One of the things we wanted to eat while we were in D.C. was some sushi. We love the stuff from low end buffet sushi to high end specialty restaurant sushi, and we seek it out whenever we get near a place that has it. The Gaylord National had a sushi restaurant on site, so we planned to go there even though we knew the prices were far higher than we're usually comfortable paying. Before heading there, though, we stopped by the exhibition hall of Med Con for a little meet and greet with hors d'oeuvres and drinks at which we hoped to see some friends from school.
Now, until this point in our Med Con experience, I'd not been down to visit the exhibition hall proper. This is odd, too, because one of my favorite things about being a civilian who frequently sails in the ocean of medical professionals is the prevalence of free swag often found in exhibition halls.
Back when the wife was in medical school and we were fairly dirt poor, I used to love going to Hospital Day gatherings at convention centers and resorts because of all the free stuff. A) There was always food and drink to be had, usually in the form of pastries and coffee (though Christmas parties and graduations tended to see drinks a bit more fermented in nature); and B) Hospital Day gatherings always meant a high presence of drug reps. Drug reps, for those not in the know, are representatives of pharmaceutical manufacturers who are sent out into doctor's offices and conventions around the nation to talk up the benefits of their particular brand of pharmaceuticals versus other brands in order to convince doctors to prescribe their brand to patients more often. In clinical settings, drug reps often help ease their foot in the door by offering to cater in lunch for the entire office, as office staffs like to eat free food and often look with great favor on doctors who allow said free food in the door in exchange for a bit of time to talk up their drugs. In convention and hospital day gathering type settings, drug reps have been known to come armed with swag in the form of really heavy metal pens, clocks, note-cubes, keychains, nifty tins of mints, reflex hammers, highlighters, jump drives, mini-mag-lites, stress balls, and even plush stuffed replicas of a stomach, all usually emblazoned with the logo of their particular pharmaceutical. Needless to say, I love all that stuff and gobble it up by the bagful, particularly the pens. While some drug rep pens are pretty cheap, others are crafted things of beauty and grace the likes of which come close and often surpass the product of companies like Cross. In fact, after losing my favorite Zoloft pen, a few years back, I managed to find a parcel of five identical Zmax pens in an assortment of 20 or so other styles of drug rep pens (including a very phallic Viagra pen) on eBay for $5. Sweet.
The exhibition hall was very disappointing in the free swag department. A few of the hospital recruiters had some swag, but the drug reps were barren of it. The wife explained that this was because as of January of this year drug reps are no longer legally allowed to pass out free swag. I'm not exactly sure of the reasoning behind this, but it's now illegal for them to do so. However, this legislation has apparently freed up funds for their food budgets, because the exhibition hall had been turned into an endless buffet of both food, beer and wine. And someone had clearly said "Screw this heavy hors d'oeuvres, crap," because most of the food there went well beyond your usual shrimp and cheese platter faire and had crossed over into stick-to-your-ribs goodness of cajun rice dishes, plates of pasta, ham stations, mini-burger and hotdog stations and much much more. And throughout the room were beverage stations with beer, wine and softdrinks. Very quickly, I realized that we would not be eating sushi that night because we would not have any room left for it. We had a lot of fun eating and chatting with people we knew until it was nearly time for the room to close. By then, much of the beer was running low and I wound up drinking a St. Pauli Girl near-beer out of obligation because the bartender had already opened it for me by the time I realized it was non alcoholic.
So I didn't get any swag, but the food more than made up for it.
Tuesday, March 31, 2009
Friday, March 27, 2009
Our Med-Con Con Adventure, Part 4
On Friday, I decided to attempt my comic-shop search yet again, this time on foot. Armed with a map of downtown D.C. and my previous Mapquest directions, I once again took the shuttle to the National Mall and began my hike over toward Union Station. My Mapquest directions said the shop was located at 50 Massachusetts Ave, which seemed to be in the vicinity. And while Union Station's interior is quite mall-like, I didn't find any comic shops within. (Their website still claims its there, but I didn't see it.)
I then noted that Union Station is not located at 50 Mass Ave, but 40, so I decided to move down the street a bit and find 50. Trouble was, Union Station is at the intersection of 8 different roads and I wound up going down the wrong one. By the time I realized it, I'd committed too much to the road I was on and decided to cut over a block and hit Mass. Ave a bit further down. When I emerged onto it, I was in the 250s and nothing back the way I'd come looked very comic-shoppy.
Abandoning the initial search, I decided what I would do was to find the second shop on my list, which according to the Mapquest directions was not terribly far away, located on Dumbarton Street, which is in Georgetown. I found that on my Map, noted that it wasn't too far north of some of the more westerly National Mall attractions and decided it was a doable walk. I decided to cut over to Pennsylvania Ave, take it all the way to the White House, check out the sites as I walked around it and then hit Pennsylvania on the other side taking it all the way up to M Street and then down to Wisconsin Ave and on up to Dumbarton. However, by the time I reached the not quite half-way mark of my journey, I realized that while I could indeed make the trip all the way to Georgetown on foot, I wouldn't make it back on foot. My feet hurt way too much already and I could foresee a cab ride for which I did not have cash to pay in my future. Furthermore, none of the public transportation options listed on my map seemed ideal. So, I popped into the Ronald Reagan Building (actually, "popped" isn't the right word, as I pretty much had to go through a cavity search in order to gain entrance) and had lunch in the food court.
After this, I strolled semi-painfully near the Washington Monument and then down to some more of the Smithsonian museums. This time I checked out the American History Museum, where the most impressive things I saw were Dorothy's Ruby Slippers, and early Kermit the Frog and Oscar the Grouch puppets.
After this, I decided to take the shuttle back to the hotel and drive our car up to Georgetown. This involved walking a goodly distance, with my feet hurt increasingly more as I went. I was thankful that I'd not decided to walk all the way to Georgetown after all.
Only after I'd arrived at the shuttle stop in front of the capitol did I check my shuttle schedule and noted that while the shuttles ran every half hour from 8 a.m. until 12:30, they took a nice long break and resumed frequent service only at 3p. At that moment, it was around 1p.
Now, what I should have done in retrospect was hoofed it over to the Air and Space Museum and checked out their planetarium shows for the next couple of hours. Or gone back to the IMax theater in the Museum of Natural History; neither option occurred to me, though. Instead, I went back to EFFing Union Station and tried to find Massachusetts Ave again to see if I could find that EFFing comic shop. After successfully skirting around a rather large and scary gentleman who was screaming angrily at passersby, I found my way on to Mass. Ave and to what I thought was the vicinity of 50, where there clearly was no comic shop to be found. My feet hurt so much by then that all I wanted to do was get off of them, so I hobbled back to the capitol, collapsed in a shady patch of mulch and listened to Adam Carolla classics on my mp3 player. When the shuttle came, an hour and a half later, it was all I could do to climb aboard.
That afternoon, once the wife was free from conference sessions, the wife joined me back in the room and announced she'd won me a prize. She'd been the winner of a door prize drawing during one of her sessions and came away with a JVC Everio digital video camera. It's super sweet and is probably a better video camera than I would have picked out had I been shopping for one. I immediately set about recording everything.
Friday night we went to see Watchmen. This is probably the movie I've been itching to see for the longest time and is one I'd been convinced would be a horrible tragedy of a film until seeing the early trailers for it, which looked very promising. Everything I'd seen up until I saw the actual movie had led me to believe it was going to be pretty darn faithful to the original book and I had long since announced to the wife that we would be seeing it opening night.
Being in D.C., we had IMax theaters at our disposal, but they were all sold out for Watchmen, so we reserved tickets for a normal theater showing.
Because of some conference commitments, we didn't get out of the hotel until nearly 6p and only had an hour to find the theater, find parking, find someplace to eat, eat and then make the show. We managed to do it, (though the finding parking was the major obstacle, it turned out) and wound up eating at a wrap-sandwich place across from the theater.
Then we saw the movie.
I have to say, there were some moments from the book that I would have preferred they left in the movie which they could have accommodated by trimming some of the lengthy fight scenes a bit. (I'm thinking of an Ozymandias/Dr. Manhattan conversation toward the end, in particular, and maybe an actual scene at the magazine stand to give us the slightest reason to care about those two characters dying later--maybe that's all in the Tales of the Black Freighter DVD, though.) And there were some minor elements (sugar cubes, nostalgia perfume spilling on Mars, etc.) that would have been nice to see, too, and wouldn't have required much in the way of time.
