I shouldn't have to say this, but I do.
I receive no funding whatsoever from any pharmaceutical or biotechnology company in existence anywhere in the world.
None.
Zip.
I have never so much as seen a single penny from one in dividends, project support, or salary from any pharmaceutical company. Indeed, all funds I have ever worked for come from competitive grants from the NIH or the AHA. Currently, the entirety of my salary is paid by a postdoctoral fellowship from the American Heart Association. The AHA, in turn, is entirely funded by private donations which the individual donors can apply to their tax returns. I have no knowledge of who the individual donors are, and therefore can have no possible knowledge of their individual motivations or what they wish for my research to show, therefore, it is completely and utterly impossible for any pharmaceutical company to exert any influence upon me, even if I were performing any research which would motivate them to do so. I am not. The AHA has no say on whether, or what, I publish, and holds no power over my academic freedom.
Further, I receive no funding, support, or salary from any manufacturer of vaccines. See above.
Pretty much anybody who speaks out against the idiocy that is the anti-vaccination movement has to include a disclaimer like the above.
Now, here's why they shouldn't have to.
It takes a truly delusional mind to claim, with a straight face, that the reason pharmaceutical companies produce vaccines is to turn a profit. Yes, there are a few vaccines that have made quite a lot of money for the manufacturers. Gardasil, for example, made its manufacturers somewhere in the ballpark of 1.5 billion dollars.
Setting aside the fact that making money off of an exceptionally effective treatment which reduces a woman's chance of developing cervical cancer to nearly zero is not implicitly evil (as much as anti-vaccination advocates would like you to think otherwise), Gardasil is deep, deep in the minority.
In general, vaccine production is so ridiculously unprofitable, convincing manufacturers to make the vaccines is a challenge in itself. The single most-applied vaccine worldwide the BCG vaccine against tuberculosis. Its profit margin is, for all practical purposes, zero, once transportation to the needed areas is taken into consideration.
But for the moment, let us assume that that is not the case. Let's assume that all doses are created equal, profit-wise. A dose of viagra makes the exact same profit as a dose of the Tdap vaccine.
Which of the two will turn a greater profit: one dose of the vaccine, or a month's worth of drugs to keep the symptoms under control?
In short, if vaccine manufacturers were really the profit-grubbing evil entities that the anti-vaccine morons believed they were, they wouldn't make vaccines. They'd want as many of us to catch the disease as possible for one simple reason: it's vastly more profitable to treat a disease than it is to prevent it.
Showing posts with label personal. Show all posts
Showing posts with label personal. Show all posts
Monday, September 13, 2010
Monday, June 23, 2008
Wednesday, April 23, 2008
Dear Moron,
I guess when you get to a major turning point, it's pretty natural to think about where you came from. Or maybe it's just that I'm in the process of packing up, and I found a few mementos from my high school days. Either way, it's related to the fact that I'm about to get married, move away, and start working for a living as opposed to doing mostly fun stuff for a living.
I was fifteen once, interestingly enough. Frankly, I was ill-prepared for being a fifteen-year-old male, which is probably why I did a pretty crappy job of it. The bottom line is that at fifteen, life, generally, sucks. There really isn't a claim you can make to the contrary. I know for a fact that every time my parents told me that "these are the best years of your life" (we've all heard it) my general reaction was "oh, shit."
So I've been realizing lately that the face looking back at me from the mirror is no longer fifteen years old. He's seen a not insubstantial amount of the world, and he's lived a rather interesting life.
Didn't seem like it was going to turn out that way at fifteen, but then it never does, does it?
At any rate, I was wondering recently what I would write if the laws of physics could be bent, slightly, for just a moment. What if I could write to the fifteen year old I used to be? What would I say?
I was fifteen once, interestingly enough. Frankly, I was ill-prepared for being a fifteen-year-old male, which is probably why I did a pretty crappy job of it. The bottom line is that at fifteen, life, generally, sucks. There really isn't a claim you can make to the contrary. I know for a fact that every time my parents told me that "these are the best years of your life" (we've all heard it) my general reaction was "oh, shit."
So I've been realizing lately that the face looking back at me from the mirror is no longer fifteen years old. He's seen a not insubstantial amount of the world, and he's lived a rather interesting life.
Didn't seem like it was going to turn out that way at fifteen, but then it never does, does it?
At any rate, I was wondering recently what I would write if the laws of physics could be bent, slightly, for just a moment. What if I could write to the fifteen year old I used to be? What would I say?
Dear moron,
I figured this greeting would be the best way to convince you that I'm you. I mean, who else would greet you that way? Of course, if you want more proof, look up on the very top shelf of your closet. You'll find a shoebox labeled "playboys" (brilliant hiding place, by the way). In that shoebox, you'll find a bottle of hydrogen peroxide, a bottle of isopropyl alcohol, a package of double-edged razor blades, anywhere between two and six sterile gauze pads, and a roll of surgical tape. Nobody but you knows about that, right?
While we're on the subject, cut back a little (no pun intended). I'm not going to tell you to quit just what say that instead of three or four times a week cut it down to, say, two or three? You're not going to quit any time soon. And you're going to try (and fail) to do so a number of times between now and the time that you're looking at my face in the mirror, and the truth is, those blades helped you through a lot of rough patches in your life. As coping mechanisms go, you could do worse, I guess.
Okay, depending on when you're getting this, you've either just flunked a math exam, or you're about to. That'll be a first for you, won't it? You'll deal, and you'll be stronger for it. Take my word for it, it's not the end of the world. About five years from now, nobody's going to give a rat's ass what grades you got in High School. Believe me, you have a lot more school to go through before you're done. High school is gonna get lost in the flurry long before you're done.
I know that right now you're thinking that you're going to be a doctor, and that's all there is to it. Well, you're not. And interestingly enough, that's a decision you'll make after being accepted to med school. I know, weird, huh? The point I'm trying to make is that life has a nasty habit of never working out quite the way you plan for it to work out. If I were to tell you now that your first three publications in a scientific journal would be in astrophysics, what would you say? What if I told you that the next three would be in the American Journal of Physiology and the Biophysical Journal (times two)? Exactly.
If you're fifteen, you also just got dumped for the first time, or you're just about to. Sorry for the spoiler. It hurts. A lot. But you'll survive that too. Maybe you need things like that to happen. Maybe it's things like that that make you stronger. All I'm going to say is just wait 'till you meet your future wife. You've read Romeo & Juliet as well as all of the classic romances who talk about that one instant when they find that one person and they just know that their life is never going to be the same again. You don't buy all that bullshit, do you? Trust me: you will.
Don't worry. Let things fall the way that they should. Let them fall the way that they will, and don't freak out when they don't quite fall where you want them to. The only constant in life is that it's never what you expect. It's always moving, always changing, always persevering.
Oh, and when dad tells you that these are the best years of your life, you can call bullshit on that one. You're nowhere near the best years of your life. Not yet.
Keep an eye out for me. I'll be the one looking back at you from the mirror in about fourteen years.
Sincerely,
Drew
Monday, December 03, 2007
If you gotta move...
So I've finally found myself a post-doc position. I'm actually kinda thrilled at this one. It requires me to live in Honolulu Hawai'i for a few years, and may lead to a future faculty position at the U of H. I figure if you're going to move away from your friends and family, there are worse places to do it than Hawai'i. In honor of that, I've added two weather graphics to my blog. One showing the current weather in Calgary, one showing the current weather in Honolulu. I feel the need to remind you that that's the weather right now. Like, in December. Fun, huh?
Actually, I'm also excited about this for things that have absolutely nothing to do with invariably good weather,
beautiful sunsets,
beautiful women,
beautiful beaches,
the opportunity to go hiking twelve months of the year,
amazing sunsets (did I mention that already? Well, it bears repeating),
history,
wildlife,
and amazing photographic subjects.
Actually, I'm excited for a whole slew of reasons, but perhaps the most important one is that I'm simply excited by the work I'm going to be doing. The work will still be in the same general area I've been working in for the last five years, but it will be more on the molecular level. A little less cellular biology, a little more genetics, a little more biochemistry, and a little bit more gene-jockeying. I'm going to be doing both the insertion and deletion of genes in mice, working on developing a working hypoxia model in wild-type mice, and studying the expression of genes in the heart specifically, and what genes will show up in these systems. This is a kind of science I've never done before, and it excites me. It means that I get to spend more time in the lab and less time scribbling equations in a lab book. I'm going to improve on my recovery surgery (something I haven't done in a long time, and haven't done at all on something as small as a mouse), my RT- and QT-PCR, as well as running and analyzing microarrays. In addition, I'm going to be working with a mathematician who wrote a textbook that has effectively been my bible for the last five years. By fortuitous circumstances, I'm going to be working with a former classmate of my brother's, he's a nice guy, and I think I'm going to enjoy working for him. I think we have a lot to do and less time to do it in, but I think that this is going to be an amazing learning opportunity for me.
Oh, and the view out of my laboratory window is the Pacific ocean.
Can you tell I'm marginally excited by this?
Actually, I'm also excited about this for things that have absolutely nothing to do with invariably good weather,
beautiful sunsets,
beautiful women,
beautiful beaches,
the opportunity to go hiking twelve months of the year,
amazing sunsets (did I mention that already? Well, it bears repeating),
history,
wildlife,
and amazing photographic subjects.
Actually, I'm excited for a whole slew of reasons, but perhaps the most important one is that I'm simply excited by the work I'm going to be doing. The work will still be in the same general area I've been working in for the last five years, but it will be more on the molecular level. A little less cellular biology, a little more genetics, a little more biochemistry, and a little bit more gene-jockeying. I'm going to be doing both the insertion and deletion of genes in mice, working on developing a working hypoxia model in wild-type mice, and studying the expression of genes in the heart specifically, and what genes will show up in these systems. This is a kind of science I've never done before, and it excites me. It means that I get to spend more time in the lab and less time scribbling equations in a lab book. I'm going to improve on my recovery surgery (something I haven't done in a long time, and haven't done at all on something as small as a mouse), my RT- and QT-PCR, as well as running and analyzing microarrays. In addition, I'm going to be working with a mathematician who wrote a textbook that has effectively been my bible for the last five years. By fortuitous circumstances, I'm going to be working with a former classmate of my brother's, he's a nice guy, and I think I'm going to enjoy working for him. I think we have a lot to do and less time to do it in, but I think that this is going to be an amazing learning opportunity for me.
Oh, and the view out of my laboratory window is the Pacific ocean.
Can you tell I'm marginally excited by this?
Thursday, September 20, 2007
In Memoriam
So I lost a friend recently. And by "lost," I mean in the permanent sense. I'm okay. Really, I am. Don't get me wrong, I have my moments of not-so-goodness, but I'm actually dealing with it better than I thought I would.
There's a mountain near the Upper Kananaskis lake called Mount Indefatigable. It rises 3000 feet above the lake itself, and the only approach to the summit is a trail approximately three miles long. Doing the math, that's about a thousand feet per mile ascent; which doesn't sound that impressive, but believe me, that's pretty huge. Until this weekend, I'd never climbed it. It's one of those trails I'd hiked past a thousand times, but never quite completed. I'd come close, make no mistake. The first time I tried, I had to turn back within sight of the summit. The second time, I wasn't even able to make the attempt. And in a way, that's what this whole story is about.
Five of us arrived at the Kananaskis Interlakes at about 12:00 pm. The skies were blue and clear. A faint haze hung in the air. We later learned that there was a controlled burn taking place nearby. The smoke hung heavily in the valley, unable to escape completely. And we were about as well as we could expect. The mountain we planned to climb hung above us like a gigantic stone monolith practically daring us to try it. Strapped to my hip, I had a camera (which, it turns out, was set to the wrong ISO, and so for the first half of the trip, my pictures look bleached out and grainy) and a spare lens. My back held water bladder, lunch, a jacket, and everything I would need for the summit approach. My right thigh pocket held a rock.
