Closure

This NYT article, entitled "I Heart Upredictable Love" by Richard Friedman really struck a chord with me.  Here are two excerpts:

Professor Berns discovered that the water and juice elicited greater activation in the brain’s reward circuit when the reward was unanticipated than when it was delivered in a predictable fashion. The pattern held true whether the reward was water or fruit juice — even though most subjects claimed a clear preference.

and

These data might explain, in part, the paradox of people who complain constantly about their unreliable lovers, but keep coming back to them, time and again.

I dated a boy in high school, and it started out as your typical teenage love affair but ended in a total train wreck, finally, my freshman year of college.  I've never been able to reconcile why, when I knew better, I still turned to him again and again no matter how many times he broke my heart.  I feel like this article offered that lightbulb moment.  The pain of the first break-up was so acute, I would have done anything just to make my lungs fill with air again - even forgive his infidelity.  Each successive break-up was less painful, but more embarrassing.  When was I going to learn?  According to this article, not until the "reward" of his affection was less than the pleasure of finally being free of the nightmare.

 

Jiggity-Jig

For as much as I love to travel, there's no place like home.  I am of the age when doing laundry is soothing and helps center my internal compass.

After taking the red-eye home from the West, My Beloved met me at the airport with a fistful of daisies (my fav).  I could spot his sexy slouch from hundreds of feet away as I staggered towards the exit (me + less than 5hrs of sleep while at 30K feet = ankles too swollen for walking).  It felt like coming to the surface after the longest attempt to swim the length of the pool underwater.  I was happy I did it, but ooh that oxygen felt so sweet: my lungs instinctively inhaled.  There is nothing, nothing in the world better than being greeted at the end of a long journey by a warm hug from arms that wraps all the way around me.

After almost four days, the swelling in my feet has subsided, but I still can't help breaking into a wide smile when I come into a room and he's there.  I have been looking at public health fellowships and such, some of them with the option for remote-ish travel or that are stationed in nearby states and would require temporary relocation.  It wouldn't be so hard for six weeks or so, I told myself as I daydreamed about developing health education programs in Sudan.  We did it in college, we could do it again.  

Clearly, I am crazy.

Yes, of course we could do it, don't be silly.  But I am also of the age when the "novelty" of sacrifice smacks of ungratefulness.  

It Was a Joke

I got a book like this from my MIL when I married.


And everyone in these pics are so skinny!

Fall Whispers

For the past two days, it has been the most perfect summer weather here.  Mostly, because the humidity has suddenly dropped below 100%, which makes it exceedingly comfortable in comparison.

This is a good thing and it makes me happy.

However,....

I also take this change as a sign that Fall is on the horizon.  My school-aged self instinctively rebels against the winding down of summer.  I'm not a parent, so I am blind to the back-to-school start up of sports clubs, clothes/uniform shopping, new school orientation, and teacher assignments that all my other friends are dealing with.

Yet, my body knows, my Id remembers.  The torture and dread that was school cannot be erased from my own circadian rhythms.

A friend emailed that her youngest had high school orientation today, and it was harder (for both daughter and mother) than the first day of kindergarden because, in addition to a new school, "high school girls are meaner than snakes."  I spent the better part of high school fetal with despair thanks to two bullies, so I can understand her concern.

I look forward to the more pleasant days (climatologically and socially!) made of cooler nights, meteor showers, crisp apples, fall colors, and hope my body learns a new rhythm of joy.

Free image courtesy of FreeDigitalPhotos.net

5 Year Plan

As in "I need a new one" and "I haven't the first clue what that looks like."

I am so spoiled.

My new boss met with me before her vacation to ask about my development plans.  I knew this day was going to come when I would be asked this question.  I really need to put some more thought into this.  And by that, I mean, I really need to get my sh*t together and start asking, interviewing, researching.

Isn't is so surprising that solutions don't find you, but you have to find them?  Lazy, selfish solutions...

The Waiting Game

When I was in college, I couldn't wait until I graduated.

When I fell in love, I couldn't wait to get married.

Once I was married, I couldn't wait to move into our own home.

When we moved into our house, I couldn't wait to pay it off.

When I got promoted, I couldn't wait to get to the next level.

Now, I can check all these off.  Graduated, done.  Married and moved, done.  Refi'd and on track for early payment, check.  Promoted and target salary, done.

