There’s nothing like a medical condition that makes you feel old while at the same time emasculating you. Because it’s most common in women over 40. Anyway.

• Basically the tendons are swollen, such that if my left ring finger or right pinky is curled up, the middle knuckle “catches” when trying to extend the finger out straight.
• It’s like that when I first wake up, but as things warm up during the day, the fingers act normal.
• It started coming on back when I was doing the floor. Apparently it’s a bad thing when, after finishing sanding, your hands feel like they’re full of springs.
• Working with my hands every day since then apparently exacerbated the situation, until maybe three weeks ago when the “catching” started.
• It doesn’t hurt (all my fingers have been a little stiff and sore since mid-May), it’s just disconcerting and likely to progressively worsen without measures being taken.
• Recommended course of action is to (a) stop doing things that require me to grab stuff, especially power tools that oscillate or vibrate; (b) splint the affected fingers, especially at night; and (c) maybe pop some “anti-inflammatories” (ibuprofen). Should heal itself in four to six weeks.
• If that doesn’t work, then I can go in and get some cortisone injections. I’ll feel like a professional athlete! Like an old, emasculated professional athlete.

Not sure whether this means I just stop doing anything with the house or what. It’s going to be hard to be here without trying to do stuff, since:

• All that’s left to do in the kitchen is install the cabinets (and sink and dishwasher and disposal).
• The den is looking good, but needs bookshelves that I’d need to build.
• I ordered five sets of slat blinds that should arrive next week some time; it might be hard to avoid hanging them once they get here.
• Now that the master bedroom is basically ready to go, it’d be cool to put a door on the room — but the door needs to be painted and hung, which require grabbing and tool-use.
• With the kitchen floor done, I can start moving stuff from the basement into the living room, but carrying all that stuff might be proscribed.
• The upstairs bathroom is still a no-mans land and it sucks having to go downstairs to use the toilet.
• Plus the whole rest of the house and all.

Guess I should’ve gone to Oregon for the family reunion. It’s amazing how pretty much everything I sort of am interested in doing requires me to grab stuff. I’m not sure I should even consider hiking in WVa, since all the interesting hikes there have river crossings and I’d be mad trying to do them without poles. Also unsure about fishing, since it’d require me to have my hands in curled-up positions.

Instead I’m heading to Southern Virginia — it’s cheaper than Oregon on short notice and most of what there is to do there is passive (read: a lot of looking). It’ll keep me off my hands for a few days and then when I get back I can maybe re-evaluate. Also, in case you were wondering, it doesn’t make sense to visit a doctor until September when I have real insurance and not the kind with the $5,000 deductible.

I dunno. Maybe this is the blown transmission of the house renovation months. I swear I’m not just trying to find excuses to avoid painting doors.

bkd

It’s a real word.

Never saw the movie, but it was nice of them to get me a gift.

Contains MSG, so you know it can’t be all bad.

Hell is standing around for two hours listening to Tom Brunanski try and tell you how to teach a nine-year-old how to catch a fly ball.

And I still need to write my post entitled “All I Really Need to Know about Humanity I Learned Assistant Coaching My Nephew’s Little League Team for Half a Season”.

“Fewer”, because I don’t think they’re referring to the band.

A photo my nephew took of me before I eventually realized I didn’t know where my phone was.

I just don’t think Uday rates Ace-of-Hearts.

My niece posing with her brothers after her baptism.

My inner left elbow.

Every third Saturday the gunfighters shoot the teachers. Wax bullets.

Watching TV while driving.

Maybe my favorite touch-screen button ever.

Real and functional: we’re not in California any more.

That was probably too many.

Mostly ambivalent,

bkd

You can click on the photo to see a bigger version of it.

0-1 Correct: You’re probably normal.

2-3: Somewhat better than normal.

4-5: Way better than normal.

6 or more: Some sort of super-genius (or else you follow my blogs and retain a lot of information — I guess those aren’t necessarily mutually exclusive).