The first mile or so wasn't terribly interesting. A lot of trees, a long climb. It wasn't until we broke free of the trees at the first lookout point that we really realized how high we were. We'd hiked just shy of a mile and a half, and we were at least a thousand feet up. The whole valley was spread out underneath us. It was gorgeous. The thin haze seemed to make waves around the mountains of the valley. Maybe it did. Whatever was happening was an interesting phenomenon, but beyond that, it was just plain beautiful. Already, our group of five didn't look like they were all going to make the summit. Dora's ankles were starting to bug her: her boots weren't properly worn in. Which meant that Rich probably wasn't going to make the entire trip up either. But we pushed on.
The second lookout point was equally beautiful. This was where the trail started getting hard, and this was where most people call it a day and turn back, and it's kinda hard to fault them for that. The view is probably the best effort:payoff ratio of the entire hike.
And then there were three. Two of our number decided to turn back. One had heels that were getting somewhat raw, and her boyfriend, I think, was starting to get tired himself, and the hike was only going to get more vertical. I'd be lying if I said that I didn't half-consider turning back as well, but I guess I'm just stubborn that way. I don't like to let myself give up; so I didn't. My recollection of the last time I'd attempted to climb this mountain was that it got steep and annoying at this point, and my recollection was not wrong. At the end of the day, it was sheer determination that got us up to "the bowl" where the three of us stopped for lunch. It was here that I realized that my camera was set to an absurdly high ISO, and my photos promptly got a lot less overexposed, and a lot less grainy.
We finished lunch and stopped for a moment to catch our breath. We could actually see the summit from where we were, but the last time I'd had to turn back, we'd seen it then too. We'd turned back within about 20 feet of the top because the scramble to the top was crumbling under our feet, and it was a looooong way down if we slipped.
And then there was one. Or so I thought at the time. As we climbed out of the bowl, I had two very tired companions. I was tired too, frankly, but I was making it to the top if I had to drag myself face first over sharp rocks. There was just no way I was going to stop this close to the summit again. They told me that they would wait here until I finished. I think they could see it in my eyes or something, but they knew it was important. I was making it to the top of this mountain.
Yes, I'm in this photograph. I'm the tiny little speck making its way up the winding trail towards the summit. I didn't know it at the time, but my two companions had also made the decision not to let the mountain beat them.
I made the summit, exhausted. The trip up the mountain had taken a simply huge amount out of me. The last 500 feet of elevation gain were the hardest, not just because they were insanely vertical (they were); but because the summit was so close you'd swear you could reach out and grab it, but every step you took didn't seem to bring it any closer to you. Sheer stupid stubbornness drove me the last fifty yards up the mountain.
I'm not an overly emotional guy by nature. But standing on that mountain was one of exactly three times in my adult life that I've actually been moved to tears. It was like the whole world was spread out like a giant tapestry. The valley we'd just climbed out of spread out as far as I could see. Lesser mountains almost seemed to bow down before the mighty Indefatigable.
I drew in a shaky breath, and dug into my pocket for the rock I'd lugged 3000 feet straight up. It had been marked and dated with a sharpie marker: "August 19, 1996: Mt. Indefatigable." It had been given to me eleven years ago by a friend who had taken it down from the summit, and had charged me with the task of putting it back. I'd always assumed that he would be there with me when I returned it to its original place, but I guess fate had other ideas. Three weeks before the hike, he'd died in a tragic accident. By pure coincidence, a hike to the top of the same mountain he'd charged me with returning the rock to was planned a few weeks later.
I'm not sure whether I believe in God, or theology or spirituality or any of that stuff, really. But for a brief moment, standing on the top of that mountain, holding a stone that I'd had in my possession for eleven years, I could almost bring myself to believe in fate.
I left the rock on top of a tiny inukshuk someone had constructed on the summit, a place I like to think he would have chosen if he were there with me. I didn't say anything, no prayers, no long eulogy. I don't think he would've wanted me to. But I did stand there on the mountain, and decided that just being here, doing something he wanted me to do, something he'd asked me to do, was the most fitting memorial I could give him.
I walked down off the mountain as if a weight had been lifted off of me. Yes, I was no longer carrying a rock around in my pocket, but I felt as if I'd done something I needed to do. Something that was waiting to be done. Something someone had asked me to do. I'd done my mourning, and I was ready to move on.
We all mourn in the way we see fit. Some of us stand solemnly around the deceased's grave, some of us sing hymns, some of us pray, some of us party.
And some of us climb mountains.
There's a mountain near the Upper Kananaskis lake called Mount Indefatigable. It rises 3000 feet above the lake itself, and the only approach to the summit is a trail approximately three miles long. Doing the math, that's about a thousand feet per mile ascent; which doesn't sound that impressive, but believe me, that's pretty huge. Until this weekend, I'd never climbed it. It's one of those trails I'd hiked past a thousand times, but never quite completed. I'd come close, make no mistake. The first time I tried, I had to turn back within sight of the summit. The second time, I wasn't even able to make the attempt. And in a way, that's what this whole story is about.
Five of us arrived at the Kananaskis Interlakes at about 12:00 pm. The skies were blue and clear. A faint haze hung in the air. We later learned that there was a controlled burn taking place nearby. The smoke hung heavily in the valley, unable to escape completely. And we were about as well as we could expect. The mountain we planned to climb hung above us like a gigantic stone monolith practically daring us to try it. Strapped to my hip, I had a camera (which, it turns out, was set to the wrong ISO, and so for the first half of the trip, my pictures look bleached out and grainy) and a spare lens. My back held water bladder, lunch, a jacket, and everything I would need for the summit approach. My right thigh pocket held a rock.
The first mile or so wasn't terribly interesting. A lot of trees, a long climb. It wasn't until we broke free of the trees at the first lookout point that we really realized how high we were. We'd hiked just shy of a mile and a half, and we were at least a thousand feet up. The whole valley was spread out underneath us. It was gorgeous. The thin haze seemed to make waves around the mountains of the valley. Maybe it did. Whatever was happening was an interesting phenomenon, but beyond that, it was just plain beautiful. Already, our group of five didn't look like they were all going to make the summit. Dora's ankles were starting to bug her: her boots weren't properly worn in. Which meant that Rich probably wasn't going to make the entire trip up either. But we pushed on.
The second lookout point was equally beautiful. This was where the trail started getting hard, and this was where most people call it a day and turn back, and it's kinda hard to fault them for that. The view is probably the best effort:payoff ratio of the entire hike.
And then there were three. Two of our number decided to turn back. One had heels that were getting somewhat raw, and her boyfriend, I think, was starting to get tired himself, and the hike was only going to get more vertical. I'd be lying if I said that I didn't half-consider turning back as well, but I guess I'm just stubborn that way. I don't like to let myself give up; so I didn't. My recollection of the last time I'd attempted to climb this mountain was that it got steep and annoying at this point, and my recollection was not wrong. At the end of the day, it was sheer determination that got us up to "the bowl" where the three of us stopped for lunch. It was here that I realized that my camera was set to an absurdly high ISO, and my photos promptly got a lot less overexposed, and a lot less grainy.
We finished lunch and stopped for a moment to catch our breath. We could actually see the summit from where we were, but the last time I'd had to turn back, we'd seen it then too. We'd turned back within about 20 feet of the top because the scramble to the top was crumbling under our feet, and it was a looooong way down if we slipped.
And then there was one. Or so I thought at the time. As we climbed out of the bowl, I had two very tired companions. I was tired too, frankly, but I was making it to the top if I had to drag myself face first over sharp rocks. There was just no way I was going to stop this close to the summit again. They told me that they would wait here until I finished. I think they could see it in my eyes or something, but they knew it was important. I was making it to the top of this mountain.
Yes, I'm in this photograph. I'm the tiny little speck making its way up the winding trail towards the summit. I didn't know it at the time, but my two companions had also made the decision not to let the mountain beat them.
I made the summit, exhausted. The trip up the mountain had taken a simply huge amount out of me. The last 500 feet of elevation gain were the hardest, not just because they were insanely vertical (they were); but because the summit was so close you'd swear you could reach out and grab it, but every step you took didn't seem to bring it any closer to you. Sheer stupid stubbornness drove me the last fifty yards up the mountain.
I'm not an overly emotional guy by nature. But standing on that mountain was one of exactly three times in my adult life that I've actually been moved to tears. It was like the whole world was spread out like a giant tapestry. The valley we'd just climbed out of spread out as far as I could see. Lesser mountains almost seemed to bow down before the mighty Indefatigable.
I drew in a shaky breath, and dug into my pocket for the rock I'd lugged 3000 feet straight up. It had been marked and dated with a sharpie marker: "August 19, 1996: Mt. Indefatigable." It had been given to me eleven years ago by a friend who had taken it down from the summit, and had charged me with the task of putting it back. I'd always assumed that he would be there with me when I returned it to its original place, but I guess fate had other ideas. Three weeks before the hike, he'd died in a tragic accident. By pure coincidence, a hike to the top of the same mountain he'd charged me with returning the rock to was planned a few weeks later.
I'm not sure whether I believe in God, or theology or spirituality or any of that stuff, really. But for a brief moment, standing on the top of that mountain, holding a stone that I'd had in my possession for eleven years, I could almost bring myself to believe in fate.
I left the rock on top of a tiny inukshuk someone had constructed on the summit, a place I like to think he would have chosen if he were there with me. I didn't say anything, no prayers, no long eulogy. I don't think he would've wanted me to. But I did stand there on the mountain, and decided that just being here, doing something he wanted me to do, something he'd asked me to do, was the most fitting memorial I could give him.
I walked down off the mountain as if a weight had been lifted off of me. Yes, I was no longer carrying a rock around in my pocket, but I felt as if I'd done something I needed to do. Something that was waiting to be done. Something someone had asked me to do. I'd done my mourning, and I was ready to move on.
We all mourn in the way we see fit. Some of us stand solemnly around the deceased's grave, some of us sing hymns, some of us pray, some of us party.
And some of us climb mountains.
Wednesday, June 13, 2007
It's over!
Okay, so I walked the stage yesterday. As predicted, I was dressed as a proverbial Hogwarts graduate, but all in all, everything turned out well. So now I have a PhD. adorning my wall right next to my BSc. My brother says I should get myself a Master's just to balance it out, but I think I'm good with two degrees, thank you very much.
'Course, the obvious question is "What's next?"
Well, I have a number of options, not the least of which being a Post-Doctorate at Oxford. I might also look at the industry route.
Or I might go back to school and complete an MD. With a Doctor of Philosophy under my belt, I think I probably have a reasonable chance of getting in. Or I can do an engineering degree.
In short, I have options.
Now, admittedly, my options need to be channelled somewhat. On a personal level, my life has got a little more complicated. Making a long story short, I managed to get myself engaged during my six-week odyssey across Europe. Yep, she said yes, oddly enough. How I managed to find someone who's crazy enough to go on week-long hiking trips, six-week odysseys, long bike rides, and who will put up with me for five years while I'm frantically completing a doctoral degree is still something of a mystery to me. How I convinced her to say "yes" when I showed her the ring is even more of a mystery, but it happened. Yay. We haven't set a date yet, and we're both fairly confident that it'll be a long engagement
So now I have a couple of factors that need to be considered before I decide which way I turn at the next fork in the road.
But at least I'm at a fork.
'Course, the obvious question is "What's next?"
Well, I have a number of options, not the least of which being a Post-Doctorate at Oxford. I might also look at the industry route.
Or I might go back to school and complete an MD. With a Doctor of Philosophy under my belt, I think I probably have a reasonable chance of getting in. Or I can do an engineering degree.
