grumble grumble february

At the risk of getting my ass kicked, I think I have a case of the Februaries.  

It may have started when I got a rejection letter from a job I was putting most of my hopes on.  Of all the positions I've applied for in preparation for my upcoming nuptials/move to Chicago, this was the one I was most qualified for.  They rejected me without even an interview.  I can only think of three explanations for this:  1.) they had several internal candidates and they couldn't bother with bringing in someone from out of town, 2.) there's a bias against rural downstate applicants (people in Chicagoland don't take anyone south of I-80 seriously), or 3.) I suck. 

Whenever I get a rejection letter for a job (I've received 10 of them in the past year), this is the voice I hear in my head:


REJECTED!!! RE...RE... REJECTED!!!  Ba-Boom!  REJECTED!!!

I've started to replace the mantra I used to have when I was single-- "No one will ever love me"-- with a new job-seeker's version:  "No one will ever hire me."

But the jobsearch is not my only symptom of The Februaries.  I've been irritable and have been picking fights with everyone, even other drivers.  I've had several highway incidents this month that have left me in a bad mood.

My betrothed and I have had 2.5 fights this month (two fights and one intense discussion), which is odd because we hardly ever have any disagreements.  I felt a lot better, however, when I discovered that other couples we know have also fought in the middle of Crate & Barrel over wedding registries. 

Why do they have 17,000 different styles of silverware?

My amazing tennis winning streak has ended and I'm sliding into another February tennis slump.  This weekend I played in a tournament.  I lost my first match but won my second.  As if to mock me, I received a trophy for it.  I was the "Consolation Winner."  There were five guys in my bracket, and because I beat the worst guy, I got a trophy.  I really didn't want it, but it would have been rude to refuse it.

ARGH. Although I've rotated and saved this pic four fucking times, I can't get it to show up here with the right orientation.  I blame February.

Today I noticed in the mirror that I have a lot of gray hairs on the left side of my head.  I don't know why just that side.  Maybe it's the latest manifestation of my leftitis, my vague annual winter ailment.

To give you a good idea of what this month has been like, perhaps the highlight was going to a funeral.  I got to see my brother and sisters and mom and we laughed while texting with our oldest brother.  

There's just been this dark cloud hanging over me all month.  It's cold and I'm ready for spring.  I have no confidence and keep feeling like no one likes me, despite evidence against it.  I'm not as excited about things as I usually am.

I know that my life is good.  I'm healthy, safe, well-fed, loved, and spoiled.  It's just that February often gets me down.  I'll be better once Spring starts.  Winter can suck it.    

Highway Harassment

The white van.  That motherfucking, annoying, asshole, douchenozzle white van.  It refused-- absolutely refused-- to move over into the right lane.  For 20 miles-- at least the 20 miles it cruised in and out of my site on the highway-- it clogged up traffic in the left lane as cars would line up behind it.  Eventually the car behind it would realize the asshole was never going to move over and pass it on the right.  Then the next car would do the same.  This wasn't easy, though, because occasionally a slower car would be blocking the right lane.  Also, the sonofobitch white van would vary its speed, sometimes speeding up just as people would try to pass it.

The fate I fantasized for the white van

That passage about the white van has been sitting in my drafts folder since last year.  I decided to dust it off and post it in honor of February, which appears to be Annoying Highway Drivers Month.  Twice in the past two weeks I've encountered drivers like the white van.  Last week I actually got into an altercation with one.

As I was driving home from work on the highway, this SUV from TX would not leave me alone.  They’d drive along in my blind spot, not passing or slowing down. I’d speed up, they’d speed up. I’d slow down, they’d slow down. Finally I jerked my car as if I was going into their lane, just so they’d see how dangerous it is to drive in my blind spot. They drove up next to me and gave me nasty hand signals.  I motioned for them to pass me, but instead they intentionally messed with me for miles and miles, staying with me and not letting me pass slow vehicles. They thought it was a game. I almost called 911 to report highway harassment, but I don’t know if that’s a thing. Finally I just took an exit off the highway and let them drive on by. I got back on the highway a minute later. I don’t know what else I could have done, but the whole experience put me in a foul mood.