Kind of makes me want to go on a road trip around the country or something. Tell you what, summer after I do my comps, I’m gonna take four months off again. Maybe.

bkd

• About the third day after I moved into the house, I started getting this rash on my left arm. It covered most of my forearm and then spread to my right arm and lower abdomen. It’s just now going away. I’m thinking it’s an allergy to dust, 52-year-old varnish, crystalized cat urine, polyurethane, latex, humidity, Pittsburgh, or a combination of the above. I’m hoping it’s not Pittsburgh, that would be awkward.
• There was one afternoon last week where Home Depot was hounding me about returning the drum sander — that I’d returned a week earlier. They warned me that it was accumulating charges by being checked out so long etc., etc. It turns out that they couldn’t find it because they’d checked it out to another customer.
• Closest Home Depot with tool rentals is out in Monroeville — about 25 minutes, depending on the tunnel.
• Had to go pick up my repaired laptop one afternoon last week in Cranberry — about 45 minutes. It was covered under the nVidia recall. The repair, I mean.
• Went to campus to meet with my faculty advisor last Monday and to discuss a Scholarly Article that I’d read and written a couple of pages about. Took about a half a day.
• Guy from Verizon came on Friday to hook up my FiOS, which took four entire hours during which I did nothing productive.
• Week and a half ago I went go kart racing out in Beaver Falls. They kept giving us more and more practice laps, qualifying laps, heats, and final races, which was good from a value perspective. Came home with badly bruised ribs that make it hard to reach up (with, for instance, a paint roller) or sleep on my left side.
• Couple nights ago at about three in the morning I was woken up by sirens. They were apparently next door. Kept seeing a red light oscillating through my window. I’m guessing ambulance.
• One of my neighbors came over to tell me that if I park my truck too close to the stop sign, another neighbor will call the police.
• Tried to go to a church function last Monday, but after driving around the park twice, gave up. The second time through I saw a sign that said to turn right, but when I turned right, there were no church people. The park was about 20 minutes away from here.
• Driving back from the paint store, didn’t realize I needed to be in the left lane until it was too late, so instead I ended up turning right and acting like I’d meant to go to Walgreens all along. Getting out of Walgreens parking lot there was no left turn allowed, so I had to drive up the road, turn onto another road, then flip a U-ey using someone’s driveway, which I’m sure is way better than letting someone make a U-turn out of Walgreens’ parking lot.
• Drove the guy who chaperoned me during my Pitt fly-out and his wife to the airport. She forgot to pack her contact lenses, so I broke into their apartment, found them, and FedEx-ed them to her the next day.
• Getting my roof replacement and kitchen wall tear-down estimated required six phone calls, four in-person visits, seven text messages, and two emails. Work on the roof started today.

bkd

• There was a cop blocking the onramp for Mifflin Road, so I had to veer off onto Carson Street and was half-way to South Side flats before there was a turnoff I could use to turn around again.
• Found out it was going to cost me $5,000 to get my roof fixed.
• Ken Griffey, Jr. retired.
• Big ol’ electrical storm.
• Power went out (and stayed out for 18 hours).

Took a shower by flashlight, then I went back to bed. Today I got a revised estimate on the roof: $3,900. And it seems like I should have taken a photo of the bird.

bkd

PS, My hair’s too short to comb, but the rhythm would’ve been way off without it. Also considered using the Easy Star All-Stars variation (fingers+dreads), but figured the original would be confusing enough.

PPS, I’m sad about Griffey retiring.His bat was too slow and he should have retired at the end of last year, but he was a big part of the reason I ended up liking baseball as much as I do; he was the guy that made my team relevant. With him out of the game it feels like a part of me is, now, officially and irrevocably, washed up.

1. Dear God, what is that *thing*?
   
   It’s a 2001 Toyota Prius.
   
   
2. And you bought it?
   
   Yes.
   
   
3. Seriously?
   
   Seriously.
   
   
4. Why?
   
   The reasons are as plentiful as they are interesting. Or maybe not. Depends on your definitions of terms. For one thing, I didn’t want to be driving my big ol’ pickup around in Pittsburgh — it’s expensive to operate and too big to fit on city streets.
   
   
5. So you’re selling your truck?
   
   Not sure yet.
   
   
6. So why a Prius?
   
   It was a good deal and it’s fuel-efficient.
   
   
7. How much?
   
   $4,625.
   
   
8. But — a Prius?
   
   I was looking for an econobox. My first choice would have been something like a Honda Fit or Scion xA, neither of which are ego-enhancing, but both of which are fuel-efficient and small enough to fit in Pittsburgh and more fun to drive than a Prius. However, thanks to (I’m guessing) the current economy and (I’m also guessing) Dear Leader’s societal engineering projects (read: Cash for Clunkers), the prices on used cars, small ones in particular, are insane.
   