In short, I have options.
Now, admittedly, my options need to be channelled somewhat. On a personal level, my life has got a little more complicated. Making a long story short, I managed to get myself engaged during my six-week odyssey across Europe. Yep, she said yes, oddly enough. How I managed to find someone who's crazy enough to go on week-long hiking trips, six-week odysseys, long bike rides, and who will put up with me for five years while I'm frantically completing a doctoral degree is still something of a mystery to me. How I convinced her to say "yes" when I showed her the ring is even more of a mystery, but it happened. Yay. We haven't set a date yet, and we're both fairly confident that it'll be a long engagement
So now I have a couple of factors that need to be considered before I decide which way I turn at the next fork in the road.
But at least I'm at a fork.
Wednesday, February 28, 2007
How much floor space does $300 of liquor take up?
So I got a few bottles of cognac today.
A few.
As in: three.
My Kung Fu master likes Cognac. And as a direct consequence of having met him, I've acquired a taste for it that I didn't possess before.
Anyhow, there's a big celebration and banquet coming up during which I happen to be one of three central figures. This is not a minor event, although very few people outside of thos who actually practice Kung Fu seem to realize just how non-minor it is. I'm being accepted as a disciple to an art which dates back 500 years. In short, it's been decided that I'm one day going to carry on the legacy and pass the knowledge I acquire on to someone else.
Yeah, this is a big deal.
So, traditionally, one gives the master a gift which he would enjoy. He has a great love of Cognac. Cognac, it turns out, is not cheap. Especially if you get very nice cognac. Cognac which has been aged many years to smooth it out; and if I'm going to be taught things that have only been taught to a select few throughout history, I'm not gonna cheap out on it.
Now, this cognac I got my hands on was not as expensive as some cognac out there (I saw a bottle which cost $7000), but it's not exactly a cheap acquisition, and it takes up less than a square foot of real estate on my floor.
Anyhow, I don't want to write about the price of cognac in Canada (title notwithstanding), but I guess I'm feeling a little introspective as the New Year has passed, and as I'm about to take a couple of big steps over the next few months. I'm becoming a disciple to a remarkable martial artist, I'm receiving my PhD. after four years of work. I'm taking my infinitely-better half to Europe for six weeks (a place neither of us has ever been). And throughout that time, I've had a constant companion in the martial arts.
I really wish I had the eloquence to explain what this means, but the truth is that I don't. The best way I know how is to say how it started.
Four years ago, I was in a bad place. Not that things weren't going well for me, mind you. I'd been accepted into a Master's program (the switch to PhD would come about a year later), my research was going well, but the bottom line is that I wasn't happy. A friendship had just ended under unpleasant circumstances, and I was dealing with it badly. I'm not generally prone to emotional outbursts, but frankly I spent about three months walking a very fine line between uncontrolled rage and deep depression. You'd be surprised how close together those two can be.
So I needed something to replace the hours that I was spending feeling sorry for myself. Hey, I'm not proud of it, but without going into detail (which I omit to protect the guilty), you can trust me that it warranted a little wallowing. I'd toyed with the idea of taking up a martial art before. I'd given Aikido a try while I was at UBish; a loooong time ago (picture a 12-year-old Drew in a white uniform and a green belt), I'd tried Tae Kwon Do; a mere few months before the events which lead up to this, I'd tried Kendo. All of which, it should be mentioned, are admirable martial arts. They just weren't for me. Tae Kwon Do, I'd done because I thought it was cool. Aikido, I took up because my significant other at the time had suggested it. Kendo, well, I don't know why I decided to try that one. It looked cool I guess.
The bottom line is that I was sick of feeling sorry for myself and decided I needed somewhere else to focus all that feeling-sorry-for-myself-energy, at least for a few months. Kung Fu seemed as good a place as any. One of the students I shared an office with ran a Kung Fu School; or rather he helped his brother run a Kung Fu school in his spare time, and three questions later, I was learning the White Tiger Style of Kung Fu, along with two buddies from High School.
My life improved rather sharply. I'm not sure to this day whether the two were related. But I was happier, I was healthier, I lost weight, and my endurance and strength increased beyond what I thought was possible. For the first time I could remember ever I realized that I could say that I was happy without a little voice in the back of my head saying no, you're not.
Some time after I came to that remarkable realization, I met April. To say that the two of us hit it right off would be both a cliche and an understatement. I'm not prone to romantic language, but in her I found a half of myself I didn't even realize was missing. Ugh, that sounds so... ugh. Not untrue, mind you. But... ugh.
Like I said, I'm feeling a little introspective, so bear with me.
So we're at now minus three years or so, and I'd been studying the White Tiger Style of Kung Fu for about eight months. I was learning a lot. I ascended quickly to the Blue sash level, and was working on the Green Sash forms and techniques. I managed to pass my test for the Blue sash while doped up on decongestants. An accomplishment I'm actually kinda proud of to this day. It had taken me almost two years to get to that point. I wasn't an asskicker by any description of the term, but I had learned a lot in those two years.
And somewhere in there, the completely unexpected happened. Suddenly, Kung Fu wasn't a crutch anymore. It wasn't something I did to smooth the wrinkles of my life. It wasn't something that made my life easier. It was just something that was there. It was something that just felt right. Like it belonged in that one spot in my life. Like it had always been there.
Keep in mind, when I'd started, I'd intended to keep with it for a few months at most. Now I was going on two years.
October, 2005.
The White Tiger school my two companions and I had been studying at was closing its doors. The young man I'd studied under directed me at a Grand Master of a different, but related style of Kung Fu, and that's where my pursuit of Bak Mei began.
I'm not going to go so far as to claim that it was a moment that changed my life, but I will say that it was a moment that I still use to describe it. It was one of those moments where we describe all the others as "before this," and "after this." This was one of those moments. I started learning this style of Kung fu in a cold basement in the middle of Chinatown. A tiny little building that I'd never have noticed if not for the fact that I needed to climb down into the basement three times a week to learn a style of Kung Fu that I'd never even heard of a month ago. I know, it's weird when I put it that way, but the fact is that for the last almost-three years, Bak Mei has been a dominant positive force in my life.
And I learned. Under the steady tutelage of a Chinese Grand Master and his two existing disciples, I learned the art. I learned to Lion Dance. I Taoist philosophy and somewhere, something was unlocked. Another piece of me that I didn't even realize was missing was added, and suddenly I found myself wondering how I ever managed without it.
Again, I draw your attention to my lack of eloquence. I don't want to say this sounding as if Kung Fu was just a crutch for me. The best way I can put it is that it's part of me. It isn't something I do anymore. It's part of who I am.
On March 10th, I take another step. I'm taking it with the same two companions that have been with me since the beginning. The people who shared the same journey. I'm taking it with April, and I take it surrounded by other students and by the man who got me started on it all.
There are worse ways to spend an evening.
A few.
As in: three.
My Kung Fu master likes Cognac. And as a direct consequence of having met him, I've acquired a taste for it that I didn't possess before.
Anyhow, there's a big celebration and banquet coming up during which I happen to be one of three central figures. This is not a minor event, although very few people outside of thos who actually practice Kung Fu seem to realize just how non-minor it is. I'm being accepted as a disciple to an art which dates back 500 years. In short, it's been decided that I'm one day going to carry on the legacy and pass the knowledge I acquire on to someone else.
Yeah, this is a big deal.
So, traditionally, one gives the master a gift which he would enjoy. He has a great love of Cognac. Cognac, it turns out, is not cheap. Especially if you get very nice cognac. Cognac which has been aged many years to smooth it out; and if I'm going to be taught things that have only been taught to a select few throughout history, I'm not gonna cheap out on it.
Now, this cognac I got my hands on was not as expensive as some cognac out there (I saw a bottle which cost $7000), but it's not exactly a cheap acquisition, and it takes up less than a square foot of real estate on my floor.
Anyhow, I don't want to write about the price of cognac in Canada (title notwithstanding), but I guess I'm feeling a little introspective as the New Year has passed, and as I'm about to take a couple of big steps over the next few months. I'm becoming a disciple to a remarkable martial artist, I'm receiving my PhD. after four years of work. I'm taking my infinitely-better half to Europe for six weeks (a place neither of us has ever been). And throughout that time, I've had a constant companion in the martial arts.
I really wish I had the eloquence to explain what this means, but the truth is that I don't. The best way I know how is to say how it started.
Four years ago, I was in a bad place. Not that things weren't going well for me, mind you. I'd been accepted into a Master's program (the switch to PhD would come about a year later), my research was going well, but the bottom line is that I wasn't happy. A friendship had just ended under unpleasant circumstances, and I was dealing with it badly. I'm not generally prone to emotional outbursts, but frankly I spent about three months walking a very fine line between uncontrolled rage and deep depression. You'd be surprised how close together those two can be.
So I needed something to replace the hours that I was spending feeling sorry for myself. Hey, I'm not proud of it, but without going into detail (which I omit to protect the guilty), you can trust me that it warranted a little wallowing. I'd toyed with the idea of taking up a martial art before. I'd given Aikido a try while I was at UBish; a loooong time ago (picture a 12-year-old Drew in a white uniform and a green belt), I'd tried Tae Kwon Do; a mere few months before the events which lead up to this, I'd tried Kendo. All of which, it should be mentioned, are admirable martial arts. They just weren't for me. Tae Kwon Do, I'd done because I thought it was cool. Aikido, I took up because my significant other at the time had suggested it. Kendo, well, I don't know why I decided to try that one. It looked cool I guess.
The bottom line is that I was sick of feeling sorry for myself and decided I needed somewhere else to focus all that feeling-sorry-for-myself-energy, at least for a few months. Kung Fu seemed as good a place as any. One of the students I shared an office with ran a Kung Fu School; or rather he helped his brother run a Kung Fu school in his spare time, and three questions later, I was learning the White Tiger Style of Kung Fu, along with two buddies from High School.
My life improved rather sharply. I'm not sure to this day whether the two were related. But I was happier, I was healthier, I lost weight, and my endurance and strength increased beyond what I thought was possible. For the first time I could remember ever I realized that I could say that I was happy without a little voice in the back of my head saying no, you're not.
Some time after I came to that remarkable realization, I met April. To say that the two of us hit it right off would be both a cliche and an understatement. I'm not prone to romantic language, but in her I found a half of myself I didn't even realize was missing. Ugh, that sounds so... ugh. Not untrue, mind you. But... ugh.
Like I said, I'm feeling a little introspective, so bear with me.
So we're at now minus three years or so, and I'd been studying the White Tiger Style of Kung Fu for about eight months. I was learning a lot. I ascended quickly to the Blue sash level, and was working on the Green Sash forms and techniques. I managed to pass my test for the Blue sash while doped up on decongestants. An accomplishment I'm actually kinda proud of to this day. It had taken me almost two years to get to that point. I wasn't an asskicker by any description of the term, but I had learned a lot in those two years.
And somewhere in there, the completely unexpected happened. Suddenly, Kung Fu wasn't a crutch anymore. It wasn't something I did to smooth the wrinkles of my life. It wasn't something that made my life easier. It was just something that was there. It was something that just felt right. Like it belonged in that one spot in my life. Like it had always been there.
Keep in mind, when I'd started, I'd intended to keep with it for a few months at most. Now I was going on two years.
October, 2005.
The White Tiger school my two companions and I had been studying at was closing its doors. The young man I'd studied under directed me at a Grand Master of a different, but related style of Kung Fu, and that's where my pursuit of Bak Mei began.