I hate it when there's a rhinoceros in my blind spot

+++++
 
The thing is, I think those cars like the TX SUV and the white van-- ahem, the motherfucking white van-- are the exception.  For the most part, people are competent drivers.  Which actually astounds me.  I'm amazed at how few accidents there are, considering what clumsy, selfish, dumb, inefficient animals we can be.  How often do you spill your coffee, stub your toe, or bump into someone?  How often do I miss an easy shot in tennis?  And yet each of us gets to be in charge of a 2,000-pound piece of machinery moving at 70 miles per hour?  And we're supposed to operate these things in conjunction with each other?  How is it possible that we're NOT constantly crashing into each other on the road?  How do we ever reach our destination?

Why don't our highways look like this all the time?

Clearly we have a pretty good system in place.  We have rules designed for courtesy, efficiency, and safety, and most people make a good faith effort to follow those.  When I'm away from the moment, out of the hellish experience of sharing the road with someone who refuses to obey those rules, I understand that for the most part, people are good drivers.  If we weren't, the system wouldn't work.    

There are lots of other cars on the road that frustrate me, usually because we have different levels of urgency, space, anticipation, courtesy, or what the speed limit actually means.  I can logically and objectively understand this, even after I've just cursed them out for being in my way.

The incident last week made me realize that I need to take a step back from the road rage and be more patient on the highway.  You can't control other people, even when (or maybe because) they're being asshats.  I just need to lower my expectations and avoid such situations as much as possible. 

Fascinating Feud

Identical twin girls were born on the Fourth of July, 1918.  Esther Pauline Friedman would be known as "Eppie" and her younger sister (by 17 minutes), Pauline Esther Friedman, would go by "Popo."

In 1939 the two girls, at the age of 21, got married in a double wedding ceremony.   Eppie became Esther Pauline Lederer, and her sister became Pauline Esther Phillips.

Some random double wedding-- NOT the Friedman twins. 

In 1955, Esther Pauline took a different name, Ann Landers, when she inherited an advice column started by the late Ruth Crowley.  The new Ann would become wildly popular and revolutionize newspaper advice columns.  By the time her column ended 47 years later, with her death in 2002, she was a household name.

The dashing Ann Landers in 1961

Perhaps the only other advice columnist with as much name recognition as Ann Landers during that time was that of Abigail Van Buren.  Van Buren was the pen name of none other than Pauline Esther Phillips, Eppie's twin sister.  For 46 years her column, Dear Abby, rivaled that of her sister's.

Dear Abby in 1961

Even more striking than the two most popular advice columnists of the 20th-century being twins is the fact that for most of those years, they were estranged.  It started when, according to Wikipedia: "Phillips says that because she applied for the columnist job without notifying her sister first, it created bad feelings between them for many years."  They had a public reconciliation some years later, but the feud seemed to continue, off and on, until Lederer (Esther Pauline/Eppie/Ann Landers) died in 2002.
   

The two sisters getting along in public

It's amazing that although they counseled thousands of people on family relationships, they couldn't get along with their own sister.  And the few things I read about the feud just seem petty and childish.  For example, they bicker over whether the other's column is any good, and one of them publicly criticized the other one for how old she looked. Of course, it's possible the media just played up their feud because it was more interesting.  But it's also credible that two talented sisters with a shared history and genetics would also share a drive to be successful, and that would make them very competitive with each other. 

I think it would have been funny to have written a letter to each of their columns seeking advice about my contentious relationship with my twin, and see if either of them would have answered it. 

As if the irony of two of America's most beloved advice-givers not being able to follow their own advice isn't enough, the story continues after their death.  Each of the twins had a daughter.  And both of those daughters also became advice columnists.  Eppie's daughter, Margo Howard, writes the popular Slate.com column Dear Prudence wrote the Slate.com column Dear Prudence, until it was taken over by Emily Yoffe in 2006.  And Pauline's daughter, Jeanne Phillips, took over her mom's column in 2002, and continues to play Dear Abby. 

Not Eppie's daughter, but Emily Yoffe, who took over the column in 2006.  Jeezus, all these names are hard to keep straight.  

