Road trip from hell

When we originally planned to go to Asheville for Thanksgiving (which was a great weekend, by the way), we figured we'd wait and drive home on Monday to avoid one of the worst driving days of the year. That was the plan, at least, until I realized I had to be in Baltimore on Monday night for a meeting, which meant we had to leave today after all. The revised plan: leave in the afternoon, knock out maybe 3/4 of the drive, then get up in the morning and be home relatively early on Monday.

It sounded so easy. And despite my not feeling great and it being cold and rainy this afternoon, we made great time for the first hour or so. Then, for no reason that we could ever discern, traffic came to a stop. Every now and then we'd get up to 65mph, then come to a stop again. Oh, and it was pouring rain. This probably went on for about an hour or so, then we were cruising again. But then, for probably at least four hours, we had almost constant bumper-to-bumper traffic even though we were IN THE MIDDLE OF NOWHERE. We finally decided to stop well short of where we thought we'd end up. According to Google Maps, it should have taken us four-and-a-half hours to get here, instead of the SEVEN it actually took (and that was with only one short peeing/refueling break). We're praying the three-hour drive we're facing tomorrow doesn't also become seven hours.

The only plus was that after not stopping to eat the whole way, there was a Subway in the gas station next door to the motel. Score! So I walked over there, only to find about twelve people in line and one person working (and making sandwiches is a labor-intensive effort). I gave up and ran some stuff from the car back to the room, then returned to find the line was about as long as I'd left it before. Ah, screw it. The gas station also had a mini-mart, so instead of a nice sandwich, my dinner tonight consisted of a banana, a bag of potato chips, and a Nestle Crunch chocolate bar. All was not totally lost, however--in the cooler section, they had nice little mini-boxes of wine, so as I type this in our crappy motel I'm at least able to enjoy a nice, cheap, chilled merlot in a plastic motel cup...

Great Thanksgiving moments

The turkey isn't even in the oven yet, but not long ago all of a sudden Gretchen called out to tell me that the oven was on fire and WHAT SHOULD WE DO? (Evidently fighting fires is one of those tasks, like killing bugs or dealing with dead birds in the yard, where the stereotypical default response is to leave it to the male in the house.) Sure enough, it appeared that the pumpkin pies had overflowed and the bottom of the oven did indeed have foot-high flames coming up. While I may have a Y-chromosome, I don't have a fire extinguisher, so I mostly just stood there thinking while my Mom stood by with a bag of flour in case we needed to throw it on the flames. Ultimately I suggested just leaving the oven door closed to starve it of oxygen, which thankfully seemed to do the trick. Now we have a smoky, stinky house, two slightly seared pumpkin pies, and hopes that whatever we put into the oven the rest of the day doesn't face a similar fate...

ADDENDUM:

About an hour after finishing that post, I decided to heat up leftover pizza from last night for lunch. Since the oven had the turkey in it (thankfully the flames have been contained), I decided to heat it in a pan on the stovetop instead (microwaving wasn't an option because crisp crust is one of the main objectives of reheating). Having never actually reheated pizza on the stovetop, I turned the burner to high. 5-10 minutes later the kitchen started to fill with smoke, and upon removing the pizza I realized the crust was indeed crisp, because it was basically burned to charcoal. So the turkey isn't even out of the oven yet and two of the three adults have already burned something...the pressure is on Gretchen now (the main chef for dinner tonight) not to incinerate any of the remaining food.

ADDENDUM 2:

At 4:06pm, I finally changed out of my pajama bottoms. I still haven't left the house. I think that may be a new personal record for a non-sick day.

Escape from DC

It's been years since we've traveled for Thanksgiving, but this year we decided to drive down to Asheville, NC, to see my Mom (it's mutually beneficial--she gets her grandchild fix, and we can actually go out on dates without a two-year-old). The only problem is that there's no easy way to get here. It's either an 8-hour drive on one of two generally unpleasant routes, or it's buying three airline tickets and having to connect in either Atlanta or Charlotte. We opted for the former.

