Cooling Off

Yet another heat wave…there is only so much you can do to make it bearable. I often drink a lot of iced drinks and eat ice cream. Air conditioning is helpful until you are frozen because the thermostat is set to arctic temperatures. Staying in the shade is also an option.


During the heat wave a few weeks ago, the kiddie pool was a godsend. My daughter and I took a dip in that to try to put a stop to the sweat. It did help even if only for that period of time while we were soaking in it.

One of my dogs disappeared into the air conditioned bedroom. She occasionally moved from in front of the appliance to the cold bathroom tiles. The other dog watched as we sat in the kiddie pool. She sniffed the water and sat nearby in the shade.

When we got up from the 'wet wonder', she followed. When she thought we weren’t looking, I caught her drinking from the plastic receptacle. She then got up and plopped herself right into the wading pool. She had such a contented smile on her face. I went over to pet her and praised her for keeping herself cool in the horrid heat. It was so unbearable even the pooches needed to get relief and looked for the best solutions possible.

Bicycles and Cycling

A couple of weeks ago I got on a bike for the first time in a VERY long time. My husband bought me a used bike in an attempt to get me used to riding it again. He was hoping that perhaps we’d be a biking family. He enjoys cycling and riding on his bike and can’t wait until my daughter is big enough to put her in an attachment or seat so she can join him for his excursions.


I got on the bike and recalled why I hadn’t been on a bike in more than 15 years. I had a crazy accident on a bike in Italy that has lived in my memory since it happened. My cousins and I would go out before 8 am to ride our bikes around the town. Before 8 was perfect because very few people were out at that time, it was still cool and the roads were closed off to traffic for garbage collection. We had done this ride almost every week in the summers when I was visiting.

One particular day, we headed out as usual. We made our way from our house up on a hill to downtown. The usual suspects were converging on the main street. We waved at the garbage collectors, the street sweepers, and the old men who sat at their usual coffee bars discussing soccer and politics. At one point, I hit a bump in the road and went flying right into one of the street sweepers carts. I then bounced off of the cart and felt into the street. I hit my head and cut my knee pretty badly. The cart fell on top of me and my bike dropped just beside me. I lay there for a while because it got very hazy.

My cousins and a number of passersby came to see how I was. I was dizzy and bleeding but relatively fine. One of my cousins decided that I should probably finish for the day and accompanied me back home on foot with our bikes in tow. Since that day, I haven’t been on a moving bicycle, until a few weeks ago.

Being on the bike freaked me out. Not because I recalled my accident but because I couldn’t really touch my feet completely to the ground. My husband tried to convince me that since I spin, that it is the same thing as riding a moving bicycle. I begged to disagree considerably. I told him that a spin bike is bolted to the floor; it doesn’t move. He said the same muscles that keep me from falling off a stationery bike are the same as the ones used to ride a regular bike. I was very doubtful.

Not sure if I will try to ride that bike anytime soon. I need to get a helmet and some knee and elbow pads. I know that once you learn to ride a bike, you never forget. However, I need to get my biking muscles back in gear. I don’t think those are the same ones used for a stationery bike.

Morning Meow

My work commute has been strange the last few months (cf entries Greener Grass or Squeaky Wheel). On the days when I head to one office, I need to transfer from the subway to a commuter train. I usually walk through an underground path to get from one mode of transport to the other. For the first few weeks of doing this I could swear that I heard a cat meowing within the general area where I walked. I’d look around to see if I could find where the noise was coming from but usually I had no luck.


As I continued this commute, the meowing noise got louder and louder and I still couldn’t place from where the noise was emanating. Despite how much it bothered me, I had to get to my train or wait another 15 minutes for the next train. This would bring me into work past my usual start time.

One day the meowing became clearer. It was coming from the street level just above the commute path. I stopped a moment to listen and realized it was someone handing out “The Metro” paper to people on their way to work. What I heard for so long as “Meow” was actually someone saying “Metro”.

Despite my feeling completely silly upon this revelation, I’m happy that I figured out this mystery. It would have been sad if it were some homeless cat mewling with its master.

Cuddles

I am very lucky for a number of reasons. I have always enjoyed cuddling since I can remember. I had a number of stuffed animals growing up and into my adulthood that I used for sleep security. When I got my first dog, even the first night she spent with me, we snuggled. She has since been a constant companion – sitting with me on the couch when I read, providing a paw when I was not feeling well, squishing beside me when I am having trouble sleeping.

My second dog was not a cuddling companion for a while. She was abused before we rescued her so she was quite skittish when trying to pet her. After a few months though, she too gained an extreme cuddliness quotient. She often woke and wakes me up to get a good cuddle in for the long day ahead. She loves getting petted and is often on my other side (opposite dog #1) when reading. 

