Steven Harper's Blog, page 4

Retirement Cruise: Souda, Crete

We landed at Souda, Crete. We've been to Crete before, but last time we spent an adventurous day driving to Heraklion to see the ruins of Knossos. This time, we just spent the day in Souda. We took a city bus to the city center, and at first we were a little disappointed. There wasn't anything really distinctive. It was a modern city on the edge of going to seed. Heavy car traffic, pharmacies, grocery stores, graffiti. I finally called up a map program on my phone to see what was worth exploring and found an area nearby that was both a park and an archaeological site of the post-Minoan city walls. (The Minoans didn't have walls around their cities because no one invaded anybody. It wasn't until after the Achaeans invaded that anyone thought about fortification, but by then it was too late.) We decided to have a look.

The route by happenstance took us through the original old city of Souda, and =that= was interesting and fun. We found winding streets and alleys all with orange and yellow walls. Restaurants and tiny hotels and little shops all shared walls that had clearly been put up during the Bronze Age. The restaurants were forced to use their limited floor space for cooking, and solved the where-to-put-the-diners problem by spilling out into the streets and courtyards. Pedestrians were sometimes forced to walk among the tables, which was probably good advertising for the restaurant. Bougainvillea trees had in some spots been trained to grow as a canopy over outdoor spaces that would normally be fried in the sun all day, and the bright red blossoms were in full bloom. It was an ingenious and beautiful solution to an intractable problem. 

We explored the old city to our heart's content, which was only until about noon. :) By then, we were sweaty and tired and wanting to go back to the ship. So that's what we did. We spent the rest of the day doing nothing much, which is what you do on vacation sometimes. :) 



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Retirement Cruise: Athens (Sort Of)

When I decided to retire, I told Darwin I wanted to take a retirement celebration cruise as a splurge. He agreed, and here we are!

On Monday, we flew to Athens, Greece, with a three-hour layover in Boston. The AC in the Boston airport was cranked so high that Darwin and I were shivering in our jeans and t-shirts. We ended up buying two BOSTON sweatshirts to compensate. As a result, we matched!

The flight to Athens was long and dull, but you don't want exciting air travel. The challenge was that it was an overnight flight combined with a seven-hour loss of time. In other words, we left on Monday at 10 AM and landed on Tuesday at 7 AM, but for us it was 12 AM. We decided to try and power through by staying awake all day. Ohhh, it was miserable! We finally caved and slept for a little while, forcing ourselves to get up after only a couple hours. At 11 PM, we went to bed and fell dead asleep.

Meanwhile...Athens. We'd chosen our overnighting place because it was really close to the port, and in that way it was successful. Our landlord even picked us up from the airport! And there were several restaurants nearby. However, we weren't near anything else worth doing, and we didn't want to mess with figuring out a place to visit and dealing with transportation while we were so jet-lagged, so we mostly strolled around the neighborhood. It made for a dull day.

In the morning, our pre-reserved Uber showed up right on time and took us down to the ship without fuss. We breezed through check-in, our luggage was spirited away for security checking, and we got to our room. We like it very much. We have a balcony, and it was lovely to sit and watch the sea and the port.

One nice thing, too: neither of us felt much jet lag.

In the late afternoon, the ship powered up and we sailed away.



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Logic and Persuasion vs. Logic and Persuasion

[image error]This meme makes me remember how I first read ENDER'S GAME as a teenager, and even then I noticed a huge plot hole. Ender's brother and sister anonymously create a series of dialogues on public chat boards. The dialogues were carefully, scientifically designed to push the right buttons of any given reader. They answered all arguments and carefully refuted all disputes. Anyone who read the dialogues would immediately throw in their support for what Ender was doing. I knew even as a teen that this wouldn't work. First, no argument will win over everyone, or even a big majority. Second, there's no way to get the entire world (or even a big fraction of it) to read these dialogues. We have language and cultural barriers, people who don't have access to the computers, people who can't read, people who DON'T read. There's no way to win over an entire population with the written word. Or any word, for that matter.Later, when this book was up for being added to the English curriculum where I teach, I argued vehemently against it, partly because of the thinly-veiled pedophilia and partly because of this plot hole. The book was dropped.So ironically, I successfully used logic and persuasion to get a group of people to take my side against a story that shows logic and persuasion as a way to get what you want.