You'd have thought that all these things were steps to something.  Turns out, they were accomplishments in themselves.

So....what next?  Not a bad question to be asking myself this year of birth milestones.

She Had Less Choice Than the Sun

A dear friend (Hi you!) just revealed that she was not familiar with the book version of The Princess Bride.  It would not be possible to overstate the importance of this book in my own life, so I was surprised that the topic had not come up with someone who knows me so well.  Lest you, too, had missed out on the joys of the original (not film!) version of True Love and High Adventure, I'm providing the link to buy yourself a copy of the book here:
http://www.alibris.com/search/books/qwork/5334155/used/The%20Princess%20Bride%3A%20S.%20Morgenstern%27s%20Classic%20Tale%20of%20True%20Love%20and%20High%20Adventure%3B%20The%20%22Good%20Parts%22%20Version/

A link to a discussion guide of the book here:
http://www.harcourtbooks.com/images/pdf/guides/Princess%20Bride_rg.pdf


And a fun blogger's take on the whole thing:
http://thebookworm07.blogspot.com/2010/04/princess-bride-s-morgensterns-classic.htmlhttp://thebookworm07.blogspot.com/2010/04/princess-bride-s-morgensterns-classic.html

There's a 25-year Anniversary edition out with a wonky introduction.  I've only read the original.

Enjoy!

I Dare You Not To Guffaw Aloud

Thank goodness for Mimi Smartypants, who led me here.  Tonight I chose her over wine to help me relax before bed.  It was a good choice.

What is so awesome about this series (and, please, scroll down the page to see all the magnificence) is how well she captures the fraught expressions.  This woman knows humor and her Flemish masters, too!

GPOYW

My Beloved is not the only person who uses pay phones!*

I was walking towards the street corner to cross and noticed the pay phone. That hit my radar b/c My Beloved does not have a cell phone and jokes that he's going to put an "app" together (read: a book) with maps of all the locations of all the remaining pay phones in the world.  Then, I noticed this guy walking towards me with his hand in his pocket doing that jingling thing you do when you are trying to get a wad of change out of a deep pocket without bringing up a wad of pocket lint at the same time.  I thought to myself, "OMG not only have I just found one of the last pay phones in Philadelphia, but I found the only other Philadelphia resident aside from My Beloved without a cell phone!  Rarer than hens teeth!"  To document this sighting, I surreptitiously took a picture over my shoulder of said hen's tooth.  

Halfway

Saturday marked the half-way point in my Master's program.  The last two weeks have been a bit brutal with way to many rolling deliverable deadlines at work plus, for school, one 2hr final, a group presentation, and two 6-page papers all due this weekend.

Honestly?  I totally phoned it in this block. (<-we call them blocks in this program as opposed to semesters or quarters).  I did none of the readings, sat in the back, and only spoke up enough to get the full 10% credit for class participation.  In spite of this approach, it was still a grueling grind to get to yesterday.

To charge my batteries, I shopped in the Italian market and bought some sausage, fresh pasta, and two kinds of chai, came home, borrowed the neighbor's dog for 20" of fur therapy, ran 3 loads of laundry, got caught up on 30 Rock and Parks & Rec, and fell asleep on the couch at 8:30pm reading a trashy novel.  Today, I slept in until 10am (10!  whoot!), did my exercise tape, cleaned out my closest and bureaus to switch over to summer clothes, cleaned the bedroom and the bathroom, and bought tons of starts from the local home store.

Now, I'm writing this insanely boring blog post and next I'm going to see if I can find the ukulele sheet music for the theme from Bob's Burgers.

Seriously?  My life is so unbelievably perfect right now.  /sigh

photo credit

Why I Read the Internet

1. http://textsfromhillaryclinton.tumblr.com/
2. http://vimeo.com/nirvan/cainesarcade

Sad City

We saw these horses at the Philadelphia Art Museum.  They looked trapped in these boxes, threatened by the machinery around time, like they are straining to get free.  The "caution" tape only adds to the drama.

Star Magnolia blossoms.  Like the tree is so happy to be in springtime that it put out these little pompoms to wave with joy.