   
9. Saying small car prices are insane is racist.
   
   Probably.
   
   
10. Like — how insane?
    
    Like ElEff bought a 2008 salvage title Fit two years ago for $8K. Today, a 2008 salvage title Fit will cost you $9,000+ — unless you want one that actually runs right, in which case add another thousand or just buy non-salvage for $11K. Similar story for the entire category — Scion xA’s, Civics, Mazda3s, Matrixes (Matrices?), et al.
    
    
11. So why didn’t you just sell your truck and buy something more expensive then?
    
    Because I wasn’t going to buy a salvage Fit for $9K. And then because if I’m going to spend $10K+ for a car, it should be a car I kind of want and would enjoy driving, not one I’m buying for the sake of being pragmatic for a while. Nothing that’s any fun to drive and that’s under 80K miles and eight years old costs less than $17K right now. And I’m not in a position to spend $17K on a car. All hail reality.
    
    
12. So does this make you some sort of environmentalist now then?
    
    It’s just a car.
    
    
13. Hmm.
    
    Exactly.
    

So I’m not necessarily *excited* about the car, but then again, it’s not a car I bought for the sake of excitement. It’ll definitely get good mileage. I bought it from a known source that I know isn’t trying to scam me. It was cheap enough that if it spontaneously combusts RIGHT NOW, I’ll recover financially. It’s not pure driving excitement, but OTOH it handles and responds better than the second-gen Prius I drove from Phoenix back to OC, so — you know.

ElEff called this car the vehicular equivalent of the house I’m (hopefully) buying in Pittsburgh. Sounds about right. At least I’m enjoying a new level of consistency.

bkd

It also struck me as probably a really bad way to begin the NYC adventure — by longing for the wild, open spaces of the west.

There’s a lot that’s different this time around, though, in particular:

1. Pittsburgh is not New York City. You can drive in Pittsburgh. There are grocery stores with parking lots. Stuff is CHEAP. I’m going to be living in a house with a yard and a garage. I’ll be working with a group of people and I’ve already met some that are cool while at the same time not manic-depressive.
2. Pittsburgh is sort-of the West. Definitely through the Angle of Repose lens Pittsburgh would have been considered more like the wilderness that it would have been like the civilization of New York. And it’s sort of a frontier town anyway. Once you get out of downtown and Oakland, Pittsburgh starts looking and feeling like the capital of Appalachia, more like a part of West Virginia than part of the same state that includes Philadelphia.
3. The west isn’t The West. Maybe there are parts of Montana and Nevada that shouldn’t be painted with this gloss, but the modern-day west has nothing to do with the frontiers and taming-the-wilderness values and lifestyle of Angle of Repose. That’s one of the things the road trip taught me — the romantic West is pretty dead. In fact, it seemed more controlled and less “rugged individualist” than a lot of other parts of the country. Wyoming had the most offensive, threatening road signs in the country (e.g., “if you don’t wear your seatbelt, we’ll find you and it will cost you”-type messages) and most of the west was similar. Granted, I tend to perceive the world almost exclusively through a windshield, which might not always be an accurate reflection of reality, but still — driving in Michigan, for example, felt considerably more free. And after you’ve been on the trail to Half Dome for an hour and a half, you realize that the freedom and solitude and therefore to a large extent the bigness of the western wilderness is likewise little more than a matter of legend.

So basically, I think Pittsburgh will be much better than New York. And I don’t think it fits my ideal place to live, but after that road trip, I don’t know that a close approximation of my ideal exists anyway. Oh well.

And I still think that the book ends too quickly and/or that the author should have spent a little more time on the framing story to better justify its existence. And it’s still one of my top five books of all time.

bkd

(A photo to keep the front page concept from breaking:

)

This isn’t about Plan B, though. This is about my having looked at, like, seven houses today and most of them being variations on awful that I hadn’t necessarily considered possible. The sloped rooms and all. I mean, really. Here are the seven:

