State of the race

As a political junkie I can't think of many times where I've seen a presidential race turn so quickly on so little real news.  Think about it:  Clinton gave a good speech defending Obama.  Obama gave a mediocre (by Obama standards) speech accepting the nomination.

Within days the Romney campaign went off the rails saying things like, "We'll repeal Obamacare but keep the parts that are popular."  And, "People making between $200,000 and $250,000 are middle class."  And then he questioned whether Obama would want to take "In God we trust" off of our coins.  And then there is the jump-the-gun response to the attacks on the embassies.

I have never seen a campaign go from confident to freaked out this quickly.  Yes, McCain rolled the dice with picking Palin but he was solidly behind at that time.  He had to roll the dice.  Romney was a point below dead even a week ago.

For every campaign there is a book or two that does in-depth reporting on each campaign.  In 2008 it was a book called "Game Change" and I wrote several posts about it.  Win or lose for my side, I look forward to reading the book because something caused Romney to become unhinged in the past week and I can't wait to read the back story.

The election day is still over six weeks away so there's no champagne bottles being popped here... but I am pinching myself with disbelief at my side's change of fortune.

Returning to the Emirates

I came.  I saw.  I ate everything I saw.

I am returning to the Emirates 15-20 pounds heavier than when I left.  On this gluttony tour of duty I left no sausage (wurst) in Germany behind or BLT or fried potatoes in the US to waste.  I took it all for the team.

For my flight back today I hope I am held up by VP candidate Paul Ryan flying in and out of Cedar Rapids at around the time my plane is supposed to take off.  I asked for an earlier flight to Atlanta but they (Delta) wouldn't do it.

Assuming all goes well, this should be a decent flight:  Cedar Rapids to Atlanta, couple of hours layover and then a direct flight to Dubai.

Cedar Rapids to Atlanta:
http://flightaware.com/live/flight/DAL5068

Atlanta to Dubai:
http://flightaware.com/live/flight/DAL8

When you go to bed tonight I will be on the plane and I'll still  be on it until 11AM Iowa time tomorrow.  It's just under 14 hours.

Flight to Iowa

I will be flying from Frankfurt to Detroit on Delta:

http://flightaware.com/live/flight/DAL143/history/20120815/0740Z/EDDF/KDTW

The flight will start in the middle of the night in the US and end around noon central time.  I am so used to 14 hour flights that an 8 hour flight seems like no big deal.

From Detroit I fly to Cedar Rapids with an expected arrival of 4:20.

http://flightaware.com/live/flight/FLG3871/history/20120815/2015Z/KDTW/KCID

*****
Having only traveled to a few countries outside of North America, I don't know what is "normal", but Germany seemed more like home than any place I've been.  I will be leaving here with a smile on my face and so very happy my friend Lukas was such a great friend/guide.

There are moments where I feel sorry for myself.  I have to remember experiences like this and remember how unbelievably lucky I am.

Summer 2012: For Iowa this a rare picture

The 6-10 day outlook is for below normal temperatures.  I plan to go to the State Fair on Friday and the forecast high is 72.

I HAVE NEVER been to the state fair on a day with a high of 72.  So in a summer with extreme heat I will be going to the fair on a day with fantastic weather.

And I'm Germany having fantastic weather.  Locals can't believe how great it is.

To say my luck changed in 2008 may be an understatement.

Flight to Germany

I'm sitting in the lounge with two hours to kill before they start boarding my flight.  There were no lines at check-in, security or immigration.  I have never been processed so quickly!

My normal flight tracking website isn't working so well so I am trying a different one.  This is kinda cool:  If you click on this it should show all flights by Etihad.  I am leaving at 5PM CDT Monday and arriving in Frankfurt at 2AM.

http://flightaware.com/live/fleet/ETD

My friend Lukas is meeting me at the airport.  I will do a sight-seeing tour of Frankfurt on Tuesday.  On Wednesday we're headed to southern Germany by train to see the region where he grew up.  At the end of the week we are headed to the central part of Germany to see where my Great-Great-Grandfather came from.  Lukas has already contacted a woman there who knows all the local residents of the small town.  If there are any Kranz or Werning families there I'm sure she'll be able to point the way.

