SkyMall

One of the few amenities left today on planes are the free magazines stuffed into the seat pocket in front of you.

Typically, I will leaf through the magazine, sometimes doing the crossword or attempting the sudoku. But oftentimes I fly during the same month, which is the time frame for the magazine to be replaced...meaning if I read the magazine on my departing flight, I have nothing to read on my return flight. Or someone else has already finished the crossword and put it back into the seat. Please stop doing that.

Enter SkyMall.

I have never bought anything from SkyMall. I seriously doubt I will ever buy anything from SkyMall. But, boy, have I gone through every page of SkyMall. People often go to Sharper Image and think "this is stuff for the person who has everything" but Sharper Image is one small chunk of the world of people who have everything. SkyMall fills in the remaining gap.


There are all sorts of crazy items, some of them logged in the comedy book SkyMaul, but the one item that is always ubiquitous that I've never been able to understand is the Pop-up hot dog cooker.

Perhaps this is the gift for the busy mother with plenty of counterspace because I don't know about you, but by the time you dug this appliance out from a cupboard, unplugged something and plugged this thing in, you could've easily boiled or pan-fried two hot dogs. There are a couple of other hot dog cookers, that more resemble the rolling spit from convenience stores and gas stations, but I could see those being a little more practical because it does more than two hot dogs and could be used at a party, maybe by a company or baseball team selling concessions.

Other unusual items for a home include a chilled shot machine (good for frats?), an automatic towel dispenser, a motorized pool lounger for the iultimate lazy experience, a breakfast cereal dispenser (see above comment regarding counter space) and a Fiesta Station Buffet, for those days when just putting chicken into bowls and tortillas on a warm plate JUST WON'T DO. That last one actually advertises itself as being "for your home" so they are not aiming at, like, companies or small restaurants or something.

But, honestly, nothing beats the hot dog warmer.

I was caught in the terrible rainstorms today...honestly, the storm was right overhead, what with the simultaneous lightening and thunderstorming and the creepy green clouds that made it look like 10 p.m. instead of 11:30 a.m.

BUT the weather yesterday was most excellent. A few of my friends from NYC came "down the shore" for some beach time. The picture is an unusual bookmark...maybe not so much for the beach.

I'm attempting to pack to head to a convention this week, but I will try and post a blog before I go. This will likely relate to driving as its been my biggest frustration this week, what with the large amount of tourists on the island now. It's bad.

Sensory memories

Several days in the past weeks have been hot and humid (humidity just goes with living on an island!) Whenever I cross a certain street on my drive back from work at night, just for a moment I am not driving back to Long Beach Island, but feel like I am in another place. Specifically, India.

The scent of the salt, seawater and humidity in the night air reminds me so much of Bombay, where I lived for 4 months my senior year of college. It smells like a million trips to India with my family, where the Bombay airport was our first welcome back, the hot, stuffy, smelly air feeling too close after the climate controlled airplane, though there we were limited to a few feet radius.

The smell always annoyed me and I'd go back with stories of how I hated that Bombay was our first welcome back and that it was foreigner's/first-time visitor's initial impression of India. I was generally pretty cross after spending close to 24 hours on a plane.

But these last few days its been making me feel sort of homesick. I was born and raised in Minnesota, not in India, but as I grow older I appreciate our visits to my parent's home country even more. I'm sure I am not alone in this sentiment, from being the picky American girl who turned up her nose at the thick, unpasteurized milk and the dust that lay everywhere, to an adult who sort of longs for visits.

Of course, visits back are never relaxing. People always think "oh she is taking two weeks off from work for vacation" but it is not vacation, it is a trip. Its traveling for so long then meeting hundreds of people, running from place to place...very little time to relax.

Anyway, its interesting how senses can bring back memories...and for some reason the sensory memories that I remember most are always ones that bring me back to India: climbing stairs in my high school reminding me of the narrow staircase to my grandma's house. Sweeping my floor reminding me of the sound of the stiff brushes used to clean the floors, daily. A car horn reminding me of the crowded streets. And the thick, heavy night air reminding me of car rides from the airport, after spending 24 hours on a plane and 24 months away.

mid-craziness-two-weeks

Only have a second to update. I got back from Cali late Wednesday and crashed. Worked Thursday and spent Friday and today unpacking, laundering, cleaning my house and REpacking for the next 7 days--NYC tonight, Pittsburgh Sunday and Monday and Delaware Tuesday through Friday for work training.


