A few days ago I found the following campaign ad attached to my mailbox. I’ve highlighted the “Personal Accomplishments” section I am about to discuss.

Now, let’s go through these.

Married to wife, Becky, for 30 years. Maybe it’s a sign of the times that this is listed as a personal accomplishment. But I can’t help but read it as an insult to his wife—like the accomplishment is putting up with her for 30 years.

Three children. Okay so your kids don’t sound like hoodlums. I hope my own kids don’t grow up to be hoodlums. Probably the most accomplishmental thing here.

Member of Rocky River Presbyterian Church. I don’t know too very much about Presbyterianism. Maybe I need to consult with my uncle the Presbyterian minister, or my cousin the aspiring Presbyterian minister. But I don’t think it is all that difficult to get in.

Harrisburg resident. Harrisburg isn’t exactly Beverly Hills. I think living there is even easier than joining a Presbyterian church.

A week ago, when I tried to connect to the wireless internet at our resort in Williamsburg, I was told I needed to pay for it.  I found the second purchasing option to be very strangely worded:

On my way into work this morning, I heard a story on the radio about how back-to-school spending is supposed to be down this year.  One statement in particular, I felt, was worthy of blogging about.  This quote comes from one Patricia Edwards, an analyst at Storehouse Partners (whatever that is):

The trends, especially for the teens which is where a lot of the spending happens for back-to-school, they’re the same!  The only thing they’ve really added is plaid.  And, ya know, you go out and buy one or two plaid pieces of clothing, and you’re set.

Allow me to translate that to how it sounded to me:

KIDS THESE DAYS!  What is wrong with this generation?!  They care nothing about fixing the economy.  All they care about is saving their parents’ money.  We are in a financial crisis, people!  This is no time to watch your budget!  And to top it all off, they are too lazy to change their fashion styles all the time.  When I was a kid, if you wore the same outfit to school twice, you would have been ashamed of yourself.  And we made it a point to change what we wore every year, so that we could make fun of the poor kids that couldn’t keep up.  Now, all of a sudden, it’s like everyone thinks it’s cool to be poor, just because their parents all lost their jobs.  Sheesh, I don’t know where this country is heading, but we’ve got a long road to travel if these penny-pinching hooligans don’t go into debt soon.

I spent last week in Matamoros, Mexico, which is a city across the Río Grande from Brownsville, Texas.  Being in Mexico, particularly near the border, gave some cause to be concerned.  But we made it through mostly without incident (more on that later).  I went with nine other people from my church to visit and help out a missionary we support there.  Jack (the missionary) runs a camp in Matamoros (seen here from outer space) which in the past has been used as a camp for kids and teens.  But he has more recently built some nicer cabins on the camp, and last week they were finally put to use during a retreat for four Mexican pastors and their wives.  Part of the reason we came was to help out with this retreat, with preparing and serving food.  The rest of us (myself included) were just there for physical labor.  But rather than write a super long post that will bore anyone who wasn’t there, I’ll try to condense a few bullet points.

• Texas is big, flat, and empty.  At least the parts that we drove through.

• The first three days, most of our group was working at Jack’s house, which was located in Texas.  This means I crossed the border quite a lot—eight times in all (four times each way).  I learned that:
  

  • The Río Grande is quite a misnomer.  The river is actually rather small.  And we were pretty close to the Gulf Coast, where you’d think the river would be at its largest.

  • Getting into Mexico is much faster and easier than getting into the United States.

  • Only once were we asked to get out of our vehicle while a guard took a look around, and looked in the glove compartment, but didn’t look in the trunk.

• Refried beans are apparently a condiment in Mexico.  At one meal, we had ham sandwiches with refried beans instead of mustard or mayonnaise.  At another, there was toast with refried beans and cheese on it.  I think the best local food I had was the breakfast burritos, which were actually not spicy (in fact, none of the food was very spicy).  I also made crepes one morning, by putting jelly on a tortilla and rolling it up.  Those were pretty good too.

• Our accommodations were not exactly top-of-the-line.  We had to shower in smelly water that was cold not clean enough to drink (even the locals don’t drink it), and we slept in cabins that were open and allowed plenty of mosquitoes in.

• On our next-to-last day, we heard from the pastors who were at the retreat.  It was humbling to think that these accommodations that we found so primitive were like the Hilton to these couples.  I think they all still have jobs in addition to being pastors, because their churches simply can’t afford to pay them enough to live on.

• I was surprised how well I could actually stumble through Spanish, having only taken it in high school about ten years ago.  But I don’t know how well I could have communicated without the help of Josh, who is currently taking Spanish in high school, and got quite a trial-by-fire.  When you’re speaking a subset of the language consisting almost entirely of common verbs and nouns, and not worrying so much about verb conjugation, and the person speaking to you slows down, it’s actually not so bad.

• We went over to the Gulf Coast on our last day, where some of us explored a shrimp boat that had run aground.  This was actually a lot of fun!

