Thrifty

So this is yet another post that contains no deep thoughts, just a nagging question: does it matter what kind of clothes I put on my baby? I have boxes of blue and green and tan baby clothes that I've saved for seven years in the basement. I've been washing these things and inspecting them, and can't convince myself to give them away. I know in advance that I will have an annoying number of people congratulating me on my "boy", just because I'll be dressing her in the wrong colors, but these are perfectly good clothes! Everytime I consider buying all new, I think of ration cards and Victory Gardens, long lines for gas and our current "mental recession", and I become unable to discard these things.

Will you be one of the people mocking me for dressing a girl in blue, with puppy dog prints?

Standby for the name- I think most people will hate it, especially the spelling which is correct, rather than convenient. We might change our minds of course, when my little Predator emerges looking more like a Martha than an Agnes, for instance.

Also standby for more consequential questions and topics, such as the Ted Stevens indictment, the America's Cup legal nightmare, the juvenile justice system, illegal immigration, and more. For now, I'm just too fatigued. Plus, I haven't solidified my thoughts well enough to present them in a fashion that will convince all and sundry that I am utterly right, and ought to be thanked for sharing my pearls of wisdom.

S-List

All my complaints to the obstetrician have had a side effect: I've been officially labelled as a complainer. The chart they hand me to check-out with has a box labelled "complaint". I always assumed this was meant to describe the reason I was visiting the doctor. Apparently, it can also hold notes about the patient. Mine said, "Will not accept schedule for satillete c-section."

I wish it had also said, "Is annoyed by mis-spellings and doctors who don't listen."

Optical Illusion

I've come to notice that small changes can alter appearances in major ways. This is a truisim in spy fiction and on TV, but I usually laugh at the notion that a little hair dye can help a major fugitive escape notice. But then this week, we have the Serbian war criminal caught hiding out as a new age guru with the help of a long beard. This is an interesting example of hiding in plain sight. Comparing photographs side by side makes it clear that this is the same person, but I'm sure that none of the people who met this "guru" ever thought to look at the features behind the beard. Why would you?



The Tour de France offers many entertaining examples of this phenomenon, where a helmet and reflective sunglasses entirely change the impression of a face. Behold the mighty Schleck brothers:

Marble statues come to life, with perfectly chiseled features and the promise of extraordinary beauty when the helmets are removed.
But what happened? The removal of the helmet reduces young Andy from utterly captivating to entirely ordinary, demolishing idle thoughts of jetting to Paris for the capture of this rare specimen. (Yes, yes, 9 months pregnant, happily married, no money for tickets- butt out, these are my idle thoughts.) Wouldn't look twice at this fellow with the thin neck and possible overbite, but the only difference is the hat.

I have found this transformation happening more than once, where some random hero of the race looks like an amazingly beautiful person, then finishes the ride, takes off the glasses and helmet, and turns back into a pumpkin. So my question is: are some changes more likely to make you look much better than normal? Is there something about obscuring the hairline and eyes that can convey a sheen of glamour? Does it only work with strangers, or is it effective with very familiar faces? I'm sure I could find the answers to these questions with some research, but I prefer to ponder them in ignorance. Keep an eye out for me this weekend, as I swan around town in hat and large sunglasses, posing in front of shop windows as I try to determine if I look glamorous.

Twofer

This second post in one day is a rare event, but I had to share my triumph:
I convinced the obstetricians to reschedule the c-section for a later date! I've been working on this since April or May, with no success. I don't know if they became tired of dealing with me, if they have some predetermined threshold for complaints, beyond which they begin to listen, or if someone else delivered early, but they found a time for me on my actual due date, instead of a week early.

Standby for my mortification when the kid comes early.

Liberal Arts, Schmiberal Farts

I seem to think and talk a lot about articles I see in the Washington Post. This is because I use the paper as my primary news source, although not as the only or final source. So anyway, I have some thoughts about yet another piece from the Post, in this case from the Opinion section last Sunday.

