2010 Music - Albums I listened to the most

It's that time of year again - time to look back and see what music had the biggest impact on my 2010. This post will focus on the albums that got the most play (again thanks to the magic of iTunes statistics and Excel pivot-tables.) Release year in parentheses.

1. Joanna Newsom - Have One On Me (2010)
2. Tom Waits - Glitter and Doom Live (2009)
3. The National - High Violet (2010)
4. Neko Case - Blacklisted (2002)
5. She & Him - Volume Two (2010)
6. The Postal Service - Give Up (2003)
7. Christina Aguilera - Bionic (2010)
8. M.I.A - /\/\ /\ Y /\ (2010)
9. Anna von Hausswolff - Singing From the Grave (2010)
10. The Tallest Man on Earth - The Wild Hunt (2010)

Observations:

• Seven albums are from 2010 - up from only four 2009 albums last year. I guess I'm listening to more new music now.
• If I limit the list to 2010 albums, spots 8-10 would be filled by Arcade Fire - The Suburbs, The Dead Weather - Sea of Cowards and The White Stripes - Under Great White Northern Lights
• Six albums with female singers (compared with 5 and 8 the last two years)
• Three artists were new discoveries: The Postal Service, Anna von Hausswolff and The Tallest Man on Earth. Although, The Postal Service is Ben Gibbard's old band, before Death Cab for Cutie, so that was only semi-new.
• Two of the acts are Swedish (#9 and #10) - up from one artist each of the previous years. However, last year I had two Norwegian artists and in 2008 I had one, and this year there were none.
• Not a single artist repeats from last year (or from 2008)
• The biggest surprise (to me - and perhaps to people who know my taste in music) is that Christina Aguilera made it onto the list. I actually liked her previous album quite a bit but didn't think this was great, so I'm not sure how I ended up listening to songs from it so much.

Schrödinger's unemployed cat, Fox News style

The Fox News morning show was playing in our work cafeteria this morning, and as I walked by I heard them say the following: "Among the unemployed, 5% have a college degree and 10% do not have a college degree."

Umm...what are the other 85% of the unemployed? Schrödinger's unemployed cat?

Taxes, math and semantics

Headline from today's NY Times: "Senate Rejects President's Plan to End Tax Cuts for Top Earners" The statement is 100% true, but what does it really mean? To "end tax cuts for top earners."

I think very few understand even the basics of how tax brackets and marginal tax rates work, and because of it many people believe that Republicans want to extend the temporary Bush tax cuts for everyone and Obama wants the top earners to go back to the (higher) Clinton-era tax rates (which are scheduled to kick back in on Jan 1.)

This is not correct.

Both sides want to give everybody lower taxes (than what is scheduled to happen on Jan 1), the Republican just want to go further for the top earners. There is nothing obscure about this (other taxes, exceptions, etc) - just the simple facts about the basic tax bracket proposals. So, the real question is whether top earners should get a smaller tax cut or a bigger one.

At this point I should clarify that the semantics around tax cuts versus tax increases depends on what you compare the taxes to. Compared to the current law for 2011 (higher scheduled taxes than in 2010) we're talking about 2011 tax cuts for everybody (both the Democratic and Republican proposals.) Compared to the 2010 taxes we're talking about tax increases for top earners.

Now, let's review the two proposals (comparing the taxes to what's currently scheduled for 2011). Obama wants to lower taxes in all tax brackets below $200,000 for individuals ($250,000 for families). As a standalone proposal, who will benefit the most from this: someone who makes $40,000 or someone who makes $400,000? If your first thought  was "the person making $40,000" I'm pretty sure you'd be in the majority. And you'd be wrong. The person making $40K (slightly better than the median US income) would get their taxes reduced on all their earnings up to $40K. The person making $400K would get that reduction plus their taxes also reduced on the next $160K (if filing individually, $210K if filing as a family).

Without running the numbers, the $400K earner will receive a tax cut that is 5X (tax reduction up to $200K instead of $40K) the one received by the $40K earner. In actuality the difference is much greater since most of the income below $35K didn't receive a Bush tax cut at all and isn't scheduled to change for 2011. Being a geek, I looked up the tax tables and did the math and the $40K earner gets about a $580/year tax cut while the $400K earner gets approximately a $5,400 tax cut.