I'm not going to go so far as to claim that it was a moment that changed my life, but I will say that it was a moment that I still use to describe it. It was one of those moments where we describe all the others as "before this," and "after this." This was one of those moments. I started learning this style of Kung fu in a cold basement in the middle of Chinatown. A tiny little building that I'd never have noticed if not for the fact that I needed to climb down into the basement three times a week to learn a style of Kung Fu that I'd never even heard of a month ago. I know, it's weird when I put it that way, but the fact is that for the last almost-three years, Bak Mei has been a dominant positive force in my life.
And I learned. Under the steady tutelage of a Chinese Grand Master and his two existing disciples, I learned the art. I learned to Lion Dance. I Taoist philosophy and somewhere, something was unlocked. Another piece of me that I didn't even realize was missing was added, and suddenly I found myself wondering how I ever managed without it.
Again, I draw your attention to my lack of eloquence. I don't want to say this sounding as if Kung Fu was just a crutch for me. The best way I can put it is that it's part of me. It isn't something I do anymore. It's part of who I am.
On March 10th, I take another step. I'm taking it with the same two companions that have been with me since the beginning. The people who shared the same journey. I'm taking it with April, and I take it surrounded by other students and by the man who got me started on it all.
There are worse ways to spend an evening.
Thursday, February 15, 2007
Some things you have to be nuts to even try
Okay, so there are people out there who have very well-established comfort zones. Some have them so well-established that any attempt to step outside that comfort zone freaks them out, whether it's them stepping out of it, or someone else. Some people, for example, say that I'm completely nuts to go camping in the backcountry every so often when I have a perfectly nice house right here. It's not exactly an untenable position. Granted, they may be missing the point of going into the backcountry in the first place, but their point is nevertheless a valid one.
My comfort zone tends to be a little bit on the wider side. I like being in the middle of nowhere for days on end. I routinely face off with a guy who's bigger and stronger than me and end up getting pretty badly bruised for it.
So me and one of my long-time martial arts partners have taken it upon ourselves to learn a form which involves duking it out with shiny, pointy weapons, and trying not to kill each other in the process. I arm myself with a Chinese eagle spear, he arms himself with a nine-ringed halberd, and we promptly attempt to kill each other with them.
Okay, it's not as crazy as it sounds.
The halberd is made out of steel and is methodically hacked at my feet, my head, and my chest throughout the form. In return, I jab my spear, methodically, at his head, chest and feet. Each time, we duck, dodge, or move out of the way of the offending weapon before it has a chance to skewer or clobber us.
Again, let me emphasize my previous "not as crazy as it sounds" dictum.
It should be mentioned that the spear is blunted (it looks sharp, but it really isn't), and the halberd is unsharpened (pointy and heavy, but not sharp); but even these can do a lot of damage if they hit you hard enough. The halberd (the heavy metal end of which is repeatedly swung at my head) weighs in at about 10 lbs, give or take a little.
For those of you who haven't figured it out yet, that's enough to leave a substantial bruise, or crush a finger quite nicely if it should happen to hit one.
I think you can see where this is going.
Making a long story short (which is actually kinda a necessity, since I'm trying to type this without use of my right index finger), my right index finger is now in a splint. They haven't x-rayed it, but at the very least, it needs to be immobilized until the swelling goes down.
The fact that a blunt weapon managed to draw a not insubstantial amount of blood should probably tell you something.
So, we'll see how long this takes to heal. Fortunately, I'm still able to do the lion dances over Chinese new year, but I don't know how functional my right hand is going to be for martial arts demonstrations.
Stay tuned.
My comfort zone tends to be a little bit on the wider side. I like being in the middle of nowhere for days on end. I routinely face off with a guy who's bigger and stronger than me and end up getting pretty badly bruised for it.
So me and one of my long-time martial arts partners have taken it upon ourselves to learn a form which involves duking it out with shiny, pointy weapons, and trying not to kill each other in the process. I arm myself with a Chinese eagle spear, he arms himself with a nine-ringed halberd, and we promptly attempt to kill each other with them.
Okay, it's not as crazy as it sounds.
The halberd is made out of steel and is methodically hacked at my feet, my head, and my chest throughout the form. In return, I jab my spear, methodically, at his head, chest and feet. Each time, we duck, dodge, or move out of the way of the offending weapon before it has a chance to skewer or clobber us.
Again, let me emphasize my previous "not as crazy as it sounds" dictum.
It should be mentioned that the spear is blunted (it looks sharp, but it really isn't), and the halberd is unsharpened (pointy and heavy, but not sharp); but even these can do a lot of damage if they hit you hard enough. The halberd (the heavy metal end of which is repeatedly swung at my head) weighs in at about 10 lbs, give or take a little.
For those of you who haven't figured it out yet, that's enough to leave a substantial bruise, or crush a finger quite nicely if it should happen to hit one.
I think you can see where this is going.
Making a long story short (which is actually kinda a necessity, since I'm trying to type this without use of my right index finger), my right index finger is now in a splint. They haven't x-rayed it, but at the very least, it needs to be immobilized until the swelling goes down.
The fact that a blunt weapon managed to draw a not insubstantial amount of blood should probably tell you something.
So, we'll see how long this takes to heal. Fortunately, I'm still able to do the lion dances over Chinese new year, but I don't know how functional my right hand is going to be for martial arts demonstrations.
Stay tuned.
Thursday, January 25, 2007
Doctor of Philosophy
So, it's over.
I guess when you get to this point in your life, it's normal to take a step back and say: hey, I did it. I guess when your entire life has been building up to one moment, and that moment finally shows up, you're supposed to have a huge sense of accomplishment.
Well, that hasn't hit me quite yet. Maybe it will on convocation day. Right now, I just kinda feel numb. It's over, I made it. All the papers have been turned in, all the forms have been filled out, all the signatures collected. All the exams have been written or spoken, all the experiments performed. It's over.
It's weird, I guess. Like I said, I just feel numb. Like I've just had some giant grab me by the legs and beat me against a wall for four years straight, then went to the hospital and got put on so many painkillers I barely even know my own name, much less that I was just grabbed by the legs and beaten against a wall. Honestly, I think I'm just tired.
So, convocation is in June. June 9th, to be exact. I haven't decided whether I'm going or not. Okay, that's a lie: I think my mom will disown me if I don't, but having seen what my older brother had to wear when he got handed his PhD back in November, I gotta say I'm not terribly thrilled at the prospect. For those of you who aren't firmly associated with an academic setting, PhDs in many institutions are required to wear something that, for some bizarre reason, is very different from the traditional cap 'n' gown. Every university has its unique academic dress or regalia that they hand out to doctoral students so that people will think they're special or something. That wouldn't bug me that much if the academic dress of the University of Calgary weren't the most godawful combination of colors and textures I can imagine. I swear, the person who designed it must've been colorblind; and I don't mean red-green, or blue-yellow colorblind. I mean, black, white and shades of gray colorblind. And on top of that, they had bad taste. Our academic reglia looks like it was put together by a two-year-old with fingerpaint. The only bright spot in the whole thing is the hat. Yes, it looks like a mortar board in desperate need of Viagra, but at least it's not as Mad-Hatter-esque as a lot of the hats I've seen. It's more of a subtle black beret-like hat that they call a John Knox Cap. I can't find a picture of it online, but it really does look like a flaccid mortar board.
I've gotta admit that I've never fully understood the need for a graduation ceremony. It always struck me as a somewhat cultish activity. Like the academic elders were saying "yes, you are worthy of joining us." Basically, you end up with a super-high-up guy who stands atop a stage proclaiming to the world that you are henceforth to be called "Doctor," then hands you a piece of paper, announcing your name to the crowd and pretending that he actually knows who the hell you are. I'm not saying I have an issue with academia; obviously, I don't, since I've dedicated the better part of my young life to it, but I have to admit that I don't fully understand all the pomp and circumstance surrounding it. So if I go to this graduation ceremony; and let's be honest, I probably will; it won't be for me that I'm going. I'm going for my parents. I'm going for April. I'm going for my two brothers who want to watch me walk across the stage in a suit that makes every rational human being on earth ask "I wonder how many of them can fit into a tiny car?"
All that said, I'm going to look into getting my hands on a Kilt. Dad has some thing about wanting to see me wear a kilt to my graduation. Hell, you only do this once.
I guess when you get to this point in your life, it's normal to take a step back and say: hey, I did it. I guess when your entire life has been building up to one moment, and that moment finally shows up, you're supposed to have a huge sense of accomplishment.
Well, that hasn't hit me quite yet. Maybe it will on convocation day. Right now, I just kinda feel numb. It's over, I made it. All the papers have been turned in, all the forms have been filled out, all the signatures collected. All the exams have been written or spoken, all the experiments performed. It's over.
It's weird, I guess. Like I said, I just feel numb. Like I've just had some giant grab me by the legs and beat me against a wall for four years straight, then went to the hospital and got put on so many painkillers I barely even know my own name, much less that I was just grabbed by the legs and beaten against a wall. Honestly, I think I'm just tired.
So, convocation is in June. June 9th, to be exact. I haven't decided whether I'm going or not. Okay, that's a lie: I think my mom will disown me if I don't, but having seen what my older brother had to wear when he got handed his PhD back in November, I gotta say I'm not terribly thrilled at the prospect. For those of you who aren't firmly associated with an academic setting, PhDs in many institutions are required to wear something that, for some bizarre reason, is very different from the traditional cap 'n' gown. Every university has its unique academic dress or regalia that they hand out to doctoral students so that people will think they're special or something. That wouldn't bug me that much if the academic dress of the University of Calgary weren't the most godawful combination of colors and textures I can imagine. I swear, the person who designed it must've been colorblind; and I don't mean red-green, or blue-yellow colorblind. I mean, black, white and shades of gray colorblind. And on top of that, they had bad taste. Our academic reglia looks like it was put together by a two-year-old with fingerpaint. The only bright spot in the whole thing is the hat. Yes, it looks like a mortar board in desperate need of Viagra, but at least it's not as Mad-Hatter-esque as a lot of the hats I've seen. It's more of a subtle black beret-like hat that they call a John Knox Cap. I can't find a picture of it online, but it really does look like a flaccid mortar board.
I've gotta admit that I've never fully understood the need for a graduation ceremony. It always struck me as a somewhat cultish activity. Like the academic elders were saying "yes, you are worthy of joining us." Basically, you end up with a super-high-up guy who stands atop a stage proclaiming to the world that you are henceforth to be called "Doctor," then hands you a piece of paper, announcing your name to the crowd and pretending that he actually knows who the hell you are. I'm not saying I have an issue with academia; obviously, I don't, since I've dedicated the better part of my young life to it, but I have to admit that I don't fully understand all the pomp and circumstance surrounding it. So if I go to this graduation ceremony; and let's be honest, I probably will; it won't be for me that I'm going. I'm going for my parents. I'm going for April. I'm going for my two brothers who want to watch me walk across the stage in a suit that makes every rational human being on earth ask "I wonder how many of them can fit into a tiny car?"
All that said, I'm going to look into getting my hands on a Kilt. Dad has some thing about wanting to see me wear a kilt to my graduation. Hell, you only do this once.
Monday, January 01, 2007
GET ME THE HELL OUT OF DENVER!!!!!!!
You'd think that I would've learned from my experiences last year not to travel through Denver, Colorado ever again. You'd think I'd have picked up a little wisdom during my seven-hour drive from Denver to Durango last year that I would've given a second thought to taking a connection through there again.
You'd think. And you'd be wrong.
I woke up bright and early on Wednesday, December 20th to catch a flight from Calgary to Denver. Three and a half hours crammed in a tin can punctuated by approximately one hour in an even smaller tin can at the end of which, it was promised, I'd be safely in Durango, Colorado.
That was the plan, anyway.
