TiVo Lady

Stepping Into the Past

Several lifetimes ago, I was a graduate student in psychology at New York University, in Greenwich Village, in New York City.  On Friday, I took a trip to my past.  Actually, to the subway stop of my past:  Astor Place on the Lexington Avenue line.

I went to visit a graduate student in psychology at NYU, who is doing the data analysis for my new book.  I went to hear him give a practice speech and to take him out to lunch.  He was practicing to give a one-hour talk on his dissertation research, as part of a job interview to become an assistant professor of psychology.  He's going to Singapore, Taiwan, and Hong Kong to give this talk, and he has to be prepared.  So I sat in, along with five other graduate students and a professor in the department.  This professor, we'll call him Jim, had been there when I was there.  Several decades ago, in fact.  I looked at the man, smiled politely, and told him I'd give him 100 bucks if he remembered my name.  He looked at me, and in about five seconds said, ". . . Carin?"  Yikes!  "I'm not paying!!" I said, amazed and impressed that he remembered me at all. 

This was in the same building, on the same floor, as I had been all these years ago.  It was instantly familiar, and not;  after all, when I was there, NYU had just one computer, "the mainframe," and I was producing my papers on a typewriter, using Wite-out for mistakes and cutting and pasting paragraphs.  With a scissors and glue.  To do data analyses, back then, I had to punch the information onto cards that held 80 columns of information.  I'd take the resulting pile of cards, hundreds or thousands of them, that included raw data and computer language instructions for analyzing the information, over to the "computer center."  I'd leave it there, and come back a day or three later, to claim my printouts and cards.  These were over-sized white and green pages, with holes along both sides, and sometimes numbered hundreds of pages.  All of this came back to me as I was sitting in the little conference room, watching my grad student give his talk, as his hundreds of PowerPoint screens flashed up at the front of the room.  His little laptop, I'll bet, has more computing power than that giant "mainframe" we relied on all those years ago.

But here's the thing.  I didn't understand nearly a word of his talk.  I don't know if it's because I've been out of the social psychology academic loop for so long, or if it's because there was so much psychology jargon involved that I just couldn't interpret it.  Either way, I couldn't make any constructive criticisms, other than to gently suggest that he take the extra "e" out of "Acknowledgments" and that he might want to put that screen at the end, rather than at the beginning of the talk.

I took him out to lunch after his talk, and found out that he grew up in Turkey, that he's an only child, that his parents are terribly proud of him for earning a doctorate in America, but also miss him desperately.  Geez, I know the feeling.  And now he wants to work in the Far East?  About as far away from home as he is now, only in the other direction. 

Meanwhile, I was feeling young and cool hanging around in the Village with a graduate student--albeit one young enough to be my son.  Then, it started to pour.  And I was damp, and my feet were hurting, and I wanted to make an early train back home.  The sense of youngitude vanished, along with my desire to hang out in my past for a minute longer.

Also, I think the beavers are following me.  This from the Astor Place subway station.  Someday, I am determined to see a real one.  From my kayak, right here in the North Country, on the upper upper upper upper upper West Side of Manhattan.

Or, I could just get back on the subway.  This guy's not going anywhere....

Winter Kayaking: Pros and Cons

So, I went kayaking yesterday.  Yes, kayaking on January 8!  (She says, with a note of pride.)  It was, after all, 58 degrees outside, sunny, very little wind, and the river was unusually calm.  And I had a burning need to look for real, live beavers, not just the half-gnawed trees they left behind.

Here's a list of good/bad news about going out in a teeny little boat on the Hudson River in the middle of winter:

Plusses:

1.  You feel very cool.  Not temperature-wise, but personality-wise.  As in hearing people whisper that you're the type of person who kayaks in January.  Awesome.

2.  You get to take pictures of ice on the waterfall, though the air is not icy.  (Pictures to come:  I used an old-fashioned, disposable film camera, just in case it went into the drink.  It didn't.)  This picture isn't mine--but it looks a lot like my trip did yesterday.

3.  You get to break ice with the front of the kayak.  It makes a distinct crunching, cricking noise.

4.  You get to see a bald eagle flying over the Hudson River.

5.  The water in the tributary river, called the Pocantico, is crystal clear, as it never is during the summer.  You can see all the way to the fishless bottom.  Also, no:  bugs, sunburn, sweat.

Minuses:
1.  In the back of your mind, you realize that if you fall in the water, you'll have about two minutes before you are paralyzed with cold.