All in all, though, I really dug the movie, particularly Jackie Earle Haley's performance. It seems to me that Zack Snyder's Watchmen is about the best Watchmen movie we could have expected to receive from Hollywood and is a far cry better than just about anyone else would have given us. Sure, we all might have a different version in our heads, and somewhere there's an alternate universe where the whole thing was done as a 12-part HBO mini. But I thought it was a very loving tribute to the original source material. I now await the director's cut DVD with the restored Black Freighter material.
We got royally lost on the way home, thanks to a wrong turn into road work, which turned into an even wronger turn when we tried to turn around and head back the way we came only to have the workmen pull a baracade into the very road we needed to take and rudely wave us in the other direction. Fortunately, the road we were forced to take did eventually cross a street that showed up on our tiny, underdetailed atlas map of D.C. and we saw that it would soon intersect with the beltway we needed.
I then noted that Union Station is not located at 50 Mass Ave, but 40, so I decided to move down the street a bit and find 50. Trouble was, Union Station is at the intersection of 8 different roads and I wound up going down the wrong one. By the time I realized it, I'd committed too much to the road I was on and decided to cut over a block and hit Mass. Ave a bit further down. When I emerged onto it, I was in the 250s and nothing back the way I'd come looked very comic-shoppy.
Abandoning the initial search, I decided what I would do was to find the second shop on my list, which according to the Mapquest directions was not terribly far away, located on Dumbarton Street, which is in Georgetown. I found that on my Map, noted that it wasn't too far north of some of the more westerly National Mall attractions and decided it was a doable walk. I decided to cut over to Pennsylvania Ave, take it all the way to the White House, check out the sites as I walked around it and then hit Pennsylvania on the other side taking it all the way up to M Street and then down to Wisconsin Ave and on up to Dumbarton. However, by the time I reached the not quite half-way mark of my journey, I realized that while I could indeed make the trip all the way to Georgetown on foot, I wouldn't make it back on foot. My feet hurt way too much already and I could foresee a cab ride for which I did not have cash to pay in my future. Furthermore, none of the public transportation options listed on my map seemed ideal. So, I popped into the Ronald Reagan Building (actually, "popped" isn't the right word, as I pretty much had to go through a cavity search in order to gain entrance) and had lunch in the food court.
After this, I strolled semi-painfully near the Washington Monument and then down to some more of the Smithsonian museums. This time I checked out the American History Museum, where the most impressive things I saw were Dorothy's Ruby Slippers, and early Kermit the Frog and Oscar the Grouch puppets.
After this, I decided to take the shuttle back to the hotel and drive our car up to Georgetown. This involved walking a goodly distance, with my feet hurt increasingly more as I went. I was thankful that I'd not decided to walk all the way to Georgetown after all.
Only after I'd arrived at the shuttle stop in front of the capitol did I check my shuttle schedule and noted that while the shuttles ran every half hour from 8 a.m. until 12:30, they took a nice long break and resumed frequent service only at 3p. At that moment, it was around 1p.
Now, what I should have done in retrospect was hoofed it over to the Air and Space Museum and checked out their planetarium shows for the next couple of hours. Or gone back to the IMax theater in the Museum of Natural History; neither option occurred to me, though. Instead, I went back to EFFing Union Station and tried to find Massachusetts Ave again to see if I could find that EFFing comic shop. After successfully skirting around a rather large and scary gentleman who was screaming angrily at passersby, I found my way on to Mass. Ave and to what I thought was the vicinity of 50, where there clearly was no comic shop to be found. My feet hurt so much by then that all I wanted to do was get off of them, so I hobbled back to the capitol, collapsed in a shady patch of mulch and listened to Adam Carolla classics on my mp3 player. When the shuttle came, an hour and a half later, it was all I could do to climb aboard.
That afternoon, once the wife was free from conference sessions, the wife joined me back in the room and announced she'd won me a prize. She'd been the winner of a door prize drawing during one of her sessions and came away with a JVC Everio digital video camera. It's super sweet and is probably a better video camera than I would have picked out had I been shopping for one. I immediately set about recording everything.
Friday night we went to see Watchmen. This is probably the movie I've been itching to see for the longest time and is one I'd been convinced would be a horrible tragedy of a film until seeing the early trailers for it, which looked very promising. Everything I'd seen up until I saw the actual movie had led me to believe it was going to be pretty darn faithful to the original book and I had long since announced to the wife that we would be seeing it opening night.
Being in D.C., we had IMax theaters at our disposal, but they were all sold out for Watchmen, so we reserved tickets for a normal theater showing.
Because of some conference commitments, we didn't get out of the hotel until nearly 6p and only had an hour to find the theater, find parking, find someplace to eat, eat and then make the show. We managed to do it, (though the finding parking was the major obstacle, it turned out) and wound up eating at a wrap-sandwich place across from the theater.
Then we saw the movie.
I have to say, there were some moments from the book that I would have preferred they left in the movie which they could have accommodated by trimming some of the lengthy fight scenes a bit. (I'm thinking of an Ozymandias/Dr. Manhattan conversation toward the end, in particular, and maybe an actual scene at the magazine stand to give us the slightest reason to care about those two characters dying later--maybe that's all in the Tales of the Black Freighter DVD, though.) And there were some minor elements (sugar cubes, nostalgia perfume spilling on Mars, etc.) that would have been nice to see, too, and wouldn't have required much in the way of time.
All in all, though, I really dug the movie, particularly Jackie Earle Haley's performance. It seems to me that Zack Snyder's Watchmen is about the best Watchmen movie we could have expected to receive from Hollywood and is a far cry better than just about anyone else would have given us. Sure, we all might have a different version in our heads, and somewhere there's an alternate universe where the whole thing was done as a 12-part HBO mini. But I thought it was a very loving tribute to the original source material. I now await the director's cut DVD with the restored Black Freighter material.
We got royally lost on the way home, thanks to a wrong turn into road work, which turned into an even wronger turn when we tried to turn around and head back the way we came only to have the workmen pull a baracade into the very road we needed to take and rudely wave us in the other direction. Fortunately, the road we were forced to take did eventually cross a street that showed up on our tiny, underdetailed atlas map of D.C. and we saw that it would soon intersect with the beltway we needed.
Wednesday, March 25, 2009
Our Med-Con Con Adventure, Part 3
The Museum of Natural History was kind of neat, but mostly wasted on us. (Though I confess that the Hope Diamond was pretty impressive.) It's a place definitely geared for a school field-trip sort of crowd and there were plenty of those on hand that day. In fact, we quickly grew tired of that crowd and all the others and decided to get out.
After escaping the museum, we had a sit down on the stone benches that surround the front of the place for a rest. Considering there'd been massive snow storms in both WV and the D.C. area only a couple of days before, the weather certainly had taken a turn for the better and we had gorgeous sunny skies and 50 plus degree temperatures of the sort that made our heavy coats less than ideal. There were several other people around us on the benches, but moments after sitting down we were approached by a not-at-all-shabbily dressed woman with loads of bling who quickly pinged on our We're-Being-Conned-O-Meter. While I've owned such a meter for much of my life, I only really figured out how to turn it on around 15 years ago during a trip to New Orleans with my buddy Joe. Since then, it's almost always on with the volume set to klaxon, warning me not to talk to strangers in cities. Even if I'd left my meter back home with my Gold-coated New Balances, though, this con-woman was so completely out of her depth when it came to playing the particular con she was attempting that it wouldn't have mattered.
It started innocently enough, with the woman, let's call her Connie, asking us if we were familiar with the area. We explained that we were not. Secure in the knowledge that we were not locals (and, therefore not likely used to people trying to con them) Connie then dropped all pretense of asking for directions and shifted into primary con-mode. And she did this so with such a suddenness that she couldn't have been more obvious about it if she'd adopted a Montgomery Burns voice and muttered, "Ehhhxcellent... now my true ruse can begin," while rubbing her talons together.