1. Horrifying salt box in West View that needed, at a minimum, a new everything. Most particularly a new smell.
2. Kind of interesting big, old three-story house in West View that had a cool yard, a slight slant to the floor in the living room, a two-car garage, and probably required more time and money than I was gonna give it.
3. Frightening three-bedroom in Morningside where you couldn’t really walk around for all the cobwebs and stuff piled on the floor (and on all other flat spaces). There were ruddy crosses finger-painted above every bedroom door. Non-positive vibe. My agent had hand sanitizer in the car.
4. Interesting-enough, small two-bedroom in Greenfield. Very narrow house, obviously had spent most of its recent years as a student rental, awesome kitchen flooring.
5. Unfortunate three-bedroom in Greenfield. In kind of a weird part of the neighborhood and walking from its front to back made me seasick with all the variations in, like, flatness. OTOH, the toilet worked.
6. The house in Lincoln Place on which I’m making an offer.
7. Another slant-floored house in Lincoln Place. The “kitchen” and “bathroom” were both located in the basement for some reason.

Here are some photos. Everyone likes photos. (All but one of these are from nos. 1 and 4 above; really should have photographed the lamb’s blood in no. 3.)

The shame of it is that the artist didn't sign his (her?) work.

You can't *really* tell, but the wallpaper in this one is reflective silver. Would have worked great in East Germany.

(Which is not to say that it doesn’t work great in Pittsburgh.)

A boiler.

A boiler! My agent said it needed to be replaced (by a NEW boiler!). And unfortunately we didn’t not come into contact with any of what he called “octopus furnaces”.

Needs a new garage door.

A Pittsburgh toilet.

This is a real, functioning toilet that’s in the middle of the basement floor (or off to the side, I guess). Apparently this is a thing here in the Burgh — it’s actually called a “Pittsburgh toilet”. According to legend, the steel mill worker would come home covered in soot and slag, enter through the side door, then head to the basement to… well, take a crap I guess. There was probably once a shower head down here next to the toilet, which may have helped with the soot.

And no walls. Basement toilet stall walls are gauche. Or they were 100 years ago.

bkd

The one I’m trying to buy is in the Lincoln Place neighborhood of Pittsburgh. I’m taking the offer paperwork over to the office in the morning. Here’s what it looks like:

Front Elevation. I suppose I'd have to put shutters on the left window.

The kitchen; I like the floor-to-ceiling tile. Makes it look like an operating room where they perform unnecessary surgeries.

A bedroom. They all looked about like this. And I didn't take a picture of the living room for some reason.

Which is a shame, because someone had painted a fireplace on one of the living room walls. It almost fools you in the listing photo.

Rec Room. The bar is wet.

The downstairs bathroom. I kind of like the retro -- which is good, b/c my real estate agent told me not to mess with the tile in this one.

OTOH, he told me I *did* need to mess with the one upstairs. The one upstairs looks pretty much the same as this one, only it’s pink for some reason.

The workshop. Seriously, the house has a workshop in it. Rocks.

The OVERSIZED (one-car) garage.

Anyway. It’s a cool house. It’s also bank-owned. If I get it, it needs the following (at least):

• New roof.
• New kitchen (floors, walls, cabinets, appliances).
• New upstairs bathroom.
• New paint (everywhere).
• Wood floors re-finished (sanded, re-stained).
• New ceiling in basement.
• Jury-rigged basement A/C unit replaced.
• New carpet in basement and on stairs.
• Shutters on front-left window.
• Paint on outside railing and stairs.
• Yard care.

Otherwise, good to go. With the price I’m hoping to get it for and what it should be worth fixed up, this should be a really good deal.

Mal sehen was wird.

Also, my real estate agent does not displease me. He gets what I’m trying to do here and has enough experience with house flipping that I trust his advice. Or, if it’s all just an act on his part, *really* well played.

bkd

The upside of these photos is that they give me good ideas of what I should do with my house I’m maybe gonna buy in Pittsburgh. Very good ideas.

Gera (March-May 1993)

I’m not sure how using the Gera bathroom for two months did *not* kill me. And it was the nicest one I had the whole two years. The washer-dryer combo emptying into the tub is a nice touch. Sehr mode!

Dresden (January-May 1992)

That one was at the Kurt-Fischer-Hotel (which was not actually a hotel; we called it that because if someone was getting blitzed home, that missionary stayed their last night with us — I’m sure I personally inspired everyone who came through there to eventually straighten up, fly correctly). The shower fed off a two-gallon hot water tank; the desk lamp over the sink seems like an under-utilized concept. And if I could, I’d usually try and hold it till I got to Tiergartenstraße 40 in the morning.

