Daft Musings

A few years ago, when we first started homeschooling, Neil and I wrote persuasive essays with opposing points of view, and I posted them here. Neil is an excellent writer, though he sometimes loses sight of this fact.

So as part of his final test on the World War II unit we’ve just completed, I set up a timed one-hour essay on the question “Compare and contrast Napoleon Bonaparte and Adolf Hitler. Be sure to specifically include one military campaign or battle for each.” Naturally, as they person who knew the question before the test, I had an advantage. Afterwards, I typed up both essays, omitting the author’s name on each, and gave them to Peter to grade. To my surprise (but also somewhat to my delight) Neil bested me, slightly in organization and focus–and Peter thought I’d written that essay!

To be fair, I gave Neil the chance to come up with a similar question for our next timed one-hour essay. He put up the question, “What were some of Hitler’s greatest mistakes in World War II?” We each thought the other’s essay was better, so I post them here for you to read and judge–and guess who wrote which. I left errors in place, just as they would have been in a formal test. (Neil also points out that by Godwin’s Law, we’ve both already lost our respective arguments….)

First Essay: Hitler’s Biggest Blunders

Second Essay: Hitler’s Greatest Mistakes

Let us know what you think in the comments!!

Recently, I took my children to  park day at Lincoln Glen Park in the middle of San Jose, a neighborhood between cute old small Willow Glen homes which house both upscale families who love the character of old neighborhoods and immigrants who look for affordable housing. It’s a fairly busy park with a regular traffic of stay-at-home moms.

We left in a rush to catch a showing of “Rio” at Almaden Cinemas with our group. The movie was delightful, but when we left, we realized, we’d left Kelly’s scooter (recently inherited from Neil) at the park. In quite a panic, we left to see if we could still find it there. To our pleasant surprise, we found it parked right behind a tree, and took it home.

The next day, we went to another park day, whereupon I realized I couldn’t find the tub of sunscreen we’d bought in Australia and been using ever since. The last time I remembered using it has been the day before at the other park, so I cruised past, and saw it clearly at the exact spot I’d left it.

I was very happy to recuperate my sunscreen (as well as the scooter the day before) but it highlighted the so-recent deterioration of my own place. For 13 years it was safe and crime-free, but in 2009, a creepy thief–or thieves–started casing us. They stole GPS’s out of cars in driveways, and in September 2010 one of them was bold enough to steal Peter’s car, right out of our driveway. Now I am paranoid: my GPS resides in my backpack, in my house, as does my wallet, and at times I wake up in the middle of the night, afraid they have not been taken in. I now make sure the door is locked in case thieves decide they want to move beyond my driveway.

The thieves depend on anonymity. So a thief could have easily taken items at the park incognito and it took more courage to steal in my neighborhood where the close neighbors know one another. And yet, the anonymous park is safer than my own driveway, and that makes me angry.

I just wrote a scathing review of “The Last of the Mohicans” on Netflix. Neil and I read it for CSA earlier this year, and it was an intriguing book, though sometimes difficult, like when entire passages were in French. But Neil laughed at the scenes where a character disguises himself as a beaver (and later as a bear) and fools the other Indians, who apparently aren’t surprised by a human-sized gargantuan beaver. And the passage wherein Colonel Munro tells Duncan Cora’s mother was half-black, and tells him not to even dare to be racist about it is compelling, given that the book was written in 1826, long before the Civil War. Then there’s also the component that Uncas, the Native American, falls in love with Cora, and she with him–only for their bond to be broken forever when Magua kills her at the end of the book.

We wondered how the movie would handle the beaver scene, but no worries–it never showed up, nor did David, the sometimes comic character of a guy who just loved to sing religious songs all the time. Uncas is like a footnote (who conveniently dies, never having come close to Cora.) Now it’s Hawkeye, his father’s white trapper buddy, who’s caught Cora’s eye. Hawkeye is played by Daniel Day Lewis with a thick Irish brogue, and it’s no wonder he’s hooked up with Cora, cuz she’s clearly a Celtic type, too, her pale white skin giving no hint of her mom’s heritage, which is never mentioned. Duncan, who was the old school European-type hero giving a foil to the Native’s survival skills, gets murdered horribly in this film (his final end coming thanks to a merciful arrow from the Irish Hawkeye.) It’s awful! Neil and I screamed at the end, as every supporting character died and Hawkeye and Cora go off into the sunset. But based on other reviews, if you never, ever read the book, it’s a great movie.

