, like chaos in reverse, form itself into a car.

My car.

Comments?

Heya! I went to Las Vegas last weekend with Mom and Susie. We had a great time, I saw 'O' for the second time in three months (it really is the best show ever) and after being down $260 and up $360 I ended up down $60. Not too bad, considering the amount of time I spent at the tables.

Mom taught Susie and I pinochle. This is important because it was the game that my Dad, Uncle, and Grandfather would play whenever they got together. 'The three beards' we called them (even after Dad shaved his off!) and nobody else ever played. Now that the threesome has been broken up, Steve has taken up playing, and Mom taught it to Susie and I so now we have another three-person game to bond with. Cribbage works with three players, but is really made for two, or to a lesser extent, four.

Working late tonight, and will be coming in early tomorrow, but I wanted to pop my head in and say hi. On the flight back from Vegas I remembered just how fast my mind works when I'm confined to a small chair, reading an intelligent book, listening to good music. I have tons of ideas on deck now, including one I want to work into an article for Salon or the New Yorker, and another that I'd like to turn into a book.

Where are all those hours that used to be in my days?

Comments?

Okay, I should post more but, for the first time in a year, the time attached to this post is the actual local time right now (about 1:52am) instead of offset by 3 hours because I was on the East coast.

Ammy and I rolled in to Mountain View today just before sundown (funnily enough, most people had it in their heads that we weren't coming in 'till tomorrow) and I promptly took off for San Leandro for a celebratory dinner with Karen and Crystal in honor of their getting the keys for their new house! After getting the tour (the first tour, I'm so honored) all my driving caught up to me and I drove(!) back south to Ammy and Rick's, where I've spent the last two hours looking at apartment listings, balancing monthly rent for comfort, and unsure where the equilibrium will be found, but I have a slew of places to drive by tomorrow (err, today), pretty much all in Mountain View (can we say 'walk to the Googleplex'?) and they tend to center to a few specific neighborhoods, so I'm sure I'll end up driving or walking around those neighborhoods to find places for rent that didn't make it to the Merc's classifieds or Craigslist.

Sunday may involve dancing but definitely involves helping the Danger Twins paint their new Chateau (Mmm... 'Chateau'...).

And of course Monday is the first day of the rest of my life. Go Google!

Comments?

One petrified forest, painted desert, meteor crater, sedona dinner, grand canyon sunset, and a hoover dam later, we're in Vegas! We met Rick at the hotel lobby, after we were delayed five minutes by a completely unjustified police pullover (and yes, we got off scott free because my registration is in fact valid).

Tonight is Zumanity, but first there's swimming. It's over 100 degrees and drizzley. I'm gonna immerse myself in water.

Maybe tomorrow I'll try to blog from something other than my sidekick. Taa for now!

Comments?

While I've been busy driving and snapping pictures, Ammy's been doing some proper blogging. For those who want details about the hinted-at moving horror story, or details in to what we've been doing since, read Ammy's travelogue of the trip so far.

If you leave comments here, we'll both get them. Happier trails ahead!

Comments?

Hey from Albuquerque, where so far we have made three rights and a U-turn, but no left turns. We'll have to make a point of that.

We're at Napoli Coffee, just a few blocks off Interstate 40, where they have free wireless, and really comfy chairs! Oh god, comfy chairs...

Driving's been going great. Yesterday we had our first really long leg of driving, leaving Little Rock in the morning, driving through Oklahoma and into the Texas panhandle before stopping at Amarillo, Texas. It didn't even seem like that long of a day, despite Oklahoma City's sweltering heat and humidity.

Being the pit stop that this is, I don't have time to craft a real journal entry of the trip so far, but I'm attaching a bunch of photos I've taken along the way.

I hope all is well with everyone else. Our plan for now is to make it to the Petrified Forest and stop there, see it in the morning, visit the Meteor Crater 40 miles east of Flagstaff, Arizona, then it's a little up in the air, so long as we make it to the South Rim of the Grand Canyon the following morning (Monday), where we'll spend the day and the night, then head from there to Las Vegas Tuesday morning, pick up Rick at the airport, check in to the MGM Grand, see Zumanity Tuesday evening, and "O" on Wednesday evening. Thursday morning Rick flies home and Ammy and I drive to Los Angeles to spend an evening with my family, then drive up to the SF Bay on Friday morning and afternoon!