Weimar (December 1991-January 1992).

I don’t think the bathtub actually worked here, which explains why the definitely non-functional communist Schleudermaschine is inside it. And the best part of this apartment was that we had a Nazi fork among the silverware. Should have grabbed it on my way out. Biggest regret of my mission.

Borna (August 1991-December 1991)

The toilet is through that door. The door is down the stairs from the apartment. Because it’s not a flush-toilet, that’s why it’s nowhere near the actual apartment (I figure).

Um, so yeah. Then here’s my ranking of Best Bathrooms of East German Apartments I Used to Live In That Are Not Pictured Above:

1. Döbeln – Frost on the inside window of an in-house outhouse toilet closet!
2. Halberstadt – For some reason the apartment had 12 rooms and covered 2,000 s.f., but the bathroom was contained in a cubby hole. (We had a library in that apartment, a workout room, a clothes-drying room, and a room where we threw unwanted baked goods.)
3. Hohenstein-Ernstthal – Very little recollection of this bathroom except that it was in the kitchen.
4. Hof (bei Weber) – Though technically in West Germany, Hof was East Germany in spirit. And we had a neighbor who was always begging to borrow our shower because he was tired of having to bathe in his sink. A lot of things wrong with that. (Also wish I could have scored a copy of that tape Denny and Kalama(?) made for Omi Weber — so many regrets.)
5. Mittweida (bei Jentzsch/Laube sort of) – We were living in an apartment that the Laube family was renovating while living in alongside us. Got walked in on a few times (they hadn’t gotten around to putting a doorknob on the bathroom yet).
6. Hof (the *good* Wohnung) – Utterly westernly normal.

Somit aufgenommen.

bkd

PS, Re: the headline, it’s the *apartments* that I lived in; I did not live (primarily) in the bathrooms.

In case you care, here’s the text of the note:

The roar and rumble you hear are made by the diesel engine of a small tender. The boat on which your announcer is riding [is heading] toward the flagship of what will be one of the largest convoys yet assembled during this or any other war. We are seeing history made tonight. Before the dawn breaks, the big hulking shadow toward which we are headed will be leading 43 vessels, loaded with men and munitions, out to sea. And beyond the now-unseen horizon the enemy will learn again a lesson on American might.

The sky is clear, but no moon tonight. By the light of the stars alone we can see now one, now two, now three huge black shadows, which are hardly recognizable as ships. Some, as we pass them, are moving slowly, carefully in the darkness, maneuvering into position as the convoy pattern forms.

There’s a rumble of engines, perhaps you hear them, and a phosphorous-specked surging of white foamy water out of the inky sea as the big tub nearby swings ponderously around. On the deck, the sound of heavy chains and the shrill note of the bos’n’s pipe indicate the eager activity aboard.

Out of the black night before us looms our flagship in blacker silhouette. Our cox’n is throttling down already and is making his turn toward the ladder thrown over the side of the big black shadow now so close. He keeps the prop churning water though as the rise and fall of the endless swells keeps us bobbing first perilously close, then dangerously adrift of the ladder up which some are already scrambling to deck above. There’s activity up there. The growling sound of the winches and the whine of cable, the scrape of iron on iron tells us of final preparations for the hour we sail.

Up the ladder we go now. It’s catch as catch can and a quick jump, as the tender shifts close to the ship. Then on the ladder, hand-over-hand to the rail and onto the deck. There goes one, two, three men scrambling like monkeys up the side. Here we go!

Well, the crew is complete. We are all on deck now and the formalities of being welcomed onboard are taking place. May I come aboard sir? A snappy salute [is] returned by the Officer of the Deck and we are now a member of the convoy.

The ladder is being hauled aboard and below us now the tender, its prop revved up, is backing down. It is now turning to starboard and straightening away, sticking out across the bay toward shore.

Let’s move up now toward the bridge, the nerve center of the ship. In this cabin the ship’s wheel is located and the entire ship is directed from here. On this trip, the entire convoy will be directed from this deck, for as flagship we carry Commodore Beck, the man in command who will lead this convoy into the enemy camp.

