Musings on Flight

Sometimes, I let myself think about air travel and it boggles my mind. How does the plane lift off? Is it the sheer speed that makes it take off? The same one that sucks everyone into their seats? Is there a rocket involved? And then, how does landing work? That bump-bump-ROAR of the landing always makes me draw my breath in all at once while wringing my hands. What is that learning curve like? And then parking afterward? I can barely pull into a space with my little car (forget parallel parking). I do not understand it. It doesn’t behoove me to ponder these lingering questions when I’m a passenger on a plane, but sometimes my curiosity gets the better of me.

At other times, I can see why people back in the day wanted to fly, resulting in funny bicycle-powered contraptions from those speckled, black and white reels with tinny piano music playing in the background. As my plane dropped down from cruising altitudes, I saw glimpses of the sunset over the San Francisco hills, burnishing the passengers on the left. Everything had tinges of gold – graceful, sloping bridges, straight, shiny skyscrapers, and seemingly miniscule cars on the freeway. I held my breath on the inhale, dazzled for a few moments. I couldn’t have seen all of this as a pedestrian in the street. Sometimes, the best view is from the top.

Then there are other times when I am absolutely sure why taking a train is my favorite mode of long-distance transportation. There are lots of trains, a short waiting period, and – most applicable today – no middle seats. There were only middle seats left on my flight when I booked it, so I picked one at random because being small means that I can fit into pretty much any situation coach seats throw at me. Unfortunately, I ended up next to a heavyset French woman who decided to forgo the armrest and essentially spilled onto my seat. It took all I had to maintain some semblance of courtesy as I gently nudged her chenille sweater to the left, brought the armrest back down while she was at the restroom, and shimmied to the right to give myself as much space as I could without getting all up on the man on my other side. I’m as affectionate as the next guy (with close friends and such, ahem), but for public situations, I definitely need my personal space. When the people on both sides of me took up the whole armrest and more, the bubble got a lot smaller and the six-hour flight seemed much longer.

In any case, thank goodness for fun co-workers, a yummy (and only $2!) cocktail, and a plateful of pasta. I won’t be good for much for too long. I can feel myself fading… Darn you, jet lag…

A Bumpy Re-Entry

It didn’t occur to me until this year, but the worst part about hosting the New Year’s shindig was that I had to go back to work with no recovery period from mountains of dishes, loads of laundry, hours on my feet, and lack of sleep. Well, I should maybe correct that last one to excessive sleep, since I subtly (and stupidly) adjusted my internal clock so that I would believe that 10am was a reasonable time to get up.

On each morning of this shortened-but-didn’t-feel-like-it week, I woke up feeling as though gravity had a greater hold on me – especially on my eyelids – than it did when I went to bed. I simply could not drag my sorry carcass out of bed to join the living despite the nagging blare of the clock. I admit that I managed to get up on Tuesday morning and do 20 minutes of yoga, but that was a one-time thing and I blame it on New Year Unrealistic-ness. Even then, when my blood was flowing, I practically napped my way to work and it’s obvious that that is not a good idea when you are driving.

I trudged my way through the week with a thought bubble hovering over my head that read, “Don’t forget that you have to travel to the west coast office next week! Better clean up that desk, gather your travel arrangements, and make sure you can afford not to work for three whole days!” Groan. That explains why I spent the greater part of this absurd 70-degree afternoon composing an article that turned out to be torturous to write and ultimately sub-par. The only thing worse than working on the weekends is producing work that you know is crap.

As a child, I remember hearing that space shuttles would burst into flame (or at least get very hot?) as they entered into the Earth’s atmosphere. Why is that? Something about the heat from the sun inside the atmosphere? I have no idea. But man, I know how that shuttle feels. Houston, I do not enjoy this.

Despite the rough landing overall, I had a pleasant surprise waiting for me in my inbox yesterday morning. Today is my two-year anniversary at my job (so weird to me) and the anniversary tradition at my company is that people write fun notes under a given theme. Well, my supervisor got wind of my reading ambitions for the year and I received a nice stack of book recommendations! I couldn’t be more pleased, though it was a bit eerie reading through the notes because I kept thinking, “Ooh, I loved that book!” or “I did always want to read that one.” They really had my number.

How I Roll

A co-worker of mine arrived at the office this morning and remarked, “It’s so quiet in here!” She proceeded to change that fact by exclaiming about the pile of mail on her desk, check her voicemail on speaker phone and talk very loudly to no one in particular so that we could all hear everything.

There are only nine people in my office, five of whom telecommute, so quiet is the norm. How loud can four people be? Why is quiet bad? Doesn’t it mean that we’re all working?