I arrived at the ticket counter a good two hours ahead of time, got my boarding pass and made it through customs in record time. The guy behind the customs desk barely even glanced at my passport. Kinda surprising since the last time I tried to cross the border I was informed that I was on the terrorist watch list. This time they barely even looked at me. I'm at a complete loss to explain that one.
The flight left at 6:55 am on Wednesday morning. The skies were clear and dark (the sun hadn't risen yet), but the weather in Calgary was pretty much ideal. The temperature hovered around freezing, the terrorism alert was yellow, and all in all, life could've been a lot worse.
The plane took off less than five minutes late (so, pretty much right on time) and turned south, cruising towards the distant, invisible runway at Denver International Airport.
I didn't even have any idea that anything was wrong in Denver until we were about an hour out from Denver, and even then the only notice was "some flights out of Denver have been cancelled." I wasn't really worried, since there are a dozen flights to Durango from Denver, and even if mine was cancelled, I figured my chances of getting onto one of them were pretty good.
And, to be fair, they probably would have been pretty good, if any flights were leaving Denver at all.
Now, I should mention that the descent into Denver was one of the most uneventful landings I've ever experienced (and I've experienced a few); except for the fact that we couldn't see the ground until we were about a hundred feet above it. Due to some minor delays enroute, we arrived at the gate approximately fifteen minutes before my flight to Durango was scheduled to leave. I thought I'd dodged a bullet. I figured if we could land in this weather, we could take off, as long as we took off before the weather got any worse.
I know, it's a vain, delusional hope, but it was something for me to cling to... for about thirty seconds, right until I saw the monitors and found that pretty much every posted flight out of Denver (including two to Durango) had been cancelled.
And that was pretty much the high point of my day.
I actually made it to a window that gave me a real picture of the weather outside. The weather was horrendous. The snow was falling so thick that from the large window, I couldn't see the airplane parked right outside it. And it was falling sideways. Brutal winds blasted the dry snow into thick snowdrifts which piled around buildings in piles several feet thick. I later found out that they were describing this as the fourth most severe blizzard to hit Denver ever. How, exactly, they quantify these things is a bit of a mystery to me, but I'm not about to argue the point. I've lived in Calgary for twenty-seven years (not counting five that I spent in Quebec), and I've seen a bizzard this bad exactly once in my life. And I was seven at the time.
I landed at 9:45. By ten, every outgoing flight had been cancelled; by noon, every incoming one. Some flights still arrived into the afternoon because United Airlines is being run by a bunch of monkeys, but as of noon, Denver International Airport was closed for business.
Which meant that I had to find a place to stay for the night.
Someone was walking around handing out these little pink slips which provided a good rate for a hotel that night... provided that we could get out of the airport. Something, it turns out, that was easier said than done. Getting a hotel room was actually the easy part. Getting to the hotel, on the other hand, was going to take a little work.
So I called my folks. On my cellphone. Long distance. Roaming. I couldn't get through to United Airlines to get a flight to Durango; or anywhere, for that matter, so I had people in two different cities try to get me a flight to anywhere. As long as it was out of Denver. From there, I figured I could make my way to somewhere that was in striking distance of Durango.
It was coming up on two o'clock in the afternoon at this point. I'd been standing in line for a little over three hours, only to be told that they weren't reserving any more flights, and that they weren't letting me get my checked bag out of the system. So it looked like I wasn't going to be able to change my clothes until this was all over. United Airlines' stock was in freefall as far as I was concerned.
I ran into a airport employee and showed him my ticket. He looked at my ticket with a confused expression on his face.
"Why did your flight leave Calgary?" He asked me.
I looked at him with a somewhat flabbergasted look on my face which is universally recognized to mean "why the hell are you asking me!?" But aloud I only said "what do you mean?"
"Well, we sent out word at 4:00 am that no more flights were to leave for Denver. That's three hours before your flight left," he told me, as if I wasn't able to do the math myself.
Assuming, for the sake of argument, I wasn't already pissed off at United Airlines, that pretty much drove the last nail into the coffin. If they'd mentioned just once before I got on the plane that getting out of Denver might be a little difficult, I could've waited and got onto another flight to somewhere else.
Anywhere else.
But I digress.
So... getting out of the Airport. Believe it or not, that would be the largest challenge I would face over the next 48 hours. I knew I had a room reserved, and would at least have a warm bed, assuming that I could get out of the airport.
Shuttle busses were coming, infrequently, to the airport and let me just say that I saw something of a wide spectrum of human behaviour during my time waiting for the bus. I saw people elbow others out of the way just to get onto the bus, and I saw a crowd stand aside to let by a woman with a baby. As you'll see in a moment, I'm not exactly in a position where I can huck stones around, but I felt it important to point out that human beings are fickle creatures.
Around 4:00 pm, I looked at the (huge) crowd around me and came to the realization that the vast majority of them weren't going to get out of the airport before the highways closed. I turned to two guys I'd spent the afternoon with and told them that if we wanted out of this, we were going to have to short-out the lineup. Taxis were already starting to bypass the airport and try to get back into town before the highway closed. So we decided that we had to do something stupid. We hiked up the shoulder of the highway, in zero visibility, in snow that was driving into us and freezing our eyes shut. We flagged down a taxi, and between the three of us, we offered a $120 "tip" on top of the fare to get to the hotel.
Yep, we bribed a taxi driver to get out of the airport. I'm not proud of it, but it did the job. I should point out at this point that normally, the ride from the airport to the hotel is approximately 20 minutes. The three of us piled into the taxi at approximately 4:13 pm. It was just after six when we arrived at the hotel. I'm no stranger to blizzards, but this one scared the bajesus out of me. Visibility was functionally zero. Cars had been abandoned on both sides of the highway, and you could see people trying to hike along the median to safety. We stopped to help jump-start two cars, helped push another one out of a snowdrift, and we carried another person to the hotel we were going to, mostly at my insistance; my attempts to atone for leaving a bunch of people stranded at the airport, I guess. At any rate, the (now four) of us made it to the hotel and we gave the taxi driver his payoff (with an additional $40 contributed by the person we'd picked up). I think we probably set the record as the single highest fare he got year. It's also worth mentioning that as we were driving away from the airport, we heard over the radio that the highways into and out of the airport were closed; so I'm pretty sure that we were some of the last people actually get away from DIA.
Like I said, I'm not proud of it, but it worked. It sure as hell beat being stranded at the airport.
I checked in at 6:12 pm (I feel I should direct your attention to the time at which my flight landed at DIA, a few paragraphs north of this one).
I slid into my room and crashed pretty much immediately. I needed some sleep.
I'll jump forward a couple of days here, since not much that was particularly noteworthy occurred for two days other than being told "no, Denver International Airport is not opened yet," repeatedly. I did manage to get a reserved flight on the 23rd from Denver to Salt Lake City, standby; then from Salt Lake City to Durango, also standby. To use a sports metaphor, it was like fumbling at the four yard line, being pushed back to the thirty, than attempting a touchdown when all of my receivers have broken ankles. For two days, we couldn't really leave the hotel until the snow plows cleared the roads, and even if we could, there wasn't really anywhere to go. I hung out with a fellow pinko liberal at the hotel bar discussing at length how much we both hated Bush and his administration. He was a nice guy. He bought me a couple of drinks. Turns out that he was also a fan of the Crown Royal and Coke; my drink of choice, when I'm not buying.
So, we had nothing better to do for two days than sit at the hotel bar and have a few (dozen) drinks.
I tried in the interim to show up uber-early to the airport and get on an earlier flight to Durango on standby, but it didn't work out. They were telling me at the time that the earliest they could get me out of the city was the 29th. Fortunately, I had my Denver-Salt Lake City-Durango ace in the hole.
So, the 23rd rolled around. I want to take a moment to point out that that day, exactly one year prior, I was also stranded in Denver International Airport, and I ended up driving from Denver to Durango (for seven hours) with three strangers I ran into at the airport; arriving at 3:00 am on Christmas Eve.
But I digress again.
DIA was a madhouse. It was a state of organized chaos. At 8:00 am (ten hours before my flight was scheduled to leave), the lineup to get to the ticket counter was 2.7 miles long, winding its way all over the airport. I know this because the woman standing two spaces behind me was wearing a pedometer.You can see a picture of the lineup to the ticket counter here.
In an act which could be considered cruel, in one of its meanderings, the lineup for the ticket counter overlooked the security lineup, which was just as bad; and that's where we were going next.
The guy who helped me at the ticket counter (two and a half hours after I got in line) was pissed off, not that I can really blame him. He'd spent the last couple of days talking with really pissed off people, I guess it rubbed off on him.
So after just shy of three hours standing in line to get a boarding pass, I stood for just shy of two more waiting to go through security. That line was longer, but it moved faster. I attached a picture of the lineup for security as well.
I made it to the gate my plane would be leaving from, and waited. I had another four hours before my flight left. I had an hour and a half connection in Salt Lake city, so as long as my flight left roughly on time, I would make it to Durango after a long day of traveling, but I'd make it.
Notice the qualifier.
I watched as the flight from Denver to Salt Lake City announced that the flight, instead of leaving at 6:00 pm, would be leaving at 8:30 pm. Unless the flight from Denver to Salt Lake was less than a half hour long (which it isn't), there was no possible way I was going to make my connection; and frankly, I was going to trade one stranding for another, since I wouldn't have any way out of Salt Lake City when I got there.
My day had just got a lot worse.
So I called my folks to let them know that they probably shouldn't bother making a bed for me, it was starting to look unlikely that I was going to leave Denver. United Airline's stock was again in freefall as far as I was concerned.
To put things in perspective, I'd now been in Denver, Colorado, less than 300 miles from my final destination, for 78 hours, I was tired, I'd been wearing the same clothes for four days, and I smelled like something that had died in an outhouse. I was not having a good day.
Then I had a thought.
The previous year, April had spent New Year's with me in Durango, and to get there, she had flown from Denver to Cortez; a tiny town about an hour away from Durango.
The flight was a tiny little propeller-powered Beechcraft; which departed from a small, corner of Denver International Airport; and it was a flight that absolutely nobody knew about.
So I'm pretty sure I set land-speed records sprinting from Concourse B to the extreme far end of concourse A (which, for those who are unfamiliar with DIA, is the single most distant point possible from the gate I was sitting at), and skidded to a stop right in front of the gate for a flight to Cortez. The nice grandmotherly woman behind the counter said that I was the first on the standby list, and that there was room on the flight, so it looked good. Then she said the single most dreaded word in the english language (for me, anyway, at that time): "but."
"But," she told me, "you're going to have to get a paper ticket which shows what we call an 'involuntary transfer' from Salt Lake City to Cortez."
"Perfect," I told her, "how do I do that?"
"Go to the Customer Services Desk, it'll take them ten minutes," she informed me.
She'd barely finished the sentence, before I dashed (again at a full sprint) back to concourse B (the customer services desk happened to be right next to the gate I was waiting at, which, you'll recall, is about as far away from the gate for the flight to Cortez as you can get without standing on the tarmac). So I skid to a stop just in front of the customer services desk, only to find out that United Airlines had just seen it fit to cancel four flights. The lineup was weaving back several hundred meters. There were exactly forty-one minutes until the flight to Cortez left, and there was no possible way that I was going to make it to the counter in time.
So I ran, again at a full sprint, to the far end of Concourse A (that's three sprints back and forth, for those of you keeping count) and arrived at the gate, out of breath, sweaty, and smelly, all of which combined to make me look just pathetic enough for her maternal instinct to kick in.
"Tell you what," she said, "you're first on the standby list, so I will sell you a ticket at the last minute to fly to Cortez."
So that's how it played out. Literally seconds before the flight was to leave, I forked over $270 (US), to hop a flight at the last minute to fly from Denver to Cortez.
I heaved a huge sigh of relief as I sat in my seat on the tiny plane.