Full of Sound and Fury, Signifying Nothing

This blog is supposed to be a friendly place where I keep in touch with my friends and family.  I try hard to abstain from overt ranting about topics that might offend.  Somedays it is harder than others.  Without expressing any particular viewpoint, here is a list of recent topics/events about which I have been sounding off at length:

• Paula Deen's diabetes and her paid sponsor
• Customer service on USAirways vs. United vs. Southwest
• The gas mileage on a 2000 Honda Civic DX compared to a 2012 version of the same
• Smoking at work
• Alec Baldwin and the use of "electronic devices" on planes
• TSA and the monetization of safety

(can you tell I've spent a lot of time on planes lately?)

• Freire's critical consciousness of education and social science theory in general
• Childhood nutrition and obesity
• The current revisioning of the DSM

 /end rant

*Specificity of Association

Since you asked...

There are a few rules to follow when trying to prove causality.  Say, for example, I observe that it rains every time I wear my pink suede shoes. 

Is there a causal link between wearing pink suede shoes and the weather?  

This guy, Sir Austin Bradford Hill, put together a list of associations that should be checked when trying to prove causality.   These rules (they're called Bradford Hills Criteria, btw) are:

1. Temporality
• how quickly after I put the shoes on does it start to cloud up?
• This is not a big requirement so much anymore, either, depending on what is under discussion.  The temporal association between smoking and lung cancer, for example, is so disparate to be almost nil.
2. Strength
• a mathematical measurement of correlation
3. Biologic gradient (aka dose-response relationship)
• does it rain all day if I wear the shoes all day?  does it only rain for half the day if I wear one pink suede shoe and one sneaker?
4. Consistency
• does it happen every time or only some times?
5. Biologic plausibility
• This would be something like "the color pink is on a light frequency that attracts water droplets and suede makes water droplets condense," e.g., a scientific reason for why pink shoes make it rain
6. Specificity
• does it always rain or does it sometimes get foggy or even snow?
• This is considered the weakest criteria b/c there are lots of cause and effects that don't seem to make any sense, especially in biology.  For example, a concussion will make you cranky (i.e., physical injury results in behavioral symptoms)
7. Experimental evidence (aka effect of removing the exposure):
• does it stop raining if I take them off?
8. Alternate hypothesis or analogy
• is there any other possible explanation?
9. Coherence
• is there anything else like this in the known universe that operates similarly?

Oh, right. That Explains It.

All my friends in the "gifted" program are laughing their heads off right now at this one.

The Life Span of a Bad Idea

As a project manager, I spend a lot of my time "herding cats" as they say:  corralling Information Holders with Decision Makers into one room so they can tell Operationalizers what to do to make it all happen.  My favorite part of this exercise is when the combination is just right, and the team starts to feed off itself and gets really creative about problem solving.  Depending on the meeting, it's my job to moderate and add gasoline or cold water as needed.  I always struggle with the cold water part.  When I hear hooves, I think "zebra" not "horse" and am deeply sympathetic towards not-obvious solutions.  Still, when it's time to call it quits on a bad idea, it's usually because of some operational issue (costs too much, lack the technology, not enough manpower), and not because of anything personal or political.

For school, I was reading about the yellow fever epidemic in Philadelphia in 1793.  The American Revolution had been supported by France and Louis XVI, but when he was executed a number of people from France and the French Indies immigrated to the US and into Philadelphia...right as the epidemic was gaining steam.  This led a two disparate beliefs about the source of the fever.  Federalists (pro-Hamilton, anti-French) believed it was an imported disease (i.e., brought by French immigrants).  Republicans (pro-Jefferson, pro-French) believed it had a local cause due to poor sanitation (think "miasmata" and "effluvia").  At an impasse, actions were take on behalf of both theories:  immigrants were quarantined and the city organized better sanitation.  Win-win, right?

There were also two schools of medical treatment for the fever: bleeding + mercury or quinine bark + wine.  The bleeding treatment was championed by a preeminent Federalist doctor.  Hamilton, in a misguided attempt to show his support behind his doctor friend, politicized the treatment issue with an op-ed piece very complementary of the doctor and the treatment.  Suddenly, it became a Federalist thing.  When other doctors tried to declaim the bleeding treatment, they were labeled as pro-Republican and anti-Federalist.  The problem with this conflict was that the bleeding treatment required the doctor to "draw an amount of blood which we know today to be in excess of the quantity possessed by most people."*  But, because it had become a political issue and was no longer a medical issue, doctors and patients couldn't step back from the bleeding theory or switch to quinine bark without signaling disloyalty towards Federalists and favor for the Republicans.  Dumb, right?

