Staying Sundance

When I arrived at the Salt Lake City airport, I met my dad and Angela, Cristina, Emily, and Lisa, our roommates for the week. We piled into a rented SUV for one of the most cramped car rides of my life and drove to Park City where we checked into our condo and spent a few days eating, skiing, chatting, and watching movies together. I enjoyed their company so much I've decided to profile each of them below.

The living room of our cozy condo

Angela - The connections between our companions were complicated, and they all start with Meredith. My dad volunteers at a spina bifida clinic a few times a month, and there he met a neurosurgeon (Meredith) from Fresno's Children's Hospital there. Meredith is great company, and she also skis at about the same level as my dad. They go on ski trips a few times a month during winter, and Angela sometimes joins them. Angela is a plastic surgeon from Colombia. She is about 4'11", or possibly even shorter, and is very sweet and funny. She came to the US for medical school and has been here on a work visa ever since. In Colombia, her mother was a governor, then a senator, for 20 years. She remembers that bodyguards always surrounded her family, but in spite of this, her father was once kidnapped for several months when she was younger. She's been going to Sundance to ski and see films for four or five years, and we have her to thank for my dad's initial interest in the Festival.

Cristina - Cristina is Angela's partner. She's from Spain, and although she's not a skier, she gamely bundled up and took a lesson on the first day we headed out. Her undergraduate degree is in hospitality, but now she's working towards a second bachelor's in psychology in Fresno. Apparently they didn't let her keep any of her credits from Spain, so she's had to start from scratch. She has a great sense of humor and is only an inch or so taller than Angela.

Emily - Emily is an orthopedic surgeon, so between her, my dad, and Angela I was pretty confident that any skiing injuries I sustained would be taken care of pretty quickly. She and Angela met in Massachusetts during their residencies and have been friends ever since, keeping in touch through the years. She lives in Ojia where she has a reputation for being a no-nonsense surgeon. She is absolutely hilarious, though, very sarcastic, which of course I loved. She hates flying and getting up early.

Lisa - Lisa is Emily's partner, and, like Cristina, is going back to school to be a "therapist" (not physical; the other kind). She used to be a chef and owned a restaurant in Boston for a while. We talked about running quite a bit, as she's done several marathons. She is obsessed with oral hygiene and we got to hear a pretty funny story about a mishap involving Listerine (long story) during our first night. She and Emily brought a bottle of Fireball, a cinnamon flavored whiskey, to share with everyone, which we drank straight, from tumblers, on the first night, so I knew I liked them immediately. Unfortunately, they were able to stay only three days.

We stayed in a conveniently located condo in Park City in an area called Prospector Square. There were two movie theaters within easy walking distance and we were also close to a few bus stops. The buses there are free and were our main source of transportation to ski slopes, movies, and everywhere else.

The FREE bus that we took to get almost anywhere. It wasn't the fastest mode of transportation, but the price was right, and there were heaters set up at many of the outdoor stops.

 Dad and I also met up with Bill and Loris, once by accident at the base of the Park City resort and once on purpose when they invited us over for wine and tasty appetizers one evening. Bill and Loris are my friend Shannon's parents. The last time I saw Shannon, we discovered, to our horror, that we've known each other for more than twenty years. She joined my second grade class when we were 7ish years old, and we've been friends ever since. Yikes. It was great to see Bill and Loris, who were very gracious hosts. They've retired and moved to Park City permanently, where they live in a fantastic house with a beautiful view of the town nestled below the mountains. Both work at Park City resort, and Bill also manages some very high end properties owned by obscenely wealthy people who like things to be just so when they arrive for occasional trips. He arranges for firewood to be on hand, transportation to be in place, etc. He told us some pretty outrageous stories about the requests he gets. One house has the thermostat set so that the air conditioning goes on at 70 degrees and the heat goes on at 68. Loris said they saw Oprah's helicopter circling the private landing pad at one of the houses recently. And there are children starving in (wherever)...

Main Street in Park City, which has an old, mining town feel. At least, it would if all the stores weren't pricey boutiques and restaurants.....

