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Snowstorm Plus Three

I'm originally from Upstate New York and I came to the Big Apple for my undergraduate. I wanted to be away from my small town, and some where that I could fine new experiences. Little did I know that these "new experiences" would include frustration every single time a flake of snow dropped from the sky.

We are prepared for snow Upstate, its part of life. Six inches of snow is nothing. Twelve inches of snow is nothing. I understand that the city rarely gets blanketed in a heavy sheet of the white powder, but come on! How hard is it to clean up the streets three days after the storm?

That's my issue. It's not that the roads are impassable during or immediately following the snowfall. My issue is that three days later, there are still places that are impossible to get to. For example, street parking. I get that there are a lot of cars and not many places to park them, but plowing cars in only perpetuates the problem. Last night I was visiting a friend in Westchester. First of all, the sidewalks still were not shoveled. Second, I had to park on a side street that was still not clear. After visiting with my friend, I came out and my car would not move because there was no traction for the tires. I was shoveling my car out, three days after the snowstorm, for 25 minutes. Granted, maybe I should have parked elsewhere, or should have angled my car differently. But regardless of what I should have done, the streets should be a little clearer than what they are.

I get it, NYC can't function in the snow, and the city becomes paralyzed when the first flake hits the sidewalk. But am I expecting too much to have the street cleared three days after the storm? Or are my expectations too high? Whichever is the case, I'm still angry.

Maybe I should just move back Upstate, or buy a four wheel drive car that can drive over anything.

Question Everything.

Trials and Tribulations of Travel

This past week was spring break for many colleges, and talking to your friends you might begin to hear travel horror stories. And that is the case here.

            For the first weekend of the spring break, several members of the newspaper staff and me were trapped in the trials and tribulations of travel. We hit every road block imaginable in our trip across country to take part in a national newspaper convention.

            Here was the round down of the ups and downs of our trip. Our first flight left JFK airport at 7am. That flight, in my opinion, was by far the best. It did have its snafus, however. It was a six hour flight to San Francisco and there was no snack served, nothing, just juice for six hours. Plus, the in-flight movie, Happy Feet, had some crazy messed up sound where you were hearing Spanish and English at the same time. But all in all we got to San Fran safe and sound.

            We exit the plane and notice that we are in the smallest terminal ever built, and we have only 35 minutes to catch our next flight to our final destination; Portland, Oregon. We asked a TSA agent where the next terminal is and their response is "You have to exit this terminal and walk to the next functioning terminal." That is correct, we had to walk through a dead terminal to get to our next flight, which also meant that we needed to go back through security.

            This is where it all went down hill. One of our group members, Claire Owens, had lost their ID somewhere between NY and San Fran and just realized it as we got onto the security line. At this point, the advisor, Ashley Friedman, shoves cash into my hand and says "If we don't make it on the plane, have fun in Portland!" Ashley and Claire had to go back to the check in counter and verify that they could come on the plane. Myself, Melissa Peace and Ana Montano all got onto the security line and started taking off our shoes and the like to get through the metal detectors.

            The second snag of the trip. We had gotten through JFK without any problems, but at this point, Melissa and I both (who carried on our luggage) are pulled aside and told that our liquids are too large and that they need to be in clear plastic ziploc bags. The man who searched my bag did not take any of my items; I just received a stern lecture. The person who was searching Melissa's bag however, decided to take about $50 worth of makeup and perfume, but left a considerable amount of liquids with her anyway. It was very confusing.

            Somehow, we all made it onto this flight to Portland. Claire was forced to go through extra security where she was puffed with air (to make sure that she didn't have any bomb making material on her clothes) and we got to Portland safe and sound. Claire, Ashley's and Ana's luggage, however, was left behind in San Fran. We go to customer service and make sure that they will send the luggage to the hotel. It arrived later that night, at about 11pm.

            Compared to traveling, the time spent in Portland was rather uneventful. We went about going to sessions and meeting new people and gaining new ideas and insights. But as soon as we left the hotel, the trip got even more interesting.

            We arrived at the Portland Airport at 9:15am for our 10:40am flight because we knew that Claire needed to go through extra security. We all get through security, where I also was forced to be puffed with air to check for bomb making material and we sit down on a bench to wait for Claire. She is surrounded by two TSA agents and we see them take away her shoes. They believed that there was something strange on her shoes and they needed to be re-x-rayed for safety. We are all, eventually, on the opposite side of security and ready to board our third flight to San Diego.