This is the Obama proposal compared to doing nothing. The Republican proposal means also lowering taxes on the second $200K earned by the $400K earner, which would result in about an additional $6,200 for a total tax cut of $11,600.

To summarize:
Obama wants to lower the taxes for the $40K earner by $580/year and the taxes for the $400K earner by $5,400.
Republicans want to lower the taxes for the $40K earner by the same $580 and the taxes for the $400K earner by $11,600.

I'm all for taxes being as low as possible for everyone, but the problem is that the additional tax cut by the Republicans costs about $700,000,000,000 (seven hundred billion) over 10 years, and without a plan to raise that money some other way, that's added to the already massive US debt. And this is on top of the $3,000,000,000,000 (three trillion) cost of the tax cuts that both sides agree on.

Finally, a few words on what it takes to be wealthy. I've heard over and over again people saying that the Obama proposal will tax people that are not wealthy, which makes me wonder what it takes to be wealthy. First, I believe people misunderstand again and think that people making $200K will pay more taxes under the Obama proposal than under the Republican proposal. That's obviously wrong, since the proposals only differ on income above $200K.

So, let's instead look at someone making $250K. For this person the difference between the two proposals is 3% for the $50K above $200K which comes to $1,500/year ($125/month). Let's assume that the person also pays 10% in other income taxes (State & Soc Sec). This would mean that they have a take home net pay of just over $13,700/month under the Republican proposal and just under $13,600 under the Obama proposal. 1) I think that kind of monthly income makes you wealthy, especially considering that it's about $11,000 more than the median working American. That's a lot of extra money to spare. Every month. 2) I doubt that most people making $250K will even notice whether they get that $125/month tax cut or not.

For the $400K earner, again, the difference is $6,200/year which is just over $500/month. That sounds like real money. To me. But when your income is that high, I'm not sure you'll really notice if your after-tax check is $20,700 or $20,200/month. You still have an extra $17-18,000 to spend every month compared to a typical person. For example, a person with a $1,000,000 mortgage would still have $13,500 in money to spend on other things (or save) each month.

First day in my new apartment

First day in my new apartment. Sitting at my dining table, having take-out pad thai and looking out the window. The first time I see the night-time view of the Boston harbor from up here.

My 22^nd story window faces East, across the water looking at Logan airport. If I look South I can see the lights on the piers along the shore line. North, there’s the New England Aquarium and more piers up to the north End. The water in front of me is sprinkled with 40-50 sail boats, all of them a few hundred yards out from the docks. Need to figure out why they aren’t at the docks – there are plenty of empty boat slips in front - maybe they are too big. I don’t know these things – I’m not a boat person.

It’s great to be in the apartment, although almost all of my belongings are still in boxes. The movers came this morning and spend until early afternoon getting everything in here. The put my bed and desk together and generally put the furniture in the right place, but I still need to unpack ~30 boxes which is going to take some time. I did about five boxes of kitchenware today but am saving most of it for the long Thanksgiving weekend coming up.

Ding-dong! That was the condo owner ringing the doorbell just checking in to make sure everything went ok with the move, and offered to lend me a couple of matching barstools to use for the kitchen counter. Very nice. He lives in the condo next door so we’re going to be neighbors.

I also need to make some hard decisions about my furniture. Since I’m moving from a larger apartment I’m not going to have room for everything. So, as I unpack I imagine a good number of things will have to go to the trash/Goodwill/Craig’s list – whatever makes sense. I spent most of three days going through my stuff before I moved and threw out things I don’t need. I believe I made ~15 trips to the dumpster but apparently that was not nearly enough.

More to follow when I’ve gotten more organized and can take some decent pictures.

And I wondered how the same moon outside...