I promise to do a little photo update soon, like a cute Flickr slideshow or something. Until then, you can check out a few photos on Sam's site, including some terrible singing during a touching moment.


And I also promise that after this, I am not leaving my place unless I absolutely have to. Like Aug. 1-4 to Miami for the AAJA convention and Aug. 6 for my cousin's 1st birthday in North Jersey. And Aug. 24 to Baltimore for a Twins-Orioles game.

But, you know, other than that, staying at home. =)

Flight from hell!

Yesterday morning I saw a piece on CNN about a "flight from hell" where passengers at JFK had to sit on a plane for 4 hours and a guy took a little camera and asked the pilot "what would you do in this situation" and then interviewed about how horrible it was.

To him I say: HA!

Why? Because I saw the piece at 6 am MST while I was in the Salt Lake City airport, where I spent the night on the floor after missing my connection...because I spent 11 hours on a plane. And only four of them flying.

Yup, in the amount of time it takes to fly to Australia, we got to Salt Lake City, where I missed my connection to California. We sat on the tarmac at PHL for 8 loooooong hours, finally jetting off at 12:30am, from our original 5:25pm departure time. We got to SLC at 3am MST and 5am EST.

So what happened? Well for starters, PHL airport always has delays. Always. The flight coming in couldn't get a gate and it sat on the tarmac for an hour, waiting for an open gate. So we got delayed in setting out...and there appeared to be about 20 planes in front of us. The Delta pilot was good at keeping us very informed and you could hear just a touch of exasperation in his voice when he talked about how air traffic has always been bad at PHL and its just gotten worse.

When we finally got clearance to fly after about three hours of sitting on the tarmac...we all started to clap and cheer!

...but then we didn't have enough fuel to make it. So we went back to the gate to refuel and to let off anyone who didn't feel like sticking it through. Here is what the pilot had to say about that:
"Well folks, you're welcome to get off the plane and try to rebook, but your chances are pretty slim as most of the flights are booked. If you stay with us, we'll get you there but we might have to sit here for awhile. If you're not flying with us...[pause]" at which point my friend and I filled in "you're flying against us!" it was a perfect opportunity.


Then it started to rain. Not just rain, POUR. So we sat and waited for that rain, then it stopped and we were going to go again, but by the time our turn came up, it started to rain AGAIN.

We finally took off at 12:30, though most people were asleep by then. and didn't cheer, we were just so weary. I almost didn't turn off my cell phone again, because I didn't realize we were actually taking off.

The rage in the plane should have been boiling over. I mean, 8 hours? And these are Philadelphians and New Jerseyians, they are not happy people. But the flight attendants were very nice and they kept handing out bottles of water, free snack boxes and cups of apple juice. The pilot would get on the overhead as soon as he knew something. So most of our basic needs were met: food, water, sleep and information. So no one got too angry. It was as ideal as being stuck on a plane for 8 hours could be.

By the time we got to SLC it was 3am local time and 5am by our internal clocks. We got in the long rebooking line, but I knew we were safe. While we were sitting on the tarmac, I called the rebooking line and got us seats on the first flight out the next morning. Others weren't so lucky and had to fly STANDBY after all of that. It was bad. But again no one was too angry. I think we were too tired. We grabbed a few blankets and pillows and set up camp in a terminal, but we couldn't escape the CNN morning show. I did see the sun rise over the Wasatch Mountains, which was a beautiful sight I missed. (My first internship was at the Salt Lake Tribune, so I spent a summer living in Salt Lake City. Beautiful place.)

We got on our plane just fine and were relieved to fly over the blighted-looking desert towards California.


Except the final indignity: THEY LOST OUR BAGGAGE. I don't know how it didn't make it on our flight, they had 5 hours in SLC to put it on board. I wasn't angry up until then and then I felt: look, I understood all the other delays, that wasn't anything Delta could have prevented (PHL people however...but that's another story). But losing our bags on top of spending 14 hours on a plane?? ridiculous. They handed us little toilet kits and our bags should be on the 12:51pm flight to Ontario, CA.