            Once we land in San Diego, we realize that we have to leave the terminal we flew into and go back through the security procedures, yet again. At least this time, our lay over is about two hours, instead of 35 minutes. We exit the terminal carrying out coats and scarves into 70 degree, sunny San Diego. We board the Red Bus that transports passengers from one terminal to the other, but because the driver makes no announcements about what stop the bus is at, we end up taking a tour of the San Diego airport.

            We enter our last and final terminal of the trip and get on the security line ready to go through "the unbuckle your belt; take off your shoes" ordeal again. But the TSA lady who is checking boarding passes informs us that our boarding pass is in fact not a boarding pass, and this is after she had let Melissa and me through, and was directing her comments to Ashley, Claire and Ana. So, to keep with the trend of the trip, Melissa and I trekked onwards as Ashley, Claire and Ana went back to the check in counter to figure the situation out. It ended with an American Airlines worker yelling at the TSA agent.

            At this point, we have gone through 4 security checks, 4 airports, countless numbers of TSA agents and had traveled thousands of miles. We thought it was over, but in fact it had not. We board our last flight from San Diego to JFK at 2:35pm Pacific time. The plane is supposed to take off at 2:55pm and land in NY at 11pm Eastern time. But as we sit on the plane and 2:55pm passes us by, the pilot of the flight informs us that we are going to be delayed about a half an hour because our flight path changed due to a storm in the Midwest and we needed to take on more fuel. Not to mention, this plane is far smaller than any of the planes we had been on and I was squished next to this law professor who smelled a little funky and huffed and puffed every time I shifted half a centimeter in my seat.

            We finally took off and began the trip from the West coast back to the East coast. We landed an hour late at JFK, but our luggage had made it and so had all of us. When I finally got to my parents house in Upstate NY a day and a half later, my mother asked me if the whole trip was worth it. And the answer is yes, and if for no other reason, because I now know to never have a layover when flying across country.

 

Question Everything.

Wait, What?

So there's this woman who wrote a book on how she felt relieved after her first husband accidentally died in a car crash more than 20 years ago. People are angry at her. Why? Because apparently they have never noticed, that relief is a typical response to grieving.

I'm a little angry that people are attacking this woman, who shared her experience in a book that she co-authored and in an article published. First, if you don't like what she has to say DON'T LISTEN. Second, what she is saying is completely plausible, and any of you reading this that have dealt with the loss of someone, know this.

Relief comes with grieving. It's not a nice feeling or thought when you realize it's there (its guilt inducing) but you cannot deny that on some level, at some point in time, you hear yourself say "It's better this way." And for the most part, that is the truth. For example, your grandmother, who bakes the best cookies in the world, has been in the hospital for five months and she finally passes away. At the services, how many times do you think you will hear "She's in a better place", "At least she's not suffering anymore". And that's the way it is. That's feeling relief that the person is not there. Either relief for the fact that the individual is no longer suffering, or relief that you personally no longer have to wait day in and day out for the inevitable.

The woman, who wrote this book, said that she felt relief when her husband died because she was unhappy in her marriage. Why is this so wrong? Why do we care? Why are people up in arms over this? I don't understand what the big deal is, she wrote about something that she not only personally experienced, but something that she researched and something that she has observed in her field of counseling.

Question Everything.

Second Lives

Since I haven't updated this blog in quite sometime, you can imagine that I've been busy. I've been catching up on readings for class, working on the college newspaper and writing some amazing things for that paper. It's taken a lot of my time. Plus, there hasn't been much to talk about (in my mind that is).

But something hit me the other day, while I was scanning Facebook for someone's contact information. How much easier our lives are because of the internet and the amount of information that we post. Facebook, MySpace, online dating…where does it end? We, as a society, have begun to have two lives. One that we live in person and one that we lead online. In fact, that idea has inspired a new online website called secondlife.com. On this website you can set up an entirely new life, a whole new person who owns things, buys things, sells things, who lives. 

Does anyone else see something strangely wrong with this? When did leading a double life become acceptable? That's exactly what is happening. People are becoming consumed with their online identity that they are losing their real identity. And I am victim to this as well. As a country we are spending more and more time online and less and less time interacting face to face.