...over this Chinatown fair
could look down over Illinois
and find you there
Tom Waits - Shore Leave

My upcoming move to Boston made me go back and look at the geography of it all. As the crow flies, I'm moving 2,288 miles / 3,683 km. (Google Earth is great for measuring distances.) To put that in perspective - here are some other places that are closer to each other:

- Scottsdale, Arizona - Tegucigalpa, Honduras (3,296 km)
- Stockholm, Sweden - Casablanca, Morocco (3,425 km)
- Stockholm, Sweden - Tehran, Iran (3,556 km)
- London, UK - Istanbul, Turkey (2,503 km)
- Freetown, Sierra Leone - Recife, Brazil (3,018 km)

Finally, for the last two years I've met up with a group of Swedes in San Francisco who have been coming over for the Oracle Open World conference. I don't attend the conference but enjoy meeting with them socially so I've been flying up there for a weekend each year, and we talked about doing it again next year. So, Boston - San Francisco: 4,338 km (2,695 miles). Let's compare:

- Stockholm, Sweden - China-Kazakhstan border (4,337 km)
- Stockholm, Sweden - Medina, Saudi Arabia (4,221 km)
- Göteborg, Sweden - St. John's, Canada (4,334 km)
- London, UK - Baghdad, Iraq (4,094 km)

Making any of these trips to meet up with friends for a weekend seems unthinkable, but I'm still thinking about making the trip to San Francisco next October. So what did I learn from all this? Not much, it seems...

Onward and upward

I found my apartment in Boston!

I spent most of Wednesday with a rental agent looking at twelve different apartments all over Boston. I saw several great places and had a really hard time deciding between different types of apartments (old, modern, walk-up, high-rise...) in different parts of town (Back Bay, Beacon Hill, South End, Waterfront, Financial District...), but in the end I went with a high-rise on the Waterfront.

Harbor Towers are the two tall white buildings on the right. I'll be living in the one on the left.

I'll be renting a condo on the 22nd floor of Harbor Tower II - the ever-so-slightly shorter (396 ft, 121 m) of the twin buildings designed by I.M. Pei in the early 70s. Because the units are individually owned the interiors can vary quite a bit. I first looked at a unit that had not been updated since it was built and it really felt uninspired, but the second unit had been completely remodeled into gorgeous condition. When I viewed the apartment the owner still had his furniture in there, so what you see in the pictures below isn't my furniture but should give you a good idea of the apartment.

The dining section of the living room. I really like the new cherry wood floors and the large windows facing the water.

The view through the living room window overlooking the waterfront and Logan airport in the background

Looking back through the living room

Kitchen with cherry wood cabinetry, granite floor and counter tops

Bedroom with a view - same warm cherry wood floors as the living room

Marble floor and subway tiles in the bathroom

When I lived in Boston in the 90s we almost never went to the Waterfront. It simply wasn't very nice then, but with the completion of The Big Dig the ugly highway that went through the city has been placed completely underground, and replaced by the Rose Kennedy Greenway making the area much more attractive and accessible. Around the same time, there was also an initiative to make the water more accessible and the concept of the HarborWalk was created, extending throughout the city

Part of the Rose Kennedy Greenway in front of the Harbor Towers

The Waterfront is still a bit disconnected from my old stomping grounds (Back Bay, Beacon Hill...) by having the Financial District lodged in-between, but it's still less than a mile from Boston Common so it's an easy walk. Boston is such a compact city that nothing is really too far away. The North End (Italian neighborhood, great food) is only a few hundred yards away from my apartment and so is Faneuil Hall/Quincy Market (although that's a bit too touristy for my taste). And, the Aquarium T-stop (subway) is right next door which gives me easy access to the whole city.

In short, I'm very excited about the move - I only have one week left here in Arizona so it's all happening very quickly. Whoop whoop!

Turning my life around

Since I was born, my whole life has been a journey in the Southwestward direction: Uppsala -> Örebro -> Kumla -> Boston - Philadelphia -> Scottsdale.

My permanent residences - moing from the Northeast to the Southwest

Until now. After 12 years working at Synygy I've decided that it's time to move on. Friday is my last day in the office so the countdown is nearing its end. I've accepted a position in the Boston area working for Sunovion - a pharmaceutical company best known in the US for Lunesta (a prescription sleep aid) as well as a few asthma/respiratory condition inhalers. I'll be Assistant Director, Sales Compensation, which means I'll be supporting the sales force with incentive plan design, quota setting, etc. Similar to what Synygy does, but this time full-time internally at a company.