There was also (apparently) a separate page attached to the letter that my grandpa had written (many years?) later:

Written aboard the USS Clinton while en route to Yokohama, where we said goodbye to the “guerilla soldados” who shipped with us and who were now denied their “hour of guts and glory”, but would now become the strength of a police action in the badly torn and crippled city of Tokyo (as was all of Japan).

It’s interesting. The thing that strikes me as particularly odd is that, according to the Navy’s record, the USS Clinton never went to Yokohama. Its travels per the Navy:

• Left San Francisco on 17 April 1945 with Marine troops and equipment, delivered these to Okinawa between 27 and 31 May.
• Transferred battle casualties (from Okinawa?) to Guam.
• Transported “ground forces of the 7th Bomber Command” to Okinawa, arriving 2 July.
• Left Okinawa on 8 July transporting “over 1,000 Okinawan and Korean prisoners of war” to internment camps in Hawaii.
• Left Honolulu 5 August carrying replacement troops to Saipan.
• Sailed to Manila to pick up Army occupation troops, who were delivered to Tsingtao, China on 11 October.
• Went to Haiphong in “French Indo-China”, arrived there 26 October and loaded Chinese troops and equipment, transporting them to Chinwangtao and Taku.
• Traveled to Mania, embarked returning US servicemen, and left 28 November heading for San Pedro, Calif., arriving 18 December.
• Salied to Norfolk, Va., arriving 2 February 1946.

Later, the Clinton was used for target practice. Of course.

Like I said, though, no mention of Yokohama. I’m guessing the ship must have transferred troops from Saipan to Yokohama — that might explain what belongs in the gap between Saipan and Manila. A couple other things I was wondering after reading the document:

• I get the impression from the first paragraph that the ship was setting out to deliver troops for combat, but the note says that’s not how the troops were deployed. Wondering if they set sail before the armistice was signed and landed after. If so — where were they deploying troops? (The battle of Okinawa ended in June.) Oh well.
• Took me a while to figure out that a “tender” in this instance was a small boat (it’s totally the right word to use).
• Wondering who the intended audience for this was. Grandpa’s trying to write it from the point of view of a tour guide — interesting choice of affect.
• Trying to figure out why Grandpa’s talking about “guerilla soldados”. Maybe he wrote the note after the family road trip to Mexico or something. There’s a fascination with Mexico in my dad’s family that I’ve never quite comprehended — we’re not from there or anything and we don’t really have any Spanish blood (Native American, yes).
• I kind of like some of the phrase turns he used.

So I guess that’s it. Here’s a picture of the letter:

Cogent. This blog post was cogent.

bkd

(If anyone pictured doesn’t like having these out there, lmk and I’ll take this post private.)

Dad, Mom. I think she's putting his lieutenant bars on him, ca. 1960.

It’s weird looking at my parents like this. I mean, they just look like young, good-looking military newlyweds, right? Who knew?

My mom's family (Uncle Bill, Grandpa, Grandma, Aunt Mitzie, Mom, Uncle Jim). David was probably on his mission or something and John was probably crime-fighting on the temple grounds. Maybe.

Four generations of Dunns (great grandparents in the middle, my grandparents at bottom left and right, Uncle Bill and Aunt Kay top-right, brother Garry and cousin Jeff at bottom right).

It’s also interesting to me how close my grandparents look to how I remember them. Heck, even my older brothers:

ca. 1964?

…still kind of look sort of like this. Their faces anyway.

My dad also scanned a photo of the house they lived in in Pensacola (1960-62?):

Which I took a photo of on my roadtrip:

It was probably nicer with the trees in the front yard.

So it turns out it’s interesting to see where you come from.

bkd

I *hope* I enjoy my stay.

The decision feels a little anti-climactic or something though. I dunno. It sort of seems like an arbitrary place, probably in part due to it not being on the short list of schools I was looking at last summer (when I was still looking primarily at strategic management programs). But FWIW, I didn’t end up applying to any of those early short-list schools. I guess it’s also not really a part of the country anyone’s heard much about since 1980, so maybe for that reason.

And the school has its own organizational behavior lab!

It should be cool, though. I’ll probably buy a house and hopefully it’s a little bit of a fixer so I can do some projects on it. Maybe that’ll be the blog for this summer. So there’s that to look forward to! (For you.) (Well — and for me.) Plus I’ll be able to make cryptic references to Fallout 3 DLC at will and, while no one will know what I’m talking about, the references will, technically, be appropriate.

