ResQgeek

 The very nature of my job means that opportunities for work related travel are extremely limited. I am currently in Seattle on a rare work excursion to visit some of the companies that file applications in the technology I work on (image analysis). These trips are intended to be educational, a chance for us to meet with inventors and attorneys on their turf and learn a bit more about what they do. I'm being paid, but off the production clock, so it should be a relaxing week, sort of a free, paid vacation of sorts. This is only my third such trip during the 27 years I've worked for the Office, and the first that didn't go to Silicon Valley in California.

Yesterday was our travel day, and we flew out on Alaska Airlines on a non-stop flight from Reagan National Airport, which got us here before lunch time. We took advantage of the free afternoon to do some sightseeing, visiting the Space Needle and the Pike Place Market. The weather was incredibly clear, and we got some absolutely breathtaking views of Mt. Rainier throughout the day. Today we start our visits, which will continue through Thursday and we will fly home on Friday.

Yesterday was Independence Day, but I found it difficult to give much thought to celebrating the birth of my nation.  I'm feeling a bit strung-out, emotionally, at the end of this week.

Wednesday was an extremely long day, and not just because I was up by 5am and didn't get back to bed until after 2am Thursday morning.  I went to work to finish up somethings before disappearing for several weeks for some much needed vacation time, but I knew it wasn't going to be a normal day at the office.  The week before, the former wife of one of the supervisors in my work unit shot and killed their 7 year old daughter, before killing herself.  While I can't say that I am close friends with my colleague, he is someone I like and, having lost a daughter myself, I felt compelled to go to the funeral as a gesture of support.  Of course, it turned out to be one of the hottest days of the summer so far, so that wearing a suit to work for the funeral was a bit uncomfortable, but nothing compared to the burden he now has to endure.

After finishing things up a work, I went home and packed a few days worth of clothes, picked up my daughter from her best friend's (16th) birthday party, had a quick supper of leftovers, and headed out to brave the holiday-heavy rush hour traffic with my daughter as we headed to my parents' house for the weekend.  It took us an hour to work our way around the Beltway into Maryland, but after we squeezed past an accident just before the state line, traffic thinned out quickly and the rest of our trip was uneventful, even though it was 2am before we arrived.  My daughter did about half of the driving, gathering some much needed night-time driving experience.

We were up early on Thursday, with a long day planned.  My brother and his family had been planning to join his longtime friend and his family for a day at the Darien Lakes amusement park, and my daughter and I had been included in the invitation.  My daughter has become a huge roller coaster enthusiast, which is why we drove up on Wednesday night.  We arrived at Darien Lakes under overcast skies, but were hopeful that the weather would clear, which it eventually did, but not until after we had endured a couple of hours of soaking rain.  We did manage to ride all six of the roller coasters in the park, and my daughter got to spend some time with her young cousins on rides more age appropriate for them, but it we were cold and wet, which made for a long day.

Yesterday morning, my daughter and I visited my grandfather at the local nursing home, where he was recently admitted after being in the hospital briefly after a taking a fall in his apartment.  He has become incredibly frail and weak, and the staff does not believe that he will recover sufficient strength to be allowed to return to his home.  He hasn't yet realized that this is his new home, and as my extended family arrived yesterday (for our annual get together this afternoon), my Dad and his brothers had a long discussion about how to break the news to their father.  None of them want to be the one to tell him that he can't return to his apartment and independent life.  They roll-played various possible scenarios, trying to form a plan and to make sure they were all on the same page.  They are planning to visit my grandfather this morning.  My parents are the only ones who live here locally, so it has been their burden to deal with my grandfather's issues by themselves up to this point, and it is clear that it has taken a toll on them.  Combine that with their efforts to close my brother's estate, and it is quite clear that my parents would really appreciate a long respite from any further bad news.

I'm looking forward to the family gathering this afternoon, even though the issues with my grandfather are likely to dampen the mood somewhat.  In addition, a couple of my cousins and their families weren't able to join us this year, and I will miss them.  But even so, it will be nice to catch up with those who are here, sharing stories and laughter.  It is a shame that we don't see each other more often, but we are scattered across several states, and everyone has time and money constraints, so we just have to make the best of the time we do have together.

Yesterday on Facebook, I posted a link to a Washington Post article about a mom experimenting with public transportation for her high school son. That link generated some great comments that got me thinking about my relationship with the public transportation system.

I have used public transportation to commute to and from my office virtually every workday for almost 12 years now. For many years, my commute involved a combination of city buses and the Metrorail trains. Currently, I'm just using city buses. While I do get a subsidy from my employer to cover the costs of using public transportation, I was already using the system before the subsidies were offered, and I would continue to do so if they were discontinued. There are a number of reasons I prefer public transportation to driving:

Exercise - The public buses don't stop in front of my house (in fact, they don't even run on my street), so I have to walk to the end of the street to the nearest bus stop. This fits with my goal of trying to increase my activity level by taking advantage of opportunities to get exercise that arise during my normal day. (I have found that I cannot exercise just for exercise sake, but that's a topic for another post, another day.)

Stress - Driving in this area, especially during the peak traffic periods, is VERY stressful. Before I switched to public transportation, when I was driving to work every day, I was becoming a dangerous driver. I suffered from road rage and had become a dangerously aggressive driver. Now, I can read the newspaper or a book, and someone else has to worry about the traffic. My blood pressure is lower, and when I do have to drive, I'm less aggressive and have a more relaxed attitude.

