Scientific Ink

Tag: Travel

  • Grateful for dial-up – the pleasure of not being connected (gratitude #41)

    So, this past weekend we went up north with some friends. It was a brief trip, much too short for the length of the drive, but it was nice to get away, get up north and relax.

    Breathe in. Breathe out. Appreciate the scenery. Repeat.

    In the summertime, we share DSL and a wireless router with the neighbors. But they locked their place up for the winter, shut down the DSL/wireless, and they won’t be back until the spring. We go year-round. I really love it when it is quiet and the winter woods especially are quiet.

    I did have a bit of work to do, so I had to reinstate our old dial-up service, through Bruce Municipal Telecom. I discovered a few fun facts:

    • My space-age Macbook doesn’t even have a place to plug in a phone line, but
    • My husband’s Dell laptop did.
    • Neither of us had a thumb drive to transfer the file I’d painstakingly prepared to send to a co-worker for the Monday I’d be out.

    I borrowed Dave’s laptop, recreated the spreadsheet on his computer, and dialed in to get stuff into Basecamp for my colleagues. Hooray for connectivity.

    Yet, dial-up definitely put a damper on my online activities. Because I didn’t have connectivity, I let a few things go. I put off work email, Twitter, uploading photos to my flickr account, personal email, blogging, working with my MiUPA colleagues to set up the chapter meeting we had the Monday evening I returned, etc. I could answer some of the email on Tuesday morning during working hours, the MiUPA team is all-powerful and organized without constant input from me. I could upload the few photos I took late Monday. My twitter friends didn’t need instant reporting of my hikes and naps and the weather at Gillies Lake.

    It all worked out just fine. So, even though I’ve loved having the wireless broadband up there, it is nice to disconnect for a while. A real vacation after all. A chance for downtime, not uploading.

  • Things to bring on a trip to Cape Breton, Nova Scotia

    General items:

    For a trip where you’ll have the wherewithal to cook your own dinner:

    If you’re a golfer,

    • bring your golf clubs. The Highlands Links was recently rated the top public course in Canada.

    We brought most of this, but neglected to bring the crackers and the pot. We were able to borrow the crab/lobster pot and use bamboo skewers to pull the crab meat from the snow crab legs (mmmmmmmm). We bought an oyster knife, adding to our collection of these. But, the excellent oysters from Aspy Bay were definitely worth the purchase of yet another oyster knife. Not yet sure if we’ll donate it to the house we’re renting.

  • Happy Anniversary, Janet & Nate! (gratitude #32)

    My in-laws are celebrating their 40th wedding anniversary.

    Happy Anniversary!

    True to form, they wanted to celebrate together with us: their daughter and their son and daughter-in-law. After a little bit of discussion, they decided on the location for the celebration – Cape Breton, Nova Scotia. It’s a fitting destination, the family camped here together often. Prior to this visit, their last visit was in 1994.

    We found a house to rent via HomeAway and now we’re here. We’ve been enjoying the seafood (oysters, crabs) and the scenic vistas here. We’ve had rainy weather (tropical storm Cristobal, perhaps?) so our pursuits thus far have been largely indoors: oat cakes, knitting, shopping for knitting supplies (Baadeck Yarns and Lorraine’s knitting shop in Neil’s Harbor), and fine dining (the home-cooked variety).

    But, on the occasion of their 40th Anniversary, I wanted to acknowledge the good times and warm welcome they have given me. My sister is moving near her in-laws, and was making a distinction in a conversation between “his” family and “hers.” She kept saying “they’re not my family.” I realized recently, I think when we drove down to visit Dave’s grandparents in Indianapolis, that after 14 years, his family is my family, not by birth, but by feeling and by association at this point, and I am sure it is Janet and Nate’s warmth and generosity that have made it so.

    I don’t want this blog post to be about me, but it is worth saying that, as a child of divorce and as a child in a family where 4 of 5 of my mom’s siblings got divorced, happy marriages kind of boggled me. I really didn’t get the rhythm of them or understand the give and take and the commitment involved. I knew what drove people apart, but not how they stayed together. Many people in Dave’s family, including both pairs of grandparents and especially Janet and Nate demonstrate such deep and abiding commitment to each other it just knocks me over. Last summer, when Dave and I stayed with Janet and Nate, I noticed how much Nate loved Janet. It was a simple thing, she and I had both gone out to run errands, and I had taken her car. I returned before she did, in her car, and after I pulled into the garage, I heard Nate calling to her from the garden. He sounded so happy she was back, it was sweet.

    That’s the kind of love these two demonstrate, on a daily basis, enjoying each other’s company and the company of their children. They’re not sickly sweet, Janet attributes her long marriage to “wine and alcohol” but I know there’s something much deeper that keeps them together.

    These two are a great example, one which I hope to emulate.

  • Grateful for a class action lawsuit? Rediscovering personal history (gratitude, week 6)

    So, I got some paperwork in the mail on a class action settlement for foreign-exchange surcharges and conversion fees for credit and debit transactions. This settlement covers the period from February 1996 to November 2006. There were 3 ways to submit a claim:

    1. Easy refund $25.
    2. Total estimation refund. 1% of typical foreign transactions. Input needed: # days outside the US during the period covered by the settlement.
    3. Annual estimation refund. 1-3% of actual transactions. Input needed: amount of foreign transactions per year of the settlement.

    Since Dave and I lived in England for the first year of the settlement period, I knew option #1 was too small. If I kept extra-detailed records, #3 might be possible, but not without a lot of interactions with the credit card company to dig up missing statements and the like. So, today, I settled down to do #2. The method I used was my personal journals and a spreadsheet.