Whew! Well, by miles we're well over halfway, and the latter part of the trip should be a little more pampering (though Hot Springs, Arkansas was a nice diversion).

For those who need to reach us, our cells should be a little more friendly now that Oklahoma and Texas are past, though I'm sure the Southwest has its fill of dead zones in the desert.

Oh yeah, Road Trip Photos.

Click for More!

Whew! That's a lot of work for one cafe stop. I think Ammy's giving me some content to post, so you may have some reading to go with the pictures.

Talk to you all soon! Oh, by the way, when you leave comments, I get them in my Sidekick inbox, and we read them from the road. Keep 'em coming!

Comments?

Wow, the day is here. I can't do it justince in prose, while simultaneously finishing packing (thank god for Rachel and Ammy and their help!!!)

With the help of the Sidekick Ammy and I may be able to post some from the road. I'm sure there will be more stories to tell, not to mention Alaska stories and pictures to post.

The AirPort and DSL router are the last things to be packed, and it's about that time.

I'll be checking in soon!!!

Next stop: Nashville

Comments?

Pit stop in an internet cafe in Juneau to check email. No blog post today, but Rachel and I have some great pictures to process and post in the next few days.

In the meantime: What's going on in your life? I love a good discussion.

Comments?

[all times Pacific, regardless of geographic location]

Wednesday, July 30

11pm: Finish packing for weeklong trip. Set three alarms (Alarm clock, watch, and palm) for wakeup at 12:15am (75 minutes). Rachel and I go to sleep.

Thursday, July 31

12:05am: Woken up by call on cellphone. Automated Orbitz flight status update. Flight is on schedule for 3am (6am Eastern) departure.

12:15am: Alarm clock goes off. I get up and disarm watch alarm. I pick up the palm just as it goes off. I press a button to stop the din, then go to the bathroom. While I'm occupied, the palm goes off again (I'd inadvertantly 'snoozed' it) and Rachel gets up to turn it off.

1:30am: Packed, showered, and dressed, we head out the door to Pittsburgh International Airport.

2:04am: Arrive at Extended Parking, take bags to shuttle stop and wait for terminal shuttle.

2:10am: Terminal shuttle, having picked us up, drops us off at the terminal.

2:16am: Checked in for flight, taking checked bags for security inspection. The line is a good 20 minutes long, plus unknown time for the 'regular' security screening (metal detectors, x-ray machine, etc.)

2:22am: TSA inspector inexplicably plucks us out of the middle of the line for inspection.

2:30am: Inspection done, we proceed to security checkpoint.

2:42am: Done with security checkpoint, taking Bombardier subway to gates.

2:46am: Rachel's buying a few breakfasty things for us at Seattle's Best. I run to gate to make sure everything's okay.

2:54am: All is well, we board the plane to Atlanta with minutes to spare.

3:07am: In the aircraft, we're informed that maintenance has not completed their routine work, and we'll be a little bit longer on the tarmac.

3:40am: We take off 40 minutes late. By this schedule we'll have 8 minutes to make our connecting flight to San Francisco in Atlanta, including deplaning time.

4:43am: Flight attendants read off connecting gates. Our flight connection is at gate B-4 and we're coming in at gate B-12.

5:11am: Making up a few minutes in flight, our plane pulls up to the gate with 12 minutes for us to make our connection. Flight attendants ask passengers to let those with connections off first. Atlanta is a Delta hub. Half the plane deplanes. We're in the far rear corner.

5:16am: Off the plane, we start walking to gate B-4, with time to spare. On the way we check out the departures board and discover our flight is departing from gate B-34, not B-4, and is at the other end of the 1/2 mile terminal. Luggage-jogging ensues.

5:23am: Board SF flight with two minutes to spare.

10:17am: Land in San Francisco, 11 minutes early. Quickly get bags from baggage claim, highly impressed that they made the connection in Atlanta. Go to Alaska airlines ticket counter as planned to see if we can check bags 7 hours in advance. Luckily, Alaska is in Terminal 1, same as Delta.

10:23am: No joy. Check in opens 4 hours prior to departure.

11:16am: Karen picks Rachel and me up from the airport. We drive to Mountain View.