One of the Metro section reporters wrote a long essay on being a black professional woman, attending an Ivy League college, how her education has affected the perception that other Americans have of her, and how her experience has been quite similar to Michelle Obama's (she thinks). This is the passage that caught my eye:

Some blacks have asked why I didn't go to Howard or another historically black college... In some instances, the choice between Harvard and Hampton can be seen as choosing to accept or reject your race. That can make an Ivy League acceptance letter seem more like a burden than a break.
But some of us still decide to go to "white" schools -- because it's a glittering line on a résumé, because we're compelled to try to own something that was once denied us, and because we hope that an Ivy League education may act as a kind of academic armor against misperceptions, assumptions and plain old bigotry. Like every other meritocrat, we're looking for an advantage, and we have particular reason to think that we may need one.

I found this immediately annoying, but had to think about why for some minutes. My usual antipathy toward this sort of thing is part of my annoyance, in that I don't understand and generally have contempt for people who define themselves by race or ethnicity. You are what you are, and you can no more "accept or reject your race" than you can your body or your soul. You've been issued one by the lottery of life, and you just get on with your life without making something so ineffable your primary focus. (Many simmering thoughts here about transgenders, but aside from noting that an operation can't change you from XX to XY, I'll leave it for another time.) However, the majority of the trouble is her list of reasons that a black person might choose to attend a white school:
1. prestige
2. barrier breaking
3. a launchpad past bigotry and assumptions of mediocrity.

Nowhere does this woman mention the primary reason that any scientist or engineer chooses a school: choice and quality of major. I feel really strongly about this, so strongly that I was angry for hours after I read the essay. I didn't choose a primarily white college for prestige or any other of her lame reasons. I chose my college because of the major that I wanted to study!
!!
!!!!

I didn't consider the demographics of the place until late in the admissions process, and then the only thing that occurred to me was that women composed less than 25% of the student body (a lot less). It wasn't until I started classes that I realized I was the only black person in the school, and I would become the first to graduate from the college. (I'll grant you that this college is where I learned that the stereotype of black people had us eating watermelon and fried chicken (thanks Bobby B. !), and that there was a certain unseemly interest in my sex life, but I forgive the second, given my own youthful indiscretions and that the same prurience extended to all the other women.)

The same consideration held for my first round of grad school, and was only slightly modified for the current go-round by geography. So it occurs to me that perhaps all the navel gazing the author indulges in is a consequence of her own field of study, that being Liberal Arts (faint horror). Maybe that tribe is predisposed to consider the culture of a school first, and the specific fields of study second. Perhaps that is logical, seeing as how an important part of what they do is think and talk and feel (stronger horror). My own people, those who think and talk and derive and leave the feelings for spare time (after drinking, gaming and sleeping), don't pick a college based on the type of people who might attend. This is a thought that just doesn't make any sense. I'm going/have gone to school to learn something specific, and so choose the school based on its ability to offer that knowledge. The race of the people teaching and learning is completely irrelevant.

So now I realize that my annoyance isn't just because this Journalism person has ignored the importance of major when choosing a college, but has presumed to speak for black professional women all over the country, and has been given a national soapbox to do so. I hate to think that any past, present or future colleague of mine might think that my choice of college was influenced primarily by the reasons she listed, or might think that my mind works like hers. I hope any that happened to read the essay understand the essential divide between her motivations (and those of her liberal arts brethren) and mine.

For most things, anyway. Did I mention I have a degree from MIT?

Je ne sais quoi

Deep in July, I am revelling in my favorite sporting event of the year, the Tour de France. I have tried and failed to explain my fascination before, all I can really say is that every year my interest grows with my knowledge. Despite the claims of the cynics, there is more to it than the spectacle of 180 fit men in spandex, muscles flexing in cadence (although that may be a small part of the show). It may be similar to my love of other non-team sports: I understand the fundamentals, I can do the activity myself with small effort, I understand how difficult it is to achieve excellence at the sport. This holds true for swimming, tennis, sailing, gardening (not a sport, but sometimes competitive). Anyway, we are at stage 12, and every night is 3 hours of TV watching bliss.

