What with a very full first day and then all that dancing down the street singing about how I’ve gotten a new job, by the time I got to the train station, I’d completely missed rush hour. That means forty minutes between trains to Jersey and a transfer in Newark and other signs of commuter hell. Scep and Katie’s condo is awesome, but it’s at the edge of civilization. (Don’t even try to defend it, Scep, how long is your drive to work?!?) (And Andrea, your house is marked by Here be dragons on my map.)

I finally got back to Scep’s place and chatted with Scep and Katie for a bit before I picked up some clothes and left again to spend the night at my mom’s so I wouldn’t have to do that again tomorrow morning. My folks’ house is much closer to Manhattan-bound commuter rail, and therefore my awesome new job.

I took the Clove Road shortcut by Montclair State, thinking about how I’d spent quite a lot of high school weekends here at Six Brothers diner (Ooh, arcade Puzzle Bobble! That should definitely go on my 15 games list!), and not about the complete stupidity of driving a fifteen-year-old car through a college late at night. I’ve been pulled over probably six or seven times since I got my license, and five or six of those were for driving a battered old car on campus at night. It was worse when I was a new driver, going exactly the speed limit with an expression of mortal terror, but you’d think I’d have learned my lesson by now.

By the way, when the cop pulls you over in the middle of the night and asks where you’re coming from and where you’re headed, he doesn’t actually need to know about your new job, your move from North Carolina, and your old boyfriend.

I’m just saying.

From the blog Simpson's Paradox, please comment here:

Crash Course

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“Don’t forget to move your car,” my dad said. “It’s a thirty-seven dollar ticket for  parking in front of our house.”

“Thirty-seven exactly? And you knew that off the top of your head?”

“Of course I did. Want to see the check stub? You can pay by credit card, but there’s a one dollar fee for that.”

“Don’t worry, Dad. If any cops see my fifteen-year-old car parked in Upper Montclair, they’ll skip the ticket and just tow me away.”

From the blog Simpson's Paradox, please comment here:

Hometown

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So apparently it’s lame to write a post about how much I love the Boston commuter rail. They have wifi now, and even though it’s pretty spotty,  playing Facebook games is far superior to driving. Instead I’ll tell you about where I went when I took the commuter train!

I’ve been working at a Middle Eastern restaurant in North Carolina that used to be a Pizza Hut. When my cousins were visiting me, I dragged them in to see those signature trapezoid windows and brick walls, now decorated with sitars and hookah pipes. It was partly so they could eat some kebabs, and partly so they can back me up at future Christmas dinners when I’m accused of blog hyperbole.

Turns out there’s another ex-Pizza Hut that now serves korma and chicken tandoori,  because my friends introduced me to Monsoon in Acton. I knew I was going to like it because Tom is a curry connoisseur, and Eric is a foodie in general. It was pretty delicious, but it didn’t really matter where we ate, because I was so happy to see my friends and decompress after a couple interviews with possible schools.

After a lot of dinner and a lot of chatting, Tom and Tricia headed home, and Eric and I met up with some more of my second family, the Hoffmanns. Carolyn’s getting married in a few weeks, so she had a some pre-wedding advice for any brides-to-be: Elope while you still can! She also said something about hiring an Elvis impersonator, but I think she may have been exaggerating.

From the blog Simpson's Paradox, please comment here:

Hyperbole and Exaggeration

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I remember driving alone from Vermont back to Western Mass a few months after I’d started driving, and feeling like the trip was an object lesson in gorgeous road metaphors. The curves in the mountain roads, blind corners, broad views down the mountain, and then the highway opening and flattening out in front of me. All of those road metaphors in songs and poems suddenly made sense!

So, I’m buying a car. This  has turned out to be a hilariously awful process, just as eye-opening as that New England morning drive, only now I’m fully understanding all the things people say about used cars and used car salesmen.

I don’t really like driving, and I don’t really know that much about cars. I can drive a standard and I can check a car’s oil, and I am incredibly impressed with myself for being able to do those things.

I secretly enjoy it when computer salespeople dumb things down for me, because it’s almost always followed by that awkward look when they realize I know what I’m talking about.  But with cars, I actually don’t have the foggiest idea what we’re talking about. Oh, it need a transmisserator? Excuse me while I stare blankly. And Google.

Anyway, I’ve gotten better and better at knowing what to ask when I go to look at cars. Do you have the title in hand, and is it actually in your name or your cousin’s sister-in-law’s roommate’s name? Are you selling the car because it spectacularly failed inspection recently? Did you hit a deer immediately after posting the photos? If it’s a standard, do all of the gears work?