11:50am: Arrive at first apartment complex. Manager says she already has an application in for the apartment, and won't show it until that one pans out or doesn't, by 5pm today. I explain that I'll be gone by then, and that I'd like to see it, but am fine holding off applying until the other application doesn't go through. She says look around the complex, and she'll find us in 10 minutes. Karen, Rachel and I look around. We'er unenthused, and note that loud children live on either side of the relatively drab townhouse unit. We leave and I wave to the manager on our way out.

12:14pm: Driving around Mountain View, looking at (and for) for rent signs, heading toward Palo Alto Hobee's.

12:25pm: Arrive at Palo Alto Hobee's. Meet up with Ammy, Fred, Dawn, and Christyn. A little later Paul joins us, having gone to the wrong Hobee's. Merry lunch ensues. Stanford 'Cardinal' Omlette for me. Naturally I chose the blueberry coffee cake.

1:54pm: Done eating, paing, hugging, Karen, Rachel, and I head back into the car to go to the next apartment, this one a half mile away in Menlo Park.

2:01pm: Arrive at apartment. Manager shows us around. I'm completely unenthused.

2:14pm: While we're gassing up Karen's car, the manager of the 3rd place calls to confirm our 3pm time. I ask if we can move it up since we're nearby and ready. We agree to meet a little after 2:30.

2:30pm: After a little trouble finding Laurel St., we arrive at the apartment. Shortly afterwards the manager arrives and shows us this 2br bottom unit will hardwood floors throughout. It's very nice but does'nt hit me right. Maybe it's the large windows of a front bottom unit on a wide street, but I don't feel that I could be myself there, and that theft could be a factor. Also, I'm not sure I want to live in Menlo Park, when Mountain View is also charming, and so very close to work. Clearly, more hunting needs to be done, despite the beautiful oak tree outside the unit.

2:53pm: We leave for SFO.

3:21pm: Arrive at SFO, say farewells to Karen, go in and check in for our flight to Vancouver.

3:29pm: Selected for special screening, Rachel and I submit to full-body wanding and bag checks.

3:43pm: Cheese tortellini with Alfredo sauce was the perfect thing to revitalize catatonic Kevin and Rachel.

5:36pm: Board plane for Vancouver.

5:50pm: Plane takes off on schedule. We nap a bit, then watch successively larger snow-capped mountains drift by (Shasta, Hood, Ranier, etc.).

7:58pm: Land in Vancouver, BC on schedule.

8:34pm: Complete Immigration

8:42pm: Get bags from baggage claim. Meet Ben outside.

9:13pm: Go by hotel to check bags.

9:14pm: Ben gives a personalized driving tour of the Greater Vancouver Area from his convertable.

10:39pm: Stop for extremely unusual Japanese food from an extremely unusual Japanese restaurant. Amazingly delicious.

11:21pm: Drive a bit more and get gelato. Experienced amazingly high-fidelity Grapefruit gelato.

11:48pm: Arrive back at hotel, say goodbyes to Ben, check in, get bags sent up to room.

Friday, August 1:

12:04am: Pull out powerbook and start logging last 24 hours.

12:08am: Rachel goes to sleep.

12:20am: Realize that the new month has started and I forgot to say 'Rabbit, Rabbit'

12:21am: Realize that I haven't said anything out loud in the last 21 minutes, and can still say "Rabbit, rabbit." Do so.

12:23am: Finish writing up this post.

One day, nearly 4500 miles of travel, with stops in all four quadrants of North America.

And tomorrow we start our 7 day cruise up the Alaskan coastline.

Goodnight y'all.

Comments?

So suddenly the five weeks I had to complete grad school has vaporized to one, two weeks spent in Los Angeles with family, one week back now, and leaving one week early to spend more much-needed time with family.

My life is suddenly thrown into fast-forward, a mixed blessing of keeping busy and of having to work fast enough to stay on my own life's train.

Within the next week I have a bunch of work do do on my masters project, and my independent study project, and I need to pack up my apartment to be ready for movers to come and take it all in their van.

Late next week Rachel and I head to Vancouver, with a 7 hour layover in San Francisco, where we can spend a little time with friends, then a week with family, then flying home from Anchorage by way of a redeye to Atlanta (can you believe there's a plane that goes from Anchorage to Atlanta?) where we'll meet Ammy and hop on another plane to complete the return to Pittsburgh. Then it's two days in Pittsburgh before Ammy and I drive off on a 12 day road trip back to San Francisco, with stops in Los Angeles, Vegas and the Grand Canyon for certain (not in that order), and a bunch of other destinations to be finalized, but likely including Mammoth Caves, Mesa Verde, and the Painted Desert.