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The CSR Good-Bye

I joke about the Midwestern Good-Bye, where the phrase, "Well, I guess we better be going," doesn't actually mean you're leaving. It means you still have to work your way through two or three more conversations before you finally walk out the door. This can take anywhere from 15 to 45 minutes.

I've noticed that another group of folks do the exact same thing. I suppose we should call it the Customer Service Representative Good-Bye. It goes like this:

ME: Great! That's everything I need. Thanks.

CUSTOMER SERVICE REPRESENTATIVE: You're welcome. Would you say that we have resolved your problem today?

ME: Yes. That's all I need.

CSR: Great! Is there anything else I can help you with?

ME: (wanting to say, "What part of THAT'S ALL I NEED did you misunderstand?"): Nope. That's everything.

CSR: If you would like to take a survey detailing the kind of service you got today, just stay on the line.

ME: No thank you.

CSR: Is there anything else I can help you with today?

ME (wanting to say, "Change the cat box"): Definitely not.

CSR: Okay, well, thank you for calling Beelzebub Life Insurance. I hope you have a good day.

ME: Thank. Bye.

CSR: Don't forget the survey!

ME: Right. Bye!

CSR: Again, thank you for calling Beelzebub Life Insurance. Have a good day.

ME (wanting to say, "How many good days are you going to wish me?"): Thanks. Bye!

(click)

It's gotten so bad that I've taken to shortening the script to this:

ME: Great! That's everything I need. Thanks.

CUSTOMER SERVICE REPRESENTATIVE: You're welcome. Would you say that we have resolved your problem today?

ME: Yes. Bye!

(click)

Sheesh.
 

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Ghosts and Cookies

 So I'm reading this YA novel about some teens who are hunting a ghost. The book is clearly supposed to be eerie and spooky. The ghost in question is evil and malicious. The problem is, the ghost, an old woman, keeps fading in and offering people cookies.

Yeah, you read that right. The spooky, evil spirit shows up with a plate piled high and says, "Cookies!" And everyone yells in fright and runs away.

It's unintentionally funny. I wonder what on earth the author was thinking. Cookies are about the least scary thing a ghost could offer you. Even the word "cookies" sounds cute. It keeps yanking me out of the story. We don't know yet why the evil ghost offers cookies, but I have the feeling the cookies were involved in someone's death. How horrifying. Except ... COOKIES!


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The PAE

 I'm home from the hospital again! What was it this time? A prostatic artery embolism, or PAE. The word "embolism" sounds bad, I know, but here it's a good thing, so you can restart your heart. :)  If you want the long definition of PAE, it's easy to find on Google. The short version is that it's a way to treat benign prostatic hyperplasia (growth of the prostate that often interferes with bathroom function). During a PAE, the doctor inserts a series of silicone beads into the arteries that feed parts of the prostate. This restricts blood flow and shrinks the prostate, easing or ending the bathroom problems. The procedure is performed with a catheter inserted through the upper thigh, like catheters cardiologists use for balloon angioplasty in the heart. For a wonder, the procedure went great, both physically and emotionally. I was so relieved at how it went that I was shaky afterward. I stayed awake during the procedure—no anesthesia, no anterograde amnesia—and the entire team from the nurses to the PAs to the doctor was solicitous, empathetic, and always kindly aware of my particular needs and fears. They made every possible accommodation cheerfully, with an "Of course! We're happy to help" attitude. This is the exact opposite of what I generally experienced in the urology clinic, and I can't describe how wonderful that contrast was. Here's the super-long, gory details version. I'm posting this because I process emotional events by writing about them and because I want to remember. I'm putting it behind a jump-cut so you can skip and jump to the final outcome it if you like.