Skiing Sundance

The initial plan for the trip was to ski during each of the six full days Dad and I spent in Park City: two at Park City Resort, two at Deer Valley, and two at the Canyons. To my muscles' and joints' relief, Dad pre-purchased only one day at Deer Valley, not two, and so we ended up with only five days, an error we chose not to correct in order to relax and watch films during our final day. We enjoyed some unbelievable scenery and perfect snow, but the weather wasn't always great and I was so exhausted by the end of Day Five I was ready to call it quits.

My collection of lift tickets

Note two things: a) the beautiful scenery, and b) the empty runs beneath the chair

 Park City - Park City is a great resort. It was the closest of the three to our condo, and we skied our first and last days there. We had beautiful weather the first day, and not-so-beautiful weather the second day (see picture below). I've done most of my skiing over the past few years at Sierra Summit, a resort near Visalia that has four or five chairs, so it was sort of a strange, but very welcome, scenario when I found myself having to constantly check the map to plan a route. It's pretty hard to get lost at Sierra Summit, but not so at Park City. There were friendly ski patrol people with pointers stationed under each of the large maps who would offer to help if you when you stopped to check. Between the high-speed quads and six-packs (really fast chairs that can hold four or six people respectively) that would get us to the top of runs lickety-split and the near-total lack of lift lines, we got in tons of skiing, at Park City and at the other two resorts. Apparently the mountains are always pretty empty during Sundance.

Whiteout at Park City

The storm that got the best of me at Deer Valle

Deer Valley - Deer Valley is my dad's favorite of the three resorts, and just one terrible day there was enough to convince me that he is right. Even though the weather was abysmal (again, see picture), I was totally sold by the great customer service, swanky lodges, and delectable food Deer Vally offers even before the day cleared up enough for me to enjoy their unbelievable runs. Deer Valley does not allow snowboarders, and the clientele were well-dressed and seemed to appreciate the finer things in life (which was a bit odd to encounter on a ski slope, but there you go). One older gentleman with whom we shared a table while seeking shelter from the storm said that he used to ski Park City until he got tired of the food. Honestly, who thinks about that when picking a place to ski? The food at Deer Valley really is something to get exited about, though. There were antipasti plates and smoked salmon all over the place. I got a grilled cheese sandwich that bordered on sublime and Dad got a bratwurst that looked and smelled so good I almost renounced vegetarianism then and there.

Dad and I use the "warming hut" machine to dry our stuff. You fit whatever's wet over the ends of these pipes and push a button, and warm air blows out. Nothing quite like putting on a newly warmed hat on a chilly day,

I did not use the bathroom at Deer Valley. I lounged.

 Luckily for us, the storm blew itself out around 2:00, leaving us 2 1/2 hours of frantic skiing as we tried to get in as many runs as we could. The sky cleared and we enjoyed some of the best runs I've ever skied, all dusted with fresh powder. Mmmmmm.

Squinty in the gondola that took us to The Canyons

The Canyons - If you love chutes and catwalks, The Canyons is for you. I love neither of those things, but we had the best weather of our trip during our two days at The Canyons, so despite the fact that it was my least favorite of the three, I spent the most time skiing there. My biggest complaints were that the runs were, for the most part, just narrow chutes, and that the mountain was really spread out so that getting from one place to another required lots of forward planning and lots of poling across nearly flat catwalks before getting to the next chairlift on the agenda. It's harder to turn while going down the narrow chutes, which was a bit of a pain, but my biggest annoyances were when I'd get stuck behind a hesitant skier and have no way to get around them. Dad and I did find a chair that I really liked a lot though, one that took us to the top of the mountain to ski a series of black and double-black diamond runs that we had almost entirely to ourselves and provided lots of practice tree and mogul skiing (sometimes on the same run!). The biggest thing The Canyons has going for it, in my opinion is the Orange Bubble Express chair.

 I tend to get pretty cold and therefore pretty miserable when I ski. If I'm going down a run with moguls or something that's steep or has choppy snow I heat up in a hurry because I'm working so hard to keep myself from rolling the rest of the way down the hill. All of that warmth vanishes, however, during the ten minutes I sit motionless on the chair back up the mountain. By the time I reach the top I'm usually freezing and crabby. Enter the bubble chairs.

This glorious lift features chairs that protect the riders in a snug orange bubble, complete with footrest, for the duration of the ride. Unfortunately, Dad and I didn't like any of the runs it led to, so we rode it just once for the experience. 