As much as we complain about our tiny, old little house, we love our location--not only because of our neighbors, but also because we're only about 5 miles from the District. The DC area is not far behind L.A. in terms of the length of people's commutes and the hideousness of the traffic, but unless there's a snowstorm, we're blissfully unaffected. (A couple of months ago I found myself getting irritated by some of the traffic on my drive home, so I started timing different routes. It turns out my commute averaged about 12 minutes door-to-door...and on those bad days when I was so irritated by the traffic, it took 15-16 minutes. I don't get irritated by traffic anymore.)

Tuesday afternoon on our way down here, we finally got a taste of what hundreds of thousands of people deal with every day. Our choices: (1) take I-95 south, which is the main north-south route on the East Coast and subject to potentially massive traffic jams but is also equipped to handle lots of cars and was recommended by Google Maps, or (2) take I-66 west to I-81 south, which was recommended by MapQuest and has less traffic but is only two lanes wide and is filled with unpredictable 18-wheeler trucks. We opted for I-95 because the trucks almost gave me an ulcer the last time we were on I-81, and because we decided to trust Google. Even though we left at 3:00pm before the worst of normal traffic, and even though we were ahead of the Thanksgiving rush, within 15 minutes of leaving home, this was what our drive was like...

...and we were in the carpool express lanes. Thankfully it got a little better after a few miles, but we still had bumper-to-bumper traffic, usually moving but occasionally stopping, for at least 50 miles. It was unbelievable just how far the suburbs sprawled, and just how many people lived that far away and had to do that commute every day. (Some probably live that far away out of necessity because housing is more affordable--especially now since those areas are the ones that are having high foreclosures--and others probably do it by choice because they don't want to live in the city, want to have more space, etc.) Needless to say, it reinforced that we wouldn't trade our tiny, drafty house for a bigger, newer house where I'd have to spend at least two hours a day in the car.

Anyway, we made it as far as Durham, found a hotel and got a good night's sleep, and were at Mädchen's "Ama's" house in time for lunch yesterday. Now we're enjoying lazing around in our pajamas late into the morning, the pumpkin pie is in the oven, and the turkey is thawing. Happy Thanksgiving!

Happy

It was a small point of pride when living in Basel that I was able to say that I had never eaten at a McDonalds overseas. I wasn't a snob about it; it just didn't seem quite right to be eating such American food when living or traveling in another country (it probably helped that I very seldom ate at McDonalds before going overseas). I can only think of three times when I almost violated this principle, none of which involved my eating the food there: (1) I used the restroom at the McDonalds next to the Spanish Steps in Rome; (2) I got a cup of coffee on a long drive home from Germany; and (3) I took Gretchen to the McDonalds near our house after our pre-natal class when she was having pregnancy cravings.

I was discussing this with a colleague one day, and he said that would assuredly change when we had kids. He was Spanish, not American, but he insisted that no matter where they come from, children around the world are drawn to the golden arches. Well...I'm afraid to say I think he may have been right.

Some people might think that we're bad parents for buying our two-year-old daughter a McDonald's Happy Meal. So unhealthy! So corporate! So American! But not only is it a sure-fire way to get her to have some protein when she won't eat anything else (something in their hamburgers is like kiddie crack), it also enhances her creativity and environmental awareness to find new uses for the box. Reduce, reuse, recyle indeed...

More great moments in fatherhood

(1) This morning

I ran upstairs to change my clothes this morning before taking Mädchen to her art class. Since she can't bear to be left alone and quiet for more than 30 seconds, it took her about that long to realize I was gone. Since she was standing at the bottom of the stairs yelling "DADDY! COME DOWN NOW!" at the top of her lungs, I figured I'd have her come upstairs to get ready as well. Evidently it disturbed her that I was only wearing my boxers when I walked down the stairs to get her--and my sincerest apologies if I've created a mental image you'd rather not have--because as I was heading down, she said "Daddy, no touch me when you naked." I really didn't know what to think of that, but Gretchen got a good 5-minute laugh when I told her later.