    Self portrait with journal and catI am a journal-writer. I write for sanity and clarity. I write to write, and I rarely read my journals. I don’t write every day, or even every week, but I do tend to write on vacation and on airplanes (recording the flight number and the departure and destination cities). So, I had a pretty good record of when I traveled to England for that year abroad, and when I was in Canada at the family cabin, and when I was elsewhere.

    Here are the results – 592 foreign days, 222 of which were spent up north in Canada at the family cabin. 274 were from our year abroad, and the others from various vacations.

    Along the way, I read more than just the date stamp and location of my entries. I was charmed to see me writing my hopes of my now-husband proposing a full two years before he did. Apparently I am patient, and the wait was worth it. I was sad to see myself struggle with a work situation that ended poorly. I didn’t recall that it dragged on for as long as it did, and I felt sadness seeing myself force it for so long. With hindsight, there are a few moments where I wish I could now intervene to give myself the advice to “cut and run” sooner than I ended up doing. But, in general, I did alright, more alright than I thought at the time.

    On a semi-humorous note is I captured the comment of an adjacent passenger when I was on a flight. The guy saw me writing furiously, and he said that he was a therapist and he cautioned me not to use my journal as a way to process emotions so I didn’t act on them. It was good to recognize more action and less stewing as the years went on.

    I felt tender and friendly towards the me in the past that was writing, I wanted to be her friend and comfort her distress. Now I realize I did comfort “her”, by journaling, and it was better for it.

  • Grateful for time alone – gratitude week 3, 2008

    This past week my husband was overseas on business. He’s back now, I’m grateful for his safe return and the chocolate he brought, of course, but I’m also grateful for the time apart.

    A Sailor’s Suitcase, originally uploaded by Bob AuBuchon.

    I am grateful for the little pleasures of having the house to myself: sleeping diagonally across in the bed, using his pillow/invading his space, having the cat all to myself, for my clock dictating my schedule. I’m grateful for takeout food: Jerusalem Garden, Eastern Flame, Zingerman’s Roadhouse, Washtenaw Dairy.

    I’m grateful for modern technology that means I can get his cell phone in Europe by dialing a local number. I’m grateful for the time difference: when I was upset and couldn’t sleep and it was 2AM and there was no one here to talk to, I was able to reach him in his morning in Europe. Not for long, but for a moment, and it was good.

    I’m grateful because absence makes the heart grow fonder. We get enough time apart to miss each other a little bit, and it breaks our routine just enough we take each other a bit less for granted.

    Folks at my office teased me that the “honeymoon must be over” since I didn’t rush home to greet him the moment his flight landed. He has always traveled for work, now less so than previously, but a week apart is normal enough for us. In fact, we both kind of like the first few days. It’s hard to explain, but for the two of us, that little distance is entirely required to maintain our equilibrium between independent and partnered, the rhythm of cyclic downtime and togetherness.

  • A doctor’s kid goes to the medic

    “Never tell them where it hurts. Keep your bullet safe inside.” Richard Buckner, Devotion and Doubt.

    I’m a physician’s daughter. Any shred of hypochondria was ridiculed out of me. My dad treated even minor injuries with disrespect.

    Dad: “You twisted your ankle? Let me see.” (takes ankle and wrenches it)

    Me: (whimpers in pain)

    Dad: “Not broken!”

    I twisted my ankle a lot on the rock-covered beaches along the Georgian Bay shore. I fell for this re-twisted ankle trick way too many times before I learned that if a limb wasn’t half severed, hanging limply, or obviously disfigured, I shouldn’t bother complaining.

    For the most part, I’ve been healthy, so this trained disinterest in my own bumps, bruises, and pain hasn’t been much of a hindrance. When I had a tumor, however, that irritated the nerves in my left hip so much I could no longer walk home a bit over a mile from work, I took way too long to complain loudly enough that the doctors figured out I needed surgery to remove a (completely benign) dermoid tumor the size of a grapefruit. Also, I was really ashamed that my husband needed to pick me up and drive me home when I couldn’t walk. Writing that out sounds pretty ridiculous, but that’s the truth of it. So, I’m working at being a bit kinder to myself.

    On the cruise, after a soak in a hot tub on the first night, I was walking back to my towel and shoes when I stepped on something. I reached down to brush a pebble off my foot and I pulled a little wedge of broken ceramic out of the sole of my foot. I tried to walk away, then I noticed I was leaving rather large bloody footprints on the tile. It wasn’t painful, nor was the cut wide, but it was deep and the foot bleeds.

    I got the attention of the pool attendant to mop up the circle of bloody prints. She asked if I wanted to go to the medical facility. I thought about it. In the room I had no antiseptic and not even a band aid. She gave me some gauze, and I put it on my foot, got my shoe on and walked down 8 flights of stairs to the medical facility. I had blood all over my right hand and wrist, and I curled my hand so as not to frighten anyone. I think I thought that the elevators would be more “public”.

    At the medical facility, the nurses clucked over me, placed my foot into a brown-red soaking liquid and gave me forms to fill out. I gave up my social security number, cabin number, and other numbers. I signed in several places. Yes, I would pay the “after hours” surcharge, yes, I would pay for the doctor visit. A soft spoken doctor arrived, pronounced I didn’t need stitches, taped the wound closed (“do not remove the tape until it falls off, don’t get it wet, shower with a plastic bag over your foot”). He gave me some extra wrapping for my foot, and the next day I got the summary of charges, $173 I could submit to my medical insurance.

    I felt grateful for the cleaned and taped up wound, grateful for not having to worry than it was worse than it was, or that neglect would have made it worse than it started out. I felt slightly guilty for the cost, for needing the help. There’s something about the shame and guilt associated with seeking help that makes me secretly wish against my own health – that makes me wish things were worse than they are to merit seeking help. I am getting better at this, I can reason out that seeking help isn’t a sign of weakness, but my emotions have yet to catch up.