So, I'll be reversing course and moving back to Boston in November. I am really looking forward to it, even though it means a return to a colder climate which, as most of you know, for which I may occasionally have shown some bursts of derision in the past. All joking aside, I really liked Boston during my five college years there and I'm very happy to return. I'll be going out there next week to find an apartment - I'll be back with more details when I have them.

"In Vegas, I got into a long argument...

...with the man at the roulette wheel over what I considered to be an odd number."

- Stephen Wright

(The text below was written on July 14 - I meant to add pictures when I got home and didn't get to it until now.)

US Airways Flight 232: Philadelphia to Phoenix, coach cabin

I’ve just spent 24 nights away from home. 25 days away as well, but the 24 nights matter more than I had expected. 24 nights in other bedrooms. 24 nights not in my bed. Five nights at the Philadelphia airport Marriott; one night crossing the Atlantic Ocean; fifteen nights in my childhood bedroom in Sweden; and three nights at the Philadelphia downtown Marriott. With the exception of the transatlantic flight, all fine accommodations, but I am really looking forward to sleeping in my own bed tonight. There’s no place like home. Hard to say it better than that.

I’ve done a lot of traveling the last several months. A lot of fun traveling on top of the work trips. A wedding in Mexico, a fraternity reunion in Vegas, and a summer visit to Sweden.

I want to find the time and the energy to write it all down. To share the experiences with others, for sure, but mostly for myself so I can go back and relive the memories later. I’m overwhelmed by the magnitude of it so I hesitate to even start. I’ll just jot down some observations without any ambitions of completeness or organization.

The trip to Mexico was my first trip to an all-inclusive resort. It was a destination wedding for my friends Tracy and Mike and I was one of about 40 wedding guests. The adults-only (brilliant!) resort – Excellence Riviera – was located in Puerto Morelos, less than an hour south of Cancun on the Mayan Riviera, and was absolutely gorgeous: right on a beautiful beach, seven sparkling pools, well manicured grounds, etc. I spent most of the time at the resort – always fun to be together with a big group like that – but also took a trip to the Mayan ruins of Tulum. I wanted to visit Chichen Itza, but it was a bit too far to work with our schedule.

View from the hotel room

Tracy and Mike - just married!

The whole vacation was really nice and I had a great time. I’m not sure how I feel about the concept of all-inclusive, though. I really liked the fact that I didn’t need to carry my wallet or think about what anything would cost, and the unlimited supply of drinks that kept appearing. The bar in the pool was particularly to my liking, and the selection of name brand alcohol was quite good. However, the quality of the food left a lot to desire. I guess I shouldn’t be too surprised, since most all-you-can-eat establishments cut corners to keep their costs reasonable, but in this case it really stood out in relation to how nice everything else was. In every other regard, the resort was top-notch, pure luxury, but most of the food quality was somewhere between Red Lobster and TGI Fridays. I would have much rather paid a bit more up-front to get better food to match the rest of the experience.

The Vegas vacation was also a big group affair – 25 guys from my college fraternity congregated in Sin City for a long weekend of nostalgia and debauchery. There group ranged from recent graduates to the four of us from my era, and everyone stayed at New York New York except for Petter and I who’d found a good deal at THEhotel. (My fourth stay there and perhaps my favorite hotel in Vegas.)

Nu Delts at New York New York

The first night I learned two things: 1) my affinity for night clubs ended well over a decade ago and will likely never return, 2) a private box and bottle service makes the experience significantly more bearable. We had made arrangements for bottle service at Rain (one of the clubs at the Palm) so we started by bypassing the endless line and the $40 entrance charge. Once inside, a secret service-looking gentleman escorted us up a private elevator and as the doors closed he whispered into his sleeve “Skybox 5 coming up”. From there another agent took us to our private box overlooking the dance floor and introduced us to our two waitresses and the huge bouncer who would make sure that nobody else would enter our area. We picked out bottles of vodka, gin, rum and whisky and had the waitresses make us some drinks, sat back and looked out over the DJ and dance floor below. I felt like an Eastern European villain in a b-movie.