I felt the same with The Count of Monte Cristo. Peter and I saw the movie when it first came out and we loved it. Then, years later, I read the book with Neil, and found it full of twists and turns, and magic, betrayal and intrigue. The movie I once loved was a pale, lame thing in comparison, especially since the Count runs off with his first love (who has never aged in the 20+ years he was imprisoned and gone) instead of his Turkish slave, who is a no-show, like so many of the other spectacular elements of the novel.

It’s terrible! I don’t know if I even want to see the movie version of The Red Badge of Courage or The Virginian. The movies may be loved, but do they even come close to the book?

It makes me wish producers wouldn’t touch books, and just stick to scripts. For instance, you rarely hear of classic plays being butchered in performance: we saw Death of a Salesman at the teeny Pear Theatre, and it was terrific –and we could read parts of the play the next day and recognize them. We also saw Bridge on the River Kwai as an interlude in our studies of World War II, and it was a great movie–I hope it wasn’t based on a book, because I’d hate to think which would have been better.

Neil and I were juggling with the San Jose State juggling club when one of the members mentioned that the math department (from which two of the regular jugglers come) was having its Pi day celebration on Monday. No kidding? Neil loves pi more than pie! I emailed both our mathematical jugglers and wrangled an invitation from them.

I can’t say if I’ve ever known anyone quite as thrilled to have been invited to a Pi Day celebration as Neil and I were. On Sunday, I baked a Pi pie for the very event:

We juggled with the juggling club for 1/2 hour, whereupon the whole club decamped to join in the party. Professor Pfiefer, who’d taught Neil precalculus, told us there was a special club for people who know 1000 or more digits of Pi by heart. What this club does when they get together no one knows, but there had been a candidate or two for a professorship at San Jose State who had had official membership in said club.

Needless to say, the party had a lot of pie, both sweet and savory.

Here are Professors Jackson and Roddick and friends, celebrating with pie.

Here’s Professor Levine properly representing the Recreation and Fun department; Professor Pfieffer; and two students who love pi.

Neil brought two of his round puzzles for people to play with:

Professor Jackson found some Pi cubes to keep the drinks cold:

We spoke to the other Pi lovers about the day. I spoke to a grad student waiting to hear back from prospective Ph.D. granting universities. Neil told his best riddles. A student quizzed Neil about when and how he’d developed his interest in math (Neil’s answer: at the age of 5, from Ivan Moscovich logic puzzle books), and told me about The Zeitgeist Movement.

There was a salacious rumor that the physics department was also celebrating Pi day. What did they do to celebrate? Roll things around? Because you know that’s exactly the sort of thing I imagine the physics department does a lot. (And I find it curious that there are no physicist jugglers in the juggling club….)

Most of the party broke up around 1 pm, but Neil wanted to wait until Pi minute in order to properly celebrate the day here. The discussion of when Pi minute actually is (3-14 1:59 pm for you non-geeks out there) got an impromptu Pi fight going, though it was more of a Pi riff, if you ask me. It is rumored than someone in the math department met his wife in a Pi fight, though he was not identified.

By the time Pi minute rolled around, we were left with a professor and 3 students, but we celebrated it–as well as Pi second (oh, help me, it’s 3-14 1:59:26) with cheers. And then Neil had to go to work, and I had to go pick up Kelly.

Kelly and I (and briefly, Neil) have come down with some nasty respiratory bug. Maybe it’s influenza, maybe bronchitis, maybe pneumonia, but whatever it is, it is keeping us down, exhausted, and coughing like seals.

My anti-sicknessroutine have consisted of raw garlic; hot water with lemon, honey, and fenugreek; zinc mouthspray; loads of orange juice; and the spiciest hot sauce I know. Once I took some Tylenol, at Peter’s insistence. Whatever this is, it’s not deterred. So last night, in the hopes of giving my lungs a rest so I could sleep this illness away, I advanced to Nyquil. Unfortunately, we had no Nyquil, since I usually refuse to take such hard drugs, so I resorted to nipping my daughter’s cold medicine that night.