Shot through the orange bubble

My favorite chair at The Canyons

Entrance to the ladies' room at The Canyons, a sight which caused my Dad to murmur, "Toto, we're not at Deer Valley anymore."

 I had a great time skiing the huge resorts in Park City. The snow was fantastic and the variety of runs available a real treat. I feel like I really improved after all the practice I got in. I've got two ski trips in the works for February, both here on the east coast. Now that I'm hopelessly spoiled, I'm not much looking forward to seeing how the other half lives.

Seeing Sundance

Dad and I crammed in seven films during our time at Sundance, which is impressive considering that we watched movies on only three of the seven days. Getting tickets turned out to be a pretty complicated business. We registered months ahead of time so that we would randomly be assigned a half-hour slot during which to buy advance tickets online. In the weeks preceding our time slots, Dad and I agonized over the schedule and ranked films we wanted to see for each day, first individually and then together. Because my work schedule is more flexible than his, I signed on to the Sundance website at my appointed time and then at Dad's a day later. I was allowed ten tickets per time slot, but I ended up buying just eight (two for four films) during my slot and then two (for one film) during Dad's; virtually everything we wanted to see was already sold out to people who paid for premium packages and therefore got to buy their tickets earlier.

Precious tickets

For people who didn't have advance tickets, it was possible to get them by entering into a wait list line. Two hours before the movie was schedule to start, a volunteer (there were 1,600 volunteers!) would hand out a number to everyone in the wait list line. Then, half an hour before the movie, the wait listers would line up again in numerical order while the people with advance tickets entered the theater. Fifteen minutes before the show started, even those with advance tickets were no longer able to go in if they weren't there already and people in the wait list would be sold tickets for the empty seats left. There were usually 20 to 30 per film. Sounds complicated, but that's before you know that people enter the wait list line well before the two-hour mark and just hang out there to get prime positions in the line. Dad and I arrived for a film called Meek's Crossing or Meek's Pass or something like that 2 1/2 hours early and counted 70 people in the wait list line ahead of us. We left before the numbers were even handed out. (We heard later that it wasn't that great, so we weren't too disappointed.)

We were able to get tickets through the wait list for two films and from a group that had tickets they had bought but weren't going to use for another.

Shorts V - The fifth of all the shorts groupings, this was the first thing we saw. It started at 11:30 P.M., and after a day of hard skiing, Dad and I were pretty tired. I was riveted by most of the six or seven in the series, while Dad snoozed (quietly, thank heaven) through parts of each short in the seat behind me. These were the first short films I'd really seen, and, like short stories, I found I really liked them. They didn't have the breadth of a full-feature film and so the purpose of each was very concentrated and the details used became even more important.

To Hell and Back Again - This was a documentary about a veteran of the Afghan war. The film started in Afghanistan, and after establishing who the soldier was, it followed him home to North Carolina where he slowly recuperated from a catastrophic hip injury with the aid of physical therapists whose advice he ignored, lots of pain medication, and his wife who found she didn't know who her husband was anymore. Throughout his recovery, there were flashbacks to the war, which the director captured as he followed the unit through the countryside for seven months. It was heart-wrenching and very well done.

Incendies - Meaning "Scorched" in French, this movie was about a brother and sister, twins, whose mother's final wish, as stated in her will, was for them to find their father and brother. The mother was from Lebanon before she moved to Montreal, and so first the sister, then the brother travel to Lebanon as they search. Their story is interspersed with scenes from the mother's life when she was young and living in Lebanon during the war. It was very well done, and we learned as we sat down to watch it that it had been nominated for an Oscar just hours before. It was Dad's favorite, and mine too, until I saw Circumstance (see below).

The Sound of my Voice - Angela noted a religious theme in the movies selected for this year's festival, and this film, about a cult, fit into that category. It starts off with a couple who joins a cult for the purpose of secretly making a documentary about it, but the man gets sucked into it while the woman is totally turned off. It was a fascinating movie, and the actress who plays the leader was fantastic. Best of all, it ended with a totally unforseen twist that left me thinking about it for days afterward.