Long story short: Our bags made it, we went to Disneyland yesterday and rode Space Mountain TWICE. Can life be any better than Space Mountain? I think not. More on Disney for another time!

Left Coast

From sea to shining sea!

I'm getting all patriotic here because I am flying across our great nation to head to the Left Coast today. More specifically, to the Long Beach area of California. I'm heading there for a wedding that I am very excited to attend. I also will be staying with a college friend and going to Disneyland, a spa and hopefully Leno.

I've always read about how flights from the East Coast to the West Coast are the same as flying to Europe, but I've never experienced it. One of the advantages of living in Minnesota is that most everything is within a 3-hour flight of home. Though if its going to be longer than two hours, I would prefer a longer flight. Under two hours or over five. (2>x>5) Anything in between is hard to prepare for because I feel fidgety after two hours unless I have it in my head that its a long haul.

This will be fidgety flights for me because we have a stopover: In Salt Lake City! I have mixed emotions about this stopover, mostly that I am excited to be stopping in the city where I had my first internship and lots of friends but sad that its less than an hour on my way to California and just over an hour on my way home, which is not enough time to see anyone, even if they came to the airport. At least I know the fly over looks great: mountains, a compact, well-designed city and the wide expanse of salt flats.

I may not blog as much because I will be busy with activities, but I will store up my observations about how life differs on the coasts. Because either way its still different from good ol' MN!

Flooded in!

UPDATE2: I waded out of my house! Its a good thing I moved my car when I did or I would have definitely had to stay in my house til the water subsided (maybe that wouldn't be a bad thing, it would be like another day off. I came in to finish a story that was supposed to run tomorrow, but now its being held a week, so I could've done cop checks and weather reports from home!) Anyway, the water was almost to the top of my bottom step, along with some gross sticks and litter like cigarette packets. I hiked down the street through my neighbors' yards but when I got to the end of the road, I had to wade through calf-deep water to get to my car. I might go to the car wash today just to spray underneath my car, make sure there is no salt left in there to muck with my car. I will update soon with more pics!


UPDATE: I was listening to the news reports and they were talking about how flooding shouldn't be as bad on the Jersey Shore because the wind down here is coming from the West blowing East--so against the ocean. Um yeah, unless you live on an island! I live on the bayside (west end) of Long Beach Island, so the water is coming in from the bay.
The water is getting higher and higher. I moved my car out of the backyard so I can have the option of going to work if necessary because the water went up several inches within a half hour.

I can't get out of my driveway because the flood waters have come in past my house and are up to the next house up the street. I think they should subside soon, but if they don't do I get a "flood day" at work? hmmmm.



This is looking down my street towards the bay. You can see the edge of my sidewalk to the right of the picture. I can't tell how deep the water is in front of my house, but its definitely deeper as we go towards the bay. I also do not want to drive in this!


My car is hiding in the backyard!


This flooding is definitely worse than the last time, plus the weather is nastier. Also, that day I didn't have to go anywhere until after the flooding was over, since I hadn't started work yet (of course, it was my moving weekend!)

This is a pic from my moving weekend:


Hmmm, now that I reread my last entry, I said the waters receded around 5 p.m. I hope these waters recede sooner than that!

weather

Some strange weather lately. First it was warm enough to ditch the coats and today is a sloppy, slushy mess.

BUT on my island it just rained. And rained and rained and rained. I was really confused last night when I went to visit my friend in Toms River because he said "maybe its better for you to drive up (to visit him rather than visa versa) because you're better in the snow." I just let it slide because I figured it had something to do with me being better at snowdriving = me being better at raindriving.

I should've worn my snow boots because the parking lot was SUCH a mess. It was like being back in MN!

Today I thought maybe the snow had melted everywhere because it was really warm on my island, but as I drove westward I saw more snow, like about 14 miles inland. It slowly got more and more, until at around 50 miles (Cherry Hill/Camden) it was pretty messy and slowed-down traffic (plus there was a state trooper driving in our little group of cars.)

But at 21 miles (just before the New Lisbon Developmental Center) I saw the most beautiful and unusual things. The trees lining the road ahead of me were green, lit nicely by the rising sun coming from behind us. It looked nice and fresh, clean and spring-like. But through my rearview mirror was the exact opposite look--the trees looked like they were coated with icicles, glittering and silvery-white.