Popo' daughter.  I didn't realize this wasn't the original Abby.  When I was a kid, that's the picture of Abby I remember.

And the daughters-- cousins to each other-- have continued the feud.  After Eppie's death in 2002, the two traded swipes at each other in the media.    

It all sounds like a bad soap opera. 

I'm surprised that more has not been made of this amazing story.  You'd think there'd be a book or a movie or a mini-series about the whole thing.   There is one book from 1987: Dear Ann, Dear Abby: The Unauthorized Biography of Ann Landers and Abigail Van Buren by Janice Pottker and Bob Speziale.  But that book is over 25 years old, and the title makes it sound kind of trashy.  A lot has happened since then.   

Scandalous! I may try to read it anyway.

The only other work I've heard of that covers this amazing story is a 2006 play by David Rambo called "The Lady With All the Answers."

Incidentally, and mostly unrelated, one of my favorite current advice columnists, Dan Savage, bought Ann Landers' desk at an auction after she died.

 

Tipping for Jeezus

Imagine you're a server at a national restaurant chain, working your ass off, making around $2 an hour, depending on tips for the bulk of your income.  Then you get a receipt like this one:

The 18% tip is crossed off, with the note, "I give God 10% Why do you get 18" (sic).  On top of her signature she's added the title "Pastor." 

The server who received this receipt showed it to another server, who took a picture of it and posted it on the web, with the snarky line, "I'm sure Jesus will pay for my rent and groceries."  While I appreciate the pro-active shaming of this obnoxious customer, I have to admit it is a gross violation of privacy, especially since posting someone's signature online can lead to identity theft.

The picture went viral.  

The Pastor complained to the restaurant-- Applebee's-- and the server who posted the receipt (who was not the one who was stiffed) got fired for violating their customer privacy policy, which set off a brand-new shit storm.

Suddenly the story shifted from a rude customer not tipping to a PR nightmare for Applebee's.  The intarwebz, where everyone loves to get angry and judgy, jumped down Applebee's throat.  When the restaurant chain tried to respond, it only made things worse and fanned the flames. 

++++

This fascinating story touches on so many different issues: tipping etiquette, rude customers, religion, privacy, social media, PR nightmares...

Here's a good summary of the story, along with a discussion on privacy issues in the Web 2.0:

Big Op-Ed: When Private Comments Go Very Public

I've been obsessed with this story for several days now.  All issues of privacy and PR aside, I wanted to get more into this Pastor's head and see what she was possibly thinking to write such an ignorant thing on a receipt.

I find the whole God thing ridiculously offensive.  You don't give "God" your 10% (AKA tithing), you give it to your church.  (And if you're a pastor, and the church pays your salary, then aren't you sort of just giving that money back to yourself?  How Jesus-like is that?)  God doesn't give a damn about your money, and I'm sure if there is a loving benevolent God, he would much prefer you honor him by paying the people who serve you.

But the really obnoxious thing is that she felt the need to add "Pastor" to her signature. Is that supposed to impress, or show how she's entitled to stiff the waitress, or what?
 
This pastor's local TV station gave her a chance to explain herself in a 9-minute interview here:


The interview is a huge disappointment and the interviewer does a terrible job. She's sympathetic to Ms. Bell, which is fine, but she goes so far that she doesn't ask any questions that will make her look more sympathetic to the general public. It ends up making her look worse. When Bell explains that she did, indeed, tip the waitress 18%-- TWICE, in fact-- the interviewer reacts with a tone that says, "Well, that's that! Why would everyone yell at you for that?" I was confused by her assertion that she did tip. You tipped twice? Why? How? Clearly it's crossed-off on the receipt. If you paid cash, then why write the nasty note?

Ms. Bell repeats throughout the interview that is was a "lapse in judgment" and that her biggest regret is that her actions reflected poorly on God. She mentions how she's received hateful emails of people calling her a hypocrite.  There are lots of questions I'd like to ask her, but one of them is: does she understand WHY people are reacting this way?  Can she explain what specifically was so repugnant about the comment on her receipt?  Because after nine minutes of explaining herself, it's still not clear to me that she understands. 