It was just enough to give me flashbacks to the last time I was hit this hard and took drugs. (I’ve been this sick before in the last few years, but it usually takes a serious intervention by Peter for me to move beyond my holistic hippie cures.)

I think it was 2005, Peter’s parents were living in Las Vegas, and we headed out to spend Christmas with them. On the way, a cold I was hoping would fade became worse, and I was coughing and hacking when we arrived. We had some celebratory wine with the parents, and on the way to our hotel room, Peter bought a bottle of Nyquil. I took a dose, and the party began.

In short, wine and cold medication do not mix well. At all. I barely remember the rest of the trip, though I can recall throwing up in the hotel toilet, and wandering along a street in North Las Vegas, wrapped in a multi-colored macrame blanket. Days later, when I was back to my senses, my friend Chris called me and said “You were out of it.” Oh, really, how did she know? Oh wait, she lives it North Las Vegas and that was her blanket I’d wrapped myself in.

Priest Elvis may or may not have given the midnight mass that year; either it was a hallucination, or I passed out right after he appeared. As for the rest of my adventures, I don’t remember them, but Peter assures me it was nothing that hasn’t been seen in Las Vegas before. Hunter S. Thompson would be ashamed of me, but that’s ok, because there was only one Hunter S. Thompson in this world, and no one should take his place.

And as for me now, I will drink some real Nyquil (which Peter bought today). But I will not be mixing it with wine.

Today, Neil is up at Stanford again, this time to take part in the Stanford Math Tournament. Neil loves the atmosphere and intellectual events at Stanford, and as a result, I seem to be driving him there and back fairly frequently–so frequently that by now I know exactly where the math and engineering buildings are located (and how they are located in relationship to the art museum) and where I can find the best parking for those buildings. Last week, we were there to see a lecture and book signing by Harvard mathematician Shing-Tung Yau. As often happens these days, Neil ran into some of his math, puzzle, and physics buddies who, like him, are attracted to the Stanford events. As we were walking back to my car, Neil asked me how much Stanford tuition cost.

“Too much,” I told him. “Or more specifically, I think it’s $50,000 a year.”

“Oh,” he said, somewhat disappointed.

“If you really want to go here, you might be able to with a scholarship.” I told him, and he vowed to work on his-already impressive resume of work.

Then today, I saw his competitors for the math tournament, all of whom, I’m sure, are also eager and jonesing for a chance to get into Stanford. A group of 24 even flew in from Beijing, China just to take part.

But what happens to these bright and eager students once they get in to Stanford? While I’m impressed with the homeschoolers and adults Neil hangs with, I don’t get the same sense of mission and excitement in the Stanford students I’ve encountered myself.

Specifically, a few years ago, I noticed that Stanford’s Slavic House had a weekly Russian dinner to which the public was invited. My own college had (and likely still has) a weekly dinner at which Russian speakers, professors and students gathered for a few hours of speaking in Russian, and I’d been a regular attendee advancing from my first meal where I learned how to say “please pass the salt” to discussing Russian poetry with Joseph Brodsky (a Russian poet who taught at Mount Holyoke each Spring) my senior year. In short, it was just the vibrant intellectual experience Neil thrives on himself at college math festivals and lectures.

I checked in with the housemother to make sure I could come, and she confirmed I could, and that she planned to be there herself. But, my, was Stanford’s Slavic House a step down from my expectations. For one thing, no one who lived in the house seemed to speak Russian, nor have any desire to do so. In contrast, I have some friends who lived at Berkeley’s Slavic House, where no-one spoke English (not even to Peter, my then-boyfriend, when I brought him there for a party), and the most ringing dispute was Polish- and Ukrainian-speakers insulted that everyone lapsed into Russian, without ever giving thought to, say, a few juicy Polish phrases once in a while.

Here I had to confirm in English with several disaffected Stanford students that there was indeed a table set aside for those who wished to converse in Russian that night, though no one was exactly sure where that was. Eventually a few students showed up, though not a single one of them was living at the Slavic House. Our little table consisted of a young Mormon couple living in the student housing who were learning Ukrainian, which they planned to use on a mission the next year; two first-year Russian students; and a Ghanaian student whose mother was Russian. No professors, teachers, nor even the housemother bothered to show up. The first year students couldn’t say much and ended up chatting carefully between themselves about their class; the Mormons carefully and politely spoke to me about their mission; and mostly I spoke to Anoso, the Ghanaian, who was the only fluent native speaker among us, and feeling awkward in this role. He’d come to Stanford to study engineering, he’d visited his mother’s family in Russia quite a few times, and he missed speaking Russian. Sadly, he wasn’t getting much good Russian from anyone here. Then I asked how long he’d been at Stanford, and he told me “six months.” As a freshman.