Then, displaying some of the worst acting I've encountered in the wild--I mean, she couldn't have done a less-convincing portrayal if she were reading from an index card--Connie explained to us that she had been visiting the museum with her elderly grandparents, but had gotten separated from them in the crowd and now could not find them and they were lost. Then, before our sympathies had a chance to get too revved up, Connie adopted a tone meant to assure us that the grandparents being lost part wasn't the part of her story we needed to be concerned about, for she had already contacted the police, who were even then searching for them. No, no, her real concern was her diabetes, which had been acting up on her that morning. And, unfortunately, her "diabetes medicine" (her words) was locked away in her grandparents' car which she couldn't get into, because her grandparents had the keys and they were, as she had previously indicated, missing. She then explained that because her diabetes medicine was locked in the car, she needed to get something to eat soon or she was afraid she would fall out.
Okay. I imagine this con might have worked on your average tourist, y'know, if she'd been even the least bit convincing. Unfortunately, Connie had chosen to pull this particular con in the midst of a veritable invasion of the National Mall by medical professionals. Sure, she happened to pick us, but the place was crawling with doctors in plain clothes trying to escape the conference with their families, and dozens and dozens of white-coated interns. Her odds, therefore, of landing a mark that didn't know precisely what the symptoms of diabetic acidosis look like, not to mention that she clearly wasn't suffering from them, weren't all that great.
Perhaps sensing our skepticism, Connie assured us that she wasn't asking for any money--just, if we could help her out a little, (and by "help her out a little" I inferred she meant give her money). I turned to my wife, waiting to see how long it would take her to start pointing out the flaws in this woman's performance; the wife, after all, has a finely-tuned We're-Being-Conned-O-Meter of her own, which doesn't even have an off button and is equipped with concert stack-speakers and a subwoofer. She has gained this expertise at bullshit-detection because of the practice she gets by having to deal with people trying to con narcotics prescriptions out of her multiple times a day. At work, she's very good at spotting such cons and even better at dealing with those who cross her. And when she's on vacation--even if it's kind of a working vacation--she does NOT want to put up with any bullshit.
I thought the wife might start Connie off with a patient history, just to try and draw her out of any comfort zone of lies she might have and make her dance a bit. Instead, though, the wife simply held up both hands, palms out and waved them in a slow circular motion--the international sign-language for "We've had all the horseshit we need, here; go sell it somewhere else."
Connie saw this and instantly became furious. Very loudly she called my wife a "stuck up bitch" and accused her of having no human decency. She cursed at us a bit more just to drive the point home. Then, with the eyes of the surrounding people telling her she'd burned all her conning opportunities in the immediate vicinity, Connie climbed the remaining museum steps and went inside, showing no weakness of limb nor confusion of manner usually associated with people about to go into a diabetic coma.
While the incident didn't dampen our afternoon, it certainly made it a little soggy. What really burned us, though, was that she'd singled us out from dozens of other people sitting around in front of the museum. What was it about us that attracted her attention? Do we scream Easy Mark, or do we just look like nice, gullible people?
The incident stayed with us, and for the rest of the day we kept coming up with Snappy Answers to Stupid Con Women that would have been far more satisfying to have said. I was all for offering her an impromptu acting class and perhaps a quick lesson on faking symptoms. (After all, I used to regularly earn money as a fake patient for medical students to diagnose back in Tri-Metro.) I think our favorite comeback, however, was to just say, "Well, we've got a couple of pieces of Dentyne and a lint roller. You're welcome to them."
After escaping the museum, we had a sit down on the stone benches that surround the front of the place for a rest. Considering there'd been massive snow storms in both WV and the D.C. area only a couple of days before, the weather certainly had taken a turn for the better and we had gorgeous sunny skies and 50 plus degree temperatures of the sort that made our heavy coats less than ideal. There were several other people around us on the benches, but moments after sitting down we were approached by a not-at-all-shabbily dressed woman with loads of bling who quickly pinged on our We're-Being-Conned-O-Meter. While I've owned such a meter for much of my life, I only really figured out how to turn it on around 15 years ago during a trip to New Orleans with my buddy Joe. Since then, it's almost always on with the volume set to klaxon, warning me not to talk to strangers in cities. Even if I'd left my meter back home with my Gold-coated New Balances, though, this con-woman was so completely out of her depth when it came to playing the particular con she was attempting that it wouldn't have mattered.
It started innocently enough, with the woman, let's call her Connie, asking us if we were familiar with the area. We explained that we were not. Secure in the knowledge that we were not locals (and, therefore not likely used to people trying to con them) Connie then dropped all pretense of asking for directions and shifted into primary con-mode. And she did this so with such a suddenness that she couldn't have been more obvious about it if she'd adopted a Montgomery Burns voice and muttered, "Ehhhxcellent... now my true ruse can begin," while rubbing her talons together.
Then, displaying some of the worst acting I've encountered in the wild--I mean, she couldn't have done a less-convincing portrayal if she were reading from an index card--Connie explained to us that she had been visiting the museum with her elderly grandparents, but had gotten separated from them in the crowd and now could not find them and they were lost. Then, before our sympathies had a chance to get too revved up, Connie adopted a tone meant to assure us that the grandparents being lost part wasn't the part of her story we needed to be concerned about, for she had already contacted the police, who were even then searching for them. No, no, her real concern was her diabetes, which had been acting up on her that morning. And, unfortunately, her "diabetes medicine" (her words) was locked away in her grandparents' car which she couldn't get into, because her grandparents had the keys and they were, as she had previously indicated, missing. She then explained that because her diabetes medicine was locked in the car, she needed to get something to eat soon or she was afraid she would fall out.
Okay. I imagine this con might have worked on your average tourist, y'know, if she'd been even the least bit convincing. Unfortunately, Connie had chosen to pull this particular con in the midst of a veritable invasion of the National Mall by medical professionals. Sure, she happened to pick us, but the place was crawling with doctors in plain clothes trying to escape the conference with their families, and dozens and dozens of white-coated interns. Her odds, therefore, of landing a mark that didn't know precisely what the symptoms of diabetic acidosis look like, not to mention that she clearly wasn't suffering from them, weren't all that great.
Perhaps sensing our skepticism, Connie assured us that she wasn't asking for any money--just, if we could help her out a little, (and by "help her out a little" I inferred she meant give her money). I turned to my wife, waiting to see how long it would take her to start pointing out the flaws in this woman's performance; the wife, after all, has a finely-tuned We're-Being-Conned-O-Meter of her own, which doesn't even have an off button and is equipped with concert stack-speakers and a subwoofer. She has gained this expertise at bullshit-detection because of the practice she gets by having to deal with people trying to con narcotics prescriptions out of her multiple times a day. At work, she's very good at spotting such cons and even better at dealing with those who cross her. And when she's on vacation--even if it's kind of a working vacation--she does NOT want to put up with any bullshit.
I thought the wife might start Connie off with a patient history, just to try and draw her out of any comfort zone of lies she might have and make her dance a bit. Instead, though, the wife simply held up both hands, palms out and waved them in a slow circular motion--the international sign-language for "We've had all the horseshit we need, here; go sell it somewhere else."
Connie saw this and instantly became furious. Very loudly she called my wife a "stuck up bitch" and accused her of having no human decency. She cursed at us a bit more just to drive the point home. Then, with the eyes of the surrounding people telling her she'd burned all her conning opportunities in the immediate vicinity, Connie climbed the remaining museum steps and went inside, showing no weakness of limb nor confusion of manner usually associated with people about to go into a diabetic coma.
While the incident didn't dampen our afternoon, it certainly made it a little soggy. What really burned us, though, was that she'd singled us out from dozens of other people sitting around in front of the museum. What was it about us that attracted her attention? Do we scream Easy Mark, or do we just look like nice, gullible people?
The incident stayed with us, and for the rest of the day we kept coming up with Snappy Answers to Stupid Con Women that would have been far more satisfying to have said. I was all for offering her an impromptu acting class and perhaps a quick lesson on faking symptoms. (After all, I used to regularly earn money as a fake patient for medical students to diagnose back in Tri-Metro.) I think our favorite comeback, however, was to just say, "Well, we've got a couple of pieces of Dentyne and a lint roller. You're welcome to them."