The only question the interviewer asks that I really wanted to know is, "What have you learned from this experience?"  Her only answer is that she'll never write on a receipt again.  That's totally not the point. (It reminds me of the episode of South Park where all the Catholic bishops decry the "problem" of all these molested kids coming forward.  Um, one priest points out, the problem is not that these kids are coming forward, the problem is that they are being molested.) 

You'd think that after such an ordeal, the Pastor would at the very least have answered the rhetorical question she so snottily wrote on the receipt.  Why does the server get 18%?  Does she understand the economics of how servers are paid?  Does she think that people deserve to be paid for their work? 

In the end, getting a glimpse into Pastor Bell's mind was unfulfilling.  Sadly, the Pastor just comes across as stupid and immature in the interview.  Which, I suppose, is what you would expect from someone who did something like that in the first place. As an educator, I would at least hope this would have been a learning experience for her.

I'll end with a fun article that discusses the relationship of tithing to tipping:

My Name Is Jehovah, and I’ll Be Taking Care of You Tonight

On Sickness

Like everything else, being sick seemed much simpler when I was a child.

When I was a kid, "the flu" meant I had a fever, headache, felt weak and had the chills.  Once diagnosed, I'd camp out on the couch in the family room with a blanket and my big bed pillow.  My mom would set up a TV tray in front of the couch with all of my supplies: tissues, drinking glass, books, medicine, and if it was a stomach flu, the "throw-up bowl," an old clear plastic sherbet container.  

I would stay home from school and watch TV, read, nap, eat chicken soup and crackers, and stare at the ugly patterns in our old 70's couch and moan. 

Staring at those patterns probably didn't help my nausea.

I never went to the doctor for the flu.  All that was required to heal was rest and soup. Despite the physical pain, it was actually kind of fun to get a day off from school and get pampered by my mom.  The rule was that you couldn't go to school within 24 hours of having a fever, so the best days where when the fever was winding down but I still got to stay home.

And then there was "a cold."  This just meant that my nose ran, I sneezed a lot, and I used about 100 tissues blowing it.  My nostrils would get sore and red and eventually scab up from all the friction from the tissues.  But I never missed school for a mere "cold."   

+++++

So I'm confused about all this talk in the news about flu shots.  How the flu season is really bad this year and health policy experts are worried there won't be enough vaccines.  I've never in my life received a flu shot.  How can this thing that I remember as a kid that seemed only mildly inconvenient be so dangerous?  (And it got me out of school!)  People die from it?  Really?

As an adult I don't get sick much.  I probably only get a cold or flu once a every two years or so. 

Last week I came down with something.  It started with flu-like symptoms: a scratchy throat, a light head, weakness, chills.  My nose ran and my head hurt.  What was this?  It had some characteristics of the flu and some of a common cold.  Was it a cold/flu hybrid?  With all this news about how nasty The Flu is, I didn't think I had it.  (One co-worker said she was laid out for a week with The Flu, and it was so bad she prayed for death.)      

I went to work for the first day, but by the second day I woke up feeling pretty crappy and took the day off.  On the third day I felt like I needed to go in to work, but only stayed for half a day and then went home early.  I clearly had something, and now in retrospect, a week later, I'm pretty sure it was just a cold.  A nasty aggressive cold.

I never stayed home from school/work with a cold before, but the world of sickness seems to have changed. Colds have become meaner and nastier, and The Flu is life-threatening.  What's the world coming to? says the grouchy old man.
         
I still don't know if all those "flu"s I had as a kid are the same thing that people warn against today.  Has the Flu gotten a lot worse?  Or was my life really in peril all those times I stared at our ugly couch?  Or was "the flu" just a catch-all phrase my mom used for any kind of sickness I got as a child that was severe enough to keep me home from school?  I understand the biology of infection, and how once you get a virus, your body fights it off and develops and immunity to it, so you can never get that strain again.  So each sickness you get is a new (sometimes tougher) strain.  Or something like that.

Maybe the real problem is the difference between how we talk about illness and the actual biology of what's happening.  The most frustrating thing about my recent illness might be that I don't know what to call it.  I had a thing.  It's gone now. 