Marco Pravia, me and Petter Skantze were the first to arrive to our Skybox

Some of the guys and our two waitresses

We also had VIP-access to the other three clubs at the Palm, so we could go past the line there as well. So, we also checked out Ghost Bar on the roof with a great view of the strip, the Playboy Lounge (gambling with Bunny dealers) and the penthouse nightclub Moon at the top of the other tower. All-in-all, not a bad night, given that it was completely not what I normally like to do.

Marco, Petter and I at Ghost Bar

Elementary math?

I'm sitting at the Philadelphia airport waiting for my flight back to Phoenix and just overheard a less-than-encouraging conversation.

Next to me, there's a family with two older parents and their adult son - probably in his mid 20s. CNN was showing a story about a 13-year old boy who had collected and donated 1.5 million pennies to commemorate all the children who died in the holocaust. The son caught interest in the story and started asking his parents how much money that was, but they weren't watching so they didn't know what he was talking about and they showed no interest in being helpful.

So, then he asked his dad: "How many pennies are there in a dollar? 100, right?" (This is when I really started paying attention.) Then he brought out his cell phone to use the calculator, talking to himself: "One point five times a hundred, is that what I do?" Then, some silence and fiddling with the calculator before giving up and asking his dad several questions, finally leading up to "How many dollars is 1.5 million pennies?" The dad thought about it for a few seconds and said "150,000 dollars."

End of conversation.

How much does your life weigh?

US Airways Flight 232: Phoenix to Detroit, 1st class cabin

I’ve been traveling quite a bit for work lately. Enough so that my frequent flier status gets me the occasional free upgrade. Usually I’m in the back with everyone else, but every once in a while I get to enjoy the comfort of some extra legroom, a wider seat and free meal service.

And it is nice.

Nice to be able to use the laptop without having to sit sideways. Nice that the time spent in the plane doesn’t only consist of wishing it was over.

I watched the movie Up In The Air a few months back. It’s a good movie on its own, but I enjoyed it even more since I could relate to many aspects of the traveling lifestyle: always looking to minimize the amount of baggage, finding the best way to get through airport security quickly, getting a good seat on the plane, obsessing over airline and hotel rewards programs, etc

I generally pack light – my general rule is to never check a bag for domestic travel. The only time I make an exception is when I need to transport wine. If I’m only staying away one night I don’t even bring my carry-on bag; I can fit toiletries and clothing for one day in my laptop bag.

The security lines usually are not an issue since I can use the shorter frequent traveler line, and I’m always well-prepared for the security checkpoint. I have my boarding pass and ID in hand and my pockets are empty. I know I need two - and only two - bins: one for my laptop and another one for my belt and my plastic bag of liquid toiletries. Shoes go directly on the belt.

When I book my flights I cross-check the seat configurations against seatguru.com to get the best seat I can. I know I always want an aisle seat, but it’s also good to know which rows have extra legroom, limited recline, trays in the armrests, etc. If I have some flexibility in my travel schedule, I sometimes go so far as checking several flights to see if the seat configurations are different. (Some flights have more first class seats than others, increasing the chance of a free upgrade.)

For both airlines and hotels, I always try to stay within the brand (and its partners) where I have my main loyalty program. For flying it’s US Airways (and the Star Alliance), and for hotels it’s the Marriott brands. When I rent cars I use Hertz because of their partnership with Marriott. Phoenix is a hub for US Airways (being able to fly without layovers is paramount) and Marriott has hotels everywhere – at least within the US.

I actually prefer Southwest to US Airways, but they only fly domestically so I can’t use reward flights for international travel, and with frequent flier status many of the US Airways annoyances go away (baggage fees, additional fees for certain coach seats, standby fees, etc)

I use a Marriott-branded credit card for all my purchases. Although it has an annual fee of $65, the value I get back is worth that many times over. I automatically get silver status and one free night's stay every year, and enough additional points through my purchases for several more free nights each year. And, that’s on top of the regular points I get from just staying at the Marriotts. I cleaned out my points last summer for the road trip I did with my parents, and I’m estimating that by the same time this year I’ll have enough points for a free week at the Ritz Carlton.

All-in-all, there are a lot of hassles around traveling and it can be very tiring, but I don’t do it so much that I hate it, and I do it enough to get some perks and travel conveniences to make it worthwhile. So, on balance, I’m pretty happy with the level I’m at right now.