Monday, March 23, 2009
Our Med-Con Adventure, Part 2
The wife was pretty much free of conference duties on Thursday. So instead of going to one of the breakfast sessions, we opted to dine at the Gaylord National's breakfast buffet. Now, let me tell you, I am not accustomed to paying $25 for a single breakfast, let alone the $50 it takes for two. But the way we looked at it was that since the hospital was paying for half of that, we were really only out $25 for the both of us, which we do regularly spend for both of us to break our fasts. And what a fine break it was, too! This was no continental muffin basket kind of place; this joint had pretty much all the breakfast items we care to eat and everything was top notch. I mean REAL eggs in the scrambled eggs (when's the last time you went to a breakfast buffet that had those?) and these tasty little apple-chicken sausages that were nearly worth the $25 alone. Yowsa, this joint was fantastic. We feasted heartily, as we knew we had a lot of walking in our future.
Instead of driving back to downtown D.C. and going through the ordeal of having to find parking, we opted to use the hotel's free shuttle service to the National Mall and just walk from there. The only bad part is that I knew I didn't have good shoes for walking, as the only pair I own that I'd trust to remain comfortable for a day's jaunt are my New Balances which I left at home cause one of them is covered in a layer of Goldcoat from our still ongoing bathroom renovation adventure. I figured my Rocket Dog's would leave me with hurt feet by the end of the day, but I was prepared to make the sacrifice for the sake of not looking like a rube with a yellow foot.
The shuttle dropped us and 30 other medical types in front of the capitol building. From there we visited the National Botanical Gallery, which was nice and earthy-smelling. Then we hoofed it to the air and space museum, which I'd been to before as a kid. From there we strolled across to the National Gallery of Art, where we dined in their food court before heading back to the Western building to gaze upon us some art. Among the highlights were some paintings by Edgar Degas, who is a figure I once played a man pretending to be in a production of Degas C'est Moi by David Ives; we also saw what is currently the only portrait by Leonardo Da Vinci in the Western Hemisphere, Generva de' Benci. I was excited to get to their photography displays to see some Ansel Adams they had, as I've never seen any in person. It was pretty underwhelming. Instead of the vast landscapes he's known for, this was a series of pictures of ocean surf which, sure, were all crisp and Ansel Adamsy, but not at all the dish I thought I'd ordered.
My major goal of the day, however, was to head over to some of the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History so I could check out something I remembered from my childhood. See this was a museum I'd once visited with my dad and sister when I was probably around 10 years old and my sister was 6. The primary memory I have of the event was not even inside the museum itself, but out in the mall in front of it, where a life-size, fiberglass triceratops was on display. The triceratops was facing the museum itself and, in my memory, was nestled in or near a small cluster of bushes. Being adventuresome kids, it was easy for my sister and I to climb up the horned head of the giant dinosaur and then scramble all the way up to the crest of its back, which, in my memory at least, was probably eight to ten feet off the ground. There was plenty of room up there for a couple of kids, provided we stayed astride the spine. Any further out, though, and you risked falling off.
My sister, having no external gonads, took to sliding down the tail of the triceratops, landing in the dirt below. It was by no means designed to be used this way and made for a really steep slide for her, but she liked it. I wouldn't take the risk, cause it really was a long way down. I think this may have offended my sister, somehow, because about the second time she'd slid down the tail, she looked up at me from the ground below and announced that she was going to push me off. Maybe she was hoping I'd slide down the tail to get away from her. I don't know. Whatever the case, she dashed around to the front of our cretaceous beastie and began climbing up toward me, cackling with evil 6-year-old glee the whole time. I, being a wussy child, began screaming bloody murder. I had no escape other than the tail and I don't know how many dinosaurs you've ridden, but this one's ass was pretty slick and there weren't a lot of hand-holds. True to her word my sister reached me and began to push at me with her feet, kicking me until I reached the tipping point and slid off the back haunch, falling--again, to my memory--eight to ten feet. I landed feet first, in a heap, in the dirt below. And while it hurt, I didn't break anything. I resolved that my sister would not be so lucky, though, and began scrambling up dinosaur's head after her. I don't know why I thought I had a chance at flinging her off, as she had no fear of sliding down the tail and could have just run around and pushed me off again if she wanted. I also have no idea what my dad was doing during all this, but he only started paying attention when she was screaming and made us both get off the triceratops.
Perhaps fortunately, the triceratops of my memory is no more. There is still a triceratops skull on display in front of the museum, but no trace of the fiberglass one.
(TO BE CONTINUED...)
Instead of driving back to downtown D.C. and going through the ordeal of having to find parking, we opted to use the hotel's free shuttle service to the National Mall and just walk from there. The only bad part is that I knew I didn't have good shoes for walking, as the only pair I own that I'd trust to remain comfortable for a day's jaunt are my New Balances which I left at home cause one of them is covered in a layer of Goldcoat from our still ongoing bathroom renovation adventure. I figured my Rocket Dog's would leave me with hurt feet by the end of the day, but I was prepared to make the sacrifice for the sake of not looking like a rube with a yellow foot.
The shuttle dropped us and 30 other medical types in front of the capitol building. From there we visited the National Botanical Gallery, which was nice and earthy-smelling. Then we hoofed it to the air and space museum, which I'd been to before as a kid. From there we strolled across to the National Gallery of Art, where we dined in their food court before heading back to the Western building to gaze upon us some art. Among the highlights were some paintings by Edgar Degas, who is a figure I once played a man pretending to be in a production of Degas C'est Moi by David Ives; we also saw what is currently the only portrait by Leonardo Da Vinci in the Western Hemisphere, Generva de' Benci. I was excited to get to their photography displays to see some Ansel Adams they had, as I've never seen any in person. It was pretty underwhelming. Instead of the vast landscapes he's known for, this was a series of pictures of ocean surf which, sure, were all crisp and Ansel Adamsy, but not at all the dish I thought I'd ordered.My major goal of the day, however, was to head over to some of the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History so I could check out something I remembered from my childhood. See this was a museum I'd once visited with my dad and sister when I was probably around 10 years old and my sister was 6. The primary memory I have of the event was not even inside the museum itself, but out in the mall in front of it, where a life-size, fiberglass triceratops was on display. The triceratops was facing the museum itself and, in my memory, was nestled in or near a small cluster of bushes. Being adventuresome kids, it was easy for my sister and I to climb up the horned head of the giant dinosaur and then scramble all the way up to the crest of its back, which, in my memory at least, was probably eight to ten feet off the ground. There was plenty of room up there for a couple of kids, provided we stayed astride the spine. Any further out, though, and you risked falling off.
My sister, having no external gonads, took to sliding down the tail of the triceratops, landing in the dirt below. It was by no means designed to be used this way and made for a really steep slide for her, but she liked it. I wouldn't take the risk, cause it really was a long way down. I think this may have offended my sister, somehow, because about the second time she'd slid down the tail, she looked up at me from the ground below and announced that she was going to push me off. Maybe she was hoping I'd slide down the tail to get away from her. I don't know. Whatever the case, she dashed around to the front of our cretaceous beastie and began climbing up toward me, cackling with evil 6-year-old glee the whole time. I, being a wussy child, began screaming bloody murder. I had no escape other than the tail and I don't know how many dinosaurs you've ridden, but this one's ass was pretty slick and there weren't a lot of hand-holds. True to her word my sister reached me and began to push at me with her feet, kicking me until I reached the tipping point and slid off the back haunch, falling--again, to my memory--eight to ten feet. I landed feet first, in a heap, in the dirt below. And while it hurt, I didn't break anything. I resolved that my sister would not be so lucky, though, and began scrambling up dinosaur's head after her. I don't know why I thought I had a chance at flinging her off, as she had no fear of sliding down the tail and could have just run around and pushed me off again if she wanted. I also have no idea what my dad was doing during all this, but he only started paying attention when she was screaming and made us both get off the triceratops.
Perhaps fortunately, the triceratops of my memory is no more. There is still a triceratops skull on display in front of the museum, but no trace of the fiberglass one.
(TO BE CONTINUED...)