• Most of Mexico was very dirty, with litter everywhere.  I’m not quite sure why.  I mean it doesn’t seem like you need to come from a wealthy background to know not to litter.  Maybe garbage collection isn’t as reliable as it is in America, so people don’t have a choice but to throw their trash in the streets?  I don’t know, I’m just speculating.

• We also went to what Jack called “Fishtown”.  This was a very poor fishing village on the coast.  I asked Jack what happens when a hurricane comes through, and he said the city sends buses to pick the people up, and after the storm they go back and salvage what building materials they can to rebuild their shacks.  We visited two pastors that Jack knew in Fishtown, one of which who is trying to start an orphanage.

• After Fishtown, we came back and made lots of sandwiches, then we went to the Matamoros city dump to pass out the sandwiches and fruit and juice.  There are a lot of people that live next to the dump, who make a living salvaging what they can from the dump and selling it.  We passed out the sandwiches, along with fruit and juice.  It was another humbling experience, seeing this level of poverty that only exists in the United States for maybe the bottom 0.01% or something.

• As we were leaving Mexico on our last day, we got pulled over by the police.  The officer claims we ran a red light, but several of us saw the light as we went through it and it only turned yellow as we were going through.  In addition, another car followed us through the light.  I didn’t catch that car’s tags as we pulled over, but I have a hunch that it had Mexican tags.  The officer told us that we would have to go to the office downtown to pay the ticket.  After putting on this show of being super strict for five or ten minutes, he said “O paga thirty-five dollars, ahora”.  (He had a firm grasp on the English language when it came to the phrase “thirty-five dollars”.)  Anyway, we ended up giving him thirty dollars and he let us go along.  We learned later that the fine for running a red light is only about five dollars, and we’re pretty sure none of that thirty dollars will ever make it to the city.  But there wasn’t much we could do.  It was one of the few times we didn’t have a local with us, and it’s not like the officer gave us any paperwork.  And we weren’t going to let him lead us to la oficina, because who knows where he would have actually taken us or what he would have done to us once we got there.  And it’s not like we can report the guy or hire a lawyer or anything.  I mean I know we have corrupt police officers in the United States, but they’re not quite so blatant about it.  I guess it was Mexico’s way of saying “thanks for visiting, and don’t come back!”

Well the bullets were supposed to keep this post from being too long but it has gotten quite large anyway.  And I’ve even left out a lot of stuff!  I guess I’ll end by saying that it was a great experience getting to interact with people in another culture, and very humbling to think about the conditions that most of them live in, compared to the comforts I enjoy in the United States.  I’ve always thought it sounded cliché to hear people say things like that, and maybe that’s what you’re thinking as you read this.  I guess I just think the world would be a better place if more people had the experience of playing soccer with the locals in another country.

I have put up a bunch of photos from the trip.  I may put up more as I get pictures from other people’s cameras, and you may have already seen these photos on my Facebook.

I found it very ironic the way the title of my last post was displayed after being imported into Facebook:

Lately we have been getting Emma into a bedtime routine.  Ostensibly, this is to teach (condition?) her into going to sleep easily at night, provided the routine is observed.  In actuality, she doesn’t go to sleep much more consistently than before the routine.  But that’s not really what I came here to write about.  Part of Emma’s bedtime routine is for daddy to read her a story.  (Literacy for the win!)  Tonight I tackled Horton Hears A Who, one of her two Dr. Seuss books (which are by far her longest bedtime stories).  I noticed while reading the book that Dr. Seuss must have pronounced “mayor” as a one-syllable word, a homophone to “mare,” whereas I pronounce it as two syllables, rhyming with “conveyor.”  I’m not sure if I pronounce it differently because I live in a different region, or because the pronunciation has shifted since the book was written in 1954, or both.  (Contrary to what your grade school teachers probably tried to burn into your head, English is a constantly evolving language, and the accepted pronunciation and even meaning of words varies by region and changes over time.)

Here is an example of what I’m talking about from Horton Hears A Who:

There aren’t any Whos!  And they don’t have a Mayor!
And we’re going to stop all this nonsense!  So there!

And here is one more example, which is even odder to my ear:

“So, Horton, please!” pleaded that voice of the Mayor’s
“Will you stick by us Whos while we’re making repairs?”

It is weird to read because “mayor” is used for a rhyme several times in the book, and if I read it so that it doesn’t rhyme it sounds really weird.  In fact, I tend to pronounce the word that is rhymed with mayor (i.e. “there”) as two syllables.

I guess I’m not really going anywhere with this, it was just something I noticed and thought I’d point out.  Other than mayor/mare thing, I didn’t notice any other rhyming problems.  In one place, I think “grocery” must be pronounced as a three-syllable word in order to have the intended rhythm, although I (and most people I know) typically pronounce “grocery” as something like “groshry.”  Oh well, people still consider Shakespeare great poetry, even though many of his rhymes no longer rhyme, so I guess it doesn’t necessarily spell doom.