(  Read more...  )Here's the final outcome: I'm glad beyond glad that I refused Versed and stayed awake throughout the procedure. More than once, I waffled on this, and came very close to saying, "Fuck it—just take the Versed." But in the end, I decided a little boredom was better than post-amnesia anxiety. I know what happened during every moment. I know what the doctor did, what the nurses did, and what the students did. I saw that the entire staff was solicitous and worried about me being comfortable and anxiety-free instead of just pretending to be until I was knocked out and reverting to snarky, "he's a bag of meat" behavior. I know that this staff was kind and nice, and it made a total difference. This procedure went a thousand times better than any I've ever had, and I really needed that. I didn't realize how much I needed it until I got home and thought back on it. I actually started to tear up a little over it, the relief was so profound. So what about the recording? I didn't give it to Darwin. I just put the recorder in its box in my desk drawer. I'm not going to listen to it. I don't need to—I know what happened. Does this mean I won't use it next time? I still don't know. But I do know that I'll be asking to stay away with fentanyl instead of forgetting with Versed. 

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Avoid Partners in Internal Medicine

 When I moved, I transferred care to a new primary care clinic called Partners in Internal Medicine. I was getting along decently with my new doctor David Weidendorf there. Very nice.

Also important to know is that I have occasional neck and shoulder pain. When it flares up, I see a chiropractor, and after a couple sessions, the pain always goes away.

Further important is that when I retired, my insurance changed. Now I need a doctor's referral in order to see a specialist. This kind of thing is usually routine--you call the doctor, and they give the referral so you can make the appointment.

The pain flared up, and I tried to see a chiropractor, only to learn that I needed a doctor's referral first, so I called the doctor's clinic to ask for one.

"We don't give referrals for chiropractors," said the nurse. "Chiropractors don't go to medical school. We'll refer you to physical therapy. though."

"No," I said. "I don't need physical therapy. I only need a couple sessions with a chiropractor. The sessions work, they're short, and they take walk-ins. PT sessions last a long time each and they want you to come in three times a week for a month. And it's hard to get a decent appointment slot. I don't need to deal with any of that. I just need a chiropractor."

The nurse's tone became snippy. "We don't refer to chiropractors."

"Well, since you don't refer to chiropractors--who I know can solve my problem--I assume that means YOU can perform that function instead, so let's make an appointment for you to treat my neck and back pain. When's your next available?"

"We don't do that here. We'll refer you to a physical therapist."

"Nonetheless, I want to make an appointment to talk to the doctor."

"Sure. What location, Ann Arbor or Canton?"

"It doesn't matter--this can be done over video."

"We don't do video appointments."

Pause.

"You don't do video appointments?"

"We don't."

"You don't refer to chiropractors, and you don't do video appointments," I repeated carefully. "Are there any other standard medical services you don't perform or refer for?"

"No, that's it."

"Maybe there's a list I could look at, just to be sure."

"There isn't."

"So we're operating on your memory. Could I see the clinic's policies, please? You can email them to me or mail them in hard copy."

Now she was getting icy. "I'm afraid we don't do that."

"So there ARE other services you don't provide."

She got very annoyed with me after that. I hung up. After some hunting, I found a new doctor. I hope this one works out better.

The moral here is, don't become a patient at Partners in Internal Medicine in Ann Arbor or Canton. They're snobby and they're dismissive of patient concerns. Avoid.

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Barbecue Fuckery

I rarely write about books, movies, or restaurants I don't like. I'd rather spread the word about the ones I DO like. But today I just have to make an exception.

I mean, how can you fuck up barbecue?

For supper on my last full day in Washington DC, I strolled down the street from my flat to a nice row of shops and restaurants. The smells outside Fat Pete's Barbecue were enticing, so I went in. The fuckery started the moment the door shut behind me.

The restaurant was relatively crowded for a weeknight, with an upper level and a lower level that were mostly full. But there was no one at the door to steer me toward a table. I waited for a few minutes, then wandered over the bar and asked about seating. 

"Oh," said the bartender, as if the idea of customers wanting to sit at a table had never occurred to her. "You can sit over there if you want."

Okay, then. I sat. A server came and handed me four different menus: a much-abused daily menu of computer-printed pages, a beer and wine menu, a pasta menu, and a barbecue menu. This put me off from the start. I don't like wading through thirty pages to figure out what to order.

I finally settled on pulled pork with potato salad, cornbread, and cole slaw. I also ordered a cocktail called a Strawberry Surprise because it had amaretto in it and I like amaretto quite a lot. I also asked for water.