Friday, March 20, 2009
Our Med-Con Adventure, Part 1
I've noted before that hauling my wife with me to a nerd convention such as Dragon Con would be about as fun for her as if she hauled me to a medical convention; i.e., none at all. Turns out, I could not have been more wrong. A couple weeks back, we went to my first medical convention and we both had an absolute blast.The wife first offered to take me to the MedCon a few months back. The hospital was paying for her whole ride, but for a little extra money I could sign up for the conference as well and tag along. While I figured it would be a pretty boring affair, I also thought there would be some fun things for me to do in D.C. while she was busy conferencing. I said, "Okay," expecting that the trip would involve a lot of me having to drop the wife off at her conference, get lost trying to find something in D.C. and then have to come back and get her for lunch, etc. I did no research into where exactly we were going. Barely did any research into what sort of things I'd like to do while there. My thought was, "it's D.C., there'll be plenty to choose from once I get there."
Five days before we were scheduled to leave, it occurred to us that we'd made no plans for what to do with the circus animals. Fortunately, our vet did pet boarding, so we signed Sadie up for that and decided to leave the cat at home with plenty of food, water, toys and litter. We felt terribly guilty about this; not for the cat, so much, as cats are pretty independent and Avie's the most well-adjusted animal I've ever owned. Sadie, however, is a pound puppy and we feared she would think we were taking her back to the pound if we boarded her. Granted, this was a place with spacious pens and half a dozen exercise sessions a day, amounting to what we explained to her was "doggie camp." However, we didn't feel much better knowing she'd think we were ditching her. I was also concerned that she would bite one of the vet techs taking care of her. Sadie has been getting a bit more suspicious in nature as she's aged and strangers are often woofed at and/or, on rare occasions, snapped at. For instance, she loves my parents cause she's met them before. But during a recent visit from my family, she was stand-offish toward my sister, snapped her on more than one occasion, and only seemed to finally make friends on the last day they were in town.
So a couple of Wednesdays ago, we went.
This was the American College of Osteopathic Family Physicians Conference, a five-day event taking place this year near Washington D.C. at the Gaylord National Resort and Convention Center, located on the garbage-strewn yet still scenic shores of the Potomac River in Maryland. The Gaylord National is not an easy facility to miss. It's gigantic, with a mostly glass face that covers the atrium area within. The conference itself would take place in the conference center, so my fears of having to drive the wife around were quashed.
The interior of the place was very impressive, with three different levels tiered one atop the other in the atrium. The upper two areas contained the massive front desk area and ballroom. The lowest level contained the garden area, with lots of plants broken up by a walkway that lead over small bridges that spanned a babbling man-made stream that pooled down below a wide fountain area. The atrium was so large that it also contained two double-storied buildings, each a retail shop. Surrounding the lower level were other restaurants and shops as well as corridors that led off to other sections of the hotel and conference center. It was like some sort of futuristic bio-dome city under glass. And while it is certainly a fancy place, it somehow fails to come off as hoity-toity.We checked in, found our room complete with atrium-facing balcony to be pretty damned amazing. There was little time to enjoy it, though, as the wife's first session was about to start and we had to go check in for the conference. Being signed up for the conference too allowed me to partake in some of the meals that were sometimes served during the conference sessions. These were often sponsored by drug and other medical-based companies looking to get their name out there now that the drug-rep swag they'd been known for previously has been legally curtailed. In fact, the first session was a lunch session with some truly impressive food. I'm sure it was standard catered faire for D.C. but it would have shown up most higher-priced restaurants I've ever been to. I was starting to like this already.
With the wife tied up for the afternoon, I decided to try and find a comic shop. I'd researched a few online and supposedly there was one on Massachusetts Ave. I'd printed Mapquest directions to it as well as from it to another shop in Georgetown and then back to the hotel from there. Unfortunately, driving anywhere in the D.C. area is a confusing and often dangerous proposition, especially without a navigator. Not helping matters, I made a wrong turn and wound up driving around in circles in downtown D.C. without a proper map to help guide me back to where I needed to be. I saw some cool stuff, but mostly I was frustrated and irritable. Eventually I gave up. Since I'd not reached my first Mapquest destination, I had no real starting point to get to the second one. So I had to figure my way out of there, which involved more going in circles and more frustration. Eventually I did get out, albeit going the wrong direction and had to turn back around. On my way back to the hotel, I spotted the road I should have taken.
That night, we dined with a med school friend of the wife's, at a sports bar tucked within the lower level of the conference center. (After all, it wouldn't be a proper con-experience unless I wound up in a sports bar eating tasty unhealthy food at some point.) Then we got to mill around and enjoy the night time atrium ambiance, including an impressive and colorful water fountain music-review that looked like something out of Vegas, before retiring to our room. As the room opened onto the atrium, we left our balcony door open so we could hear the trickle of the man-made babbling stream of the lower level. It lulled us right to sleep. (Ahh, such blessed sleep.)
(TO BE CONTINUED...)
Wednesday, March 18, 2009
Minor relief
Well, I pretty much slept through the night last night, unassisted by Benadryl. I took my Alteril just before bed (you're supposed to take it an hour before) and had a little more trouble than usual getting to sleep. Around midnight I woke up and thought I was in a wakeful state. I lay there for a few minutes and was about to get up and take a Benedryl but decided to just keep trying. I eventually drifted off. When I next looked at the clock it was after 6a and I was greatly relieved.
Now, I wouldn't classify the sleep I got as the deepest I've ever had, as I did wake up here and there throughout the night. But to remain so asleep that I didn't even look at the clock hasn't happened in a while, so I'll take this as a good sign.
Better still, no anxieties. Sweet.
Now, I wouldn't classify the sleep I got as the deepest I've ever had, as I did wake up here and there throughout the night. But to remain so asleep that I didn't even look at the clock hasn't happened in a while, so I'll take this as a good sign.
Better still, no anxieties. Sweet.
Tuesday, March 17, 2009
Radio Silence
Sorry for the dead air around here. I'm afraid I've been going through some sleep-deprivation issues for the past couple of weeks and have just not felt the mental strength to tackle much writing.
I've long been a sufferer of insomnia, mostly stemming from my frequent inability to shut off my brain compounded by my ability to worry myself into a panic-attack on just about any subject under the sun. The going to sleep part isn't an issue so much as is the remaining asleep part. I tend to wake up around 3 or 4 in the morning just long enough for my brain to latch onto one or more of my revolving Hour of the Wolf topics of concern (which are always magnified at that time of morning) and then I stew on them for the next couple hours, catching only snatches of sleep here and there, not getting any real REM time to speak of until close to sunrise. It used to only happen once in a while, but the past couple of weeks have been particularly bad. It's maddening.
In the past, I've tried taking Benedryl before bed, which is loaded with the usual sleep-aid of dyphenhydromine. I find this only works to my advantage about half the time, though. Some nights I take one or two before bed and sleep right through the night with restful dreams. The other half of the time, I am seized by the most effed up chaotic dreams my little pea brain can produce and then still wake up at 3 a.m. for more Hour of the Medicine-Headed Wolf worries, which are far worse than normal ones. The only thing I can really do to combat this is to get up and go watch TV until my brain can reset and I get sleepy again. Too bad TV at 3 a.m. sucks so much.
Like I said, this is nothing new to me. I've sort of examined this area of my life and have come to realize this kind of thing has been haunting me for a long time, going way back into early childhood and probably has its earliest roots in my mother's death when I was age 4. That major event spun into a deep fear of my father dying, which stayed with me to varying degrees through middle school. And, fear being fairly transferable, I developed the power to worry about lots of very silly things and some earth-shattering ones, like nuclear war. This, mind you, was the 1980s, when all we had to worry about nuke-wise was the Soviets getting a wild hair up their ass and deciding a first-strike made sense, not to mention a president who regularly called them evil in public. Good sleep was a hard-won commodity throughout much of this time. I even once guesstimated that I spent collectively around a year of my teenaged life in a state of worry and depression. Reconsidering it now, it might have been more.
Somewhere in young adulthood, I decided worrying about things I had no control over was not productive. I'd had this pointed out to me plenty of times before, but I finally came to agree with it and put it into practice. Worked out pretty good for me for a while, too. Then you get thrown into the real world and suddenly have worries about job security, or the new neighbors downstairs in your festering hellhole of an apartment building, the ones who clearly look up to no good and spend a suspicious amount of time hammering (they were up to no good, and were evidently pulling up floorboards to hide their drugs, a fact I later learned when the police came and hauled them away in the middle of the night), and suddenly worrying doesn't seem out of the question. Then there's the whole matter of people who fly planes into buildings.