I was so startled. I kept looking ahead and back. Ahead, spring. Behind, winter. Ahead, green. Behind, silver.

I wish I could've captured it somehow.

(please don't!) Cue Canon in D

Please! Don't invite us to your wedding!

That's not what I'm saying, it's what one Argentinian couple said in a paid newspaper advertisement a few weeks ago. I wonder if its going to have the opposite affect and they will have no social life now...

Speaking of weddings, I am attending quite a few this year: Five. Spread all over the country from here in New Jersey to California to Texas to Minnesota. I think I am going to hit all the major geographic areas of the United States--Northeast, West Coast, South and Midwest.

I actually like going to weddings. I guess if I was invited to a wedding every weekend it might be a different story, but I feel its an honor to be included on someone's wedding guest list and I should do my best to try and make it. Of course, the happy couple is probably planning on/hoping that a third of their guests can't come...

I wonder if this is my "year of weddings." Five is quite a few for one year, and, even though the majority of my friends are unmarried, I don't see it getting beyond this. Maybe...

It's interesting to see how friendships change and evolve and develop. Nicole blogged about how her friends came for her baby shower and they talked about babies and husbands, which is different from their college year discussions. I'm a step behind her with my friends, who are starting to talk weddings and engagements and long-term relationships and whatnot. Why does it all scare people so much? Because those really are huge life changes. Its sort of the start of "you might turn into your parents someday." Up until that we could deny it by being fun, free-wheeling young adults. But when you are in a relationship and comfortable, you stop shaking things up.

This post is all over the place. I am enjoying seeing all the different wedding invitations, ideas, websites, etc. Not in a "I'm planning my own" sort of way, but just a general appreciate for aestheics and function.

But if anyone plays Canon in D, I will be very upset:

Poor fishies.

Temperatures right now are hovering in the teens, and the windchill has dipped to below zero. This, of course, is nothing compared to Minnesota, where they are struggling to get the mercury above zero, but it is darn cold nonetheless.

And, my heat went out. Again.

It went out last week but was fixed enough to keep me warm that week. I went to Philadelphia this past weekend for three days of eating myself silly (Restaurant Week, BYOB and going-away party) only to come back to a heatless house on Sunday afternoon.

It was 45 degrees in my home. And my fish died.

Poor little Aoi and Akai. They were my buddies. They watched TV when I was watching TV, wriggling their little bodies towards the set. And I let them freeze to death. I gave them a proper burial at sea, and proceeded to huddle down under some comforters until my gas could be repaired. Again. Unfortunately, it took 23 hours before the gas company could make it out, so I drove back to Philadelphia, in time to see the Bears lose.

It made me sort of sad because I realized there were not too many places around where I live that I could turn to in a time of need. I have two friends in the area who I feel comfortable enough with to ask to spend the night. And both were out of town. So back to Philly it was. Back in MN, I would've had dozens of places to go...I guess that's a big struggle, is how do you make friends when you are out of college? You don't want to walk up to someone in a bar and be "hey baby, wanna be my friend?"

I am lucky to have such good friends only an hour away, but I wish I had friends only minutes away. And I wish I had my fish back.

(picture is of Akaiii, who is the new fish I bought today. I am keeping him at work. The extra i'd are to remember that he is the second Akai.)

local color

a really, really, really nice day
Yesterday we went for a drive. It was absolutely gorgeous, perfect weather outside yesterday--nearly 70 degrees. In January! So we left our coats at home. We went down Route 9 through Little Egg Harbor and Tuckerton and then we drove down Seven Bridges Road, which I wrote about for the APP as one of my first stories assigned to me.

It's a pretty little road-to-nowhere that ends abruptly. It was originally intended to serve as another route to LBI, but the seabed was too soft to build a bridge across. So it just winds through wild marshes, with only small marinas and abandoned fish factories along the way.

It has several "one-hoss" bridges that only fits the width of one car at a time. A stoplight helps regulate traffic, so two cars don't accidentally end up facing each other on a bridge, where the only way out is backing up. Scrubby pine trees, tall grass and brambly bushes grow alongside the road, which sometimes dips so low, it feels like you are driving on the marsh itself.