The engines spun up, and the plane turned to taxi towards the runway.
Then it stopped.
It stopped dead in the middle of the flight apron, its engines spinning, waiting to lift off.
The pilot turned around and announced: "Folks, I'm sorry to announce that we've had a minor technical problem and we cannot lift off at this time. We're going to go back to the gate and deplane, and we'll see if we can get this corrected."
There's a point at which the situation becomes just absurd enough to be funny. I was quietly giggling to myself as I sat in the airport for the next half hour, watching them try to fix the plane outside. Maybe it was because I was exhausted, both physically and emotionally, but the whole situation suddenly seemed hilarious. I remember I had to force myself not to giggle uncontrolably when April called me on my cellphone while I was waiting at the gate.
The flight finally lifted off, almost an hour late, but it lifted off, and landed in the tiny airport in Cortez, Colorado, just over an hour later.
Me, I was just happy to be out of Denver.
Dad was already waiting for me at the gate when I got off of the plane. I vowed never to fly through Denver; ever again.
Now, as an addendum, remember how they wouldn't let me get my bags and as a result, I had to wear the same clothes for four days? Well, guess what, my bag arrived in Durango the day before I did. So apparently, it was more important for them to get my bags to Durango than it was to get me there.
Nice to know where I rate.
So, for those of you keeping track, I'm never flying through Denver again, and I'm never flying United.
Happy New Year, everybody.
You'd think. And you'd be wrong.
I woke up bright and early on Wednesday, December 20th to catch a flight from Calgary to Denver. Three and a half hours crammed in a tin can punctuated by approximately one hour in an even smaller tin can at the end of which, it was promised, I'd be safely in Durango, Colorado.
That was the plan, anyway.
I arrived at the ticket counter a good two hours ahead of time, got my boarding pass and made it through customs in record time. The guy behind the customs desk barely even glanced at my passport. Kinda surprising since the last time I tried to cross the border I was informed that I was on the terrorist watch list. This time they barely even looked at me. I'm at a complete loss to explain that one.
The flight left at 6:55 am on Wednesday morning. The skies were clear and dark (the sun hadn't risen yet), but the weather in Calgary was pretty much ideal. The temperature hovered around freezing, the terrorism alert was yellow, and all in all, life could've been a lot worse.
The plane took off less than five minutes late (so, pretty much right on time) and turned south, cruising towards the distant, invisible runway at Denver International Airport.
I didn't even have any idea that anything was wrong in Denver until we were about an hour out from Denver, and even then the only notice was "some flights out of Denver have been cancelled." I wasn't really worried, since there are a dozen flights to Durango from Denver, and even if mine was cancelled, I figured my chances of getting onto one of them were pretty good.
And, to be fair, they probably would have been pretty good, if any flights were leaving Denver at all.
Now, I should mention that the descent into Denver was one of the most uneventful landings I've ever experienced (and I've experienced a few); except for the fact that we couldn't see the ground until we were about a hundred feet above it. Due to some minor delays enroute, we arrived at the gate approximately fifteen minutes before my flight to Durango was scheduled to leave. I thought I'd dodged a bullet. I figured if we could land in this weather, we could take off, as long as we took off before the weather got any worse.
I know, it's a vain, delusional hope, but it was something for me to cling to... for about thirty seconds, right until I saw the monitors and found that pretty much every posted flight out of Denver (including two to Durango) had been cancelled.
And that was pretty much the high point of my day.
I actually made it to a window that gave me a real picture of the weather outside. The weather was horrendous. The snow was falling so thick that from the large window, I couldn't see the airplane parked right outside it. And it was falling sideways. Brutal winds blasted the dry snow into thick snowdrifts which piled around buildings in piles several feet thick. I later found out that they were describing this as the fourth most severe blizzard to hit Denver ever. How, exactly, they quantify these things is a bit of a mystery to me, but I'm not about to argue the point. I've lived in Calgary for twenty-seven years (not counting five that I spent in Quebec), and I've seen a bizzard this bad exactly once in my life. And I was seven at the time.
I landed at 9:45. By ten, every outgoing flight had been cancelled; by noon, every incoming one. Some flights still arrived into the afternoon because United Airlines is being run by a bunch of monkeys, but as of noon, Denver International Airport was closed for business.
Which meant that I had to find a place to stay for the night.
Someone was walking around handing out these little pink slips which provided a good rate for a hotel that night... provided that we could get out of the airport. Something, it turns out, that was easier said than done. Getting a hotel room was actually the easy part. Getting to the hotel, on the other hand, was going to take a little work.
So I called my folks. On my cellphone. Long distance. Roaming. I couldn't get through to United Airlines to get a flight to Durango; or anywhere, for that matter, so I had people in two different cities try to get me a flight to anywhere. As long as it was out of Denver. From there, I figured I could make my way to somewhere that was in striking distance of Durango.
It was coming up on two o'clock in the afternoon at this point. I'd been standing in line for a little over three hours, only to be told that they weren't reserving any more flights, and that they weren't letting me get my checked bag out of the system. So it looked like I wasn't going to be able to change my clothes until this was all over. United Airlines' stock was in freefall as far as I was concerned.
I ran into a airport employee and showed him my ticket. He looked at my ticket with a confused expression on his face.
"Why did your flight leave Calgary?" He asked me.
I looked at him with a somewhat flabbergasted look on my face which is universally recognized to mean "why the hell are you asking me!?" But aloud I only said "what do you mean?"
"Well, we sent out word at 4:00 am that no more flights were to leave for Denver. That's three hours before your flight left," he told me, as if I wasn't able to do the math myself.
Assuming, for the sake of argument, I wasn't already pissed off at United Airlines, that pretty much drove the last nail into the coffin. If they'd mentioned just once before I got on the plane that getting out of Denver might be a little difficult, I could've waited and got onto another flight to somewhere else.
Anywhere else.
But I digress.
So... getting out of the Airport. Believe it or not, that would be the largest challenge I would face over the next 48 hours. I knew I had a room reserved, and would at least have a warm bed, assuming that I could get out of the airport.
Shuttle busses were coming, infrequently, to the airport and let me just say that I saw something of a wide spectrum of human behaviour during my time waiting for the bus. I saw people elbow others out of the way just to get onto the bus, and I saw a crowd stand aside to let by a woman with a baby. As you'll see in a moment, I'm not exactly in a position where I can huck stones around, but I felt it important to point out that human beings are fickle creatures.
Around 4:00 pm, I looked at the (huge) crowd around me and came to the realization that the vast majority of them weren't going to get out of the airport before the highways closed. I turned to two guys I'd spent the afternoon with and told them that if we wanted out of this, we were going to have to short-out the lineup. Taxis were already starting to bypass the airport and try to get back into town before the highway closed. So we decided that we had to do something stupid. We hiked up the shoulder of the highway, in zero visibility, in snow that was driving into us and freezing our eyes shut. We flagged down a taxi, and between the three of us, we offered a $120 "tip" on top of the fare to get to the hotel.
Yep, we bribed a taxi driver to get out of the airport. I'm not proud of it, but it did the job. I should point out at this point that normally, the ride from the airport to the hotel is approximately 20 minutes. The three of us piled into the taxi at approximately 4:13 pm. It was just after six when we arrived at the hotel. I'm no stranger to blizzards, but this one scared the bajesus out of me. Visibility was functionally zero. Cars had been abandoned on both sides of the highway, and you could see people trying to hike along the median to safety. We stopped to help jump-start two cars, helped push another one out of a snowdrift, and we carried another person to the hotel we were going to, mostly at my insistance; my attempts to atone for leaving a bunch of people stranded at the airport, I guess. At any rate, the (now four) of us made it to the hotel and we gave the taxi driver his payoff (with an additional $40 contributed by the person we'd picked up). I think we probably set the record as the single highest fare he got year. It's also worth mentioning that as we were driving away from the airport, we heard over the radio that the highways into and out of the airport were closed; so I'm pretty sure that we were some of the last people actually get away from DIA.
Like I said, I'm not proud of it, but it worked. It sure as hell beat being stranded at the airport.
I checked in at 6:12 pm (I feel I should direct your attention to the time at which my flight landed at DIA, a few paragraphs north of this one).
I slid into my room and crashed pretty much immediately. I needed some sleep.
I'll jump forward a couple of days here, since not much that was particularly noteworthy occurred for two days other than being told "no, Denver International Airport is not opened yet," repeatedly. I did manage to get a reserved flight on the 23rd from Denver to Salt Lake City, standby; then from Salt Lake City to Durango, also standby. To use a sports metaphor, it was like fumbling at the four yard line, being pushed back to the thirty, than attempting a touchdown when all of my receivers have broken ankles. For two days, we couldn't really leave the hotel until the snow plows cleared the roads, and even if we could, there wasn't really anywhere to go. I hung out with a fellow pinko liberal at the hotel bar discussing at length how much we both hated Bush and his administration. He was a nice guy. He bought me a couple of drinks. Turns out that he was also a fan of the Crown Royal and Coke; my drink of choice, when I'm not buying.
So, we had nothing better to do for two days than sit at the hotel bar and have a few (dozen) drinks.
I tried in the interim to show up uber-early to the airport and get on an earlier flight to Durango on standby, but it didn't work out. They were telling me at the time that the earliest they could get me out of the city was the 29th. Fortunately, I had my Denver-Salt Lake City-Durango ace in the hole.
So, the 23rd rolled around. I want to take a moment to point out that that day, exactly one year prior, I was also stranded in Denver International Airport, and I ended up driving from Denver to Durango (for seven hours) with three strangers I ran into at the airport; arriving at 3:00 am on Christmas Eve.
But I digress again.
DIA was a madhouse. It was a state of organized chaos. At 8:00 am (ten hours before my flight was scheduled to leave), the lineup to get to the ticket counter was 2.7 miles long, winding its way all over the airport. I know this because the woman standing two spaces behind me was wearing a pedometer.You can see a picture of the lineup to the ticket counter here.
In an act which could be considered cruel, in one of its meanderings, the lineup for the ticket counter overlooked the security lineup, which was just as bad; and that's where we were going next.
The guy who helped me at the ticket counter (two and a half hours after I got in line) was pissed off, not that I can really blame him. He'd spent the last couple of days talking with really pissed off people, I guess it rubbed off on him.
So after just shy of three hours standing in line to get a boarding pass, I stood for just shy of two more waiting to go through security. That line was longer, but it moved faster. I attached a picture of the lineup for security as well.
I made it to the gate my plane would be leaving from, and waited. I had another four hours before my flight left. I had an hour and a half connection in Salt Lake city, so as long as my flight left roughly on time, I would make it to Durango after a long day of traveling, but I'd make it.
Notice the qualifier.
I watched as the flight from Denver to Salt Lake City announced that the flight, instead of leaving at 6:00 pm, would be leaving at 8:30 pm. Unless the flight from Denver to Salt Lake was less than a half hour long (which it isn't), there was no possible way I was going to make my connection; and frankly, I was going to trade one stranding for another, since I wouldn't have any way out of Salt Lake City when I got there.
My day had just got a lot worse.
So I called my folks to let them know that they probably shouldn't bother making a bed for me, it was starting to look unlikely that I was going to leave Denver. United Airline's stock was again in freefall as far as I was concerned.
To put things in perspective, I'd now been in Denver, Colorado, less than 300 miles from my final destination, for 78 hours, I was tired, I'd been wearing the same clothes for four days, and I smelled like something that had died in an outhouse. I was not having a good day.
Then I had a thought.
The previous year, April had spent New Year's with me in Durango, and to get there, she had flown from Denver to Cortez; a tiny town about an hour away from Durango.
The flight was a tiny little propeller-powered Beechcraft; which departed from a small, corner of Denver International Airport; and it was a flight that absolutely nobody knew about.