We Were Here - This was another documentary about the AIDS epidemic in San Francisco during the '80s and 90's. The director experienced it firsthand, and he interviewed several other gay men who had survived it and one female nurse who took care of the plague's victims. It was an interesting movie for someone who didn't know much about the time period, although Dad didn't fit that description. For me, it was strange to think about a time when AIDS, which seems so obvious to us now, was a total mystery and people kept getting inexplicably sick. The panel afterwards was particularly moving as they discussed their experiences making the film.

The Mill and the Cross - Hands down, this was our least favorite. I really liked the director's idea in principle, but in practice it was very difficult to watch and I was quite relieved when it was over. The director focused on Bruegel, a Flemish painter who lived in the 1500's. One of his most famous paintings is called "Procession to Calvary," and it shows Christ carrying his cross toward the hill where he will later die. This much is a typical theme, but Bruegel stands out because of his devotion to the inclusion every day life surrounding extraordinary subjects. The painting has at least 100 other people in it, going about the affairs that would have kept townspeople busy in those days.

Procession to Calvary

The director of The Mill and the Cross decided to show how the lives of the other people in the painting would have looked. Cool concept, but it was painful to watch. Because the medium of inspiration for him was a painting, a silent art form, there was virtually no dialogue for just about the whole movie (no background music either). I've never been in such a quiet theater. The story didn't follow an easily recognizable plot, and it was tough to keep my eyes open. However, from there we went straight to:



Circumstance - My favorite of the series. The story takes place in Iran and follows two teenage girls as they grow up and experiment with all sorts of things that are forbidden by the Morality Police. They are best friends, but one is born into a privileged family and the other is not, so when they get in trouble for the same crime, their circumstances dictate very different outcomes for each of them. The film was beautifully shot, and the panel afterward featured the director and most of the central actors and it was fascinating. Although the story takes place in Iran, the crew was not able to shoot it there for fear of being thrown in jail because of the themes in it. They settled for shooting in Beirut instead, and it was really interesting hearing their accounts of making the movie as young Iranian-Americans with mostly traditional, conservative parents from the old country.

As a result of making the movie, the director and one of the actresses, who still have a lot of family in Iran, are no longer welcome in the country. The director said that the movie will certainly not be shown in theaters because of censorship issues, but she hopes lots of bootleg copies will circulate the country. Writing, directing, and acting in this movie were very brave acts of defiance, and I found myself really admiring the cast and crew who were involved.

How To Wash Your Clothes in Manhattan

For the second in this series of instructive posts about living in New York, we present instructions for washing your clothes in the city. 

Option 1: Visit a Laundromat

Chances are your apartment doesn't have a washer and dryer - if it did, you'd lose half your square footage anyway. 

1. Locate a nearby laundromat. There is probably one just a block or two away from where you live.

2. Collect your laundry. Keep in mind that washing your clothes is a pain, so be discerning when deciding what to toss in your laundry bag. It's probably ok to wear that pair of jeans a second (or third, or sixth) time.

3. Be prepared when you go. This means allowing yourself sufficient time to walk down four flights of stairs with a bulging laundry bag, and bringing enough reading material and money to get you through the process. Don't forget the detergent!

4. Select a washer of appropriate size. Most laundromats will have two to three different options. Remember that as size goes up, so does price. Fill the washer with your clothes and add the soap, which you forgot to bring and had to purchase for an exorbitant price from the staff.

5. Insert approximately 4,000 quarters into the machine. This will take 20 minutes. Collect quarters from your daily purchases and save them for laundry day, or use on of the change machines at the laundromat.

 6. Sit back to wait. You'll likely have about 45 minutes. Read, nod off, or practice your Spanish by eavesdropping on the conversations of fellow patrons. Alternately, give up trying to pretend you don't see the 3-year-old girl whose mother is resolutely ignoring her questions, comments, offers of help, and existence in general, and play with her until the washer stops.
7. Remove clothes from the washer. Use one of the carts on wheels to help you do this, as any clothing that comes into contact with the floor of the laundromat must be incinerated immediately. Place clothes that should be air-dried in a plastic bag. Wheel the cart with the remaining clothes to the drier.
8. Load the dryer. See Step 5 concerning quarters.
9. Take the plastic bag home. Be sure to check the time left on the drier to figure out when you need to return, first. Upon returning to your apartment, hang your wet clothes wherever you can. Options include over doorknobs, backs of chairs, and open drawers/cupboards/doors. Leave an apologetic note to your roommate for the unmentionables draped from the door of every kitchen cabinet and swear that they are clean and that you will remove them as soon as they are dry.