Two days later is my first day at Google. Meanwhile I'll be staying with Ammy and Rick for a few weeks (or less) while I find an apartment and tell the movers where to appear with my stuff.

All-told I'll be living in six different environments over the next six weeks. Maybe my internal bolstering preparing for once again changing my total environment has helped a bit in dealing with the unexpected change in my life. I knew I'd be off-kilter, and so perhaps I'm a little more prepared emotionally, though just enough to keep standing, not enough to absorb the blow.

So much to do, and so little time. I need to compartmentalize. I need to make sure that when I leave next Thursday that school is checked off. I need to make sure that when I leave on the road trip, Pittsburgh is checked of. (I mean materially, not personally. Those I love here in the 'burgh will be with me for a long, long time, and do not have little boxes next to their avatars in my mind).

The last 10% is always the hardest.

Here we go!

Comments?

Art will come later.

My father, David Henry Fox, passed away unexpectedly this morning. I'm going out to Los Angeles tomorrow morning (everything's completely booked tonight) and will be out there for a while. Further bulletins will definitely follow, but I probably won't be as responsive as usual. I should have email access while I'm out there.

Thanks. There's so much more that I want to say about my father, about my love for him, about a thousand things, but I can't right now. It will come later.

I love you, Dad.

Comments?

A new fast moving sidewalk is undergoing field trials in Paris. It transports walkers at 9kph (5.5mph), about twice as fast as existing moving sidewalks.

Larry Niven wrote a lot about what he called 'slidewalks.' He envisioned as many as 10 sliding floor tracks edge to edge next to each other, with each one to the left moving a few mph faster than its neighbor. That way someone could step from a stop onto the first 3mph moving sidewalk, then make one more 3mph faster transition, stepping to the next one, until they were going 30mph (or faster) in the 'fast lane', emulating how multi-lane freeways work. People could get on and off wherever they chose, and there would never be a situation where someone would accidentally accelerate or decelerate drastically.

The Paris system is much more like a traditional moving sidewalk, but uses a 'ramp up' section to accelerate passengers to the fast speed, and a ramp-down at the end to bring them to a halt. the animation provided in the article does a great job of showing how this works. It's more sophisticated than just a shorter sidewalk of intermediate speed.

It'll be interesting to see where this goes. Personally, I still see the biggest problem being the point-to-point nature of these sidewalks, making them useful for simple high-traffic routes, but not so useful for, say, getting from one gate to another in an airport, or navigating a city, because with the current design you'd have to get on and off the system at every possible stop.

Comments?

After a whirlwind weekend and nearly 1,000 miles on the road, Rachel and I got back late last night. This post is just an 'I'm alive' ping, and to get "Feast or Famine" Ammy off my back. ("Sure is a lot of beige, Kevin") Pbbth. ;-)

Weekend pictures are coming soon, but first I have school stuff and 390 emails to catch up on.

Comments?

Rachel and I are heading up to Bloomfield, New York tomorrow (near Rochester) to visit her parents. We'll be hanging out for a few days, maybe helping out in their new restaurant, and generally doing the things there are to do up there, including hiking to the waterfalls, or possibly bike riding along the Erie canal.

Sunday we're heading back south, but jagging right at Lake Erie, staying the night in Sandusky, Ohio, and getting up early Monday morning to take on Cedar Point, home of the tallest (420ft), fastest (120mph) roller coaster on the planet, the Dragster. [or, um, not. still, we won't be hurting, considering the 15 other thrill coasters they have at the park].

I don't know how much I'll be posting this weekend, but I'll try to take pictures. I hope everyone has a great weekend! Beat the heat any way you can!

Comments?

I got a really interesting piece of mail the other day, offering a kind of opt-out I hadn't seen before.

Though I've been in Pittsburgh for the last year, I still have my FasTrak transponder to pay my Bay Area bridge tolls, and so they still send me monthly statements, politely informing me that I haven't actually crossed any SF bridges since the last statement. This time though, they wrote to tell me about a new service that I'd be helping build, just by driving around.

511.org, run by the Metropolitan Transportation Commission, is a realtime traffic information aggregator, to help drivers estimate how long a given trip will take, accounting for realtime traffic conditions.