At the end of this road is an old red-and-white Coast Guard Station, now home to the Rutgers Marine Field Station. The bushes grow high at the turn-around. The road ends with a metal road barrier, but just beyond that barrier is a small path that goes through the curving bushes. The bushes are like a tunnel and, even if you've been there before, its sort of exciting to see what is on the other end.

Which is a small beach that opens out into the Atlantic Ocean. From there you can see the very tip of Long Beach Island, Atlantic City, other small uninhabited barrier islands and miles and miles of ocean. Seagulls dip and soar and scream and you almost think you can see them scooping up fish, but never manage to actually catch them in the act.

Out on this narrow beach, we spread my "dirty" blanket, huddled under my "clean" blanket and just sat there as the sun set. I thought we wouldn't be able to see it from that perspective because we would be facing east, but the sun set right in front of us, just west of Atlantic City. Luckily the sky was almost cloud-free. Unfortunately, the one place where there were clouds were exactly in front of the sunset, just above the horizon. Nevertheless, we enjoyed most of the sunset, rolling up our blankets a little early so we could enjoy the drive by dusk.

travel

So, looking at Sioux's pictures from her trip to Hawaii made me seriously jealous. I really would like to take a vacation that is just a vacation--I can't remember the last time I did that.

Anyways, it sucks that this probably won't happen for awhile. Most of my vacation time will be wiled away a day at a time for 3-day weekends to fly home and other various spots for weddings. Not that weddings aren't wonderful--I am very happy and grateful that so many of my friends are getting married and so many want to include me in the celebration. Each guest is a huge undertaking (esp $$-wise), so when someone makes the effort to save one space (or two) for me, I am going to make the effort to attend.

Earlier, the problem was all my vacation went to one big chunk of vacation time--going to India. Dec. 2004 and March 2006. And that is NOT a vacation, no matter what the two weeks stretching across the vacation calendar may look like. I come back from India needing a vacation.

For now, I am happy taking one- or two-day vacations to NYC, Philly area, Atlantic City, etc. I would like to go to Boston and Toronto and Hershey, PA. =) I also would like to go to Vermont and New Hampshire cause those were two states I always said I probably would never have the chance to visit but would actually enjoy. And now I am close enough to do it. Plus then maybe I could understand which one is narrow at the top and which one is narrow at the bottom. Those are the two states I always confuse in those online geography tests. (now, don't go rushing to tell me that Vermont is this one and NH is this one...People keep telling me and I keep looking it up, the problem is getting it to stay in my head.)

Let's not even get started on all the places in the world I want to visit...South Africa, Kenya, Egypt, Spain, the English countryside, Incan ruins in Mexico (not drinking to ruin in Mexico), Australia, Chile...and back to The Netherlands/Amsterdam and Nepal.

And, of course, Hawaii!

NYC

I discovered that I am only an hour and a half from Jersey City, which is the same distance that I am from Philly. Which means that I am pretty much two hours from NYC, assuming I park in JC and take the train into the city. Driving into the city wouldn't be bad, except for that whole parking thing. That is not easy, methinks.

Dinner was amazing. I love Indian-Chinese food; its just this amazing hybrid of tastes and it works so well. We had my favorite dish, Chicken 65. We also had some wine.

Ravi needed to catch a train at Penn Station, so we dropped him off there, after screaming random stuff out the window at him, probably mortifying him beyond belief. Then we drove back to Jersey City where Maya and Vikram totally twisted my arm into staying the night. And by twist, they just touched my wrist and I was like OKAY! I really didn't feel like driving an hour and a half at that point.

We went to their favorite local Jersey City bar, drank some more...then finally stumbled into bed at about 3am.

The nicest part about the weekend? Spending time with friends. I mean, two of the guys on Saturday night were Vikram and Maya's friends, but it just felt like normal. And it was exciting to "crash" at Maya's place and go home in my rumpled clothes the next day, like I had friends again. I know this sounds stupid, but it is silly little things like that that make a difference to me.

I am feeling the fact that I don't have friends here in town, but I am forging a tentative friendship with a girl who works in my building and also lives on the island. Maybe some of her friends will be cool too and then I can start my own little friendships!