It seems that I now have another addition to the cuddlefest – my daughter. The last few weekends, when she’s woken up earlier than I’d like, after having her bottle, she sneaks into the crook of my neck and begins to talk. She then gives me a hug. It was really the sweetest thing I could think of - until the sweetest thing in the whole world happened this weekend. 

Again she woke up earlier than necessary. She had grogginess all over her face. I fed her a bottle and then we had breakfast. I returned to the bedroom to change her and in doing so she snuck away from me on the bed. I ended up crawling over to get her. She rubbed her eyes and cuddled up to me. She tried to grab my eyelashes and then she giggled. From there, she proceeded to fall asleep on my arm with her face against my chest. 

I didn’t want to move her because I was afraid of waking her up. Instead I watched her fall deeper into sleep. I then fell asleep too. I woke up about 30 minutes later to the sound of the telephone ringing but she at least continued to sleep. She moved positions but still remained on my hand. My arm did go numb a couple of times but I tried to squeeze my hand to bring circulation back. 

After that my hip began to hurt from the position I was in. I couldn’t really move without waking her so I didn’t. I took a look around to see what time it was and who do I see around me but both my dogs napping around us as well. I guess they climbed onto the bed when I was asleep. 

When my daughter finally woke up, she looked right into my face and giggled again. She gave a big stretch releasing my arm and then proceeded to start crawling around as if the nap didn’t happen at all. It was probably the best hour and a half or so I’ve ever napped in my life. I was surrounded by my favorite warm cuddly parade. Everyone should be blessed with cuddle-loving critters and humans in their lives.

Egypt

Egypt has been in the news a lot in recent weeks. There is just so much happening there. When Morsi was ousted, I remember watching one news report where the journalist was speaking from Tahrir Square. I stared at the tv remembering how when we first arrived in Egypt a number of years ago for a tour, we stayed in a hotel minutes from the famous location. 

The first night we spent in Egypt was in Cairo. We had a room up at the top of a hotel and our view looked out onto the square. I could see the British Museum across the way, even though I didn’t know that was it at the time. I looked out the window and saw so much activity - cars not obeying the traffic signals and people trying to get across the street like in the video game ‘Frogger’. There were scents of grilled lamb intermingled with oil or gasoline smells wafting up into our hotel window. It was the most incredible sight of a populated square I’d ever seen. And having lived in New York all my life, that really was saying something.

I couldn’t sleep that night because of all the noise in the square below. It was more the excitement of being in a country I had wanted to visit since I was a child. I also didn’t want to miss our wake up call to go to the Pyramids the next morning. And boy, am I happy I didn’t oversleep or miss that part of the tour?

The Pyramids were astounding. The sun reflected on my sunglasses making it difficult to see them completely. It was sunlight bouncing up from the sand and from the rocks onto my sunglasses. Regardless, my jaw dropped at the immensity of these structures and the unbelievable strength and intelligence of the people who created them. I loved seeing the Sphinx, just this crazy cat like animal in the desert with a big headdress. Some people took camel rides but I opted out of it because no matter how far we were from them, I could still smell their odor. I didn’t want that smell staying in my clothes through the whole trip (which it did for all the people who did that tour extra). 

We went to an archeological museum on site and had to put weird socks on our feet. My husband and I kept taking pictures of each other making sure to get the cool socks in every shot. We then made our way back on the tour bus and off we went to other parts of the tour. 

We returned to Cairo at the end of the tour. We had a day to explore the city without our tour guide if we wanted. We opted for this and walked through the city in the heat. It wasn’t so humid in Cairo but it was very hot. We went in October and it was hitting the high 90s easily. We ran across the street through Tahrir Square. We came close to losing our lives on 3 occasions. 

At the end of our walk we ended up meeting our tour without even realizing it. On our way back, we took a cab ride through Cairo (because we didn’t go with the rest of the team, we had to go on our own) and our driver was showing us where his aunt lived, where he went to school, etc. Honestly I forgot momentarily that we were in Egypt. Driving with that guy seemed more like a roller coaster than a cab ride. My husband took a video of the whole ride and I remember feeling very nauseous (I wasn’t even that nauseated during pregnancy!). 

It’s amazing to me now how things happen. When the Arab Spring happened and I watched the protests in Tahrir Square, I was equally transported to our visit. I hope that they figure everything they need to and get the country back on its feet with more democratic means. It is such a beautiful country and I hope people can go and visit it soon. It’s a shame that due to everything that is happening, people aren’t able to go and see what a wonderful place - full of amazing history - it is. 

Breakfast Pastry

Yesterday morning when I got off the commuter subway at work, I decided to pay a visit to a mom and pop coffee shop to get my breakfast. I had walked by the business the day before and said "Tomorrow I will check it out." I kept thinking about what I would get there as I walked to the spot. Obviously I'd get a cup of coffee and see what they had in terms of breakfast pastries since that's what they advertised on the chalkboard outside.

I opened the door and walked into the shop at a little before 8 am. I asked for a cup of coffee and I looked around for the pastries. "There aren't any pastries yet?", I asked. "No, we usually get them at around 9."