The server brought me disposable eatingware in plastic wrapping, another bad sign. The server also brought my water. It was in--and I'm not making this up--a plastic Dixie cup. It was just enough water to knock back a couple of pills. They were stingy with WATER? I should have left right then, but I stuck it out. Mistake.

My food arrived in due course. (Foodie friends, you may find this section like a car wreck you can't look away from.) It was awful, from top to bottom.

The pulled pork barbecue had no barbecue sauce on it. Nothing. It had been flavored with a little salt, and that was it. I stirred it around to see if any sauce was puddled on the bottom. Nope. Bland as a Christian rock band. When the server came to check on me, I asked for some barbecue sauce. This request, like the request for a seat, was treated with a surprised look. Barbecue sauce in a barbecue restaurant? Who would want that? She left and returned with a teeny plastic cup of skimpy sauce. I drizzled it over the pork and tried again. No change. The sauce had no flavor. It was like eating fatty Styrofoam.

Meanwhile, we also had the potato salad. It was wrong in every possible way. The flavor wasn't too bad, but the potatoes were in chunks too big to eat in one bite, and the cheap eatingware was too wimpy to cut them up. I think there were a few cucumbers swimming in there, begging for the release of death, but they were drowned out by the watery, nasty sauce that covered them. It had the consistency of thin gravy, but none of the taste.

Next I tried the cole slaw and actually spat it out. It was one of the vilest things I had ever put in my mouth, and feel free to joke about that as long as you keep mind how awful that cole slaw was.

The cornbread was covered in Saran wrap, which took considerable time to undo and told me that the stuff wasn't very fresh. It came with minuscule bits of butter. The bread was actually halfway decent, but it was cakey and sweet, and it couldn't make up for the awful that came with it.

And then there was the drink. The Strawberry Surprise was a surprise in that it had no strawberry in it. It was basically club soda with a dash of amaretto and a lime garnish clinging apologetically to the rim of the glass. 

Usually I laugh good-naturedly at bad restaurants. "Oh well--they tried." But in this case, I just couldn't find it in me. Pete's had signs all over proclaiming they'd been declared the best BBQ in DC, and aren't we wonderful? No, they weren't. Truthfully, it all came across as arrogant. The servers treated me like an afterthought, or even an intruder, compounding the problem. This place is easily in the bottom three of Worst Restaurants I've Eaten In Ever.

Avoid. 




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Washington DC: Thursday, Part II

 The weather was kinder today. Clouds blocked the sun and it was much cooler, though it was still a hot day. I set out, determined to see SOMETHING worth seeing today.

I didn't dick around this time. I went straight to the Library of Congress. 

The LoC isn't really a library. It's a museum of American books. You don't get to wander the stacks, but the library has put a bunch of interesting library artifacts on display for visitors. The big, vaulted central room and the gallery above it were impressive. It's more like a cathedral than a library, and that was on purpose. Back when the LoC was built, libraries were venerated institutions dedicated to learning for all. It was religious, in its way. Hence the impressive architecture. 

It was also very crowded. Yesterday the Archives and the MAH had only a sprinkling of visitors, so I was surprised at the big crowd at the Library. Why was it more popular? No idea.

I poked around to my satisfaction and realized I was starving. I'd skipped breakfast, and it was already way past lunchtime. 

Outside, I found a hole-in-the-wall diner. It was as narrow as a Dutch house, and it was crowded. I had to squeeze past other diners to get to the counter, where I ordered a club sandwich and fries. The server brought me the fries the moment they came out of the fryer, so they were hot and crispy and perfect. The club sandwich was delicious, too. I think this diner was one of the high points of Washington! 

That done, I headed back to the National Mall to see what trouble I could get into. To my surprise, Capitol Hill was open for business, so I went in.

I should mention here two features of every national building in Washington DC. First is that admission is free to all of them. Second is that you have to go through airport-level security to go into any of them. I understood why, but when you've removed your belt for the third time in one day, you get aggravated.

Anyway, I wove through security at the Capitol and had a look-see.

The inside was more like a train station than a government building. There were lines for this and that, and crowds of people sloshing from one side to the other. Lots of statues. I started to explore, and then stopped. I didn't feel good. Emotionally, that is. I really, really didn't want to be there. Why? The current administration. I just couldn't stomach being in the same building as the current Congress. So I left. I'd been in for maybe ten minutes.