2.  You've gotta put at least one foot in the frigid water to get out of the kayak.

3.  Those drips, right onto your lap, from the paddle, don't feel as good in January as they do in July.

4.  People on shore look at you as if you are completely, utterly insane.

5.  Every so often, a breeze comes across the water, and the temperature drops about 10 degrees, and you begin to wonder if maybe you aren't a little bit, slightly, insane.

Yet Another Fashion Disaster? You Decide...

You'd think that being a Boomer, by now, would confer some degree of wisdom.  Wiseness.  Wise-eousity. 

Alas, this is not so.  Boomers can be just as dopey as they were two or three decades ago;  only now, they're older.  Older dopes.  Take me, for example.  I have always been incapable of doing any kind of fashion-related shopping.  I simply cannot buy a pair of pants or a sweater or even socks, that I don't return home with and instantly regret, forever.  It's as if a trance washes over me in the store, rendering me unable to think rationally. 

Take yesterday.  Whiling away the hours--and there were many of them, about 11--waiting for my husband's outpatient surgery to be really out, I went to a local discount emporium.  There, I saw shoes.   For myself. 

"Stop!"  My brain warned me!! "You know this will end in Fashion Disaster!"

"No way," I told my brain.  "I am really concentrating.  Plus, these shoes, which are already on my feet, fit so perfectly it's as if they were made just for me."

Ignoring my brain, I bought those shoes, and another pair.  When I returned home, and came out of my Retail-Induced Trance, I realized that not only were those shoes kind of uncomfortable, they may also be The Most Hideously Ugly Shoes Ever Made.  Here's the evidence:  You decide.

This is why my daughter really, really should return home--right now!--from Rio.  She is the only one in our family who got the Shopping Gene, and she's really good at it.  I need her!!

Doing Stupid Things

There's no age limit on stupidity, apparently.  Last week, I did something so incredibly stupid--on this blog, in fact--that I am still too ashamed and embarrassed to write about it.

How stupid was it?

Well, it was more stupid than going through the E-Z Pass toll and forgetting to take the E-Z Pass thing out of the glove compartment.  Then, when I got the red light at the toll (instead of "Paid"), I just kept going.  This I did yesterday.  But my other thing was stupider.

Also, it was more stupid than not putting enough money in the meter when I went across the Hudson River and parked on the street.  I put in only one quarter, and got a ticket for 50 times that amount when my hour expired.  This, despite the fact that I had written a story for The New York Times on this charming little village and how strict they are about parking.  Granted, this was stupid.  But my other thing was stupider yet.

I'm finding little comfort about the height and depth of my stupidity about the matter that I am still unable to discuss.  Thankfully, however, I was not, I believe, quite as stupid as the drivers in this picture.  I swear that I was not driving either of these cars. Thankfully.

Call this "Not So E-Z Pass."  Or, maybe, "Me First."  Or, how about "How Will Allstate Deal With This?"  And one final question:  Did they still have to pay the toll anyway?

The Importance of Objects

I am not a "things" person.  I don't buy new clothes or shoes or purses.  I'm just not that into stuff.  But, still, I am attached to certain objects that have acquired meaning over the years.  I've had two Tombow pens for about five years now, and I've used them to take notes for the stories I've written for the New York Times, for interviews on my book, for dozens of outlines and ideas and lists.  I'm attached to these pens just because I've used them for so long, and because I like the way they feel in my hand.  I order refills by the dozen, online, at Pen City.  They have become almost a totem, an object laced with superstition--as in, without them, I cannot write. 

So you might understand when I say that I was upset when I lost my white Tombow pen the other night.  I was at a monthly meeting of our local library Board of Trustees--I'm the chairperson, so I was concentrating on getting the business done, speaking, watching the clock, taking notes.  I took my white pen with me, lent it to a colleague who need to co-sign some checks, and then demanded it back.  The next day, I hunted high and low for my white pen:  in my purse, in the car, in the library parking lot, on the floor of the board room.  No luck:  no pen.  I was so upset, I went out and bought another Tombow pen, this one electric blue.  (The company no longer makes my simple white, plastic pen, alas, so it could not be replaced.)  I'm happy to have a nice new pen, though this one is chubbier than the other, and doesn't have as good a hand fit.  Also, it's just not.... my old white pen.

I emailed several of the people who were at the meeting with me.  Not accusing them of pen theft, exactly, but just asking if they'd seen my favorite pen.  And guess what?  Tina had it.  Her black purse was on the floor, right near mine.  After grabbing the pen from the check-signer, I hastily threw it into my purse.  Only it was Tina's look-alike purse into which it was thrown. 

The Boomer mind is a porous one.  I knew the pen was important enough so that I didn't let it out of my sight.  Only I just didn't follow through.  But my pen story has a happy ending, since now I have three pens where once there were two.

I like pens.