I looked around the table and realized there was not a single person there of drinking age. Beyond us, the Slavic Hall residents who could no longer be bothered to even try to speak Russian shuffled around lethargically.

I can’t imagine Neil ever being that indifferent to his line of study at any college, and if he was, there’s no way I’d spend a fortune keeping him there. Peter assures me that the mathematics department shouldn’t be judged by the language departments, but I still expect the Stanford acceptance standards are equally high for either mathematics or language. And if the strength of Stanford is the caliber of the speakers and events it can put on (which are excellent, and almost always free or inexpensive and open to the public), what do you get going there as a student?

Thanks to this book, Neil and I watched the 1994 movie Speed for his physics lesson today. As a physics lesson, the movie is absurdly amusing. If you don’t know the movie, the general premise is that a madman, unhappy with his pension plan, has placed a bomb on a public transit bus, and once the bus goes faster than 50 miles an hour, it can never go slower than that, or it will explode. Only the fast thinking action hero bomb squad skillz of LAPD officer Jack Traven (played by Keanu Reeves) and the gutsy trick driving talent of Annie Porter (Sandra Bullock) save the day. That and super physics, but more on that later.

As Keanu Reeves answers a public pay phone in the vicinity of a recently exploded bus in order to have the bomber taunt him, I had to point out to Neil that there was once a day when not everyone had a cell phone. Nonetheless, this was modern enough that both the bomber and the rich dude from whom Traven takes one (after having carjacked and damaged his car) had the big bulky kind which looked like walkie-talkies, allowing them to communicate the way we do today.

After speeding along an off ramp and then in crosstown traffic, the bus needs to take a 90 degree right turn. Any physicist will tell you that big public transit buses cannot make 90 degree turns, and even then, they need to take their turns slowly or else the bus will topple. In the movie, the bus makes the turn and manages not to topple as all the passengers move to the left side of the bus.

Neil assured me the weight of the bus had nothing to do with calculations on whether this is possible: it all has to do with the velocity of the bus, the width of the bus, and the friction between the bus and the tires. We can give some leeway to the fact that Annie the driver may take a wider-than-road turn even if if involves driving on the embankment and smashing into things (as she has been doing). But the balance and friction would be better with bigger, denser passengers. There is one character named simply, Ortiz, whom Travers initially called “Gigantaur” and as physics calculations revealed, more of him would have made the movie more plausible. If all the passengers had been Ortizes, their very mass would have kept the bus’s center of mass lower and thus made the bus less likely to topple in a fast turn.

Later in the movie, Annie gets the bus up to a roaring 70 miles an hour to jump a 50 foot gap between freeway portions. Sadly, given that any ramping is minimal, and because of air resistance, physics says the bus could never make it–once again, the actual weight of the bus isn’t a factor, though speed (velocity) and angle are. However, as Neil and I (as well as the book author) noticed, the bus inexplicably makes a wheelie as it takes off, even though we knew all the passengers were crouched in their seats for a crash landing. Once again, we see the value of multiple Ortizes. If the bus had been filled with Ortizes, they could have all hurled themselves against the back door of the bus, thus causing the wheelie and allowing the bus to have a sufficient angle to make it to the other side of the gap.

Physics thus gives us two important lessons. If you get on a bus in the Los Angeles area and you find it nearly full with gargantuan Hispanic men, and a twitchy person playing a racing game on his or her cell phone, you will probably be safe when a Speed-type emergency arises, unless one of them succeeds in shooting the LAPD officer when he gets on the bus after having carjacked a car. Or you can do what most Angelenos do, and drive a car, regardless of whether you have a license to do so.