So I'm pretty sure I set land-speed records sprinting from Concourse B to the extreme far end of concourse A (which, for those who are unfamiliar with DIA, is the single most distant point possible from the gate I was sitting at), and skidded to a stop right in front of the gate for a flight to Cortez. The nice grandmotherly woman behind the counter said that I was the first on the standby list, and that there was room on the flight, so it looked good. Then she said the single most dreaded word in the english language (for me, anyway, at that time): "but."
"But," she told me, "you're going to have to get a paper ticket which shows what we call an 'involuntary transfer' from Salt Lake City to Cortez."
"Perfect," I told her, "how do I do that?"
"Go to the Customer Services Desk, it'll take them ten minutes," she informed me.
She'd barely finished the sentence, before I dashed (again at a full sprint) back to concourse B (the customer services desk happened to be right next to the gate I was waiting at, which, you'll recall, is about as far away from the gate for the flight to Cortez as you can get without standing on the tarmac). So I skid to a stop just in front of the customer services desk, only to find out that United Airlines had just seen it fit to cancel four flights. The lineup was weaving back several hundred meters. There were exactly forty-one minutes until the flight to Cortez left, and there was no possible way that I was going to make it to the counter in time.
So I ran, again at a full sprint, to the far end of Concourse A (that's three sprints back and forth, for those of you keeping count) and arrived at the gate, out of breath, sweaty, and smelly, all of which combined to make me look just pathetic enough for her maternal instinct to kick in.
"Tell you what," she said, "you're first on the standby list, so I will sell you a ticket at the last minute to fly to Cortez."
So that's how it played out. Literally seconds before the flight was to leave, I forked over $270 (US), to hop a flight at the last minute to fly from Denver to Cortez.
I heaved a huge sigh of relief as I sat in my seat on the tiny plane.
The engines spun up, and the plane turned to taxi towards the runway.
Then it stopped.
It stopped dead in the middle of the flight apron, its engines spinning, waiting to lift off.
The pilot turned around and announced: "Folks, I'm sorry to announce that we've had a minor technical problem and we cannot lift off at this time. We're going to go back to the gate and deplane, and we'll see if we can get this corrected."
There's a point at which the situation becomes just absurd enough to be funny. I was quietly giggling to myself as I sat in the airport for the next half hour, watching them try to fix the plane outside. Maybe it was because I was exhausted, both physically and emotionally, but the whole situation suddenly seemed hilarious. I remember I had to force myself not to giggle uncontrolably when April called me on my cellphone while I was waiting at the gate.
The flight finally lifted off, almost an hour late, but it lifted off, and landed in the tiny airport in Cortez, Colorado, just over an hour later.
Me, I was just happy to be out of Denver.
Dad was already waiting for me at the gate when I got off of the plane. I vowed never to fly through Denver; ever again.
Now, as an addendum, remember how they wouldn't let me get my bags and as a result, I had to wear the same clothes for four days? Well, guess what, my bag arrived in Durango the day before I did. So apparently, it was more important for them to get my bags to Durango than it was to get me there.
Nice to know where I rate.
So, for those of you keeping track, I'm never flying through Denver again, and I'm never flying United.
Happy New Year, everybody.
Thursday, November 09, 2006
Best. Week. Ever.
The democrats took back congress, which means that for the first time in his presidency, Bush might actually have to listen to the other side of the aisle rather than having them just rubber stamp the bills he sends his way. It also means that for the first time in six years, I'm actually cautiously optimistic about this country's political future.
Rummy's gone, and although his replacement is an ol' buddy of Bush's, he's also worked under several administrations that aren't Bush, and with a little luck, and a nod from the gods, I'm actually cautiously optimistic that we'll actually have an exit strategy some time in the near future.
A creationist whackjob in florida just got nailed for tax evasion, which just goes to show that although creationist whackjobs can manipulate school boards to force their particular flavor of christianity into the class room, they aren't completely above the law.
Stem cell initiatives have passed in one state, a ban on gay marriage was defeated in another, and a complete ban of abortion was defeated in a third, giving me reason to be cautiously optimistic that the US as a whole hasn't slid hopelessly far to the extreme right.
Oh, and I passed my PhD. thesis defense.
Rummy's gone, and although his replacement is an ol' buddy of Bush's, he's also worked under several administrations that aren't Bush, and with a little luck, and a nod from the gods, I'm actually cautiously optimistic that we'll actually have an exit strategy some time in the near future.
A creationist whackjob in florida just got nailed for tax evasion, which just goes to show that although creationist whackjobs can manipulate school boards to force their particular flavor of christianity into the class room, they aren't completely above the law.
Stem cell initiatives have passed in one state, a ban on gay marriage was defeated in another, and a complete ban of abortion was defeated in a third, giving me reason to be cautiously optimistic that the US as a whole hasn't slid hopelessly far to the extreme right.
Oh, and I passed my PhD. thesis defense.
Saturday, October 28, 2006
Okay, I am in as bad shape as I thought I was.
I'm in marginal pain at the moment.
So i'm back to three Kung Fu classes every week. I couldn't make friday nights for pretty much the last several months. The problem is that Friday nights are the hard classes. We do conditioning on Friday night. Basically, it's a two-hour torture-test where we find new and creative ways of abusing our bodies with the aim of building muscle, endurance, and physical strength.
I haven't been to a Friday night class in several months. I guess that comes from working on a fricking PhD. thesis. Side effect of sitting in front of a computer for 16 hours a day is that you get out of shape rather quickly.
So I went to class last night, and as most Fridays are, I brutally abused myself for three hours. But as the evening drew to a close, I figured that I wasn't in as bad shape as I thought I was. Oh, I was hurting, naturally. You don't push yourself for that hard, and that long without some body part voicing an objection or two; but it wasn't nearly as bad as I thought it would be. I thought I'd be vomiting by the time the class was half-over.
So I thought I was in better physical condition than I feared I would be.
Then I woke up this morning.
Nope. Turns out that I'm in as bad shape as I thought I was. Pretty much everything hurts at the moment.
I'm gonna have to do something about that.
So i'm back to three Kung Fu classes every week. I couldn't make friday nights for pretty much the last several months. The problem is that Friday nights are the hard classes. We do conditioning on Friday night. Basically, it's a two-hour torture-test where we find new and creative ways of abusing our bodies with the aim of building muscle, endurance, and physical strength.
I haven't been to a Friday night class in several months. I guess that comes from working on a fricking PhD. thesis. Side effect of sitting in front of a computer for 16 hours a day is that you get out of shape rather quickly.
So I went to class last night, and as most Fridays are, I brutally abused myself for three hours. But as the evening drew to a close, I figured that I wasn't in as bad shape as I thought I was. Oh, I was hurting, naturally. You don't push yourself for that hard, and that long without some body part voicing an objection or two; but it wasn't nearly as bad as I thought it would be. I thought I'd be vomiting by the time the class was half-over.
So I thought I was in better physical condition than I feared I would be.
Then I woke up this morning.
Nope. Turns out that I'm in as bad shape as I thought I was. Pretty much everything hurts at the moment.
I'm gonna have to do something about that.
Sunday, July 09, 2006
Have Food Dehydrator, Will Travel
So I bought myself a food dehydrator, which, interestingly enough, costs less than half the cost of the food April and I bought for the West Coast trail.
Suffice it to say that I think April and I are both sick of our insta-meals in the backcountry, and would like to have something that is a wee bit more edible. So I bought a dehydrator so that we can make something a little more gourmet, that doesn't require us to carry a huge amount of stuff, or require a lot of preparation on the trail.
I'll let you know how that turns out.
Suffice it to say that I think April and I are both sick of our insta-meals in the backcountry, and would like to have something that is a wee bit more edible. So I bought a dehydrator so that we can make something a little more gourmet, that doesn't require us to carry a huge amount of stuff, or require a lot of preparation on the trail.
I'll let you know how that turns out.
Monday, May 15, 2006
No real surprises here.
Well, a little bit. I always thought of myself a little closer to the political center. Turns out I'm reasonably far to the left (which for some reason is the right on these diagrams). 'course this is pretty much by American standards, where the political spectrum has been shifted so far to the right it's ridiculous.
By Canadian standards, I suppose I'm closer to the middle.
In fairness, I did vote for Kerry in the last US federal election; but on the other hand, I voted McCain for senate. Back then, he was reasonably close to what I thought was the political center. He's been shifting rightward as the mid-term elections approach.
By Canadian standards, I suppose I'm closer to the middle.
In fairness, I did vote for Kerry in the last US federal election; but on the other hand, I voted McCain for senate. Back then, he was reasonably close to what I thought was the political center. He's been shifting rightward as the mid-term elections approach.
| You are a Social Liberal (83% permissive) and an... Economic Liberal (31% permissive) You are best described as a:
Link: The Politics Test on Ok Cupid |
Tuesday, April 11, 2006
It's official
I just want to point out that when the most exciting moment of your day occurs when you go online to order a textbook entitled Ion Channels of Excitable Membranes, you officially have no life.
Wednesday, March 15, 2006
Requiem for a Stick
So my stick died on Sunday night. Either I have a s*itload of power or the structure had been severely compromised. It was probably a little bit of both.
My staff (studiously dubbed Trembling Ram) snapped just past the halfway point; leaving two pieces where once there was one.
Oh well, I got a lot of decent life out of that staff. We had an understanding going. It didn't bean me over the head (much); I didn't break it into tiny pieces and use it for firewood. You could call it a truce, I suppose.
I'd worked so heavily with that staff that I knew its center of balance to a millimeter. I knew how it felt in my hands, how it moved, how it felt hitting another person's staff in the fighting forms... I knew that staff.
So now I guess I'm going to have to spend time "re-educating" another one.
So I'm in the market for a new stick. If I'd been thinking straight, I would've bought one while I was in Vancouver. There's a really good store there that sells White Wax Wood staffs at good prices, and I wouldn't have had to pay shipping. Fortunately, my Martial Arts school gets a discount on equipment they buy; be it weapons, uniforms, or sparring equipment; so I'll probably get a decent price for it. Maybe cheaper shipping, or something.
I might actually get two staffs. One out of waxwood for my solo forms (because chinese white waxwood looks so cool when you burn it and use it in solo forms. A second out of iron wood for fighting forms because it's heavier and tougher.
Now I have to go and come up with two new names.
Dammit.
My staff (studiously dubbed Trembling Ram) snapped just past the halfway point; leaving two pieces where once there was one.
Oh well, I got a lot of decent life out of that staff. We had an understanding going. It didn't bean me over the head (much); I didn't break it into tiny pieces and use it for firewood. You could call it a truce, I suppose.
I'd worked so heavily with that staff that I knew its center of balance to a millimeter. I knew how it felt in my hands, how it moved, how it felt hitting another person's staff in the fighting forms... I knew that staff.
So now I guess I'm going to have to spend time "re-educating" another one.
So I'm in the market for a new stick. If I'd been thinking straight, I would've bought one while I was in Vancouver. There's a really good store there that sells White Wax Wood staffs at good prices, and I wouldn't have had to pay shipping. Fortunately, my Martial Arts school gets a discount on equipment they buy; be it weapons, uniforms, or sparring equipment; so I'll probably get a decent price for it. Maybe cheaper shipping, or something.
I might actually get two staffs. One out of waxwood for my solo forms (because chinese white waxwood looks so cool when you burn it and use it in solo forms. A second out of iron wood for fighting forms because it's heavier and tougher.
Now I have to go and come up with two new names.
Dammit.
Tuesday, March 14, 2006
Don't trust your eyes.
Riddle me this....
So I made the rather surprising discovery during a sparring session last night that I apparently spar better blindfolded than I do when I can see.
This, I have to admit, is something I'm at a complete loss to explain.