Last week I was waking up at 3 a.m. like clockwork, stewing on the horrors and turmoils of the world over which I have no control, and the turmoils of my own life over which I seemingly don't either (like the fact that I don't see my wife very much because she's having to work long hours at the hospital at a job she is coming to hate precisely because of those long hours--and it's freaking me out that she's so miserable and I can't do anything about it and I have life so much easier than she does, so what sense does it make that I'm the one having panic attacks?). And, perhaps because I wasn't getting good sleep, the wolves of 3 a.m. began following me into the daylight and I fell into a swirling funk. I decided to fight back and dropped my caffeine consumption to one cup of coffee in the morning--just enough to stave off the headaches. (Sorry, Sonny.) I also avoided Benedryl, cause I didn't want any more effed up nightmares bleeding into wolfy tossing & turning time. Instead, I switched to Melatonin, which is what I used to use to get to sleep back in my morning radio days. It might have helped with the getting to sleep, but it had largely worn off by the time I needed to stay asleep at 3 a.m. The wife and I even tried switching to the guest bedroom to sleep, hoping the change of scenery would help. Not so much, though the wolves themselves have left me be for a few days, preferring to just let me lie there not sleeping in relative peace.
Yesterday, I went to Wally world to see what sort of other sleep aids were available, but they were almost all chock full of dyphenhydromine. Then I saw a product called Alteril, which I've seen ads for on TV. It's supposed to be an all natural sleep aid full of the usual herbal and hormonal sleep assisters, like Melatonin, Chamomile, L-Tryptophan, Valerian Root, Skullcap Extract, etc. Taking a couple of them an hour before bed did seem to calm my mind down a good bit, and I fell asleep. At 2 a.m., though, I popped awake and pretty much stayed that way until nearly 5. I wasn't even worrying on anything; I was just irritatingly awake. I tried watching TV. I tried warm milk. Twice. Finally, at 4:30, I took a damned Benedryl and was knocked out by it, sleeping soundly until 9 a.m.
All of this sounds like the stirrings of a man who needs a vacation. Trouble is, I JUST GOT BACK FROM ONE!!! It was a rather restful trip to the Washington D.C. area for a medical conference. And, believe me, if anything can put you to sleep, it'll be one of those.
(TO BE CONTINUED...)
I've long been a sufferer of insomnia, mostly stemming from my frequent inability to shut off my brain compounded by my ability to worry myself into a panic-attack on just about any subject under the sun. The going to sleep part isn't an issue so much as is the remaining asleep part. I tend to wake up around 3 or 4 in the morning just long enough for my brain to latch onto one or more of my revolving Hour of the Wolf topics of concern (which are always magnified at that time of morning) and then I stew on them for the next couple hours, catching only snatches of sleep here and there, not getting any real REM time to speak of until close to sunrise. It used to only happen once in a while, but the past couple of weeks have been particularly bad. It's maddening.
In the past, I've tried taking Benedryl before bed, which is loaded with the usual sleep-aid of dyphenhydromine. I find this only works to my advantage about half the time, though. Some nights I take one or two before bed and sleep right through the night with restful dreams. The other half of the time, I am seized by the most effed up chaotic dreams my little pea brain can produce and then still wake up at 3 a.m. for more Hour of the Medicine-Headed Wolf worries, which are far worse than normal ones. The only thing I can really do to combat this is to get up and go watch TV until my brain can reset and I get sleepy again. Too bad TV at 3 a.m. sucks so much.
Like I said, this is nothing new to me. I've sort of examined this area of my life and have come to realize this kind of thing has been haunting me for a long time, going way back into early childhood and probably has its earliest roots in my mother's death when I was age 4. That major event spun into a deep fear of my father dying, which stayed with me to varying degrees through middle school. And, fear being fairly transferable, I developed the power to worry about lots of very silly things and some earth-shattering ones, like nuclear war. This, mind you, was the 1980s, when all we had to worry about nuke-wise was the Soviets getting a wild hair up their ass and deciding a first-strike made sense, not to mention a president who regularly called them evil in public. Good sleep was a hard-won commodity throughout much of this time. I even once guesstimated that I spent collectively around a year of my teenaged life in a state of worry and depression. Reconsidering it now, it might have been more.
Somewhere in young adulthood, I decided worrying about things I had no control over was not productive. I'd had this pointed out to me plenty of times before, but I finally came to agree with it and put it into practice. Worked out pretty good for me for a while, too. Then you get thrown into the real world and suddenly have worries about job security, or the new neighbors downstairs in your festering hellhole of an apartment building, the ones who clearly look up to no good and spend a suspicious amount of time hammering (they were up to no good, and were evidently pulling up floorboards to hide their drugs, a fact I later learned when the police came and hauled them away in the middle of the night), and suddenly worrying doesn't seem out of the question. Then there's the whole matter of people who fly planes into buildings.
Last week I was waking up at 3 a.m. like clockwork, stewing on the horrors and turmoils of the world over which I have no control, and the turmoils of my own life over which I seemingly don't either (like the fact that I don't see my wife very much because she's having to work long hours at the hospital at a job she is coming to hate precisely because of those long hours--and it's freaking me out that she's so miserable and I can't do anything about it and I have life so much easier than she does, so what sense does it make that I'm the one having panic attacks?). And, perhaps because I wasn't getting good sleep, the wolves of 3 a.m. began following me into the daylight and I fell into a swirling funk. I decided to fight back and dropped my caffeine consumption to one cup of coffee in the morning--just enough to stave off the headaches. (Sorry, Sonny.) I also avoided Benedryl, cause I didn't want any more effed up nightmares bleeding into wolfy tossing & turning time. Instead, I switched to Melatonin, which is what I used to use to get to sleep back in my morning radio days. It might have helped with the getting to sleep, but it had largely worn off by the time I needed to stay asleep at 3 a.m. The wife and I even tried switching to the guest bedroom to sleep, hoping the change of scenery would help. Not so much, though the wolves themselves have left me be for a few days, preferring to just let me lie there not sleeping in relative peace.
Yesterday, I went to Wally world to see what sort of other sleep aids were available, but they were almost all chock full of dyphenhydromine. Then I saw a product called Alteril, which I've seen ads for on TV. It's supposed to be an all natural sleep aid full of the usual herbal and hormonal sleep assisters, like Melatonin, Chamomile, L-Tryptophan, Valerian Root, Skullcap Extract, etc. Taking a couple of them an hour before bed did seem to calm my mind down a good bit, and I fell asleep. At 2 a.m., though, I popped awake and pretty much stayed that way until nearly 5. I wasn't even worrying on anything; I was just irritatingly awake. I tried watching TV. I tried warm milk. Twice. Finally, at 4:30, I took a damned Benedryl and was knocked out by it, sleeping soundly until 9 a.m.
All of this sounds like the stirrings of a man who needs a vacation. Trouble is, I JUST GOT BACK FROM ONE!!! It was a rather restful trip to the Washington D.C. area for a medical conference. And, believe me, if anything can put you to sleep, it'll be one of those.
(TO BE CONTINUED...)
Monday, March 9, 2009
Radio Days (Part 3)
Around this time, I was dating my future wife long-distance, visiting her in North Carolina or meeting in Atlanta whenever we could. Hearing my morning show woes, the girlfriend told me of a morning show out of Charlotte she loved called the Bob & Sheri show. I got to hear a few episodes of it during a visit to NC and really took to it as well. Bob & Sheri are kind of the anti-morning zoo show in that they're more conversational and personality based than crass-humor or radio bit-based. At the time, they still played music, too, but largely they just chatted about the usual morning show topics from their perspective. I really dug the show and thought it was exactly the sort of format that would do well at my own station. Our demographic was 25 to 50 year old women and so was theirs. Seemed a good fit. Unfortunately, any Bob & Sheri sensibilities still had to be squeezed in between the umpteenth repeat of My Heart Will Go On, and once again had to be concise, so in practice it didn't work as well. Still, it gave me something to shoot for.
At the end of the next ratings period, we were both walking under a heavy heavy cloud, feeling that the sky would fall at any moment. We knew how it would happen, too. There would be a meeting called (in my experience, never EVER a good sign), probably with us individually, possibly with us both, and we would be told that numbers were down and we were fired. And, sure enough, one day a meeting was called, but for the entire staff. There we sat, all doom and gloom as we waited in the ad-sales room for someone to open the conference room doors. The doors were opened, we all shuffled in and looked around to see streamers and balloons and decorations and a giant sign that said "CONGRATULATIONS!"