10. Return to the drier. Sort through to remove clothes that are already dry - usually synthetic materials - then add more quarters to continue drying your stubborn towels and jeans. Fold the dry clothes while you wait for the damp ones to be done. This is the most efficient use of your time and your quarter stash.
11. Remove the rest of your clothes from the drier and fold them. Stack them back in your laundry bag, then haul it back to your apartment. Politely decline all offers of help from men smoking cigarettes on stoops in your neighborhood. Do not return their winks.
12. Put your clothes away. Pour yourself a drink. Resolve to spend your first post-New York paycheck on your own washer/drier.

Option 2: The Aussie Method
This involves obtaining and assembling and Australian washing machine, which consists of a bucket and a clean toilet plunger. Insert water, detergent, and clothes, one or two items at a time. To work it, imagine that you are churning butter. Be sure to check your standards at the door and to allow plenty of time for drying.

Option 3: The Aristocratic Method
Take your laundry to the laundromat and pay by the pound for them to wash and fold it for you. Be aware that your laundry may come back smelling like Febreeze but not necessarily any cleaner than when you dropped it off. Note: Allow plenty of time to advertise and sell your spare organs on eBay to collect revenue for this venture.

Tips for Coat-Checking Success

Congratulations on your decision to check coats in a New York bar! We hope the suggestions listed below will help you to get the most out of this exciting career. Let's get started!

1. Get plenty of sleep before your shift. If you work on a Friday, you can expect to contend with the happy hour crowd plus the Friday night crowd. Your shift will probably start around 5:30 P.M. and wrap up around 4:00 A.M. But you won't be done yet! You'll have to wait another 15 minutes or so for your manager to count the money in the cashbox and give you what you're owed ($1 for each coat you check). You'll arrive around 8:30 on a Saturday night because you won't have to accommodate happy hour. Either way, be sure to be well-rested.

2. Wear tight clothes. Not only will this help you earn more tips from tispy male customers, it will help you squeeze between overloaded racks of coats with maximum ease. Another tip: cram protruding sleeves between coats so they don't stick out from the rack. This will give you more space to move back and forth and decrease the likelihood that you'll pull coats off hangers as you walk through. 

3. Hang heavy coats on two hangers. If you use plastic ones, a heavy coat will stretch the hooked part, causing the coat to fall off the rack where it will be harder to see (causing you to think you have lost it) or to become tangled up with your feet (causing you to trip and fall headlong into a wall of winter wear).

4. Be prepared! To burn through your line fast, have hangers waiting with tickets already on them. Have the bottom portions of the ticket already torn off (being very careful to keep them in numerical order - mix them up and you won't know whose number goes with which coat) and ready to hand to customers. Also, if you are an English major, practice your math skills, so that when a customer hands you three coats, two bags, and a $50 bill you can make change quickly.

5. Be ready with tape. If a customer wants to check a bag and a coat, tear the second number off the hanger and tape it to their bag before placing the bag on the shelf and the coat on the hanger. Use plenty of tape to prevent the number falling off; cloth bags don't hold tape well. Later, when you go to return the coat, the missing number on the hanger will be a clue that you have something else to return to the customer.

6. Watch out for cheapskates. Allowing customers to put two coats on one hanger takes a chunk out of your income, plus it increases the likelihood that the second coat will slide off the hanger and compromise your impeccable organizational scheme. Insist on one coat per hanger. If the person checks a light sweater and a coat, both theirs, hang the sweater under the coat, putting the hanger through the arms of both. Stuff hats and scarves into the sleeves of coats - they should stay there - and button or zip a coat that looks like it might not stay put to help contain the layers.