I'm going home!

I have checked fares every day for 3 months.  They have been remarkably consistent.  Actually, as a geek, I can say they have never been this consistent.  As the price of oil dropped I hoped the fares would drop and they did but only about $80.  If were paid a dollar per hour for checking fares I would lose money.

Anyhow, the ticket has been purchased and I headed to Germany on August 7.  I will spend 8 glorious days trying to find anyone who has met a relative of my family and I will be back in CR on August 15.

I was home last summer, Christmas, and spring break.  After three trips home in one year I am shocked that booking the ticket has given such an adrenalin high.  I have a quiz to write!  I am in no mood to write a quiz!

The roll of the dice: I will be in Iowa until Tuesday, September 4, arriving here late on September 5.  I *cough* was supposed to report to work on Monday, September 3.  I said to my boss, "Really?  Leave during Labor Day weekend?"  He lived in the US for 20 years so he knows it is our last major holiday of summer so he said, "I don't care, but I'm not the university.  So if anyone there cares you might lose some pay."

Let's hope I don't.

I'm going home!  I'm going home!

As a M*A*S*H fan all I can think is Colonel Henry Blake saying the same thing.  I'm gonna be optimistic and expect that the North Koreans won't shoot my plane out of the sky.

Bad Steve

I really meant to post every day this month.  I'm only 14 days short of that happening.

My classes have their final tomorrow.  I spent several days writing and re-writing 4 versions of the test.  Getting them printed and collated was yesterday's task.  Assuming the test goes smoothly at this time tomorrow I will be grading.

Good Steve
I spent four hours today trying to help a friend get everything lined up for moving out out of the country.  My good deed.

I swear I have more interesting stories to tell... just give me time.

I saw this on FB:

I am that friend. No relationship in decades yet I seem to attract people wanting to talk about theirs.  Many times I have said, "Do you really want advice from me?  The guy who doesn't have a bad track record only because he has NO track record?"

The ethics of selling sugar water

In the past month I've had less Coke than I have for any month since I was 12.  How can I be that precise?  I was 12 when mom relaxed the one-Coke-per-day rule.  Since then I peaked in college having 8-10 per day.  In the past month I've had maybe 10 or 20 Coke Zeros.  It's not that I've fallen out of love for the company I advertise on most of my clothes; its that the years of insane caffeine addiction seem to have caught up with me.  

Today's Washington Post has a story of a former marketing exec from Coke feeling regret for pushing up the rates of obesity.  What I found humorous in the story?  The fact that Coke measured success in terms of "share of stomach."  It wasn't just beating Pepsi; they wanted to be a larger part of America's ever growing stomachs.

I gave up the sugary corn sweetened version of Coke years ago.  Coke defends itself against this guy by pointing out the increase in diet sodas - people like me who switched from regular Coke.  And I'll defend Coke on this:  When I drank 8-10 Cokes per day I weighed 140 pounds or less.  Now that I drink only Coke Zero I weigh... well, a lot more.

Health fair

The nutrition students have a health booth today.  I weighed in 206 and a body mass index of 26.  They informed me I was overweight.

True, but better than I was just a few months ago.  Tomorrow I will get my blood drawn to find out if my numbers are any better than the dismal numbers I had last fall.

Watch what I say

One of the fears in teaching is having a student misinterpret a point.

Here's an example:  Equity theory says that people are more motivated if they believe the rules of the game are fair.  If you think there is a tilt against you, it is reasonable to think, "Why work hard?  I'm not going to win anyway."

To make the point I say to my class, "What if I said, 'Fujeirah is a beautiful city.  I will automatically give everyone from Fujeirah an extra ten points on each quiz.'"  The students joke that they'd all say that they were from Fujeirah... but also come to realize that those not from Fujeirah would be unhappy and unmotivated in the class.

Lesson learned, I hope.