As a fiscal conservative, I found myself offended by another part of the movie. If I heard correctly, the bomber, Howard Payne, only wants $3.7 million. At one point he snarls to Traven “Grow a brain, Jack,” but, no, Howard, it is you who should grow a brain! He’s spent hundreds or thousands of hours planning his terrorist exploits, thousands of dollars getting explosives and equipment, and more renting an unfinished office downtown and setting it up with expensive equipment, as well as putting then-state-of-the-art video transmitters into LA buses. Oh, and he rigs up his own million-dollar house to explode when the SWAT team comes to find him. All that for $3.7 million? I’m pretty sure you can retire and collect very nearly that much by retiring early as a California public school teacher or firefighter, and you could do far better than that by hiring yourself out as a consultant to a federal agency for a few years. Just shill yourself as the best candidate as Explosives Czar, dude, don’t blow up your house and destroy your neighborhood’s real estate values!

It also would have been cheaper to pay him off, because that bus (and later, the subway train) did a heckuva lot more than $3.7 million worth of damage. There were a whole lot of smashed cars, and in the end, the bus ran into a billion dollar airplane and blew it up. And don’t even ask me about the cleanup for a subway car that breaks up and smashes through a subway station wall and into downtown LA traffic. There isn’t a federal slush fund big enough to cover that, and don’t even think about asking the California governor for emergency money on that. He really really really doesn’t want to hear it now. Just give the terrorist douchebag his money. Yeah, yadda, yadda, moral hazard, and the terrorist will probably blow everyone up anyway, but if he doesn’t, it’s a lot cheaper than the alternative, which is this case included the gratuitous murder of 6 LAPD officers. After all, they already had his identity (which he wanted them to have), and they put a tracking device on the money, which he hadn’t bothered to check for. Again, who’s the person who needs to grow a brain in this movie?

Well, it was a fun anyway. And I did find out from Mythbusters that it is possible to skip a lightweight sportscar over a small body of water, something I will keep in mind if I’m ever trying to outrun the cops in a small sportscar in an area with many small lakes. Even if I’m caught, I’m sure a good defense attorney can say I was just trying a physics experiment…not actually running from the law.

As previous posts have shown, I have a psychologically tortured relationship with Costco. I loathe the conceit that everything there is a bargain, but for the exact same commercial goods found elsewhere, they are often cheaper than Amazon. Their dairy prices compete with those at Smart & Final, so I will buy milk and eggs there, but be thoroughly chagrined when I discover that in one particular weeks, say, the eggs were actually cheaper at Smart & Final where I didn’t have to suffer the indignity of door nazis. Peter and I will insouciantly stroll around, sneering at the punters navigating their giant douchebag carts (or, more subtly said, GDCs), trying to ignore the fact that we’re at Costco, too, and, ooo, isn’t that a great deal on some entertainment DVDs….

Well, it was time to get Neil an eye exam (after 3 years) and new glasses. I had booked an eye exam at a respectable discount optometrist, Site for Sore Eyes, when Peter reminded me that Costco sold glasses, too, and they were highly rated by Consumer Reports. I dragged Neil to the Costco optometrist, who could easily provide the exam for a little bit less than it would cost at Site for Sore Eyes. So Neil got his eye exam while I gawped at the super packs of whole trout and avoided the GDCs rushing into the sample food tables.

The exam was fine, as far as these things go. The optometrist was crammed in a tiny, stuffy room, but we got Neil’s eye prescription, which we could take anywhere. I foolishly and naively took it to the eyeglasses section in Costco. Neil, who shares our family disdain for Costco, begged me not to make him wear Costco glasses. Besides, he liked the frames he had already, so all we needed were new lenses. I had run out of my cash because unlike the typical Costco customer, I don’t carry huge wads of cash with me, and I leave my checks at home where I use them to pay off my bills. But since we wouldn’t be getting the lenses right now, I could pay when I picked them up, right?

Trying to get Costco glasses was the Costco experience I remember. The checkout lines have actually not been too bad lately, though I do notice that if there’s any chance of getting through in less than 5 minutes, a manager will run up and close down lines. But to get glasses, I had to take a number, and stand around with the many other fools who thought this was a good idea for some reason. We waited and waited and waited, until finally, 45 minutes later, we sat down and asked what it would cost to get new lenses for Neil’s glasses. It’s hard for any American to be as snotty as a Soviet shopgirl (and no, not even the DMV gets close), but this clerk made an effort. It would take 2 weeks to get the new lenses; it would be $49 plus $18 for our temerity not to get Costco frames, and if I didn’t pony up the cash right now, it was a no go. It was a no go. We left.