7. Be strict about lost tickets. Be sure that the customer knows the official policy: no ticket, no coat. However, be charitable. After giving the customer a very hard time, consent to look for their coat. Ask them for a very specific description, including brand, size, and content of pockets. Make sure they are aware that telling you that "it's a black peacoat" won't help, as you have about 75 coats that match that description. Note: It's ok to be less suspicious of a patron who tells you their coat is from Old Navy (retail value: $40) than a patron who tells you their coat is from Prada (retail value: $700). Expect to be showered with tips when you find the missing coat.

8. Keep your liquid intake to a minimum and take bathroom breaks when you can get them. You'll be busy, and you're not supposed to leave the closet often. When you do, be sure to get the bouncer or the DJ to watch the door for you until you return.

9. Have ready a policy for customers who attempt to woo you. It is suggested that you tell anyone who asks that you don't give your number to people you meet at the bar. Stick to this policy, unless your suitor is very attractive.

10. Stretch before, during, and after. You'll wake up with sore muscles, particularly if you've got a lot of coats and have to resort to acrobatics to reach the top rack, like climbing up and down a chair or balancing on the paint can/industrial-sized can of enchilada sauce that you use for a step stool because the bar doesn't have one. Remind yourself that you're getting paid to exercise.

11. Budget. Expect to make anywhere between $120 and $375 a night, depending on the popularity of the bar on a given night and the generosity of the customers. Your income is a combination of tips, all of which you get to keep, and the contents of the cash box, of which you get 1/3 of the revenue you bring in. If a customer is too drunk to see clearly and tips you with a $20 instead of a $1, it is up to your discretion whether you point this out. Take into account the kindness of the customer and your mood, and remember that any verbal lessons you impart about drinking responsibly, regardless of your eloquence, may be forgotten in the morning anyway. Resist the urge to blow your loot on a cab ride when you stagger into the streets at 4:30 A.M. at the end of your shift.

Happy Coat Checking!

Dumpster Diving

Life in New York requires a certain amount of frugality. While I very occasionally splurge on cab rides when I can't walk another step in heels or throw down $15 for a martini at a swanky bar when I can't find someone to buy one for me, for the most part I'm careful about my spending. Luckily, I've figured out how to support one of my more debilitating addictions scot-free.


I've been a member of both BookMooch and Paperback Swap for a while; these are great websites you can use to trade used books with other people around the country and the world. You post whichever books you're willing to part with, and if someone likes what you've got they send you a request for it. If you accept (some people won't send book internationally because you are responsible for your own postage), you put the book in the mail and receive a point which you can spend getting a book from someone else's collection. Great system.

The problem is, I'm a bit of a book hoarder. If I like what I read, I want to keep it, partly for completely illogical, sentimental reasons and partly because I really like lending books to friends. Enter New York's unofficial giveaway system. Instead of putting useful things they no longer want in trash cans, thoughtful citizens often set them on trash can lids so that their throw-aways can find homes with interested parties. I've done this before with a set of curtains I no longer wanted and they were gone within minutes. And whenever I see books, I always paw through them and often take a few to post on these websites. Sometimes I get duds - I've got about five that have been sitting in a dusty pile for several months with no takers - but sometimes I hit gold and have been able to trade books I have no interest in for books I really want. Recycling at its best.

I've never seen quite this many in once place, but I did come across several large boxes chock full of old books once. The super of the building caught me rifling through and told me to help myself - less for him to move to the curb on trash day, I guess.

Trader Joe's Delivers Again

I've been avoiding the new Trader Joe's on the Upper West Side for months. Although I'd have loved to shop there, I'd heard that the lines were unbelievably long and was, frankly, not in the mood to deal with it. Rumor has it that one can expect to wait in line for around 45 minutes at the TJ's nearest NYU. There are only 3 of them in Manhattan, and demand is apparently pretty high. This evening, however, I found myself emerging from the subway right outside it with a few minutes to spare and "Buy tomatoes" on my to-do list. I braced myself and headed in.

The whole store is underground. Once inside, your only option is to go down via escalator or elevator. There are two subterranean levels. Of course I realized I absolutely had to have several other things once inside, like spinach and packaged baby beets, so I put about 6 items in my basket before bracing myself for the line.


I've seen lines like this before, but I associate them with theme parks or bread lines during the Depression. There were at least (I swear I am not exaggerating) 35 people ahead of me in the line I chose, and there was a line of equal length parallel to mine. The lines were so long that there were two employees whose sole job, so far as I could see, was to stand at the end of the line holding large, colorful signs with downward arrows which said "End of Line." I set my face to pissed-off and queued up.