I’ve received feedback that I adhere too strictly to my schedule. I freely admit that flexibility is not my strong point, but I don’t see anything wrong with doing a full day of work and then getting the heck out of the office. That’s not to say that I don’t have longer hours at times or that I’m completely antisocial, but it’s frustrating to me when getting work done is seen as a hindrance to socializing, and then, something worthy of condescension. I’m all about having fun at work during a lull, but when the deadline looms, no amount of fun helps the job get finished. If I have a lot to do, I don’t need distractions in the form of random bursts of hip-hop music or someone else’s conference call on speaker phone, but my wearing headphones is viewed as exclusive or even rude.

Um, sorry? I have to write two articles this morning and I have a hunch that blocking noise would be helpful in that process. But that’s just me.

Whatever. Back to the grindstone.

Books of 2007

To keep me on track with my new year’s resolution to read four books each month, I’ll log my progress here and grace the books I enjoyed most with a fancy link. However, as of press time, it’s clear that I don’t have nearly enough books to get me even halfway through the year, so please! Recommend your favorites! I don’t pressure myself to finish a book if it ends up being a chore (Take Walden. Please.), so I’m open to whatever other people liked. I’ve never read anything by Jodi Picoult and I hear she’s good. Is she?

For those who are curious whether I’d enjoy a particular book:

• I try to vary my reading with fiction and non-fiction
• My favorite authors are Madeleine L’Engle, C.S. Lewis, James Thurber, and Jane Austen (in that order)
• I’ve become fond of memoirs lately and I like short story/essay anthologies
• I make my best effort to read books that I should read on sheer principle, building character and all that
  
• I can’t handle a lot of suspense, gore, or ridiculous romance
  

And so it begins!

January
Teacher Man, by Frank McCourt
The General in His Labyrinth, by Gabriel García Márquez
Come Back, Barbara, by C. John Miller

February
The Hundred Secret Senses, by Amy Tan
Lapsing into a Comma, by Bill Walsh
Interpreter of Maladies, by Jhumpa Lahiri
Notes from a Small Island, by Bill Bryson

March
Traveling Mercies, by Anne Lamott
Ellen Foster, by Kaye Gibbons
March, by Geraldine Brooks
Life of Pi, by Yann Martel

April
The Kitchen God's Wife, by Amy Tan
Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim, by David Sedaris
Spring Snow, by Yukio Mishima

May
Good in Bed, by Jennifer Weiner
Singing My Him Song, by Malachy McCourt
Friends for the Journey, by Madeleine L’Engle and Luci Shaw
The Bonesetter’s Daughter, by Amy Tan

June
Loud and Clear, by Anna Quindlen

Waiting in the wings: (alphabetically)

• Blink, by Malcolm Gladwell
• The Code Book, by Simon Singh
• In a Sunburned Country, by Bill Bryson
• Empire Falls, by Richard Russo
  
• One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, by Ken Kesey
• Runaway Horses, by Yukio Mishima
  
• Slaughterhouse-Five, by Kurt Vonnegut

The First Hours

I had not seen the 2am hour in I couldn’t remember how long. But there’s something about a living room full of friends, a coffee table covered with food, and weeks or months of absence from one another that make 2am a reasonable time to fall, exhausted and full-bellied, into bed. The house is packed with sleeping people, overnight bags, and foil-covered plates of baked goods. Every couch and bed is occupied and it is strangely satisfying to me, whose house usually consists of empty, unheated spaces. I like it in its inhabited way. My ear is tuned to any sounds of movement, but the house is still at the moment.

JG and I woke up after only six hours of sleep (we’re kind of lame in our eight-hour habit), but we’re hoping it’ll tire us out to slot us into the right waking up hour for the abrupt re-entry into the working world tomorrow. I haven’t awakened to the jarring poke of an alarm clock since the Friday before Christmas and I dread its insistence. Let’s not think about that. For now, I will savor the peace of my last day off and share with you what I resolve for this year.

1. To read four books every month
Basically, I want to read more, and I work best with a timeline, so there we are. If this goal ends up being a homework assignment, I’ll probably decrease the quantity because the ultimate objective here is to make time for leisure reading rather than hit a certain number of books.

2. To try two new recipes every month
So, there’s that timeline thing again. My mom gave me a subscription to Cooking Light for Christmas and JG received the cookbook from America’s Test Kitchen for his birthday, so I will have a wellspring of recipes from which to glean. My idea is to try a recipe from baking and cooking because I prefer to bake but I aspire to improve my cooking skills. Hopefully, this balance will cater to my inclination and help me grow.

Guests are starting to stir and I hear the clank of mugs and glasses upstairs. It’s time to get a move on. I drag my pointer across the date in the taskbar just to see the pop-up – there it is. Monday, January 1, 2007.