Oh, hell, I thought. They're firing the lot of us. That sign really means "Congratulations, you suck worse than ANY radio station has ever sucked before; leave your keys on the conference table; you have five minutes to leave the building."
Turned out, though, that the decorations were there to celebrate the fact that our station's ratings had come back and we turned out to be #1 in the market for the first time in forever. Not only that, but our morning show had respectable numbers and was the #2 show in the area, after John Boy & Billy. Now, I'd like to be able to say these numbers were based largely on our talent as radio people, but that's not entirely the case. A major factor in this is that the station that was our number one competition in the area wound up moving their broadcast tower out of the area, putting their signal out of reach for a great many listeners. A lot of them turned to us as a replacement. Management had known this was a possibility (though I don't recall them letting me know about it), but it was not a guarantee as there were several other stations in the area with morning shows. I say all that to say this: we had our reprieve. Furthermore, with the numbers as good as they were, a lot of the people who'd been up our ass all year long finally climbed out. At long last we were finally left, if not alone then at least at a comfortable distance.
Meanwhile, back in my real life, things were getting pretty serious between me and the wife-to-be. I hated living 600 miles away from her and had actually not been too worried about being fired before, as that would at least give me the excuse to move to North Carolina. She'd already offered me her folks' Avion camper to stay in, should it come to that. And though we had not yet officially become engaged, we had been shopping around for rings and were very much in discussions. I figured give the station until July or August and then turn in at least a month's notice in time for them to find a new morning show person to replace me. In the meantime, I would try to save money for the move, which turned out to be easier because I got a pretty massive pay raise at work for no adequately apparent reason.
In late July, I picked my date to drop the news. Before I could do it, though, another staff meeting was called in the conference room. I didn't care, I felt invulnerable, but still the news was something of a shock. Our GM announced that our station had been sold to another local group of radio stations. This was a state-based media company that Cat had once worked for, one which was so notorious for being cheap that they actually made the DJs bring their own toilet paper to work. Our GM assured us that this was no longer the case and that the new company had agreed to take all employees with no layoff plans for the immediate future. The fact that the new company also had a reputation for never ever giving raises (something I'd enjoyed receiving on a more than annual basis since starting in professional radio) threw our recent massive pay raises into a new light. Turned out our old owners were trying to compensate for the cheapness of the new regime by giving us pay raises in advance, knowing the new company would have to honor them.
Of course, after learning the station had been sold off, my big departure news seemed kind of tame. It also came as a surprise to no one, as the staff had been wagering on how long it would take me to head for NC since the girlfriend and I had started dating.
I stepped down as morning show co-host in early August to allow Lee to take over again as Cat's morning show partner. (Which only made sense, as they were married in real life.) On my final day, I announced on the air that I had big news and then spilled the details of my departure. Cat, in turn, had some major news of her own to announce: she was pregnant. We then spent the next four hours trying to convince the listeners that it wasn't mine and had nothing to do with me leaving town.
That was not my last radio gig. I found a regular on-air slot in North Carolina, working for the very station that originated the Bob & Sheri show. That job also came with a fairly high degree of drama and many lessons learned about how commercial radio works. Overall, though, it was a positive experience, though if I never hear "Mambo #5" again in my life, I will not be too broken hearted. At least it wasn't Rod Stewart.
At the end of the next ratings period, we were both walking under a heavy heavy cloud, feeling that the sky would fall at any moment. We knew how it would happen, too. There would be a meeting called (in my experience, never EVER a good sign), probably with us individually, possibly with us both, and we would be told that numbers were down and we were fired. And, sure enough, one day a meeting was called, but for the entire staff. There we sat, all doom and gloom as we waited in the ad-sales room for someone to open the conference room doors. The doors were opened, we all shuffled in and looked around to see streamers and balloons and decorations and a giant sign that said "CONGRATULATIONS!"
Oh, hell, I thought. They're firing the lot of us. That sign really means "Congratulations, you suck worse than ANY radio station has ever sucked before; leave your keys on the conference table; you have five minutes to leave the building."
Turned out, though, that the decorations were there to celebrate the fact that our station's ratings had come back and we turned out to be #1 in the market for the first time in forever. Not only that, but our morning show had respectable numbers and was the #2 show in the area, after John Boy & Billy. Now, I'd like to be able to say these numbers were based largely on our talent as radio people, but that's not entirely the case. A major factor in this is that the station that was our number one competition in the area wound up moving their broadcast tower out of the area, putting their signal out of reach for a great many listeners. A lot of them turned to us as a replacement. Management had known this was a possibility (though I don't recall them letting me know about it), but it was not a guarantee as there were several other stations in the area with morning shows. I say all that to say this: we had our reprieve. Furthermore, with the numbers as good as they were, a lot of the people who'd been up our ass all year long finally climbed out. At long last we were finally left, if not alone then at least at a comfortable distance.
Meanwhile, back in my real life, things were getting pretty serious between me and the wife-to-be. I hated living 600 miles away from her and had actually not been too worried about being fired before, as that would at least give me the excuse to move to North Carolina. She'd already offered me her folks' Avion camper to stay in, should it come to that. And though we had not yet officially become engaged, we had been shopping around for rings and were very much in discussions. I figured give the station until July or August and then turn in at least a month's notice in time for them to find a new morning show person to replace me. In the meantime, I would try to save money for the move, which turned out to be easier because I got a pretty massive pay raise at work for no adequately apparent reason.
In late July, I picked my date to drop the news. Before I could do it, though, another staff meeting was called in the conference room. I didn't care, I felt invulnerable, but still the news was something of a shock. Our GM announced that our station had been sold to another local group of radio stations. This was a state-based media company that Cat had once worked for, one which was so notorious for being cheap that they actually made the DJs bring their own toilet paper to work. Our GM assured us that this was no longer the case and that the new company had agreed to take all employees with no layoff plans for the immediate future. The fact that the new company also had a reputation for never ever giving raises (something I'd enjoyed receiving on a more than annual basis since starting in professional radio) threw our recent massive pay raises into a new light. Turned out our old owners were trying to compensate for the cheapness of the new regime by giving us pay raises in advance, knowing the new company would have to honor them.
Of course, after learning the station had been sold off, my big departure news seemed kind of tame. It also came as a surprise to no one, as the staff had been wagering on how long it would take me to head for NC since the girlfriend and I had started dating.
I stepped down as morning show co-host in early August to allow Lee to take over again as Cat's morning show partner. (Which only made sense, as they were married in real life.) On my final day, I announced on the air that I had big news and then spilled the details of my departure. Cat, in turn, had some major news of her own to announce: she was pregnant. We then spent the next four hours trying to convince the listeners that it wasn't mine and had nothing to do with me leaving town.
That was not my last radio gig. I found a regular on-air slot in North Carolina, working for the very station that originated the Bob & Sheri show. That job also came with a fairly high degree of drama and many lessons learned about how commercial radio works. Overall, though, it was a positive experience, though if I never hear "Mambo #5" again in my life, I will not be too broken hearted. At least it wasn't Rod Stewart.
Monday, March 2, 2009
Ar Baffroom Adventuer Part Tin
Despite no word here, the bathroom project has not been in drydock for the last couple of weeks but has been roaring along. We'd been waiting for all the tile we ordered to arrive and it took a good week longer than we'd expected. However, last weekend, I went and picked up what tile the tile store did have in stock and we began the adventure that is tiling up the new shower surround.
Neither of us have attempted anything like this before, but we'd read the DIY sites and some tiling books and had talked to the guys at the tile store to get their advice, so we figured we would be okay. And, ultimately, we were, despite our best efforts otherwise.
As I mentioned, we chose white subway tile of the sort that doesn't need additional spacers, cause the grout spacing is built into the design of each tile. However, because of the dimensions of the room, we knew we'd have to cut tiles in order to fit in the corners. So we bought a cheap tile cutter and learned how to use it. So while the wife cut tile, I was slapping them on the wall I'd freshly coated in a troweled layer of mastic and then trying to make sure they remained level and plumb. It wasn't easy. We had to start the first row a quarter inch off the tub itself to allow nails sticking out of the flooring and joists on which one might gouge one's head.