(2) This evening

We were driving home from dinner when an oncoming taxi blatantly cut us off by making a left turn directly in front of us when we had a green light, and he almost plowed into a group of pedestrians crossing the street in the process. I've mellowed considerably behind the wheel now that we have a toddler, but this was so reckless and dangerous that I had to lay on the horn. I wouldn't have given it much more thought, but I was taken aback when he then started yelling out his window at me for daring to go straight on a green light. I guess I got caught up in the moment, because after he yelled at me, I'm not proud to say that the following ensued:

ME (yelling out Gretchen's open window): "You idiot!"

GRETCHEN: "Kirk! Shh!"

MÄDCHEN: "What Daddy say?"

ME: "Sweetheart, I told him he wasn't being a very nice driver. He wasn't being safe."

MÄDCHEN: "No, Daddy say 'you giddyup!'"

Batty

One of the small pleasures of life is the weekly Animal Watch in the Washington Post, which is often more about people than animals. Take for example, this past Sunday's gem:

A woman found a bat in her home and said that it looked tired, so she let it rest for several hours on her chest.

When she woke the bat, it bit her on the finger.

God bless America...

Everyone is doing it

Tonight we went to the bookstore to pick up this book for Mädchen:


We also bought prune juice this week. You can guess what our lives revolve around these days...

ADDENDUM: This is one reason we need to keep our blog active--if Mädchen is hanging around with the wrong crowd someday, we can always threaten to unearth and share posts like this with her friends. She'll love that.

Artist-in-training

Neither Gretchen nor I have an artistic bone in our bodies (although Gretchen is at least gifted musically), but Mädchen seems to like to draw and paint, so maybe she picked up a recessive artistic gene somewhere. I've started taking her to an art class for toddlers, and while she seems to prefer dipping paint brushes in water rather than in paint, at least there's a chance that her right brain might develop better than either of ours did...

The most wonderful time of the year

Summer here is generally miserable and has few, if any, redeeming qualities.

Winter is a mixed bag. It's not as damp as Basel (which is a good thing), but it can get colder. And there's typically not much snow, which is a drag (if it's going to be cold, my feeling is it may as well snow since it's much prettier than the typical drabness of winter).

Spring is pretty nice. Sometimes it's too short (i.e., we go straight from winter to summer), but overall it tends to be a beautiful time of year.

But for me, even though it means winter is right around the corner, my favorite season is fall. Maybe I'm so fond of it because I grew up where we basically had no trees, and the seasons were 10 months of sun and maybe 2 months of occasional rain (if that). So feeling the first chill in the air and seeing the leaves turn colors and fall to the ground is still a special treat (having to rake, on the other hand, not so much).

This fall seems to be an especially nice one. For a long time we were wondering if it was going to arrive at all or if the leaves would just turn brown and drop (it's happened in past years), but all of a sudden in the past two weeks we've been treated to a mosaic of beautiful gold and red trees, carpets of fallen leaves on the road, the sudden aroma of smoke from chimneys, etc. In another couple of weeks I'll assuredly be complaining about the cold, but for now all's right with the world.

Postscript

No more election stuff, I promise, but I took a walk at lunch the other day to the Lincoln Memorial and came across this thing that someone had set up for people to sign in honor of the election--which, clearly, lots of people from all over the world decided to do:

Hot dog!

Amidst the excitement of the election, I almost forgot that when we were driving to a nearby restaurant for an early dinner, we drove past an Oscar Mayer Wienermobile! Even Gretchen--who grew up in a city with a sizeable Oscar Mayer plant and so could be excused for being jaded about such things--was excited to see it go past. I guess there's just something magical about a gigantic hot dog driving down the streets of your town (even if, alas, it was too quick to get a picture)...

Sticker

Couldn't have said it any better myself.

For now, the "I Voted" sticker remains gloriously the same. Oh, some jurisdictions may dress it up -- Prince William's sticker is much jazzier than the District's simple white circle with the red "X" in the box -- but the message is clearer than ever: I kick it old school.