It got me thinking about the life span of bad ideas.  What's the tipping point between exploring an idea and beating a dead horse? (<-to bring back the equine metaphor)  When have you persisted in something after it was out of favor (poor fashion decisions, excluded)?

*Pernick, MS. (1972) "Politics, Parties, and Pstielence: epidemic Yellow Fever in Philadelphia and the Rise of the First Party System." William and Mary Quarterly, 29(4): 559-586.

Eclectic Tastes

These days, my bedside reading looks like this:

• Health Behavior and Health Education (school)
• The Short Second Life of Bree Tanner (school antidote)
• Five Chiefs (school antidote antidote)
• iPad (so my hands never need touch library binding again)

Good Luck with That

From today's NYT:  "MTA Trash Plan: Remove Subway Station Bins"

A few years ago when we were in Japan, our tour guide regaled us with a story about waste management in the big cities.  She said many people eat their meals outdoors on their lunch breaks, but this resulted in the lunchtime refuse quickly overflowing the trash cans and blowing around the town.  To my way of thinking, the solution would be to add more trash cans.  The Japanese?  Not so much.  Instead, they got *rid* of the trash cans.  Now, with no nearby place to dispose of it, the lunchtimers had to cart their trash back home/to the office/the car for disposal.  It was a success!  No more overflowing trash bins or wax wrappers tumbling into the gutters.

Now, it seems NYC is trying a similar experiment.  I think its a noble exercise and wonder how they calculated the number of trash cans to remove.  According to this article, they pulled them from two busy stations, but local purveyors are complaining that trash is being displaced into their area.  I think, to be successful, there must be wholesale removal.  All trash cans, gone!  City wide!  Who's with me?!

News Flash for MTA & me:  NYC is not Japan.

Image from http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_4SufQJeNigU/TTkGBuOAHsI/AAAAAAA...

Schism

When I was a teenager, I felt fairly composed and mature for my age. I also felt like I was strong in my opinions, reasoned, and that they would be immutable with age. I had a recent conversation with My Beloved about a Frontline or PBS program he had seen on Facebook privacy and teens. In the program, teens went on a trip to NYC and got loaded on the train ride. There were ER visits and much of the escapade was video taped and posted. One parent, on the PTA, found out about it and sent an email to all the other PTA parents to alert them to the goings on and encourage a conversation with their teen. My Beloved asked if I thought she was right to do this?

In answering, I am aware of how differently I see myself now from my younger self. Yes, I thought she was right and would likely have done the same. It's almost as if these generations, parent and child, are at war and, like POWs, each is obligated to harass the enemy as much as possible. As a teen, I operated in strict pursuit of accomplishing my own objectives. If those aligned with others' goals, so much the better. If not, well, we each had our own destiny to pursue. I imagine I would feel the same, now, but from the perspective of a parent. My objective would be to protect and educate, without negotiation.

We don't have these theoretical kinds of conversations about parenting often. However, each time I am reminded how grateful I am to have a choice about being a parent, and how blessed I am to have been raised by people better than me.

Two Tramps In Mud Time

I've recently discovered APM's "Dinner Party Downloads", which are light and entertaining and the perfect thing to listen to whilst smiling politely at idiots with road rage. Tonight, after leaving the office after 7:30pm (again!), I heard this excerpt of Robert Frost's "Two Tramps in Mud Time" for the first time:

The sun was warm but the wind was chill.
You know how it is with an April day
When the sun is out and the wind is still,
You're one month on in the middle of May.
But if you so much as dare to speak,
A cloud comes over the sunlit arch,
A wind comes off a frozen peak,
And you're two months back in the middle of March.

I'm not a poet (and I know it!), but I love this. So true!  So poetic!  And it rhymes!  We have just entered that part of the year where I'd be crazy to deny that Fall is upon me.  There is no squinting of my eyes or cleaning of the windshield which can correct the new colors on the trees.  And it is Dark dark at 7:30pm, now - no fooling myself that it's just cloudy or an early sunset -  so late nights at the office really make me feel like I've missed the whole day.  Tonight, when I heard this on the podcast, I felt like it'd been chosen for me on this day when I'm in this mood.

The universe is feelin' me.