Actually, I can't even fully explain what possessed me to try it in the first place. I was sparring with an opponent of roughly-equal skill and getting my ass rather thoroughly pounded. So I decided that I'd see what happened when I closed my eyes. I mean, I figured it was pretty much impossible for me to get my ass kicked any worse, right?
Well, surprisingly enough, when sparring against a sighted opponent, I performed vastly better when I'd blinded myself. As my partner put it: it was as if I'd left the room and had been replaced by an identical twin who actually knew what he was doing.
Yeah, I'm at a complete loss to explain this one.
--Drew
So I made the rather surprising discovery during a sparring session last night that I apparently spar better blindfolded than I do when I can see.
This, I have to admit, is something I'm at a complete loss to explain.
Actually, I can't even fully explain what possessed me to try it in the first place. I was sparring with an opponent of roughly-equal skill and getting my ass rather thoroughly pounded. So I decided that I'd see what happened when I closed my eyes. I mean, I figured it was pretty much impossible for me to get my ass kicked any worse, right?
Well, surprisingly enough, when sparring against a sighted opponent, I performed vastly better when I'd blinded myself. As my partner put it: it was as if I'd left the room and had been replaced by an identical twin who actually knew what he was doing.
Yeah, I'm at a complete loss to explain this one.
--Drew
Monday, February 20, 2006
The Stash
From about the age of fourteen until four years ago, I was a cutter. I didn't know at the time that it was actually a documented coping mechanism until a couple of years ago. I thought I was just weird.
At least twice, sometimes as many as five times a week (during exam time), usually after a particularly stressful day, I'd lock myself in the bathroom where I'd spend the next ten minutes drawing a double-edged razor blade across the backs of my forearms, and the subsequent ten minutes disinfecting and dressing the fresh cuts. You'd be surprised how well thought-out and ritualized it was. I'd make long, parrallel, evenly-spaced cuts on the back of one forearm, then I'd quickly disinfect and dress them. I'd taken a course in advanced first aid so that I knew how to effectively dress the cuts; I studied my biology textbook so that I'd know exactly where to cut so that blood loss would be minimal; I knew exactly how deep I could cut without leaving a scar; I kept a bottle of isopropyl alcohol in the bottom drawer of my desk so that the blade could be sterilized before I used it; and a bottle of hydrogen peroxide to disinfect the cuts afterwards; I cornered the market in ibuprophen to keep inflammation around the cuts under control; I'd alternate between arms to give one arm time to heal while I'd cut on the other. Never let it be said that I didn't think this through down to the last detail. I got good at hiding it, too. One of the advantages of living in the Great White North is that nobody really considers it weird if you're wearing long sleeves in the middle of the summer. This was my ritual from about halfway through grade eight until the end of High School, then I stopped for three while I was in college; and started again during my last year. I managed to kick the habit just before I graduated; and in the middle of March, I'll hit four laceration-free years; which will make the longest time I've gone without hurting myself since I started.
You wouldn't think it, frankly, I'm not sure I understand it completely, but cutting is an incredibly addictive behaviour. It's a coping mechanism. I'd have a bad day, my life would seem to be spinning out of control, and I'd be reaching for my trusty razor blade the same way some people reach for a pack of cigarettes; I had my favorite brand of double-edged razor blade, the same way some people have their favorite brand of cigarette. Being me, I couldn't pick a "normal" unhealthy coping mechnism like getting stoned. I'm probably one of maybe six students who graduated from Bishop's University never having smoked pot (second-hand pot smoke notwithstanding; you walk through the pub at Bishop's on Halloween, and you're stoned), believe it or not. Actually, the idea of taking drugs scared the bajesus out of me. Yep, I was terrified of smoking pot or shooting up, but taking a razor blade to myself seemed perfectly sensible (if you can figure that one out, you're a lot smarter than I am). For maybe twenty minutes, I felt as if I had some control over my life. Physical pain is the easy kind, I guess. The pain gave me something to focus on; the cuts gave me something to do; something that I had to deal with. Cutting was something that I was in control of (or it was in control of me; to this day, I'm not sure which). Plus razors were cheaper than pot.
I think I knew I was addicted; I often half-jokingly referred to the pharmacy as my "dealer." I'm one of those people who needs to shave often, so nobody considered it weird when that I always had a large supply of double-edged razor blades; and nobody really noticed that I didn't actually own a razor that used double-edged razor blades. As far as I know, even the young woman I dated during my time at Bishop's never suspected anything; or if she did, she never said anything about it (this isn't any fault of hers; I managed to keep the habit under control for most of the time we were dating until about the last four months we were together; and for those last four months, she was never in a position to notice). She did, however, notice that I avoided going to the doctor like the plague. I don't think she knew why, though. Nobody at all seemed to notice that I suddenly stopped wearing short sleeves altogether; even when it was warm out.
So why, after four lacerationless years, am I writing about it now? Well, I was going through some of the boxes I have in the basement of my old Bishop's Memorabilia. There, near the bottom of the box, as if they'd been waiting for me all along, was a half-empty package of Merkur double-edged razor blades, and an almost-empty bottle of isopropyl alcohol. Digging a little deeper, I found two unopened gauze bandages, a couple of 4"x4" sterile gauze pads, and about half a roll of surgical tape. I guess I'd thrown out the bottle of hydrogen peroxide, because I never found it.
My stash.
I don't know why I kept it when I left Bishop's. Maybe I thought I'd need them again someday, maybe I wanted them around as a security blanket or something.
Maybe I didn't think that I could really quit. I don't know, really.
The garbage man picked it up with the rest of the trash on Thursday.
At least twice, sometimes as many as five times a week (during exam time), usually after a particularly stressful day, I'd lock myself in the bathroom where I'd spend the next ten minutes drawing a double-edged razor blade across the backs of my forearms, and the subsequent ten minutes disinfecting and dressing the fresh cuts. You'd be surprised how well thought-out and ritualized it was. I'd make long, parrallel, evenly-spaced cuts on the back of one forearm, then I'd quickly disinfect and dress them. I'd taken a course in advanced first aid so that I knew how to effectively dress the cuts; I studied my biology textbook so that I'd know exactly where to cut so that blood loss would be minimal; I knew exactly how deep I could cut without leaving a scar; I kept a bottle of isopropyl alcohol in the bottom drawer of my desk so that the blade could be sterilized before I used it; and a bottle of hydrogen peroxide to disinfect the cuts afterwards; I cornered the market in ibuprophen to keep inflammation around the cuts under control; I'd alternate between arms to give one arm time to heal while I'd cut on the other. Never let it be said that I didn't think this through down to the last detail. I got good at hiding it, too. One of the advantages of living in the Great White North is that nobody really considers it weird if you're wearing long sleeves in the middle of the summer. This was my ritual from about halfway through grade eight until the end of High School, then I stopped for three while I was in college; and started again during my last year. I managed to kick the habit just before I graduated; and in the middle of March, I'll hit four laceration-free years; which will make the longest time I've gone without hurting myself since I started.
You wouldn't think it, frankly, I'm not sure I understand it completely, but cutting is an incredibly addictive behaviour. It's a coping mechanism. I'd have a bad day, my life would seem to be spinning out of control, and I'd be reaching for my trusty razor blade the same way some people reach for a pack of cigarettes; I had my favorite brand of double-edged razor blade, the same way some people have their favorite brand of cigarette. Being me, I couldn't pick a "normal" unhealthy coping mechnism like getting stoned. I'm probably one of maybe six students who graduated from Bishop's University never having smoked pot (second-hand pot smoke notwithstanding; you walk through the pub at Bishop's on Halloween, and you're stoned), believe it or not. Actually, the idea of taking drugs scared the bajesus out of me. Yep, I was terrified of smoking pot or shooting up, but taking a razor blade to myself seemed perfectly sensible (if you can figure that one out, you're a lot smarter than I am). For maybe twenty minutes, I felt as if I had some control over my life. Physical pain is the easy kind, I guess. The pain gave me something to focus on; the cuts gave me something to do; something that I had to deal with. Cutting was something that I was in control of (or it was in control of me; to this day, I'm not sure which). Plus razors were cheaper than pot.
I think I knew I was addicted; I often half-jokingly referred to the pharmacy as my "dealer." I'm one of those people who needs to shave often, so nobody considered it weird when that I always had a large supply of double-edged razor blades; and nobody really noticed that I didn't actually own a razor that used double-edged razor blades. As far as I know, even the young woman I dated during my time at Bishop's never suspected anything; or if she did, she never said anything about it (this isn't any fault of hers; I managed to keep the habit under control for most of the time we were dating until about the last four months we were together; and for those last four months, she was never in a position to notice). She did, however, notice that I avoided going to the doctor like the plague. I don't think she knew why, though. Nobody at all seemed to notice that I suddenly stopped wearing short sleeves altogether; even when it was warm out.
So why, after four lacerationless years, am I writing about it now? Well, I was going through some of the boxes I have in the basement of my old Bishop's Memorabilia. There, near the bottom of the box, as if they'd been waiting for me all along, was a half-empty package of Merkur double-edged razor blades, and an almost-empty bottle of isopropyl alcohol. Digging a little deeper, I found two unopened gauze bandages, a couple of 4"x4" sterile gauze pads, and about half a roll of surgical tape. I guess I'd thrown out the bottle of hydrogen peroxide, because I never found it.
My stash.
I don't know why I kept it when I left Bishop's. Maybe I thought I'd need them again someday, maybe I wanted them around as a security blanket or something.
Maybe I didn't think that I could really quit. I don't know, really.
The garbage man picked it up with the rest of the trash on Thursday.
Monday, January 30, 2006
Define "Glutton for Punishment"
So.... Chinese New Year.
You know, I can't even claim I didn't know what I was getting into this year; 'cause I did it last year and I remember how pretty much every single muscle in my body was aching for the subsequent month.
At least last year, our lion dancing for Chinese New Year was spread over two days.
Not so this year. We did it all in one day. Eleven hours straight of Lion Dancing. Now that may not sound like much, but I was pretty much exhausted by the time we called it a night at 8:00 pm.
But the good news is that I survived. I'm alive and breathing.
Tired, yes.
Sore, hell yes.
Every muscle in my body feels as if it's been beaten with a rubber baseball bat.
Next year, I really can't claim that I didn't know what I was getting into.
Welcome to the Year of the Fire Dog.
You know, I can't even claim I didn't know what I was getting into this year; 'cause I did it last year and I remember how pretty much every single muscle in my body was aching for the subsequent month.
At least last year, our lion dancing for Chinese New Year was spread over two days.
Not so this year. We did it all in one day. Eleven hours straight of Lion Dancing. Now that may not sound like much, but I was pretty much exhausted by the time we called it a night at 8:00 pm.
But the good news is that I survived. I'm alive and breathing.
Tired, yes.
Sore, hell yes.
Every muscle in my body feels as if it's been beaten with a rubber baseball bat.
Next year, I really can't claim that I didn't know what I was getting into.
Welcome to the Year of the Fire Dog.
Friday, January 27, 2006
I worship whoever invented the RAID array.
So one of my hard drives failed on Wednesday. This was, largely, a non-event for me because I was bright in my assembly of my current computer. The hard drive of this computer is actually two individual physical drives. The two drives have the same data written to them, so effectively, one drive is an identical copy of the other.
So the short version is that a complete drive failure on my computer was a non-issue; the drive was even under warranty, so there was no cost for replacement; and now I have the drive replaced and synchronized with the source disk. Two hours later, and it's as if the failure never happened.
So the short version is that a complete drive failure on my computer was a non-issue; the drive was even under warranty, so there was no cost for replacement; and now I have the drive replaced and synchronized with the source disk. Two hours later, and it's as if the failure never happened.
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