Outside, there was a guy sitting in a chair under an umbrella. He was wrapped in white bandages from head to foot. A sign at his feet explained that he was in day three of a hunger strike. I felt like I should offer him words of support or something, but I didn't feel comfortable with the idea for some reason, so I didn't.

Next, I went to the Supreme Court building. Is it weird that the Supreme Court building has a gift shop? Yes. Yes, it is. The lobby area is really another museum, and you can also join tours. There are signs everywhere about LIBERTY and FREEDOM and RULE OF LAW. I felt angry and nauseated at the sight. So I turned my back and left. So much for that.

I was done. I just couldn't stand the thought of examining yet another display expounding the glories of the American government and its emphasis on freedom and liberty and justice. Not when the current administration was destroying every one of those ideals. It was time to go back to the flat.

The buses weren't running right--some kind of breakdown somewhere--so I treated myself to a nice, air-conditioned Uber and rode back to the flat, chewing over what had just happened.




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Washington DC: Thursday, Part I

My appointment at the Embassy of Latvia wasn't until late morning, giving me plenty of time to get there. Thanks to my earlier trip with my trailblazing cousin Elaine, I already knew exactly where to go and what to do, but I was still anxious. I've dealt with Eastern European bureaucracies before (see blog entries re: Adoption of Ukrainian Boys), and I know someone always throws you a stumbling block you couldn't predict, or they show you the fine print that shows you were supposed to bring a notarized copy of Form 482615a-5, or you had to prove you could tap dance. If I was turned away at the embassy for a paperwork error, I wouldn't be able to get my passport until the next time I was in Washington, and it's not a place I visit randomly. 

I set out. The day was still hot, but it was cloudy, so it was bearable. I skipped breakfast on the grounds that I didn't want to have an activity in there with an unknown time variable, and anyway I wasn't really hungry. 

As with Elaine on Tuesday, I arrived at the embassy about 20 minutes early, so I wandered about for a bit, admiring the other embassies. When I returned for my 10:40 appointment, I found a woman and a man already waiting at the door. They were--she was--also applying for a passport. 

"My appointment was for twenty minutes ago," she said. "They're behind."

So I sat on the lip of a flower bed to wait. Eventually, another couple emerged talking animatedly in Spanish, which I found interesting. Latvian citizenship attracts refugee descendants from all over! The first couple went in, and I continued to wait and wonder what I might have overlooked. It was a nerve-wracking time. But finally, the couple emerged and left. I hit the door buzzer and told the metallic voice I was here to apply for a passport.

The lobby and the clerk were the same as Tuesday, of course, but this time it was me with the application. The clerk spoke to me in Latvian, and again I had to admit I didn't know the language. The clerk was clearly exasperated. She must spend most of her day in that particular mood. 

"I never had the chance to learn it," I said, "and that saddens me."

The clerk wasn't having any of it. "You understand that we're here on Latvian soil [technically] but we can only communicate in a foreign language, not in Latvian."

I thought about telling her about the time I was in a student tour group in Germany. The group had students from Turkey, Greece, America, France, and Italy, and the only language we all had in common was German. So I, an American, conversed with my hotel room-mates, who were Turkish, in German. I thought that was pretty cool, actually, and I wanted to tell the clerk so, but I decided against. She might take it the wrong way.

I passed my forms over, and she glanced at them only briefly before turning to her computer. No sign I'd missed something. Small sigh of relief. I knew I had everything in order, but I was still glad to get the confirmation.

"What is your height in centimeters?" the clerk asked abruptly.

I was ready for this, and had looked it up yesterday. "180," I said.

Here, the clerk defrosted a little. "You prepared," she said, sounding a tiny bit impressed. I took the victory.

She took my fingerprints, had me fill out a couple of FedEx slips for delivery of said passport, snapped up $180 dollars from me, and took my picture, all from behind her glass enclosure. 

"You're all set," she said, and turned back to her computer. I was dismissed.

I left like a schoolboy slinking out of the principal's office. But outside, I gave myself a personal happy moment. The last step was done! I took a selfie with the Latvian Embassy sign and went on my way.




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