Over the weekend—while I was back home for my brother’s wedding (some pictures will likely come soon)—I noticed that the organic milk my mom has started buying has a really long shelf life.  The carton I was pouring milk from, for example, didn’t expire for well over a month.  I was curious why this was the case so I did a little research and it seems that this milk has been treated with ultra-high-temperature (UHT) processing, rather than regular pasteurization.  From what I’ve read on Wikipedia, it seems that UHT milk could actually sit at room temperature for months without going bad, and in Europe it’s actually sold unrefrigerated.  Apparently they sell it refrigerated here because Americans wouldn’t buy unrefrigerated milk in test markets.

I couldn’t find a consensus as to why organic milk is UHT processed, though.  Some people said it was because “organic cows” aren’t given antibiotics, so UHT must be used to be sure all bacteria are killed.  Another said organic milk is typically shipped from further away, so they have to use UHT or it would be about to expire by the time it got to the store.  I’m not sure which is the real reason and I don’t feel like doing any more research.

Anyway, I thought that was an interesting fact I’d share with the class.

I was at home with the flu for a few days last week (not an experience I would recommend to anyone), and I did something I’ve never done before.  I watched a few episodes of Walker: Texas Ranger.  I had always assumed, based on the title I suppose, that the show was about your typical tougher-than-nails-cowboy-who-lives-by-his-own-rules-but-has-a-heart-of-gold type.  Turns out, it’s mainly about jumping out of helicopters onto people, and then proceeding to kick them.  A lot.  Like, I think there have been kick-boxing matches with less kicking.  Now I get all those Chuck Norris facts which set the internets abuzz a few years ago.

I also caught a few episodes of Ninja Warrior.  It’s kinda like Gladiators, only without the gladiators themselves (an improvement), and with the difficulty turned up about ten difficulty units.  And that’s on a scale of five.  You should totally check it out.

Now if only we could get Chuck Norris to compete on Ninja Warrior...

I went to a new Thai restaurant with some people from work yesterday, and I took a business card as I was paying:

I’m not sure what that means.  My theory is that a non-native speaker meant to write something like “premier” instead of “first.”

Any other theories?

I just got back from my first ever business trip.  My company sent me to Seattle (technically Everett, WA) this week to visit our good friends at Boeing.  You may have heard, they are a little behind schedule.  But I can’t say too much about the business purpose of my trip here.  Fortunately I wasn’t flying solo, there were several others from my company (two others from the Charlotte office).  I was the only developer there; everyone else was support.  In any case, here are a few highlights in convenient bulleted form:

• The area is pretty.  Unless you happen to hate evergreen trees, in which I guess you wouldn’t care for it.  Because there are lots of evergreens.  When you look out the window of the plane, it looks kind of like you are about to land in a Christmas tree farm.

• The Boeing plant is big.  Really big.  The biggest building in the world by volume, as a matter of fact.  If you imagine a garage where you might get your oil changed, with about six garage doors in the building, it’s kind of like that.  Except the garage doors are big enough to hold full-sized airplanes.

• Security is tight there.  Since they couldn’t confirm that I was a US Citizen, I got a temporary badge requiring an escort anywhere other than the conference room.  Including the bathroom.  So I had to act like a five-year-old and ask people to take me to the bathroom.

• I got to visit my friend from the Amazon.  It was nice to catch up with you.

• Due to a layover in Phoenix, I got to see the Grand Canyon from the sky.  I think it was the Grand Canyon anyway.  In any case, it was a large canyon somewhere north-northwest of Phoenix.

• On the flights to Seattle, I got to experience first-class flight for my first time.  I didn’t think it was that great, until I flew coach on the way back.  Then I remembered what coach was like.

• Most of our nation is a barren wasteland.  That’s the impression I get from thirty thousand feet.

• It was my observation that there are no black people in Seattle.  Some quick internet searching seems to support this: only 8.44% of the population in Seattle versus 32.72% of the population in Charlotte.  That’s a pretty big difference.  And in Everett it is only 3.35%.  That was a little weird.

• There is some kind of circular farming that they do in the flat states, where they just don’t use 21.5% of the land in a square plot.  See many examples here.  This isn’t the first time I’ve noticed this but I thought I’d mention it.  I’m not sure how it is cost effective to waste so much of your land, but since there is so much of it done I’m assuming it must be more than 21.5% more efficient for some crops than traditional farming techniques.

• They still like grunge rock in Seattle.  At least the station I was listening to does.  In four half-hour drives (two trips to and from Peter’s house), I think I heard: 4 Nirvana songs, 3 Pearl Jam songs, 4 Foo Fighters songs, 2 Alice In Chains songs.  And then some new stuff like that terrible Finger Eleven song about clubbing.  I really hate that song.

• It didn’t rain all week.  Garrison had the same experience when he visited.  I’m beginning to think that “it always rains in Seattle” is just a myth.

• No signs of Sasquatch.  That also might be a myth.  But if so, then how do beef jerky enthusiasts mess with them?

I guess that’s all I’ve got to share.