Weapon in hand, a newly minted PhD looks forward to her bright future.

Will probably fly out there again in maybe May and look for a place to live, then move out for real once it closes escrow or whatever. You can get a pretty decent place for not much money out there — the trick is not taking a bath when you’re trying to sell it four to five years later.

So I got that going for me.

Excelsior,

bkd

Government overreach. That was the reason. Not kidding.

And one day I’ll go somewhere with (one of) my real camera(s) again. Just that my point-and-shoot has to go back to the factory (it’s in an envelope, has been there for a week now, on my desk) and the DSLR is freakin’ huge, which matters when it comes to not checking luggage. And having to bring a parka. So: cell phone photos.

Got back from The Pitt on Saturday night, was there for about 44 hours total, during which time it never got over 20 degrees. Everyone there apologized for the weather, but honestly it’s kind of cool to have a good reason to wear said parka for once and anyway, clear skies and 15 degrees breaks up the monotony of overcast and 65 in a welcome manner. Seriously. For me.

I’d rather have clear skies than warm temperatures anyway.

Generally.

Pittsburgh, at night, from the top of Washington Hill.

So, surprisingly, not quite enough light for the ol’ cell phone on that one. OTOH, it was a great view — you can see a few of the city’s bridges down there and the confluence of the rivers (Allegheny and Monongahela). Went to a restaurant very close to this location with the exact same view, which was pretty cool.

View from Room 615 at the Wyndham Hotel.

So you can kind of see some Pittsburgh topography in that one also. And some snow, and Forbes Street, which is a main thoroughfare in Oakland, the part of town where Pitt and Carnegie-Mellon are. The topography in Pittsburgh makes it an interesting place — hills and rivers and tunnels and bridges break up the neighborhoods so it’s not like most cities where it’s just a big old paved place with buildings on top.

Center field wall of the former Forbes Field. The business school is now located where the right field grandstand was.

The Pirates played here until Three Rivers was built. This is where they won the World Series in 1960 with the Bill Mazeroski home run against the Yankees and all that. It’s all now incorporated into Pitt’s campus.

The Cathedral of Learning on Pitt campus.

It’s the second tallest higher-education building in the world! And for some reason it’s in a neo-gothic style. And the inside looks like Hogwarts. Some sort of depression-era make-work project. Kind of seems like they could’ve come up with a better name for it. IMHO.

Installation art at the Mattress Factory museum. The faces talk to you.

That one was a little disconcerting. Installation art is odd stuff, but at least it gives the viewer something to do (e.g., “slowly walk toward the gray rectangle”, “sit in utter darkness for fifteen minutes”).

Tarmac at sunset with baggage cart.

Might’ve been good with a real camera and tripod is all.

It’s an interesting, old town. I mean, you feel how old it is everywhere you go — like the “incline” that takes you to the top of Mt. Washington is the one that steelworkers were using to get down to work on the river back in… eh, some year that was a long time ago. It’s kind of the opposite of New York where every building gets torn down and re-built every fifty years (seemingly). It also feels like an odd combination of cramped and over-built. The streets were all made for horse-drawn buggies, so parking and driving is tight — but there aren’t that many people driving, so you never feel trapped. Might have something to do with the population declines over the last three or four decades, but it’s an odd combination.

Pgh!

bkd

Me in the computer lab and distressingly clean-shaven.

The "Big XII Store" at OKC Will Rogers International Airport.

Two things:

1. From the gear available in the store, you’d think they were advocating getting rid of the other XI — sort of like USC in the Pac 1.
2. I don’t think there are any regularly scheduled international flights going through Will Rogers. They had flights to Houston, though, which may be close enough.

The trip to Oklahoma went real well. It’s a friendly town (Norman, I mean) that seemed like an easy place to be as far as that goes. And the football stadium isn’t at the *exact* center of campus — but pretty close. Surprisingly pretty campus, though, and while there I learned that there’s an architectural style called “Cherokee Gothic”. Not sure how that jives with the Cherokee Wild Potato, but certainly it must.

bkd

• The GMAT in 2009 does not necessarily test in the same manner as it did in 1995.
• The scores may be scaled differently today.
• The test may not be a good measure of intelligence as such.
• It may be that in 2009 I compensated for having become stupider by preparing better for the examination.