The idea isn't new. Seattle has a similar system, that uses inductive loops built in to the highway to measure traffic speeds, and facilitates some nifty gadgets for using that information. The Bay Area currently uses a system of video cameras, along with some very slick computer vision software (nifty video) developed by my former artificial intelligence professor at Berkeley, to video a stretch of highway, count the cars that pass by, and measure their speed. Nevertheless, I'm guessing FasTrak readers are cheap, and allow for unique identification of cars, so you can put up more datapoints quickly and easily (build them into the overpasses, probably) and understand not just how fast traffic is moving at a given point, but know how fast it's moving between those points, since you know how long it takes a particular vehicle to go from point A to point B.

As I was reading this, thinking "nifty!" I noticed the static-proof bag that came along with the letter. At first I assumed it was for sending my current transponder back to trade in for a new one, better equipped to work with their system (a traditional 'opt-in' service). As I read on, understanding that I didn't have to do anything for the system to work, I thought it was for sending my transponder back if I wanted one that wouldn't work with their tracking system, and would only pay tolls (a traditional 'opt-out' system).

Despite their absolute assurance that "no personal information will be collected or stored," and that they will "never know the location of any particular vehicle or person" or "collect information on individual driving patterns" I understand that many people value their privacy too much. After all, nothing in those platitudes prevents the highway patrol from knowing that there are one or more vehicles traveling above the speed limit, and where they are, so they could then be found and identified.

Still, as much as I value the concept of privacy, I personally don't care about whether they can see how fast I'm going, and I'm trusting (as I am with TiVo) that it won't turn out badly.

So what about the anti-static bag? "If you prefer not to participate in this program, but still want the convenience of using FasTrak, place your toll tag in the enclosed Mylar bag after you have passed through the toll plaza; then it cannot be detected by the roadside readers. To function at the toll plazas, the toll tag must be removed from the Mylar bag." Thus it's an 'opt-out' system, but of a physical nature. at least when you're opting out, you know you're actually opting out, and aren't just trusting the service to respect your wishes (unless the bag's a fake, of course).

It's like the Hokey-Pokey. Opt-in, Opt-out, Opt-in, then out. that's what it's all about!

Comments?

Last weekend Rachel and I ventured across Pennsylvania to attend a wedding where, incidentally, Rachel was the Maid of Honor. We left early Friday morning with a map and a timetable in hand.

Trying to make the most of my time left in the strange and foreign land known as Pennsylvania, I couldn't pass up the chance to drop in on the Pennsylvania Dutch, and so we planned a 30 mile detour just past Lancaster and deep in to the heart of Amish and Mennonite culture. In this case, a rural town called 'Bird-in-Hand'.

At the urging of the buggy company's web site, www.amishbuggyrides.com, we took the "quickest, then most scenic way" in to town, in defiance of Yahoo Maps's directions. It's a bit of a quandary, when you think about it: Who knows more about the optimal route? The computer that warns you that roads it tells you to travel on might not even exist, or the Amish who are forbidden to drive cars and haven't travelled more than 15 miles from their birthplace? In this case, Yahoo had the direct route right, though the way we took may have been a bit more scenic.

We were already behind our tight schedule that would bring us to Reading (well, Hiedelberg, but who's counting?) in time for wedding rehearsal prep (involving the bride, her mother, bridesmaids, and a distinct absence of moi). Still, we made it, and the Buggy Ride bird was now in our hands, and we weren't going to let it go. Thankfully there was no line, just a buggy, a horse, and a driver (footnote 1). In 10 minutes we were underway. With a family of four fellow travellers sharing our buggy, I sat right up front on a small wooden footstool, right behind the horse. Unfortunately, the previous sentence isn't the only one that uses both the words 'horse', 'behind', and 'stool', but seeing as this sentence fulfills that prophecy, I don't have to bring it up later, but it happened, and at a trot, no less.

The first bit of the ride was along the highway, in the 'buggy lane'. I was impressed that the horse looked both ways before merging in to traffic, a good thing since it turns out that because horses aren't machines, there's no license or age required to operate such a beastie on the open road. We quickly turned off the main road on to a smaller road, where our guide pointed out the ways to tell whether a given house was occupied by Amish (dark-curtained, unadorned windows, no wires leading in to the house, often simple clothes on the washline) or by others. We passed a carpenter's studio with a sign declaring that he would be happy to make custom furniture to order. A few moments later we were passed by a large tour bus. I got a momentary insight in to the Amish lifestyle as twenty tourists crowded to the windows and pointed at us, the presumptive Amish they had come to see through their tinted panes.

