Still No Power

We live in Newton Center and we've been without power since 11am on Sunday, May 28th. Let me know if you hear somebody say that the pre-Irene warnings were all "hype" - I will track them down and throw them into the prison that is my house. Not only have we lost a certain amount of food, feeding a family of 5 is tough in this semi-kosher accessed place. I'm writing this in a "Panera" and I'm surrounded by other families without power, but they can bring their kids here to eat, we can't.

We're naturally out of hot water as well, and since I have a Motorola Droid phone - known by cognoscenti as a hunk of crap in a plastic case - my phone batteries have been burnt out. This was already after the phone became impossible to directly recharge because the silly little prongs in the recharge port became slightly bent. When that happens, a few cents of breakage, renders the hundreds of dollars phone useless.

Our power-company, NStar, is ignoring their customers, as far as I can tell. We're not even told when we will be scheduled to be visited by a friendly crew. I'd switch companies, but as far as I know they have a government mandated monopoly of my neighborhood.

My kids are doing a decent job in handling this stuff, but there's just so much three kids under 7 can understand.

The only silver lining in this lovely episode is that I can use the experience to convince my family, or anyone I know, to never ever go camping. Because everything I'm suffering through right now is what 'camping' people endure on purpose.

10-4: Talk Like a Trucker Day

It took these guys (which had a picture of the greatest trucker who ever lived, Jack Burton) to inform me that today is Talk Like a Trucker Day (get it, 10-4?).

Here's a set of phrases to help ya'll out. Go here for my nostalgia for "Convoy" to get yo'self in the mood.

Back out from Bean-Town. Bah-bah.

Boston 'Catastrophic' Water Woes

Right after Motzei Shabbat, my internet connection wasn't working, so it took a bit for us to get the message that there was a 'boil water' emergancy condition for eastern Massachusetts after a 'Catastrophic' water main break. This is not a good way to begin the week. Add onto that the terrorist bomb attempt in Times Square and a children's Tylenol recall, and you got a trifecta of Doom.

I have a few musings on the water subject:

1. After taking a shower last night, bathing myself in e-coli, I realized that I hadn't felt so dirty after 'washing' since I went to the Washington Heights mikvah erev Yom Kippur.
   
2. It's situations like these that we need to recall whenever we feel high-and-mighty about our technical mastery of nature. A busted pipe - a few centimeters gone wrong - will leave 2 million people without potable water.
   
3. Also, this should remind the crunchy green granola types that 'natural' water is deadly.

I hope the crisis will pass quickly - it's not fun to be frightened of a normally life giving substance.

Pic from the Globe story.

Crosswalk Button Morality

One thing that impressed me in New Haven, and now in Newton, is that the crosswalk buttons actually work. Not so in NYC, they were like elevator 'close door' buttons - something there to amuse the police on closed-circuit cameras. Like in the above Citizen Dog from January 04, 2009.

Note, a moral question I struggled with when I first arrived is whether or not I should use these crosswalk buttons - which will stop all traffic going in every direction, costing drivers a batch of time - or whether I should cross on the red-light like I did in NYC (and in previous hometowns). The question is: is it justified for me to waste the time of every driver at a cross-roads (could number in the dozens of people!) for my own needs. Selfishness is one of my main pet-peeves and I consider it the root of most evil I witness in life. I especially hate behavior that gains advantage at another's expense: it's basically robbery. So, is using the cross-walk button robbery?

After a few weeks in Newton/Boston I realized that the drivers here are truly the worst I've ever seen. They are stupid, aggressive and selfish. Thus for reasons of life-and-death, I feel it's justified to use the button.

Veteran's Day Story

Last year I came to Brandeis via carpool. This year, since my carpool driver left, I've depended on public transportation. Sadly, I've noticed that the quality of the buses has gone down serverly over the past few months. I blame the recession - more people riding and, I believe, budget cuts that have made busses more unreliable (and possibly the drivers as well). Whatever the cause, I have missed connecting buses many times because my main route (the 52) is never on time.

This is a problem especially when I have a 9am class - because rush-hour makes the bus errors even worse. So this morning, like many a Wednesday, the buses just decided not to run, and I needed to take the emergency route, which involves a taxi.

Note, it is 22 miles from my house to Brandeis. By car, direct route, it should take 20 minutes (17 according to Google Maps). By public transport, if I'm lucky, it's an hour door to door. Many of the "direct" routes (meaning that from the start of the first bus to then end of the last bus, barring schedule mishmash or missing connections) it can take 90 minutes or more. This is nuts. Brandeis is so close to Newton, yet in can take as long to get there as it did to go from New Haven to New York City! Public transportation should not suck! It's better for poor people, better for the environment, better for traffic etc to have good, reliable, common public transport. Rant, rave.

Anyhoo, if I want to go lickity split, then I take the train to the end of the line (Riverside) and then hop a cab to campus. Were there a shuttle bus to campus from Riverside - an idea that's too logical and cost effective to be implemented, this would validate the whole public-travel enterprise. But, as you pessimists have already determined, it don't happen that way.

A main taxi provider in my area is Veteran's Taxi. I once asked where the name comes from and I was told, by the non-vet driver, that the company was founded by veterans. But, luck would have it, the driver I had was an honest-to-goodness vet. USArmy, 1958-1963; good years - he avoided 'Nam (but he was assigned to guard missile silos in Alaska... I wonder who he annoyed to get that assignment). I took extra time allowing him to regale me with his war stories (minus, of course, the war) and I gave him a big tip as a recognition of karma and collective guilt/recompense.

The Best Restaurant in Boston

Is the Brandeis kosher cafeteria. I found this out a few months ago when, to celebrate something or another, I took the nuclear family to Reuben's for dinner. The total bill ranged around 50-60 bucks and we still went home hungry. The kids, both under 5, have chaotic appetites: they don't know what they want to eat when we need to order the food, they change their minds midway in the meal, and they don't eat much even after it's served.

The Brandeis kosher kitchen is an all-you-can-eat buffet that costs, for dinner, $13 a person. And, out of generosity, they don't even charge my kids! On dairy nights the kids get to eat a lot of small dishes, whatever they want, allowing them to change their minds in the middle, and there's no cost for their mutated minds. The food is good, cheap, and plentiful.

We now have a minhag of going every Tuesday night (which works for my class schedule as well; it counts as my ride home).

The biggest problem: I can longer actually eat 'all I can eat.' When I was 18-22, 'all you can eat' was a challenge, now my appetite has shrunk, my waist is a danger zone, and I feel guilty if I don't get my 13 bucks worth of food. However, since a simple sandwich at any of the local Boston restaurants costs as much as the buffet at Brandeis, my guilt is largely assuaged.

Radio Free Newton is On the Air

I have to say that the move to Newton was very smooth so far and my internet is up and running in about 24 hours since wheels-down in this zip-code. The family is still quite un-bobulated, but I will regale with some stories from the trip anon. First, dinner.

Radio Free New Haven is Off the Air

The movers come at 8:00am, it is now 7:15am. The Styx will be off the air for a few hours/days/weeks (it takes me from one month to three months to get myself back up to speed after a move - hoisting myself out of a well-connected rut is quite painful). Will resume the Styx in Massachusetts.