New Orleans New Year

Things I learned on my trip to New Orleans over the New Year holiday:

Alligator sausage tastes like Spam.  After trying it once for the novelty of it, I don't have any great need to try it again.

This looks just like the eggs benedict dish I had with alligator sausage buried in it.  The non-reptile-meat part was good.

The French Quarter is a national park. We walked through it every day, and it was a nice place to get to know.  I never realized how historical New Orleans was.  The FQ is the oldest part of the city, with a rich and diverse history, and the many old houses were colorful and interesting.  

Quaint old houses of the French Quarter.

There's a big iconic cathedral there that I'd never even known about.  

Cathedral in New Orleans?  Who knew?

Although Bourbon Street has a reputation for being a cesspool of drunken bead-throwing revelers, that's only one stretch of it-- the rest of it is just an old residential neighborhood.  Today much of it is a quiet gayborhood with rainbow flags.  

Hosing off Bourbon Street after New Year's Eve.  (Notice tiny rainbow flag in the distance above stop sign.)

The FQ has plenty of street performers, art, museums, neighborhood bars, music clubs, and local cafes, but that's mixed in with the touristy stuff like t-shirt shops, chain restaurants & bars, strip clubs, drunk frat boys on Bourbon Street, and all the college football fans (in Louisville red and Florida blue/orange) in town for the Sugar Bowl.

Street performers in French Quarter, literally in the middle of the street.

A beignet is a deep-fried piece of heaven drenched in powdered sugar.  On three separate occasions we got beignets and hot chocolate.  One day that was our entire lunch.

The bag they came in would have three solid inches of powdered sugar in the bottom of it, even after we were done eating.

Our tour guide for the Haunted Tour of the French Quarter actually took (or pretended to) her subject seriously.  I thought it would just be a tour of ghost legends, combined with interesting historical/architectural facts, but from the outset she asked if there were any "skeptics" in the group.  Oh, I thought, so it's going to be that kind of tour.  She talked about lots of "documented cases" of ghosts and told us about each ghost's quirks and personalities.  She told us about how other tour groups regularly see ghosts during the tour.  She used the power of suggestion so often that the annoying drunk woman in the Florida Gators jersey was convinced she'd seen a ghost at every stop.  

The "haunted" French Quarter at night

New Orleans doesn't want us to eat dinner.  Our first night, we planned to eat at this place on Bourbon St. we had a gift certificate to.  When we walked by it late that afternoon, a sign said they would be closed til 8:00 pm for a private event.  We decided not to wait that long and went to another place around 7:00, but it was swarming with people and there was a 1.5- to 2-hour wait. So we decided to go back to the other place at 8:00, and had some beignets to tide us over. When we got to the other place , it was 7:45, but it was completely full and there was a 1- to 1.5-hour wait.  WTF?    They said they wouldn't re-open til 8:00, and at 7:45 it was already full with a one-hour wait?  Again, WTF?  So we went to this dingy bar instead where I got a gut-bomb called a Muffuletta.  

Meat stuffed inside of meat layered under more meat.  With a wet olive salad to make the bun all soggy.  I should have stopped with the beignet.

On New Year's Eve we thought we were smart and made dinner reservations, but we needed a cab to take us to the restaurant, which was not within walking distance.  An hour before our reservation we called a cab company, but couldn't get through.  We called five different cab companies, but all of them were busy.  (Seriously, who still uses a busy signal?)  When we finally got a hold of one, they said it would be a 2-hour wait.  WTF?  New Orleans clearly doesn't want us to have dinner!  (Eventually we got hold of a cab company and they conveniently had someone in our area, and he got us to the restaurant on time.  Still, we were pretty panicky for a while.) 
   
The crowd at Jackson Square on New Year's Eve was ridiculously dense.  The whole French Quarter in general was thick with people, and I learned to practice what I called "defensive walking" to get around everyone.  It's like defensive driving, but on foot. 