To my amazement, the line moved very rapidly. I got to what I thought was the front after no more than five minutes, but it turned out to be just a curve. This meant that there were about 10 more people in the original line than I'd estimated at the outset, but it also gave me a view of the checkout counters and I understood the reason for my quick progress: There were TWENTY-NINE checkout counters available. An employee stood between the two lines and directed customers to the next open counter, and she sent people off at the rate of about one every five seconds or so. Start to finish, I was in the line for less than ten minutes. Amazing.

The guy that rang me up was, hands down, the friendliest cashier I've encountered since moving to New York; most of them won't even make eye contact and act as though your need for supplies is an unforgivable imposition. The bag of spinach, salad dressing, and goat cheese I picked up each cost at least a dollar less than I'm used to paying for them in the city, so I handed over far less of my wallet's contents than I generally do. And the images of harried New Yorkers, all in dark colored clothes with red faces, heavy scarves, and big boots for the 32-degree high temperature we had today, set against a backdrop of oversize technicolor tropical flowers that are TJ's trademark decor was pretty amusing. One of the families I tutor for lives about a block away from Trader Joe's, and I will most definitely be back. I forgot to pick up some Two-Buck Chuck.

Yay capitalism!

A few days before I flew home for Christmas, a friend of mine named Chrysta came to the city for the day. Chrysta lived next door to me in the dorm junior year at Cate, and she was probably the first real friend I made there. Now she goes to Tuck business school and had some time off, and since it was just a short train ride for her she headed down to spend the afternoon and the evening with me. After hanging out at Dave's bar for a while, we headed to Times Square to do a bit of shopping. Struck, as I often am, by the blast of neon that hits you as you near Times Square, I brought up marketing and we spent a few minutes talking about advertising. New York doesn't stop at billboards, fliers, or commercials. There are whole stores in Times Square dedicated to promoting a particular product. You can buy a souvenir box of M&Ms at the M&M Store for three or four times the price you'd find them at an 7-Eleven on the same block. (Also for sale there are stuffed M&Ms, M&M t-shirts and tote bags, M&M key chains, stationery, blankets... You get the idea. I feel a blend of pity and revulsion for the people I see riding the subway or walking around the city clutching their M&M bags.) I mentioned that I had heard about a Pop Tart store that had opened recently, and minutes later we happened to walk past it. Naturally, we had to go in.

There were tons of things with the Pop Tart logo and pictures of various Pop Tart flavors, as expected, but what I really wanted to see was the food counter. Instead of simply selling regular Pop Tarts, the store sells all kinds of culinary creations made from Pop Tarts. There were sandwiches, sundaes, and stuff I didn't want to get too close to. (This reminded me a of a White Castle cookbook - really - that I saw in Tennessee once. It was full of recipes you could concoct using White Castle products. Memorable was some sort of casserole, the bottom layer of which was a layer of White Castle burgers.)

Pop Tart "sushi," wrapped in some sort of sugary gelatinous stuff.

While there, I made two decisions: 1) I was not going to purchase a snack, and 2) I wanted to stop by the bathroom. A Pop Tart employee wearing a Pop Tart t-shirt and Pop Tart visor informed us, however, that their bathroom was closed. She suggested that we go to the Charmin store, which was right next to the Pop Tart store. Morbidly fascinated (and needing to pee), I led Chrysta out of Pop Tart Land and into an experience unlike any I've ever had.

The Charmin store was a party. There were flashing lights and various upbeat Charmin jingles blasting from speakers. Tourists posed by giant toilets decorated to look like thrones. There were free hot chocolate and boxes of Puffs available. "From a marketing perspective, I find this fascinating," said Chrysta, and headed off to look around while I got in line. Instead of being tucked away on the periphery, like all bathrooms in all public establishments, you probably guessed that these facilities were center stage. There were about 15 doors, each bearing the name of a different state and decorated with cartoon-y pictures of local flora and fauna. The line was about 8 people deep, but it moved fast. And to pass the time, there was (I swear I'm not making this up) a guy in his early 20's with a microphone interviewing the person at the front of the line about where they were from and which of the three types of toilet paper - Charmin Sensitive, Charmin Ultra-Strong, or Charmin Extra Soft - they planned to use. Then a door would open emitting a relieved-looking patron and the emcee would say something like, "Okaaaaay, Tina! You're headed off to beautiful Mooooontana! Hope everything comes out alright for you!" Poor guy probably starred in his high school production of "Damn Yankees" and moved to New York thinking he'd make it big... When it was my turn, I told him I thought that asking about my toilet paper choice was a rather personal question before he shuttled me off to Alaska. A bathroom attendant preceded me in to spray and wipe.