In one class I went to explain how I taught this in the US:  "In the US I would say, 'What if I said blue eyed people are better people so I will give them an extra ten points on each quiz?'"  I can't use that example of favortism here because, well, I rarely have any blue-eyed people in my classes.

But my point was not that I like people from Fujeirah better or that I like people with blue eyes better... it's using a story to explain equity theory.

Fast forward to tonight when I had dinner with a former student.  During the dinner he said, "In my class two years ago you said blue eyed people were better..."

And this misunderstanding was from one of my best students.  Ugh.

Piggy bank

I bought this for just under $2.

Buying a piggy bank in the US is no big deal, but this is the first I've seen here.  I found it at Daiso - a store where everything is made in Japan.  Why is it humorous?  Muslims that I have come to know hate pork more than alcohol or the invasion of Iraq. Eating pork is like what we'd think of for eating dog.  
 
If only they knew how great bacon tastes.

Worth seeing a doctor?

Today is the 15th anniversary of Spellman's death.  As he was my economics prof/advisor/life guru it would be entirely appropriate to discuss the latest economic news, like a jobs report showing that only 69,000 jobs were created in the US last month.  But, seriously, that's just too depressing.

So let's talk about a possible "pre-cancerous" growth on my back.

I have a spot between my shoulder blades that is about the size of a nickel and looks like scab.  I noticed it on Tuesday and each day it grew more tender and a red patch grew around it.  I wisely called to see my doctor on Thursday but she's not available until next Wednesday.  I considered just going to the hospital today but Fridays are Sundays in the US.  It's not a matter of the cost of an emergency room - the price is the same as an advanced appointment - the problem is the thought of spending hours and hours waiting and then possibly getting a doctor who doesn't speak English.

Hmm, that seems like a really weak excuse as I wrote the paragraph above.

Late today a friend saw it (something I can't easily do given its location) and she said, "Looks like a scab to me."

So I will wait until next Wednesday.  That's the same day I'll have blood taken and see whether or not the past two months of working out and taking pills have been worth it.

I've also spent a lot of time looking at really gorgeous TV's.  If the numbers come in bad or I find out I do, indeed have skin cancer?  Well, just guess who is getting a 60 70 inch TV?

*****
I don't give myself credit for much, but my tribute to Spellman and his eulogy are on the list.

Assessment of life

In February I planned and bought tickets for a trip to Egypt with my two closest friends in the Emirates.  A month later they froze me out and did the Egypt trip without me. I decided to make a last minute trip back home.  It was good to remind me that I have friends and close family in the US.

Back in the Emirates I have worked hard over the past two months to make my life better.  I realized I couldn't put so much weight in only two friends - it left me too vulnerable.  I started working out.  I've been working out 6 days a week since early March.  I've been religiously taking my meds.  Soon I'll have blood work done to see if the 20 pounds I've lost and being a good pill taker have any effect.

Work has not been going well.  I pretty much fell short on every goal I had for my new job.  My boss is more OK with it than I am.  I'm going to give it one more year mainly because I have to prove I can do better.

Overall, I am in much better shape physically and mentally compared to March.  My next step is to get back to blogging. Given what was going on in my life blogging was hard - I felt screwed over by close friends and nothing at work was going right.  Good times.

I think things are better now but the test will be if I can post every day in June.   Wish me luck and please try to remember to stop back here.  I know you get out of the habit of checking the blog when I don't post...

Weekend remainders

Father of the year he is not:  A man here has made it his mission in life to have 100 children. It is acceptable here to have up to four wives at a time so he keeps as long as they are fertile.

Here's an interactive map of gay rights in the US.  Jon Stewart points out that the best measure of how far we've come is that Republicans criticized Obama for being opportunistic.  I admit I was pleasantly surprised that not one of my far right friends on FB posted anything negative.

On a somewhat related topic, it appears John Travolta really likes happy endings from his massage therapists.  If you have a few minutes it is worth reading the lawsuit.

My alma mater Coe is now over $41,920 for residential students.  I am happy I went to Coe but I don't think I could make the same choice today.  Here's an interactive graph on colleges and their graduates' level of debt.  Student loan debt has now passed credit card debt and auto loans.