Upon my arrival at the site, I could see we were in trouble. The drain for the new tub sits in a somewhat different place than the old one, being as the drain itself is a bit further back from the wall and requires a long pipe to connect to the upper drain and then down into the plumbing. From my place beneath the tub, I could see that the drain was resting within a notch cut half-way into one of the floor joists. It wasn't touching the upper edge of the notch, but that was the surface that prevented the elbow we had to install into the drain from fitting. Because of the cramped nature of the area, I couldn't get my sawsall in there to carve any more of it out. That being the case, I knew I would probably have to cut through it using a piece of broken hack saw blade, which I also knew would take all afternoon.
After hacking at it for a bit, I came to another realization. In order to fit that elbow, it seemed to me that most if not all of the rest of the joist would have to be cut away. Before actually doing this, I went to fetch the wife hoping her advice would be sound. She crawled down there with me to look at the problem and decided that what we really needed to do was to chisel out more of, but not all of, the notch until we could fit the elbow in. As we don't own a chisel, we had to use a medium-sized nail-puller/crow bar and a block of stray wood to whack it with. It took a while with the both of us laying on our backs and trading striking duties from different angles, but we finally chiseled through enough to get the elbow in straight. Some PVC cement products were applied and the whole thing was ready to go.
Neither of us have attempted anything like this before, but we'd read the DIY sites and some tiling books and had talked to the guys at the tile store to get their advice, so we figured we would be okay. And, ultimately, we were, despite our best efforts otherwise.
As I mentioned, we chose white subway tile of the sort that doesn't need additional spacers, cause the grout spacing is built into the design of each tile. However, because of the dimensions of the room, we knew we'd have to cut tiles in order to fit in the corners. So we bought a cheap tile cutter and learned how to use it. So while the wife cut tile, I was slapping them on the wall I'd freshly coated in a troweled layer of mastic and then trying to make sure they remained level and plumb. It wasn't easy. We had to start the first row a quarter inch off the tub itself to allow nails sticking out of the flooring and joists on which one might gouge one's head.
Upon my arrival at the site, I could see we were in trouble. The drain for the new tub sits in a somewhat different place than the old one, being as the drain itself is a bit further back from the wall and requires a long pipe to connect to the upper drain and then down into the plumbing. From my place beneath the tub, I could see that the drain was resting within a notch cut half-way into one of the floor joists. It wasn't touching the upper edge of the notch, but that was the surface that prevented the elbow we had to install into the drain from fitting. Because of the cramped nature of the area, I couldn't get my sawsall in there to carve any more of it out. That being the case, I knew I would probably have to cut through it using a piece of broken hack saw blade, which I also knew would take all afternoon.
After hacking at it for a bit, I came to another realization. In order to fit that elbow, it seemed to me that most if not all of the rest of the joist would have to be cut away. Before actually doing this, I went to fetch the wife hoping her advice would be sound. She crawled down there with me to look at the problem and decided that what we really needed to do was to chisel out more of, but not all of, the notch until we could fit the elbow in. As we don't own a chisel, we had to use a medium-sized nail-puller/crow bar and a block of stray wood to whack it with. It took a while with the both of us laying on our backs and trading striking duties from different angles, but we finally chiseled through enough to get the elbow in straight. Some PVC cement products were applied and the whole thing was ready to go.
But was it leakproof?
We had planned to use our first test-drive of the tub as a chance for the wife to take a nice soak, but instead we opted to just fill the tub with cold water. Once it had nearly reached the upper drain, I went out and crawled back under the house to check for leaks. I could see that it was leaking even before we tested the upper drain. Water was seeping out of the lower drain--not in a steady stream, but at least a good steady drip. Already it had puddled on the plastic beneath the house. Apparently when the tub drain had been knocked to one side it had lost some of its seal-power. Go figure.
Fortunately, according to the website of the plumber's putty we'd used, the stuff takes a good couple of days to fully set so we were still within a window during which we could remove the putty, reset the drain and seal it anew. And, after letting all the water out, this we did--the wife from above and me assisting from beneath the floor.
for proper sealing later, but the whole row kept sliding ever so slightly down the wall, dropping below the level start line I'd drawn. We finally had to prop them up with pieces of tile from one of our failed cutting experiments. In the end, though, they did stay put and gave us a level foundation that I was able to start building on. By the time I reached near the top, we decided to put in a decorative row of stone, glass and metal tiles, the stone of which matched our new floor tiles.
I hit some more trouble on one of the side walls when I began relying more on the eyeballed vertically level nature of the tiles themselves and less on the carefully measured vertical line I'd drawn before starting the wall. By the time I reached the top the tiles were well inside the line. When I pointed out to the wife how strange this looked, she pointed out that I'd done it wrong. Fortunately, the mastic had not set and we were able to scoot the rows to the line, then cut new tile for the corner pieces.
The opposite wall, the one with the tub spout, valve handle and shower head, also proved a bit tricky, but nothing we couldn't tackle together.
By the time the basic surround was finished, we'd used four boxes of tile and had one full box remaining to take back to the tile store.
The bullnose came in this weekend and we set about installing them. This became even trickier, because we only had around 72 pieces of it, leaving very little room for screw ups. Then, due to the screwups that then ensued anyway, we wound up using every last piece we had down to the scraps. We got it all in there, though, and it looks pretty darn good.
Now all we have left is the sealing of the tub, the grouting of the tile, the tiling of the floor, the grouting of the floor tile, some drywalling, the replacement of the ugly plumbing that will be exposed beneath the new sink vanity, the installation of said sink and vanity, the installation of the toilet, towel shelf and shower curtain and the painting.
The further along we get in this project, the less work we feel like doing on the hall bathroom. By the end, we'll probably be in a mood to slap some new paint on it and call it a day.
We had planned to use our first test-drive of the tub as a chance for the wife to take a nice soak, but instead we opted to just fill the tub with cold water. Once it had nearly reached the upper drain, I went out and crawled back under the house to check for leaks. I could see that it was leaking even before we tested the upper drain. Water was seeping out of the lower drain--not in a steady stream, but at least a good steady drip. Already it had puddled on the plastic beneath the house. Apparently when the tub drain had been knocked to one side it had lost some of its seal-power. Go figure.
Fortunately, according to the website of the plumber's putty we'd used, the stuff takes a good couple of days to fully set so we were still within a window during which we could remove the putty, reset the drain and seal it anew. And, after letting all the water out, this we did--the wife from above and me assisting from beneath the floor.
for proper sealing later, but the whole row kept sliding ever so slightly down the wall, dropping below the level start line I'd drawn. We finally had to prop them up with pieces of tile from one of our failed cutting experiments. In the end, though, they did stay put and gave us a level foundation that I was able to start building on. By the time I reached near the top, we decided to put in a decorative row of stone, glass and metal tiles, the stone of which matched our new floor tiles.
I hit some more trouble on one of the side walls when I began relying more on the eyeballed vertically level nature of the tiles themselves and less on the carefully measured vertical line I'd drawn before starting the wall. By the time I reached the top the tiles were well inside the line. When I pointed out to the wife how strange this looked, she pointed out that I'd done it wrong. Fortunately, the mastic had not set and we were able to scoot the rows to the line, then cut new tile for the corner pieces.The opposite wall, the one with the tub spout, valve handle and shower head, also proved a bit tricky, but nothing we couldn't tackle together.
By the time the basic surround was finished, we'd used four boxes of tile and had one full box remaining to take back to the tile store.
The bullnose came in this weekend and we set about installing them. This became even trickier, because we only had around 72 pieces of it, leaving very little room for screw ups. Then, due to the screwups that then ensued anyway, we wound up using every last piece we had down to the scraps. We got it all in there, though, and it looks pretty darn good.Now all we have left is the sealing of the tub, the grouting of the tile, the tiling of the floor, the grouting of the floor tile, some drywalling, the replacement of the ugly plumbing that will be exposed beneath the new sink vanity, the installation of said sink and vanity, the installation of the toilet, towel shelf and shower curtain and the painting.
The further along we get in this project, the less work we feel like doing on the hall bathroom. By the end, we'll probably be in a mood to slap some new paint on it and call it a day.
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