I found out I could get new lenses for Neil’s glasses for as little as $30 online, but that became moot when Neil lost (or misplaced) the glasses, no doubt partially due to the trauma of the full-on Costco experience. Peter’s a big believer in just getting things done, so on Sunday night we headed over to Site for Sore Eyes to get Neil new glasses with lenses. Unfortunately, Site for Sore Eyes was closed, but Lenscrafters, in the mall across the street was still open, and with current specials was reasonably enough priced for us to shop there. Neil found some great Ralph Lauren glasses, and by the next morning, they had lenses cut and set in for him. I don’t know why people were raving about Costco glasses–they weren’t considerably less expensive, and the 45 minute wait (which would be undoubtedly be repeated for pick up) plus having to wait another 2 weeks for lenses which other stores can make in an hour or less is odious.

So Neil didn’t get Costco glasses (and the optometrist is officially Costco-independent). I believe we all have more dignity as a result.

The economy may be slow, but there’s one place that’s going strong with near-unlimited demand: Comic Con 2011. I knew it was already going to be off the hook when I was in the office a few weeks ago and got a call from an anxious would-be Comic Con 2011 attendee. It was the day the Comic Con site opened for online purchasing of badges (in effect, tickets) to its show, then still a good 8 months in the future.

I told him we were ComicBase, not Comic Con, but he explained to me their site had gone down, and he was wondering if we, as regular exhibitors, had any kind of in with the organization to help him buy a badge.Certainly, I thought to myself, it shouldn’t be that hard to get a badge 8 months in advance. While I was on the phone with him, I checked out the Comic Con site myself and was thoroughly surprised to see the 4-day badges had sold out in July at the 2010 Con. And due to massive demand for the remaining badges (which might only give access for a day or two), Comic Con had had to shut down its purchasing site until further notice. It was a revelation to me, and unfortunately, all I’d be able to do is get him in touch with exhibitor services–who’d just put him on a long wait list for a booth he didn’t need. Since some badges are still available, I assume he eventually got in, but I can’t help but wish he and those like him had had a shot at the 4-day passes, without the worry about whether he’d be able to see the show at all. I remember watching agog last year as the badges sold out 5 months in advance of the show.

We had our own moment of panic last night. Getting a hotel room within San Diego during Comic Con has become increasingly difficult, and I still wax nostalgic about the far gone years, when one could get a hotel room within a mile of the convention center without having to join in a frenzied panic on the day reservations open. The Con has made it somewhat easier for exhibitors (who need to be at the booth before the show opens and remain there until after the close) by letting them list their top ten choices in a lottery in advance. This year, the lottery was supposed to open on December 7, but just as it was about to, Peter received a note letting him know the system was still down, and to hold tight until he received further notice.

Further notice never really came, unless you count the email Peter received late last night that the lottery was closing that very night, and Comic Con couldn’t help but notice we’d yet to put down any choices. If we didn’t have them in my midnight, we’d have no other chances to book a room until March. It put the adrenaline into what had been an otherwise rather calm day. I rushed to put in our top ten choices, but accidentally put down one less room than we needed. As it was, we had no confirmation and no way to go back and correct it, so I had to go back in and enter another request, which means we’ll get no rooms, not enough rooms, or too many rooms. We won’t know until February, when we may or may not be able to fix it. And even that doesn’t guarantee you the number of beds you need. Last year, Joe and Carl called me upon arrival telling me that the twin (2-bed, 2-people) room we’d book the November before, had only one bed in it. Despite our reservation request, the hotel had only received a Priceline-type reservation calling for a room, number of beds not specified, and booked our guys into a single room instead. Peter sweet-talked the hotel manager into switching our staff to a 2-bed room, but I’m sure we weren’t the only people encountering that surprise.