But whatever: I did well enough on it that I don’t have to do it again and I beat my old score (barely).

bkd

• Rents < $1,000 for a place with a 2-car garage and something like a yard.
• Close enough to the mountains that getting a season’s pass for skiing makes sense.
• Close to good hiking.
• Close to a real karting track.
• In the vicinity of an adult baseball league I can join.
• Close to current friends/family.
• Not crushingly urban (e.g., New York).
• Not crushingly rural (e.g., Twin Falls).
• Not crushingly suburban (e.g., Mission Viejo).
• Not crushingly pretentious (e.g., Laguna Beach).
• Predominately sunny (not necessarily warm, just sunny).
• Smart, reasonably compatible prevailing personality.
• Should be non-imaginary.

It might be tough to find a place that meets all those criteria. Here are the places that could be considered front-runners, along with the areas where they may not measure up (listed alphabetically):

• Kauai: Not much skiing, karting, or baseball; can’t get a place with a garage for under $1,000 (but it’s still a cheaper rental market than SoCal); might get really sick of it after three weeks.
• Reno: No family and only one friend (whom I haven’t talked to for a few years); could be too redneckish; possibly imaginary.
• San Diego: Couldn’t possibly get a 2BR w/ garage for less than $1K without living somewhere where I’d get shot daily (although it’s really not much more expensive than Seattle-Tacoma); no skiing and karting is tricky; not as sunny as non-Cals think; could be pretentious or trashy, depending on the neighborhood.
• Seattle-Tacoma Area: Not very sunny; don’t really have any friends that live there (that I’ve talked to in the last 20 years at least); would have to get deep into the sticks in order to find a 2BR place with a garage under $1,000/month.
• Tahoe: No friends or family; could be too pretentious or too rural — really; not close to karting or baseball; no idea on personalities.
• Some Random Place: I got at least a couple months to figure it out.

Or if some municipality wanted to pay me cash considerations in exchange for positive blog mentions, I’d be up for that probably.

bkd

It’s not. It’s just another test prep company like Kaplan and Princeton Review. I’ve gone for two weeks now and…

Good:

• For the money, they give you a lot of class time (14 sessions vs. 8 or so with the other companies).
• The workbooks they use are pretty well written and lend themselves to self-teaching.
• On the second night of class one person who was re-taking the class said that last time everything moved too fast for her, to which the instructor responded that it moves as fast as it moves and they expect students to have some reasonable understanding of the subject matter beforehand so deal with it. I’m paraphrasing.
• Most of the answer keys are correct.

Bad:

• The teachers are more like TAs than professors. Basically, they just read through the manual and answer questions if they come up. I’m guessing this is the Veritas method, but it seems a little half-hearted.
• More class sessions means it’s kind of a pain having to spend three hours twice a week to attend.
• The hotel where the classes are held appears to have no food-vending machines. 
• The other students in the class — well, yeah. I guess they’re about what I expected. But since most of the students in the class are going to be happy scoring 600 and the instruction is focused mostly on them — well…

All in all — it’s probably the right thing for me to be doing to prepare for the test. I get next to nothing out of the in-class instruction, but it gives me six relatively quiet hours a week during which I can work through the workbooks and practice problems, which is a lot more time than I’d spend preparing otherwise.

bkd

bkd

The new living room. The place comes furnished, btw. It’s nice, eclectic stuff.

The view out the front door.

The boardwalk at Main Beach in Laguna. This photo is about a mile down from where I’m living — but there’s another beach that’s just three blocks and across PCH away from me (5 minutes walk).

Chief Idiosyncracies (of the Apartment and Area):

• It’s really small. Most of my stuff is in storage already, but not enough of it apparently.
• No garbage disposal or dishwasher.
• The recycling bin is bigger than the main trash can.
• Backing out of the driveway is tricky (it slopes down toward the house and it’s kind of a blind back-out situation as a result).
• Town is crowded on the weekends.
• More per capita Ferarris than any other city on Earth.

Everyone warned me about the traffic before moving here. But “everyone” hasn’t lived here — they’ve just experienced traffic trying to get here on a weekend, which I’m sure was brutal. But when you’re starting with your car already in Laguna Beach, it’s not quite so awful. Driving to work is 25 minutes now, but not that much traffic on the way and it’s pretty free-flowing.

We’ll see how it goes.

bkd