Look at online dating for example. We weave this extravagant persona that is carefully crafted to present the best side of ourselves to entice and entrance members of the opposite sex (or in some cases, of the same sex) in hopes of finding our one true love. I'm not denouncing online dating; in fact I am trying it out. But what happened to face to face interaction? What happened to seeing someone in a store and asking them out?

Try this experiment for me. Time yourself and your online usage tonight or tomorrow. See how much time you spend doing homework, or research. And then time how much time you spend chatting on AIM, or surfing MySpace or Facebook. Look at those times and then take a longer look at what that means for you. If you are spending more time sitting at your computer to surf the web and check out the new video on YouTube and less time working on your history report then I would say you are one of the victims of this online epidemic.

The internet is an amazing technologically advancement that is allowing people from opposite ends of the earth to communicate and share ideas. Unfortunately, it's creating a rift in personal contact. I'm also a victim of this, I can barely go a day without checking MySpace, regardless of if someone posted something new on my comment wall or not. We are obsessed. And we need to find a way to begin reconnecting with real life, and attempt to leave our second lives behind.

Question Everything.

Valentine's Day--Who Needs It?

On the eve of this Valentine's Day I find the need to curse the card companies and chocolate factories. CURSE YOU!

Ok, I feel better. But who isn't with me on that? Don't get me wrong, I LOVE those little candy hearts that have the little messages on them and I can always go for getting a heart filled with mystery chocolates. But why make a holiday out of it?

My issue with Valentine's Day is along the same line as my issue with New Years. Why do we need a special day set aside for something that we should be doing ALL OF THE TIME? Shouldn't we tell the people that are near and dear to us every day that we love them? Shouldn't we just get a gift for someone just because? Why do we make such a big deal out of February 14^th?

We as a society are so distracted by holidays that lose their meaning before we even know what the meaning is. We get so consumed with Valentine's Day and what we are going to buy that special someone that we don't think about the bigger picture.

The easy solutions—don't celebrate Valentine's Day. Don't wear red, don't buy a card, don't drop to one knee and offer a dozen long stem red roses (which are so over rated, I can't stand roses) to the one that you care for. Instead; wake up as you normally do and start telling the people in your life how much you care for them on a DAILY basis. Try to do something nice and unexpected every day for that someone in your life because if you did that then you wouldn't need to go overboard to try to make up for all the times that you didn't next February 14^th.

Question Everything.

Randomness

I've spent the last week waiting for inspiration, something that made me slightly angry that I could write about for this blog. But instead of something that made me angry, I was just met by things that made me smile, and in some cases jump for joy. Like the fact that I just was admitted into Emerson College and their Graduate School for Journalism. Yes. I am officially going to Graduate School. I received the acceptance letter last Wednesday and there was just this huge, enormous weight lifted off of my shoulders. I can't even describe how great it felt to open that package and see CONGRATULATIONS! It's almost unbelievable.

The only thing that has made me a little annoyed this past week is Ana Nicole Smith's death and the amount of coverage in the media it is receiving. Can we not just let this woman, who has been bullied by the media for years, rest in peace? It is a horrible thing that happened, and the media is behaving like a pack of wild dogs devouring this news and everything surrounding it. Who's the baby's father? Where does her money go? Did she commit suicide? Did someone murder her? Did her nurse and security guard not do enough to resuscitate her? GIVE IT A REST. She deserves to keep what last shards of dignity she has. She was beaten by the media for her marriage to an 80-year-old billionaire, for her sponsoring the weight loss pill TrimSpa, and over the death of her son while she was giving birth to her daughter. We, as a country, should not allow this to be the news that we want our on front pages. It's a shame.

I was in a production of The Vagina Monologues this weekend. For those of you who do not know this show, it is a set of monologues written from what are called Vagina Interviews. It was written by Eve Ensler who wanted to raise awareness about violence against women in the United States and abroad. Some of the monologues are considered risqué and offensive, and I can understand why. However, I feel that the cause is so great that the content can be overlooked. All money rose from the shows (which are done all over the country and the world on February 14—V-Day) go to organizations that fight for the rights of women. As a miniature feminist I participate in the show and donate my time, money and effort to this cause.  

Forgive the randomness that is in this blog.

Question Everything.