Pastafarians unite:  A man has won the right to wear a pasta strainer in his ID photo.

A Kmart in Kentucky was closing.  After the store had marked down the remaining merchandise to one-tenth of its value a man bought it all and gave it to a shelter.  He initially thought he'd try to resell it all but the 76 year-old had a change of heart.  Good for him.

And finally, a college friend is a trial lawyer.  He's developed a product to help companies to keep from being sued.

A sad reality

After changing back to atenolol (for high blood pressure) two days ago I started feeling very dizzy.  More than once today I felt so woozy I thought I might black out.  OK, so I'll stop taking the drug.

I took my last pill early this morning.  As I felt awful all day I hoped things would get better as time passed.  Unfortunately, I'm just as dizzy as I was earlier.  I won't go to the hospital because this is a relatively common side effect for the drug (although the websites say, "If you experience this symptom see your doctor.")  And death is not listed as one of the side effects so I'm gonna bet I'll be OK.

But...

Thursday is the start of the weekend here.  I've made no plans with anyone this weekend.  It would be Sunday before anyone might wonder what happened to me...

Tune in tomorrow because, 1.  I promise to post saying I'm alive and, 2. I have a list of stories I have missed blogging about over the past couple of weeks.

Summer School

When I was home in March I had tile laid in my basement and had a quote done for the upstairs.  The cost? $4900.  

This summer I want to go to Germany to visit the area my Great-Great-Grandfather came from.  I could afford the trip OR I could afford the new floor, not both.  So the opportunity came up to teach summer school.  The pay?  $4900

Therefore...

Now my plans are to leave here on August 7 for Germany and continue on to the US on August 16.

(No homeless person was intentionally mocked in the creation of this blog post.)

Tragedy in Pokhara

Pokhara is the most popular tourist resort in Nepal.  It is beautiful, serene and perhaps the only place I've been that makes *me* feel at peace.  Sadly, water backed up after a landslide and when it finally broke through the rush of water swept away 60+ people and many homes.

I found out about this from my friend Sanjaya - a hotel manager I met two years ago and we've kept in touch.  He was with me on my last trip when I took this picture of the river that tragically killed many two days ago:

Here's the latest news story.  It mentions that the victims of the families will receive 125,000 rupees and those who lost their homes will get 25,000 rupees.  That's $1,500 per death and $300 for a lost house.

Nepal is a spectacular country - beautiful in an almost fairy tale way.  It is also poor, poor beyond the imagination for this Iowa boy.  The people could easily be resentful of foreigners yet they are unbelievably nice.  If ever there was a country and people deserving a break it is the people of Nepal.

I'm famous!

This is from the front page of the "Youth" section of a national newspaper.  You can read the story here if you understand Arabic.  If you don't just trust me that it says "Steve is a god... he's so amazing it is beyond belief."

Maybe it doesn't quite say that but since I can't read Arabic I'm going to believe it does.

Quotes of the day

Comments that would be considered inappropriate are somewhat common here.  Partly, I think language barrier is part of it - just not using the right words.  Culture plays another role and good ole' fashioned rudeness must also play a part.

As I was going up an elevator today a woman I don't know said, "Sir, you used to be a little bit fat.  No you are not.  What happened?"

I had no response.  I am down 20 pounds so thanks for noticing but who are you?

My  barber speaks little English but since I give a 100% tip I'm pretty sure I'm his favorite client.  I never have to wait when I come in three times a week for a shave.  Clearly this has made him wonder how much I make...

Barber: Money.  How much do you get?
Me: What?
Barber:  Money.  Month (pointing to calendar). How much you take?

I should have told him it was none of his business but instead I basically cut my salary in half and told him that.  The sad reality is that he sits in his shop seven days a week from 10AM-11PM and makes less than one-tenth what I make.  Yes, he gets to sleep during the day when business is slow but imagine spending 13 hours every day at your job.  I have no problem giving a 100% tip and now that he has asked me how much I make he'll be expecting at least that much.