Money - With the subsidy, my commute is essentially free. But even without the subsidy, the bus is less expensive than driving. Parking at my office would cost me $100/month. Add in the cost of fuel and maintenance for the car I would need to drive, and driving would be significantly more expensive than the $50-$60/month it would cost me to ride the bus everyday.

Intangibles - It doesn't have a big impact, but using the bus every day is my small contribution to improving my community. I'm helping, in my small way, to reduce the traffic volume on our streets, and at the same time, I helping to conserve fuel and reduce pollution. By myself, none of these change things very much, but there is a certain satisfaction from knowing that I'm doing something.

As for our daughters, their elementary school is only a block up the street, and they've walked to and from school since the very beginning. While we walked with them when they were younger, they've been walking by themselves for more than a year now. However, if you go up to the school at the beginning or end of the school day, you will find cars lining both sides of the street, with parents dropping off or picking up their children. Many of these people live within easy walking distance (some live closer than we do!). Most of them leave their engines idling while they wait (and then complain about when fuel prices go up). I find it very irritating. Not only are they wasting fuel and contributing to our traffic and pollution issues, but they are also training their children to be inactive and lazy, rather than active and healthy. I just don't get it.

We're back, and life should be returning to normal, if only briefly. I do want to upload some pictures and write about our trip, but I'm not sure when I'll be able get to that. My wife and I enjoyed our seven day cruise through the Caribbean, with stops at Cozumel, Grand Cayman and Ocho Rios (Jamaica). I ate far to much food, enjoyed the shows, and loved the shore excursions. The long drive home from Miami on Saturday was made longer by the onset of a nasty head cold, so Easter was spent at my MIL's house, quietly suffering while the kids hunted for easter eggs and my wife helped my MIL prepare Easter dinner. I slept in this morning and came to work late (I'm going to claim it as sick leave), and chose not to go to the White House with my wife and daughters. My wife graciously offered to take the books I'd set aside to release this year, so my annual White House releases will continue this year.

I've spent the day here trying to catch up with the backlog of messages and work. It looks like I'm almost on top of it, and then its back to the usual work patterns (I hope), which should leave me more time to write in more detail about the trip.

Today is my first full day at the office this week. I spent the last three days attending a technical conference in Old Town Alexandria (about a mile from my office). The Office paid for the conference out of the technical training budget, and it was a nice break from my usual routine, but it limited my on-line access. I've been lurking, reading everyone's entries, but I haven't had time to post much in the way of comments.

Tuesday night, the conference attendees went on a dessert cruise on the Potomac River, which was included in the conference fee. I've lived in this area for fifteen years, and have never been out on the river (at least not down here by DC and Alexandria), so I decided to go along. I had a fun evening, chatting with the various researchers and engineers about their work, and got to see Washington from a very different point of view. Unfortunately it got dark early in the cruise, and I just couldn't get good pictures from a moving boat in the dark. I'll take a look at what I did get and post any interesting pictures I did get.

Of course being out of the office for two and a half days allowed things to explode on my desk, so now I've got a number of small fires to put out. I think I can get them taken care of today, and then I can try to get back to my normal routine.

What? You look puzzled. Didn't you know that it's the Iranian New Year? Well, now you do.

One of the things I like about my job is the incredible diversity of the employees here. A few months back, a co-worker from Ethiopia took a bunch of us out to an Ethiopian restaurant to celebrate the retirement of my old boss. Today, it was Iran's turn. I have a number of co-workers who were born in Iran, and every year they invite a bunch of us to join them for lunch at an Iranian restaurant to celebrate the Iranian New Year. Today, a group of about two dozen people from our work unit piled into a bunch of cars and went out to celebrate. We had a variety of Iranian dishes to sample, and I believe we all left the restaurant wishing we were headed home for a nap instead of back to the office to work. The food was fabulous, and the conversation included discussions of Iranian New Year's traditions. All-in-all, quite a fun lunch.

I'm not really sure why, but I haven't really had a great deal of motivation to write this week. Last weekend was all about physical labor. I finally got motivated to collect the firewood that's been sitting down the hill at a neighbor's place for a couple of months. It took five trips with the trailer, but all the wood is now stacked at the end of the driveway, waiting for me to split it. Then I brought another big pile of freshly cut oak from my next-door neighbors over and stacked it in the driveway too. I was hoping to get started splitting the wood this weekend, but the rainy weather has changed that plan.

It was actually a pretty relaxing week at work. I spent the week at our training facility, teaching new employees. I wouldn't want to do the training full time, but it is nice to have a couple of weeks each year where I don't have to worry about the usual job issues. Its also refreshing to interact with the new employees...their eagerness to learn and enthusiasm for the job are fun to watch. Of course, next week will be back to my usual work, but hopefully the positive energy from last week will carry over for a while...

Finally, my parents came down from NY on Tuesday. They are spending the weekend at my brother's place in Maryland, but they came down early to visit their granddaughters. I didn't really get to see much of them while they were here, but it sounds like they had a good time with the girls. We did make tentative plans to send the younger daughter up to my parents' place after Thanksgiving so she can help Grandma make Christmas cookies!