It wasn't too much further when we pulled on to a dirt road, heading towards barns and silos. It turns out that this was the first day in a month that they'd been able to take this path, as the earlier rains had made the path too muddy for the cart's narrow wheels. We drove between fields, seeing a horse-driven plow team here, a person tending to a garden there.

Amish look Amish all the time.

The average Amish family has about 10 children, which is why every day is laundry day. It also explains their culture's survival. the Amish culture has just about zero population growth, since so many of the kids leave the farm.

Driving past a barn and scooter (Amish will ride push-scooters, but not bicycles), we came upon three girls working in the family garden. they were probably 20, 14, and 3 years old. When the buggy came, the middle girl came out and offered us chocolate chip cookies, three for a dollar.

Amish know their cookies.

We went on our way, and continued between fields, with silos in the distance, and grazing cows near the path. Trundling by the cows, I wondered: Does our horse know he's a horse? Does he look down on the lazy fat cows as he works for his daily fare, or does he lament his position? Do the cows laugh at him? Is there a parallel to be found here between the Amish and wider civilization? Are we the cows?

Amish Factoid Time:

• Amish don't work on Sundays. Sunday is God's day.
• Weddings always happen in October and November, when they interfere the least with tending the land.
• An Amish man shaves until he is married, then he grows a full beard, but never a mustache.
• Weddings are always held on Tuesdays and Thursdays. It takes a full day to prepare for a wedding, and a full day to clean after a wedding, so mon-TUES-wed and wed-THURS-fri is the only way to ensure that nobody misses a wedding while preparing for another.
• After the wedding, Amish newlyweds go door to door to collect their wedding gifts.
• Amish aren't permitted to drive cars, but can be passengers.
• Those Amish who require phones for their business keep the phone in the shed, a fair distance from the house.

I forgot to ask if the Amish vote.

Coming back to the terminus after our 30-minute ride, we saw a field trip of 20 kids in identical blue t-shirts. they were all going buggying. We asked how they'd handle them all, and sure enough a long buggy with lengthwise benches emerged to the kids delight.

A quick gift shop pit stop later and we were on our way to the rehearsal, plus a jar of blueberry syrup and a slab of rocky road fudge.

Amish Mennonites know their fudge. (Know the difference between Amish and Mennonites? Check the FAQ!) Actually, truth to tell, we thought they knew their fudge, and we wouldn't know any better for another two days, but that's another day, and another story.

Footnote 1: Driver is an interesting term. I was having a conversation with Ammy a few days ago about words that persist in our culture, after the literal meaning of the word has been surpassed by technology. Her example was an article about TiVo where it talked about taping shows, as if TiVo has anything to do with tape. I tried to think of others, but it's not easy to do off the cuff. 'Driver' is definitely such a word, as it derived [npi] from the person who 'drives' the horses forward. (go back up)

Comments?

Going to the other side of Pennsylvania for a few days for a wedding. We're going to go on an Amish Buggy Ride along the way.

Have a great weekend everyone!

Comments?

Here it is, another Wednesday night, another return from Parts West. It was weird being at the Plough on Monday, seeing friends that I saw last week, yet realizing that I don't have plans to come back before August, so the casual goodbyes really were 'goodbye for another quarter.'

It truly amazes me how easily I slide from one world to another right now. I used to feel that each place that had sentimental meaning to me also had the power to alter me when I went there, so there was 'Los Angeles Kevin' and 'Berkeley Kevin' and so forth. Now that I've been traveling so much, it's just me, and I carry my identity wherever I go.

For the most part, anyhow. I still seem to have layers that get highlighted more in specific environments. I'm identity tiramisu.

Comments?

Los Angeles, Puerto Vallarta, Mazatlan, Cabo San Lucas, and the Carnival Cruise ship Elation.

Captions and stories for some pictures to follow later. Right now, just the images. Sorry for the huge index page!

Comments?