The only fly in my ointment, apart from a nagging guilt that I am watching so much TV when I spend the rest of the year not doing so, is the drug issue. Pro-cycling has public doping scandals with tedious frequency. The upside is that this only occurs because cycling authorities test athletes regularly and publish the results. The downside is that this testing regime has not yet dissuaded everyone from trying to dope. So we have yet another Tour where an entire team has withdrawn from the competition because their star has tested positive. Another rider was caught with chemicals and syringes in his hotel room, which is seriously blatant.

The difficulty I have with this is that I seem to be a cycling optimist: I find it very hard to believe that any rider could be so stupid as to use illegal drugs when they know they will be tested. The best riders, the ones who win points and stages, know that they will be tested immediately after the win, so doping would be stupid, illogical and nearly impossible to conceal; therefore, high profile riders who test positive during the Tour must be victims of inaccurate tests. Of course, this logic holds together only if the riders are intelligent (unproven) and know for sure that they will face regular testing that will detect whatever fancy stuff they want to use. When riders are caught, I can either believe my fantasy that the tests are bad, or that the riders are dumb, or that the riders really believe that their concoction will beat the tests. While it may be that options 2 and 3 are the most likely, I'm attracted to option 1 like a kid to cotton candy: insubstantial but delicious.

I may have to let go of my staunch belief in the integrity of cyclists (where did this belief come from? I truly don't know, and it doesn't extend to other sports- I'm talking to you, track and field and baseball), but I don't really want to. I want to keep the special feeling that I get in July, when I'm mesmerized by herculean efforts in the mountain stages, and enthralled with the mental discipline of the time trials. And I still believe in Floyd.

De Nile

I love that corny saying, "You must be Egyptian, because you are living in denial." It always makes me laugh, just like my trusty old Homer jokes (the blind greek poet)(What did Homer say about reading and writing? It's all Greek to me!)(What did Homer say about Australia? It's all reef to me!)(Seriously, laughing already). So anyway, I know I'm in denial, and now I think my advisor is too.

My particular problem is preparing for this new baby. No stroller, crib across town with a friend, no clue where the bassinet is, no bottles, a couple random packs of diapers of unknown size, no newborn clothes for girls (but a basement full of boy stuff, randomly stacked up), and no real sense of urgency. This is very different from the first time. I'm guessing that either things will come together now, or 3 years from now, no big. The only thing that really must get sorted out in the next 3 weeks or so is a name. I'm rather enjoying the zen of not speculating on names, but I can see that this peaceful feeling might flash over into irritation on day T+1, when the kid still doesn't have a name. Might have to harsh the household mellow and insist on some sort of conversation about this, but I think I'll wait until next week. Or the week after.

My advisor this morning was quite happy with my current results. If I produce one more set, slightly refined, then we can fix the date for my pre-defense. This is the moment I've been waiting for, but... I'm not sure I can pre-defend before this kid is born. Not because of the state of my work, but because of the state of my body. I have about 3 weeks until D-day, but I seem to use 75% of my available energy getting out of bed. I coast through the day on brain and will power alone, then use the remaining 25% getting home, feeding the existing kid, and falling into bed myself. So, the resources are somewhat limited. If it wasn't for the ice cream turbo charge, I might not be able to get into bed. Considering that the alien was in full escape mode this morning while I presented my slides, I think my advisor is deploying a bit of willful blindness. You'd have to be right, to tell a woman in her 9th month to prepare for a major presentation that will determine the success of her PhD, while she's just hoping to get through every day of work without any embarrassing amniotic incidents?

Hair Again

Believe it or not, I finally had my hair cut. It's been quite a while since the last one, in October of '06. Back in those days, we had to cut our own hair with a sharp rock... Anyway, it was all quite lovely, in that scalp-burning, chemical straightening way. I can't help but wonder though, why did it take 2.25 hours? That's really a long time to sit in a salon, sniffing the fumes, and listening to the local gossip. The hot topics were: the perfidy of my old salon in dumping me (was glad to tell that story to the listening patrons), the character of the owner of said salon (this from my stylist and another woman), the local illegal immigration scandal, and the murky dealings at the big, fancy condo place downtown. Seems like no one has any sympathy for the wife and kids of the entrepreneur whose business was raided (cold), and the big time finance group who bought into the condo development have pushed the developer and his wife out of some operations (bummer).