The throng at Jackson Square

What we looked like to all the drunk people

New Orleans doesn't want us to go to the Garden District.  Two days in a row we tried to take the streetcar there.  The first day we waited for an hour before we found out that due to rail maintenance, the streetcar wasn't running, buses were instead.  Despite this, three buses drove by us while we were waiting at the streetcar stop.  The second day we tried to take the bus, but it was raining and it took too long so we sat in a cafe instead.  Then we saw the bus drive by.  By then we decided to give up on seeing the Garden District.   

Many of the shops in the French Quarter had signs telling people what they couldn't do.  No bathrooms!  No sitting!  No loitering!  Maybe this was a result of all the drunk tourists they deal with every day.        

No dogs allowed!  Or something like that.

The fleur de lis, the icon of New Orleans, is everywhere.  It was in the tourist shops, on their candy, on top of the Christmas tree, and it was even the thing that dropped at midnight on NYE.  Then we watched fireworks over the river.

The fleur de lis hanging from a tree on NYE.

Yes, I'm posting a picture of fireworks on my blog.  It's better than the guy next to me who was recording them on his video camera.  Who are you going to show that to? "Hey, wanna watch a crappy, shaky recording of fireworks on my TV?"

2012 Review

Has it been an entire year since I posted about all the things I did in 2011? 

At the end of that post I wrote:

I'm not the kind of person to make resolutions or set goals for a coming year. Because I know that, merely by living my life, I'm going to experience new things and grow in ways I can't anticipate.

I know 2012 will be no different. 

And I was right.  From the jungles of Belize to the skyscrapers of New York to the historic houses in New Orleans' French Quarter, I did a lot in 2012:

• rang in the New Year in little roadside open-air village bar in Belize, where a dozen American tourists blew noisemakers with local Belizean villagers.  
• hiked through the Belizean jungle and had a picnic in a cave. 
  
• took the plunge to start planning my relocation to Chicago.  Dusted off my resume, went on the job hunt for the first time in 10 years.  Applied to a dozen positions, got three phone interviews.
• started out the year in a huge tennis slump, lost 9 of my first 10 matches.  
• read appx. 45 books, blogged about 12 of them. 
• bought my first new tennis racket in four years. Then won the Silver League twice  (once in spring, once in the fall). (Oops, I don't know why I had it in my head that I won it twice.  I only finished 1st once.  I got 2nd place in the spring, 3rd place in the summer, then I won it in the fall. Which is much better than 8th (last) place I got in the Gold.) 
• visited New York, stayed in Manhattan, saw the new World Trade Center under construction, deepened my obsession with skyscrapers.
  
• attended my first Seder, and later got my my first Hanukkah present. 
• went to my first prom (thanks to my teacher/chaperone girlfriend.)    
• took my girlfriend to Bloomington, IN. Watched Breaking Away in our room.
• attended a surprise party for my mom's 70th birthday.  Introduced my girlfriend to my large extended family. 
• visited Pittsburgh for the first time.  Met many new people in my girlfriend's family. 
• spent a weekend with family in Madison, IN.  Almost(!) beat my big brother in our annual tennis match.  I'll get him next year!    
• said goodbye to my mom's husband, who'd been a part of my family for 10 years.  
• attended a funeral and wedding in the same week.  Visited Raleigh and the research triangle.   
• got engaged!
  
• took part in Obama's re-election.
• discovered, and became obsessed with, the Game of Thrones series of books. 
• started planning a wedding.
• quintupled the most wins I'd ever had in the Gold League, finishing with my first winning record (5-2.)  Thanks to a bizarre series of upsets and coincidences, finished in first place! 
• visited Cleveland for the first time.  
• broke a string on a tennis racket for the first time ever. (This happens to other players all the time, but in six years of playing I'd never done it.)  
• visited New Orleans, got to know the French Quarter, and watched the fleur de lis drop on New Year's Eve. (Post about this coming soon.)

It felt like I was on quite a winning streak by the end of the year: I won the Silver League, got engaged, Obama won the election, and then I won the Gold League.

Would it be greedy to expect as much success in 2013?  There will certainly be a lot of scary and exciting changes, as I quit my job, move to Chicago, get married, find a new job (?), and completely upend my life.