Heya, net access on the ship is thin and pricy, so I couldn't pre-compose an entry. For now, just checking in to say that Karen and I are having a great time. Tomorrow we reach Puerto Vallarta where we're going hiking and, among other shopping activities, we have to shop for a new AC adapter for my powerbook. Seems that's the one thing I left at my mom's place. I have homework due on Thursday that I was planning on doing here, but with about 90 minutes of battery left to do several hours of Flash animations, it doesn't seem likely, so it'll be shopping tomorrow, then lots of coding tomorrow night once we put out to sea at 10pm.

I hope everyone's doiong well! I'm sorry I can't send emails out to folks individually, but hopefully it'll suffice to say I miss those I should miss, and then some. I sunburned my ankle yesterday, as a warning of what would happen if I hadn't been so assiduous with the SPF 30 everywhere else.

Okay, time to go for now. I'll check in again soon, and with any luck I'l be posting pictures as well!

Be well,
Kevin

Comments?

As those of you reading my cohort's blog know, the wandering compass needle that is Karen and my vacation has fix'd itself on the seas. This afternoon we set sail on a week-long cruise to Mexico!

We're shipping out on Carnival's Elation, a 'fun boat' that should be pretty different than the more sedate family cruises I've been on with Celebrity, but then this is two people hopping to Mexico, and not 22 people cruising through Alaska or the Mediterranean, so differences already abound.

This is the Trip of Little Planning, and we're looking forward to choosing activities on the spur of the moment. We got a good deal on cruise fare because of the last-minute booking, and we've done a little research on our three destination ports: Cabo San Lucas, Mazatlan, and Puerto Vallarta, but have stopped short of making full plans.

Despite Karen's being the daughter of a Coast Guard captain, and loving boats and the ocean all her life, this is her first cruise, and will be the first time she's ever been on the water out of sight of land.

For my part, this will be the first time in a long time that I will be on the water out of sight of email, as I believe the Elation doesn't have a cybercafe. Nevertheless, we'll both be writing and taking pictures, and it's not inconceivable that blog posts may be made from ports of call.

I've added the ship's itinerary to the calendar in the left hand nav, and you'll notice that upon arriving back in Los Angeles, I'll be jetting off to the CHI2003 conference in Fort Lauderdale. Truly, it is a hard knock life.

In other news, Google got in touch with me this week. On the basis of an interview I had with them last week when two of their product managers came to Pittsburg,h they want to fly me out to San Francisco next month for a full day of interviews. Things are good.

[edited to place a modifier in it's proper position - Fox]

Comments?

I understand this old Chinese curse better now than I ever have. Two weeks ago I was sure that I would be in China right now, with Karen and almost 20 family members and friends of family, but it wasn't to be.

When the news about SARS broke out a week from last Sunday, I was concerned, but not overly so. I was glad that it was still a week until our trip, so that informed analyses would have time to replace sensationalism and we could make an informed choice as to the outcome of our trip.

As the days rolled on, and three cases in Hong Kong became 12, then 50, then 260, I grew more and more concerned. Cases had turned up in Canada, the disease was blossoming in Hanoi, and 12 nations had people with atypical pneumonia, all recent visitors to affected areas, under observation and isolation.

I raised the issue to a few people who were going on the trip, and some were concerned. My cousin, a doctor, assured us that the dangers were minimal, and that if he was taking his one-year-old son along, then it should be clear that in his informed decision there was no substantially increased danger.

Each day I'd check Google News to find out the latest on the virus investigation and spread. On the night before I was supposed to fly to Los Angeles to catch a flight to Tokyo then Beijing the next day, I did a lot of soul searching.

While cases had been cropping out in several areas connected to Hong Kong, the Chinese Ministry of Health claimed that there were no cases in China outside Hong Kong, and released a report about 305 cases (with 5 fatalities) that occurred from November to February in Guangdong province. They claimed that that outbreak was under control, and hadn't spread beyond Guangdong.

Considering that there is more personal traffic between Hong Kong and Beijing and Shanghai than several places with documented cases, it seemed questionable that Mainland China was somehow free from disease.

The New York Times published a piece discussing how infection rates are considered 'state information' and are controlled by the government. In the previous Guangdong outbreak, the government-controlled media was specifically prohibited from broadcasting information about the new disease or its spread. Investigators from the World Health Organization who came to Beijing were not allowed to travel to Guangdong province to conduct their own assessment of the current state of the disease.

...