Needless to say I was disappointed. I was really looking forward to trying one of their items. But I was also upset because I kept thinking:

"Hey, this is my breakfast time. I want my breakfast pastry. Am I being penalized for being an early bird??"

I understand that they were ordering in pastries for the morning rush but the last I checked rush hour usually started before 8 am, not 9. Or maybe I'm mistaken since I only see a handful elbows in my face during my morning commute. Perhaps the true morning rush was before 9 am. This felt like false advertising to me. When was breakfast anyway? I usually had it in the morning but is there a specific time of the morning when breakfast is acceptable and I'd been missing out?

Needless to say, the coffee was very good. It would have been superb if I had a yummy cinnamon roll, muffin or danish to go with it. I'm not sure if I will go back and check on their pastries in the afternoon some day (since I don't understand the breakfast window!). They are lucky the coffee was that good that I'd give them another try.

Business Continuity

Recently my team has been preparing some business continuity measures. We are running processes with the assumption that should something happen to our team in India, we, in the United States, could run their reports for them. There would not be any gaps and all would work out seamlessly – as if no one would be able to tell the difference.


This whole thing cracks me up for a number of reasons. I especially love running these processes when I think about how almost all of my American co-workers are displaced because of Sandy. We are working between two offices because our original building was and is still out of commission. The likelihood of something happening in India doesn’t seem relevant. In the past few years all the natural disasters have been happening in the U.S, but oh well.

The second assumption we are working with is that the procedures can be picked up by anyone who is not familiar with the process. Anyone should be able to run with it. The amusing aspect of this is that the procedures that I’ve read through are the most confusing things I’ve ever read in my life (and I’ve read lots of philosophy, James Joyce and Faulkner). Random screenshots are placed into the procedures without any description of what they are for or how they pertain to what you need to do. The pictures are like a conversational digression…it is somehow there yet you don’t know how it relates to the rest of the discussion until possibly far after the point.

The third part is that we are supposed to get training on the reports we are supposed to run for this practice phase. This is oxymoronic to me because it suggests that the procedures are not clear enough for people to pick up and ‘run with it’. Why else would you need training? Shouldn’t the documents be up-to-date? The few training sessions I had only made clear more discrepancies in the procedures than I first saw. Not to mention that most of the training sessions I had were not planned out. The trainers, who usually run the reports on a monthly basis, couldn’t answer my questions and we not prepared. They didn’t have the documents available to make updates to the procedures as we went through them. They left very much to be desired.

I could go on and on about the other aspects of this whole task that were silly but I’ll leave it for another entry.

Non-Fiction

I enjoy reading a variety of genres. I tend to read fiction because I enjoy the way authors turn phrases or how they use their imagination. Every so often I will turn to non-fiction either because a book interests me or because one of my book clubs decides to read some non-fiction. I have read some pretty fascinating non-fiction titles. However, sometimes, I remember why I don’t like to read non-fiction so much.
Non-fiction often reminds me that truth is much stranger than fiction. Non-fiction comes in a couple of varieties for me:

1) In-depth analysis and investigation into some event or person’s life (i.e. investigative journalism)

2) Factual information or anecdotes about phenomena (Malcolm Gladwell’s books fall into this category)

3) Memoirs or essays (David Sedaris is one of my favorites in this vein)

Last year I read a number of political non-fiction books (Team of Rivals and Game Change) that thoroughly intrigued me and opened my eyes a little more to the genre. In the past I mostly read fiction and an occasional non-fiction book when it was a book club choice. This year, I thought I’d give non-fiction more of a chance. Let my open mind see what else could be learned from this type of literature.

One of the recent books I read is about how a British girl went to Japan to work and disappeared. There were times while reading that I shook my head and felt so sad for the girl, for her family, for the fate of the human population. Why are there so many crazy people out there? The story disturbed me thoroughly. The writing, although wonderful and mesmerizing in the beginning, fell flat towards the end. Regardless, I was still so upset by this book. Then I started reading another piece of non-fiction. I got maybe a fourth of the way in and decided to stop it. Again, another haunting story about a person and it occurred to me that I needed to read something a little more uplifting.

These two books made me recall why I don’t usually pick non-fiction. I don’t like to be reminded of the deterioration of the human race. I don’t have to imagine it like I do in fiction; it exists and this book just proves it. Also, I could just watch the news if I wanted to be reminded of the fall of humanity.

Although these particular books have temporarily put me off to non-fiction, I am constantly reminded of the wonderful works I’ve read in the past. Thanks Michael Pollan and Malcolm Gladwell for your interesting works that make human nature and nature in general more appealing. Let’s not forget that without Doris Kearns Goodwin, I’d never have learned so much about Honest Abe! It definitely made me appreciate him more as both a person and a president. For the time being however, I think I’ll stick with fiction, especially in the summer.