Ask not what you can do for your country. Ask what's for lunch.

It should come as no surprise that when I'm on vacation I enjoy eating well, especially in beautiful places. I've found that many times the best way to enjoy an upscale establishment is to go there for lunch (or sometimes brunch).

I'm not going to pretend I came up with the idea - I've read it as a travel tip several times - but I do strongly endorse it. Over the last several years I've had a number of amazing experiences at places that I probably would have skipped if I'd only considered them for dinner. Many of them have been at destination places where the scenery is a big part of the experience, and this way I've gotten that experience in a less formal setting and usually at half the price or less.

Here are some examples:

Hotel del Coronado

Shortly after I moved to Arizona, my friends Alexandra and Erik came to visit and we went on a road trip to San Diego. While there, we visited the iconic Hotel del Coronado and had brunch on the patio with a beautiful view of the ocean. It was a great way to experience the hotel without staying there or doing a formal dinner.

Hotel del Coronado - from the front

Pebble Beach

In order to get a tee time at the legendary golf course you generally need to book a room at the resort for a minimum of two nights. Rooms start at $695/night and the golf is $495, so you're looking at close to two grand to do it on the cheap. Needless to say, I haven't done that. Instead, my friend Petter and I got a Sunday brunch reservation at the restaurant overlooking the 18th green. No golf, but we got a nice meal in a gorgeous setting and spent a couple of hours enjoying the atmosphere.

Petter looking out over the 18th green

Me in front of the 18th fairway

L'Auberge de Sedona

L'Auberge is one of the premier resorts in Sedona, Arizona, a couple of hours north of Scottsdale. During my family road trip last summer, we enjoyed a nice lunch and tranquility alongside Oak Creek at the bottom of the valley, surrounded by the famous red rocks.

The family and I at L'Auberge, Sedona

Ahwahnee Hotel

On the same road trip, a few days a several hundred miles later, we visited the landmark Ahwahnee Hotel in the middle of Yosemite, California.

The Ahwahnee Hotel from the outside

The dining room

Sierra Mar at Post Ranch Inn

Post Ranch Inn is a high-end boutique hotel situated on the cliffs of Big Sur, along the Pacific Coast Highway about two hours south of San Francisco, with an amazing ocean view. The rooms range from $550 for a regular room with a "forest view" to $2,800/night for one of the larger freestanding tree house structures.

The restaurant, Sierra Mar, features floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking the 1,000 foot (300 m) drop down to the ocean. I was fortunate enough to eat there twice last year; first with the family on the same road trip and then a second time a few months later with Alexandra and a group of other attendees from the Oracle OpenWorld convention in SF. Highly recommended.

The family with the ocean view in the background...

...and looking down through the window

All of these were truly memorable experiences and I'm pretty sure none of them cost more than $20 per person. Not counting the trips there, of course.

Culinary Dropout

I had lunch today at Culinary Dropout for the second time since they opened in late January. It is the latest venture from Fox Restaurant Concepts, and it's replacing Pink Taco (Thank God - that place was terrible!) next to Wildfish by Scottsdale Fashion Square.

Given my experience with Fox restaurants I didn't originally have high expectations. In their defense, I think they have some pretty good places that do a good job at being what they try to be (e.g. Blanco, Greene House, Modern Burger) but they are generally priced 1-2 levels above where they need to be to be considered great.

Culinary Dropout is by no means inexpensive - lunch is $15-20 per person - but I think it's well worth it. Nice atmosphere, good service and very good food. Both times I've gone with the same two coworkers so we've covered 5-6 different dishes and we've been impressed across the board.

The first time I had the ricotta gnocchi with sausage and mushrooms, and I was very pleased with it. My coworkers ordered a shrimp po'boy and a turkey pastrami sandwich on a pretzel bun. I tasted both of their dishes and liked them both - the po'boy used a very good spicy sauce and the pretzel bun was outstanding.