And, one that bitter experience has taught me to ask: DOES IT HAVE SEATS?

From the blog Simpson's Paradox, please comment here:

One Hubcap ‘Cause Three Got Stolen

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I’m visiting my awesome sister in Boston now. We had a salon last night where she played me some songs she’s working on and I read her my latest story.

In a lot of ways, New England is home to me. I love the saltbox houses and the town greens, and absence has made the heart grow fonder of ubiquitous Red Sox caps. I even like riding the T.  (If you’ve just tuned into Simpson’s Paradox, I feel about driving the way most people feel about visiting the dentist. Oh, not the dread and anxiety part, I just mean that driving is better than all my teeth falling out.)

As Eric said: Welcome back to the homeworld.

[PS I reread several years of Pie2K comics to find this one to go with the title.]

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More Than A Feeling

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I started watching LOST in Yantai, so it’s been years now that I’ve been hoping to get a job working for the Dharma Initiative.  I’ve fallen a month or two behind on this season (which requires avoiding Twitter on certain evenings), but that doesn’t mean I haven’t been thinking about it. Here’s how I think the show will end:

It turns out that when Juliet set off the bomb at the end of the last season, it caused a temporal anomaly preventing her from ever being seen in any of the flashbacks, flashforwards or alternate-timestreams. In fact, if you go back and watch previous episodes, there won’t be any scenes with Juliet. The time we had been spending watching Juliet looking sad and being sneaky is now spent developing backstories on the Temple-Others, Illana and her sidekicks, the Still-more-others, and all the rest of the red shirts who keep appearing on the once-deserted island.

Miles is walking through the forest when dead Charlotte asks him to tell Daniel how much she always loved him. Dead Daniel sends a message of love, via Miles, right back to her. Charlotte sends one back. Miles has to walk back and forth in the jungle, which isn’t entirely bad because he stumbles across Nikki and Paolo, who mention the diamonds. They’re actually worth $8, 151,623.42

Someone asks Jack a perfectly reasonable question. He pulls a gun on them and says no.

Someone asks Kate a perfectly reasonable question. She pulls a gun on them and says no, but actually means yes.

Someone asks Sawyer a perfectly reasonable questions. He says “I’m just trying to get off this rock!”

Sayid is left alone with the Others’/Dharma Initiative’s power station for about ten minutes, and runs a secret wire out to Rose and Bernard’s hut in the woods so they can have a hot shower and a reading light. Rose and Bernard also have takeout from the Mr. Cluck’s Chicken Shack (it was on the island the whole time, but it was over on the side with the lighthouse) sometimes. They hold hands a lot and smile.

A flash-sideways shows Rose and Bernard driving past a Mr. Cluck’s on their way to another restaurant. They bicker.

Someone asks Jack a perfectly reasonable question. He pulls a gun on them and says no.

Someone asks Kate a perfectly reasonable question. She pulls a gun on them and says yes, but actually means no.

Someone asks Sawyer a perfectly reasonable questions. He says “We have to get off this rock!”

Jin and Sun have a tearful reunion. He gives her a flower, and she shows him a picture of their daughter, who’s talking in her timestream, but hasn’t been born in his. More crying.

Meanwhile, Team Whitmore, Team Linus, Team Smoky, Evil Sayid and Jacob’s ghost all have a giant faceoff battle. With giant killer robots. When asked about the giant killer robots, Ben Linus gives the intense stare and says “Oh, those? Peter built them. Peter built everything here.” There’s dramatic music.

After the break, a random new character called Peter appears, he joins the epic battle.

Someone asks Jack a perfectly reasonable question. He pulls a gun on them and says no.

Someone asks Kate a perfectly reasonable question. She pulls a gun on them and says yes, but actually means no. But then she means yes.

Someone asks Sawyer a perfectly reasonable question. He says “It’s the only way for us to get off this rock!”

We trace the history of Hurley’s numbers through a series of flashbacks, each leading to a new revelation about the numbers and Hurley’s bad luck. At the end, he falls madly in love with a games blogger with purple hair.

Did I miss anything?

From the blog Simpson's Paradox, please comment here:

How LOST Will End

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Stick and I went to Play! A Videogame Symphony at the Koka Booth Amphitheatre a few weekends ago. We joined the crazy quilt of blankets, over a carpet of drying pine needles, and unpacked our cheese, olives,  Nintendo DS, and those mini wine bottles I keep calling chardonnay shots. We must have been flying the nerd flag, because a fellow passing out flyers for a gaming and music fest in DC in a few months, came right to us. And after telling him no thanks, we realized we might actually be in DC in a few months!