But given that enthusiastic fans can’t even get a 4-day pass, I’m up and awake at 5 am, with the horrible fear that we may only get our number 10 choice–a hotel six miles away in Hotel Circle, or worse yet, no hotel at all, due to every room we wanted being booked out before the travel agent even looks at our requests. I’m not even going to Comic Con—I checked out on it at my last con in 2008, when I had the most minimal of responsibilities, and only went into the convention hall for a few hours at the beginning or end of the show. And Peter and Neil are, if anything, more enthusiastic and jazzed about Comic Con. Despite its nuisances, it is also a pop culture phenomenon, with massive multi-media theme-park-like ever-changing promotions for upcoming movies like a Harold & Kumar pavilion, a Tron experience, and Thor himself. It’s filled with celebrities, and passionate fans cleverly dressed up as their favorite characters. And there’s always a new surprise, like last years David Hasselhoff bus coming down the street, led by Knight Riders and flanked by beer maids and Baywatch-type beach babes. Peter (as well as Neil) would think nothing about getting up at 5 am to battle gnarly traffic for an hour and a half to get to the convention hall in time to chat with others like him until 8 pm, spend 2 or 3 hours hunting down an available meal within the throng of other out-of-towners, and crash at midnight or 1 am, to get up the next day and do it all over again for 5 straight days. But it’s not worth it for me,and just the thought of it makes me hope he–and the rest of the staff– do get a hotel within walking distance so that those who do need to collapse in a pool of exhaustion may do so easily. I guess we’ll know where we’re at (and where we’re not) 2 months from now….

Last year, Peter surprised me as we ventured out to get our new Christmas tree with the suggestion that we get a fake one instead. He’d bought a fake one the year before for his office, so that the janitor wouldn’t suffer additional work in constantly vacuuming up fallen pine needles.

I had had a long aversion to fake Christmas trees, dating back to the time my mother bought a fake Christmas tree for our home in the early 1980s. It was, without dispute, awful. Sure, it didn’t need water, drip needles, or need to be cut up for disposal. But it was also made of an awful cheap plastic, colored an obviously fake green. Any “needles” close to the Christmas tree lights we had (which, were back in that day, little colored light bulbs) melted, making a permanent green smear on the bulbs. I can’t remember clearly, but I think it smelled funny, too–certainly not like pine.

I think even my thrifty mother hated that tree enough to throw it out and get a real one the next year, because I remember those smeared bulbs on a real tree. And from then on, only a real tree, even if it could only be a small one, such as the miniature tree I bought at Woolworth’s one year, would do.

There’s no denying that the real thing has its problems, though. We’ve spent hours of our lives hunting through Christmas tree lots and once or twice, in a Christmas tree farm, for just the right tree with well-spaced branches and just the right height–followed by the annual discussion of whether to pay a third more for that perfect tree, or settle for one of a different type. Then, there’s the challenge of getting it in, which requires additonal sawing, and setting it up straight. Peter bought a special Christmas tree stand with an inner stand which could be rotated and adjusted for just this reason. There’s also the sad spectre of waste, as you know the tree was cut down just for a month, after which it gets turned into wood chips, which may or may not actually be needed by any one. And then there’s the pine needles, which we often found ourselves vacuuming out of crevices and corners into February. Oh, and not to forget the tragedy of the overflowing water bowl, which once ruined some books beneath the tree wrapped up and meant to give as presents; and its counterpart, the brown-bef0re-its-time dead tree.

Nonetheless, I was still fairly dubious about being a fake tree family, but Peter invited me to just examine the trees which were on sale at Target; if I was still opposed, we’d follow tradition and find a real tree for the season.

As it turns out, the fake trees weren’t bad, not bad at all. The models we choose from had fake bristles, but these seemed to be made of a fire-resistant paper, and looked passably real. You could get trees with lights installed on them already, sparing you from stringing new ones on–or adding to your own lights. Each had its own stable stand, so there’d never be any issue with standing it up straight, much less in a bowl of water.

We bought one, and I was won over. It assembled easily (and packed away pretty well afterwards). Assuming we use it for the next few years, it will be cheaper than getting a fresh Christmas tree each year, and we don’t have to march around a lot in cold weather having to chose and wonder what we passed up each year. And I no longer have to worry about putting wrapped books on the floor near the tree, or clean up the trail of pine needles into and out of the house, and around the tree. The only issue with it is storage, but somehow we managed to haul it into the attic last year, and I suspect we can do the same this year.

And so I have become one of those fake tree people I used to look down upon–but they’re come a long way since they had “needles” that melted.