Grilled Cheese Sliders and Creamy Tomato Soup

On our second visit I ordered Yesterday's Soup ("It's better the day after") - a creamy tomato soup with parmesan cheese shavings - and the grilled cheese sliders with tomato and bacon. (I needed something easy to chew after a wonderful morning of dental work.) The soup was somewhat ordinary by itself, but it was a great complement to the sliders. I originally ordered the French Onion Soup, but our waitressed suggested that this soup would be a better match and she was absolutely right. Nice to see staff with an understanding of the food and the menu. Also, their fries are very good - crispy in the style that I like and generously sprinkled with a nice sea salt. One of my coworkers also ordered the sliders and the other got the Pub Burger, and they were both happy - we will certainly return again.

This Too Shall Pass

Pretty incredible, from the guys who brought you the treadmill video:

We Are The World 3

The snow itself is lonely

...or, if you prefer, self-sufficient.
There is no other time when the whole world
seems composed of one thing and one thing only.
- Joseph Wood Krutch

I wasn't even supposed to be here. Not today. Not yet. I'm standing by the window. My sixteenth floor hotel window. Staring at the swirling snow flying aimlessly by my Philadelphia window. The deep passageways between the tall buildings create turbulent, violent winds carrying the tiny flakes in loops and circles. Back and forth. Up and down.

Sometimes, for extended periods, the snow flies straight up the building wall, making my window look like a film played back in reverse. I'm almost tempted to look down and see if the snow is really leaving the ground and returning to the sky above. A Benjamin Button snow storm in an ordinary world.

Slowly the darkness outside settles in. Leaving long, icy-wet, streaky patterns on the window the only evidence of the alabaster chaos that reined for hours. Unless, of course, I lean forward and look down on the empty, desolate white-blanketed street below. And I remember why I'm here.

I spent the last three nights in three different hotel rooms, and it literally took planes, trains and automobiles to get here. The last blizzard shut down the DC airports. Snowmaggeddon, Obama called it, just four days ago. My flight cancelled, I was re-directed to Philly, via St. Louis, missing the Super Bowl. But I didn't mind much.

Sunday night, weary after a day of travel, I stumbled into at an airport hotel and went straight to bed, trying to make friends with the Eastern time zone. The clock said 10:30 PM but my body said 8:30. I needed to sleep quickly because my alarm was set for 05:15 AM. Eastern time. 03:15 body-time. An angry wake-up call, a coworker pickup, and a cautious wintery near-four-hour car-ride to Washington, DC.

A day of meetings and a hotel night later, and the approaching second snow storm was an unnegotiable fact. Nobody was going to make it to the client office Wednesday or Thursday. We would have to meet over phone. Them from their homes and us from hotel rooms. We opted to drive back to Philly before the storm. Save hotel costs and get the locals home.

My coworkers live outside the city and my hotel is downtown. So, upon reaching Wilmington, Delaware, I caught a train. A few hours later the snow began coming down. Here I am now. 24 hours of snowfall and repeated room service. I have not ventured outside the hotel and I don't know when I will. Not yet. Not today. And I wasn't even supposed to be here.

My body's at home but my heart's in the wind...

...where the clouds are like headlines on a new front page sky

my tears are salt water and the moon's full and high

Tom Waits - Shiver Me Timbers

I've always liked maps. As a kid I used to look at them all the time. Whenever I go somewhere new I try to look at a map of the area. I don't feel comfortable unless I have a mental map of the area and have a good idea of East, West, North and South.

As an adult, I've spent a lot of time playing with Yahoo Maps, MapQuest and Google Maps, and for the last few years I've had a lot of fun with Google Earth. If you don't have it you're really missing something; it's pretty incredible. One of the nice features is that you can see the latitude and longitude of any spot on earth. For example, my apartment is at 33°29'52" N 111°55'15" W.