Cookies and juice

Here's my election report. Thankfully, my wait at the polls was much shorter than Kirk's. Madchen came with me to vote mid-afternoon, just after I picked her up from school, and I didn't even have to stand in any lines. In fact, we spent more time picking out treats and chatting with neighbors at the bake sale (which also sold juice boxes for all the little ones accompanying their parents to the polls) than the actual voting process. It was an exciting afternoon for Madchen. Not only did she get some apple juice and a chocolate chip cookie, she learned about the word "VOTE" (which flashed up on the screen after I submitted my ballot) and even got a "Future Voter" sticker from the poll workers.

Fired up!

I don't want to go overboard on the whole election thing, but this is certainly one of the most--if not THE most--exciting election seasons since I've been voting. Last night, Obama had his last campaign event here in Northern Virginia. We half-heartedly joked about how we should try to go, but that just wasn't going to happen since the traffic (it was about 25 miles from here) and parking would have been a nightmare, it would have been a late night, and there is the minor detail of having a two-year-old to take care of. Still, after watching this, there was at least a small part of me that regretted not being there.



Also, this story was touching. And this. And this. And this. And this. And this...

Oh, and this.

This too. And this.

Vote early and vote often

Everyone is expecting massive voter turnout today (at least by U.S. standards), so I decided to get to the polls first this morning on my way to work. Evidently I wasn't the only one.

6:05 Leave house.

6:07 The normally quiet street where we vote is absolutely packed with cars.

6:09 Someone pulling out of a spot right near the entrance! Score!

6:10 Get in line, which extends halfway across the parking lot (in most elections there is literally no line at all).

6:15 Very politely pestered by canvassers offering sample Democratic and Republican ballots (this is a pet peeve of mine...I really don't want to run a gauntlet of people, even if they're friendly and even if I support the same candidates, on the way in to cast my vote). There seem to be a lot more takers for the former, but definitely a few for the latter as well. I wouldn't quite describe the mood as festive--it's 6:15 in the morning, after all, and most folks probably haven't had their coffee yet--but no one seems especially bothered to be waiting in a long line.

6:20 A near-stampede ensues when one of the canvassers announces that there is basically no wait for paper ballots, which a group of people misinterpret to mean that they can just bypass the whole line (it just means once they get inside that it will be quicker to do paper). This is the DC area, after all, where everyone is Type A and everyone's time is VERY VERY IMPORTANT AND CANNOT BE WASTED. Luckily everyone seems to take it in good humor when they have to get back in line.

6:30 Very smart decision by the local elementary school (where we vote) to set up a bake sale at the entrance to the polling station.

6:40 I finally get to the front door...only to see the line winding up and down the hallway.

6:45 Gretchen gets serious points for letting me take the whole newspaper with me this morning (I usually just take the front page), especially since I didn't remember to charge my iPod.

6:55 Finally to the check-in desk! Everyone has to say their name and address aloud, and the poll workers have to say it back to you, presumably so the poll watchers can make sure there is no voter fraud (or, to be more blunt and biased, so that the Republican poll watchers can question anything even remotely amiss to keep turnout down, and so Democratic poll watchers can make sure legitimate voters aren't turned away...it sure is nice that we lecture other countries about how to run elections).

6:57 The big choice: electronic machine or paper ballot (which is a new option this year). Since the line is shorter for paper ballots, and since I like the idea that there will be a paper trail to follow if necessary, I go with paper.

6:58 Fill in the bubbles completely with a #2 pencil...I'm having flashbacks to taking the SAT.

7:00 That was very easy, and most importantly, I've got the sticker to prove I did my part. Now we just have to wait for the results to come in tonight. After the last two presidential elections, it would be REALLY nice to go to bed already knowing who the next president will be and not having to wait.

Only in Washington

I went to the gym this morning. There were three big TVs in front of me, and these were the choices of what to watch: CNN, C-SPAN, and Fox News. Do you think we live in a bubble?

Thankfully I had my iPod Shuffle with my work-out mix of Euro techno/dance music. Saved from watching more politics...