I have to say, it was one of the cleaner public bathrooms I've visited, and I was in no danger of running out of toilet paper. I am not going to reveal which of the rolls I selected.

Duty done, I collected Chrysta who was gazing at a pyramid of toilet paper rolls with a mixture of horror and fascination on her face, and fled.

Omen?

2011 will hold a lot of travel for me. I've got a trip to Austin coming up in spring, a wedding in Atlanta in May, and a pre-wedding party in a city which is still TBA in April. I'll move from New York to California sometime in the summer, and will most likely visit my brother and his wife in Berlin in July - August. And of course, best of all, I'm hoping to have an international teaching post to go to right before the beginning of the 2011-2012 school year. My return to New York after spending the holidays at home was my first trip of 2011, and I'm not sure whether its events constitute a good omen or a bad omen for all the travel to come.

I woke up early on Wednesday morning to shower and do some last-minute packing up before my mom drove me to the Fresno airport. With about 15 minutes left in the hour-long drive, I got an automated call from Delta telling me that my flight from Fresno was delayed. I was supposed to connect in LA, and with the new departure time, it looked like I wasn't going to make it. Nothing for it but to keep driving, however. In Fresno, just as I got to the front of the line for my turn with the ticket agent, the departure, which had been moved from 9:15 to 10:25, changed to 11:20 on the screen. Now it seemed that in addition to missing the flight I'd originally planned to take from LA, I'd miss the following one as well. Obviously this was all frustrating, but as I didn't have anything I absolutely had to do in New York until Thursday afternoon, I wasn't too worried. Mom and I went for a cup of tea to kill some time, and about 20 minutes later there was an announcement that all American Eagle morning flights had been canceled. Oh boy...

Calling the airline was preferable to waiting in a very long line. After a frustrating few minutes trying to work my way through automated prompts, I got through to an agent at American, who explained that she was powerless to help me because, despite the fact that I was supposed to check in at the American Airlines counter and would have been boarding an American Airlines plane had all gone well, the flight was actually run by Delta. Um. She looked up the number for me, and I got through to very nice agent at Delta almost immediately. She said there were no more flights out of Fresno that day. All would have been lost, and my mom was making outrageous suggestions about driving me to the airport in LA, when we realized that I could call Luke. I can't even remember how old I was when my family and Luke's family began to spend time together, vacation together, etc., but I was definitely in elementary school. Luke lives in San Diego, but he had been in Visalia for a few days on business and was planning to drive back home that morning. I called him immediately, and he said he'd be happy to drop me off at LAX on his way. So Mom and I got back in the car and drove to Visalia, where she was in time to teach her social studies class and I got to hang out with some of the teachers for a while until Luke picked me up. We had a pleasant, smooth ride to LA, which included pretty scenery over a snowy Grapevine and a stop at In-N-Out Burger. (Vegetarians get grilled cheese sandwiches there.) I arrived at LAX in plenty of time and was through security in a jiffy. Although my plane left the runway a few minutes late, it boarded on time and I got a whole row of seats to myself. We arrived early in New York, and I was so comfortable and content I was almost disappointed.

Off the plane, things changed for the worse. The A train took forever to come, and the platform one must wait on is outdoors. I estimate that it was just below 30 degrees, and it got mighty chilly after the first few minutes. Of course, that late at night, the A doesn't run express and so we paused at every single stop along the route home. All told, my plane touched the ground at 12:25 or so and I wasn't inside my building until minutes before 3:00 in the morning.

Overall good, or overall bad? Unquestionably, it was a mixed bag, which is guess is about the best anyone can expect from travel.