Here are a few examples of places along my approximate latitude:

- Laguna Beach, California (south of LA)

- Atlanta, Georgia (southern suburbs)

- Bermuda (about 60 miles / 100 km further south)

- Madeira (about 50 miles / 80 km further south)

- Casablanca, Morocco (southern suburbs)

- Lebanon

- Baghdad, Iraq (northern suburbs)

- Kashmir (India controlled portion)

- Tibet

- Japan (between Hiroshima and Nagasaki)

Going along my longitude is a lot less interesting:

- Edmonton, Canada (about 100 miles / 160 km further west)

- Salt Lake City, Utah

- The Grand Canyon, Arizona

- Cabo San Lucas, Mexico (about 100 miles / 160 km further east)

- Water, water and more water until Antarctica

Finally, the furthest I've ever traveled in any direction:

- North: Reykjavik, Iceland. 63° N. Similar to Fairbanks, Alaska

- West: Honolulu, Hawaii. 157° W. Similar to western-most Alaska

- South: Negril, Jamaica, and Pune, India. Both 18° N

- East: Agra (Taj Mahal), India. 78° E

So, while I've traveled 157°+78°=235° in the East-West direction, well over half of the 360° to get all the way around, I've only covered 63°-18°= 45° in the North-South direction. Looks like it's time to check out the Southern Hemisphere!

My Top 2009 Albums - Part Four

Ok - I never got around to adding any detail about Neko Case and the Heartless Bastards. They don't have much in common other than that they both feature very impressive female vocalists. I'll leave it at that and for you to check out for yourself.

My Top 2009 Albums - Part Three

The Antlers - Hospice

At first I didn't think much of this album. I played it a few times, nothing really grabbed me and a couple of sections were downright hard to listen to. Just as I was about to dismiss it I noticed the lyrics.

This is a heart-wrenching record; ten songs telling a story of a woman slowly succumbing to bone cancer, from the perspective of her caregiver-turned-husband, and how she takes out her pain and suffering on him. Actually, the story isn't that straight-forward and quite open to interpretation. It may be an allegory for a self-destructive person and an abusive relationship. Or not. In any case, thinking about the lyrics both ways makes them more powerful. Most of us have either experienced (or have known someone in) a relationship where they should leave, but it has taken over their existence and they aren't able to let go.

Anyway, below are some of the lyrics (with comments only in the literal context.)

He works at the Kettering cancer ward and she becomes his patient:

I wish that I had known in that first minute we met / the unpayable debt that I owed you / Because you'd been abused by the bone that refused you / and you hired me to make up for that

She becomes suicidal (several references to Sylvia Plath):

Sylvia, get your head out of the oven / Go back to screaming and cursing, remind me again how everyone betrayed you / Sylvia, get your head out of the covers / Let me take your temperature / you can throw the thermometer right back at me / if that's what you want to do, okay?

...

Sylvia, can't you see what you are doing? / Can't you see I'm scared to speak and I hate my voice 'cause it only makes you angry / Sylvia, I only talk when you're sleeping / That's when I tell you everything /And I imagine that somehow you're going to hear me

They quickly marry:

With the bite of the teeth of that ring on my finger / I'm bound to your bedside, your eulogy singer

He initially refuses to give up hope for a miracle turnaround, but eventually accepts her fate:

In the middle of the night I was sleeping sitting up / when a doctor came to tell me, "Enough is enough." / He brought me out into the hall (I could have sworn it was haunted) / and told me something that I didn't know that I wanted to hear:

That there was nothing that I could do to save you / the choir's gonna sing, and this thing is gonna kill you / Something in my throat made my next words shake / and something in the wires made the light bulbs break

After her death he struggles to move on and re-engage with the world:

It was easier to lock the doors and kill the phones than to show my skin / because the hardest thing is never to repent for someone else, it's letting people in

...

[About a friend] When your helicopter came and tried to lift me out, I put its rope around my neck / And after that you didn't bother with the airlift and rescue - you knew just what to expect

...

[Convincing himself] We can't rely on photographs and visitation time, but I just don't know where to begin / I wanna bust down the door, if you're willing to forgive / I've got the keys, I'm letting people in

...

[Someone talking to him at the wake.] Some patients can't be saved, but that burden's not on you / Don't let anyone tell you you deserve that

...

[In dreams later] When I try to move my arms sometimes, they weigh too much to lift / I think you buried me awake (my one and only parting gift) / But you return to me at night, just when I think I may have fallen asleep / Your face is up against mine, and I'm too terrified to speak

Clearly, not the most uplifting album. It is tragic but never sentimental, deeply moving but never sugarcoated. There are no lessons to be learned that make it all better in the end. There are no heart-warming moments that make us appreciate how relationships help us through terrible times. In short, this is not a Lifetime-movie.