Backing out of the trip is no small deal. Magnanimously paid for by my uncle, it probably cost about $6,000 per person. Though it sounds like we could get an 80% refund on the last minute cancellations, due to the outbreak and war policies, that's not certain. I had a lot of thinking to do, and family politics, like it or not, would play a major role.

As the infection numbers grew daily, so did my concern. Family members who claimed it was no big deal were still purchasing N95-level face masks for protection on the trip. On Thursday, word came that two people had died of SARS in Beijing. Two cases and two fatalities wouldn't concern me overly much, if not for the knowledge of the extent to which the Ministry attempts to hide this information. Sure enough, it turns out that the doctor in the medical hospital who told the French press about the fatalities was fired the next day.

Speaking with my cousin (doctor) Thursday night, I heard a few rationalizations as to why the disease wasn't a concern: First, the current risk seems to be equivalent to that of driving in China, an admittedly more hazardous activity than driving in the US. Second, the virus appears to require close contact for transmission, and the large majority of documented transmissions were between relatives or to hospital workers. Third, in response to my concern that we'll be in Shanghai for several days after the virus has a chance to go through an additional four or five incubation cycles, I was told that either the virus is non-contagious enough to be avoidable, or it is virulent enough that it will eventually reach all corners of the globe (like the Spanish Flu of 1917) so it doesn't matter whether exposure happens in China or in my home town.

Most of my family had already made a firm decision to go, and they had put their fears to rest, bolstered by these arguments. I didn't make a significant effort to try and persuade others to the validity of my views, since it was clear that I wouldn't be able to convince others to consider alternate plans at this late date, and trying to would likely only make a tense situation worse.

Having heard the arguments as to why SARS is no big deal, I still had significant reservations. Any infectious risk assessment is based on three factors: How many carriers there are, ease of transmission, and risk groups.

The number of carriers right now in Beijing and Shanghai is unknown. Today the Ministry of Health admitted that their report on the November-February outbreak was incorrect. There were over 600 cases, not 305, and there were at least 31 fatalities, not 5. Meanwhile, the Ministry continues to deny that there is any outbreak in other mainland areas, even though several SARS cases in other countries are in travellers who only visited Shanghai or Beijing. Without government support, we can't hope to know how large the outbreak in Beijing and Shanghai is, or how far it will spread amongst an uninformed populace over two weeks. In the absence of concrete information, I prefer to err on the side of caution.

On transmission vectors, the statement that documented cases of transmission are heavily weighted to personal acquaintances and hospital personnel is misleading at best. Documented cases always favor these groups because they are easier to document. Most cases at this point have no documented transmission vector, so saying that those that are identified tend to be of the type that are easier to identify is a meaningless tautology. As it turns out, as cases are being investigated further, several cases of in-aircraft transmission have been documented, along with the hundreds of cases with no identifiable source. 'Casual contact' is a completely ambiguous term, especially when it seems to cover the contact between a hospital worker and a patient known to be contagious. One patient infected 40 hospital workers in Honk Kong last week, even after it was known that he had a communicable disease. While proximity was certainly a factor in transmission, many of these hospital workers used barrier systems (face masks, gloves) when interacting with the patient, and the fact that they came down with SARS means that the means of transmission goes beyond casual contact.

Lastly is risk groups. Viral infections, especially non-airborne infections, are social diseases, in that they spread through social groups (healthcare workers, families, communities, etc.). As it happens, in the current outbreak, a high percentage of the cases in the last two weeks have been among travellers. Those cases of non-familial and non-hospital transmissions have all taken place within the social group of 'traveller'. People are being infected in hotels and airplanes. This makes some sense because the traveller comes in to contact with so many more people on a given day than someone following their regular daily routine. This localization of infection should be kept in mind when weighing total documented cases against a population in order to estimate risk. In this case, the population of greater Beijing isn't as relevant as the population of travellers in the city.

In the end, it came down to the fact that this is an emerging disease, with an unknown but growing infected population in the areas we were travelling, unknown transmission vector, unknown treatment, in a country that deliberately hides cases of the disease by transferring them to military hospitals and ordering doctors not to discuss them. In 1975, 85,000 Chinese were killed by a broken reservoir, and it went unreported for 23 years. In 1995, China finally revealed that 694 people died in a cinema fire 18 years earlier. Yesterday China announced that the Novembe