It's amazing what you can pick up about your community when you kill an afternoon in a hair salon. However, since the price of this gossip was about $60/hour, I'll just stick to the newspaper as my primary source of information.

Anyway, I'm wondering about the rate of return on this particular investment. So far at work, there have been zero comments and two weird looks. Sadly, these looks seem to say, "You look funny today. I wonder what's different about you?", rather than "Man, I am so lucky to work in an office with that hot head of hair!" That's the price I pay for working with engineers, I guess. The "upside" is that I could choose not to bathe for two weeks, and no one would notice that either. I didn't even get my usual kissy-faces from old guys driving past me on the highway. Very poor show.

Two more days until the start of the best three weeks of summer :)

The Third Thing

Thank goodness for radio, because I was just reminded of the third thing I wanted to mention: high-tech swimsuits. These are the latest thing in competitive swimming, and apparently give a speed advantage to the wearer. Newspapers are calling this high-tech doping, in a joking way. I don't really get why anyone is joking about it. If the suit offers a speed advantage over the natural talent of the swimmer, how does it differ from chemical doping? Considering that the things are ultra-thin, very hard to get into without tearing, and about $600 apiece, they aren't exactly available to all. Even worse, Speedo has a lock on the new technology, so swimmers or swim teams who are sponsored by another company cannot use the suit.

So, this bugs me not because I care about swimming, but because I care (intensely) about cycling, and am annoyed that my favorite riders have not been invited to the Tour de France this year because their teams have the "wrong attitude" toward doping. Both Contador (last year's champion) and Leipheimer (perennial contender) are members of Team Astana, which has had some embarrassing incidents in the past. However, the team was entirely revamped last year, and none of the current members have any doping controversies. Nevertheless, the French (maginot line) are refusing to budge, and these guys are being excluded because former members of their current team were disgraced in the past.

So the question for me is: why can swimmers use suits so advanced that the maker brags about the records they are collecting for the corporate brand, but cyclists (like my man Landis, poor little trooper) are kicked to the curb for allegedly using a possible performance enhancer like testosterone (which we all know they would have more of naturally, if only they didn't spend so much time on their bikes)? They aren't actually doping, if indeed they are doing anything at all (I believe you Floyd!), they are merely getting back to baseline.

Stayed tuned. The TDF starts July 5, and I'll be spending the last 3.5 weeks of this pregnancy hypnotized by a marginal sport in a foreign country, contended by riders I don't yet care about.

Random Miscellany

Since I'm feeling incoherent and disconnected this morning, I'd thought I'd post a random collection of interesting things that I've seen in the last day or so.

First, an interesting travel tip from Google. If you are flying or meeting someone's plane, you can check on the status of the flight by texting the flight number to 466453. I think they get their info from www.flightstat.com, so it should be good quality. This number is like a pseudo-411, so you could look up anything. Need the nearest Dairy Queen while driving through New Jersey? Ask Google with your cell phone, and they'll send you the address. Nice and neat.

Second, while you are doing all this flying or driving, you should make sure to stay hydrated. The best, or at least most expensive, way to do that is to invest in some concentrated water. Yes, it is finally here, the oldest joke of all: concentrated water. This little luxury good comes from Hawaii, and is desalinated ocean water. Apparently, this water is special because it comes from 3000 ft down, and is "pure." 2 oz. sells for $33.50, and you are supposed to mix it with regular water (so much for purity). For your money, you get "weight loss, stress reduction, skin tone, and digestion." I suggest you head to Dairy Queen instead, which will give you two out of four for 2 bucks. If you walk there, you might get the skin tone and weight loss too.

I had a third item, but I'm so incoherent and disconnected that it has gone clean out of my mind. Maybe some of that concentrated water would help.