Once it got dark, the performance began. The conductor opened by asking everyone to feel free to clap and cheer if they felt moved to do so, and everyone did. I was so impressed with the range of games chosen, with the wild shift from metallic beeps to symphony, and with the music in general.

Sometimes when I’ve lived abroad, I’ve had moments of glowing amazement that I was really in that place.  This is me, walking across the St. Catherine’s quad to go to a lecture in Cambridge, I remember thinking, or this is me, on the Great Wall of China. I’m always amazed to find myself actually at place I recognize from books, walking in the steps of history.  (Yes, it’s true, my self-centeredness knows no bounds.) it’s best when I’m traveling, of course, but even in Amherst, I would sometimes be amazed by real New England fall leaves! Just like in books!

In this past almost-year in North Carolina, I haven’t felt like that at all. Probably because it’s hard to feel any connection with the past in the brand-new sameness of Cary. It’s hard to feel amazement and wonder that I’m driving on a highway.

But finally, lying on the blanket looking up at the tall, skinny Carolina pines, and listening to the swell of the symphony and the applause, I felt amazed that I live here. This is it. The Carolina pines, the endless Southern twilight.  Just like in books! With the cheering nerd-crowd as an added bonus.  I sighed with total contentment.

“I think I felt a raindrop,” Stick said.

The other part of Southern summers in books are the surprise, torrential thundershowers.  Within moments, we were drenched. We tried to tough it out long enough to hear World Of WarCraft: Stormwind, but soaked jeans are not fun and we joined the mob running for the parking lot.

From the blog Simpson's Paradox, please comment here:

Play! A Videogame Symphony

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I was listening to Obama’s Cairo speech on NPR the other day when the radio cut out and it went to static. My first thought was not that I was driving through a radio dead zone, or that NPR might be having difficulties, but that Obama must have mentioned Tiananmen and gotten censored.

I am more apt to criticize my life among strip malls and highways than to praise it, but there are some great things about being in the US.

From the blog Simpson's Paradox, please comment here:

Ex-Expat Thoughts

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As months go by, I’m getting more and more soured on the endless parking lots here, opening into shopping or office complexes and strip malls without sidewalks, a city designed for a life like that of the old Peking emperors, where our feet never touch the ground. My wanderlust is frustrated by roads that don’t actually go places, cutely named loops with housing cul-de-sacs on either side. Cary makes all these lists of the nicest places to live in the US, which reminds me that this suffocating sameness I feel is not you, it’s me.

I try to focus on the things I like here. Working in the Chocolate Bean, good meals at Bosphorus and Unaabi Grill, the Middle Earth poster in my boss’ office, my wonderful students, driving past Awesome Street, walking around Hoffman Lake (yes, that’s the real name!). Playing with Isabelle. Our apartment, a happy bubble of Meg and Stick. The simple enjoyment of English conversation hasn’t entirely worn off yet.

And I like the little town library here. It’s between the school and the train station, across from the post office, an ESL lesson come to life. This is also, perhaps not so coincidentally, one street that’s good for foot traffic. I love reading the liberal bumper stickers and seeing the reusable book bags.  I remind myself to really enjoy the easy access to English books now, because I hope I’ll soon be missing them again.

From the blog Simpson's Paradox, please comment here:

Checking Out At The Library

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When I went to the Arts&Crafts Conference a couple weeks ago, I took the bus from Raleigh to Asheville.

I tried to buy tickets on the Greyhound website, but every time I did, it returned an error and asked me to try again. Then I called their phone sales  number, and spoke to some mindblowingly unhelpful girls who kept spelling Stivison “F-G-Y-P-Y-F-O-M”, sighing loudly, and telling me that card wouldn’t work because I must not know the address on my bank statement (smack some gum while you read for full effect). I ended up driving to the bus station and buying a ticket in person.

But while Greyhound was telling me my address was wrong and I can’t purchase tickets by phone, they were actually running my debit card over and over, for more than a thousand dollars worth of charges.

Greyhound has two customer service numbers on their website. One begins by telling you to press one if you’ve been overcharged for tickets, so I guess I’m not the only one who’d had this problem, but when I pressed one, no one was there. The other number goes directly to a voicemail that isn’t connected. (Sometimes I am accused of exaggerating for effect on my blog. I’m not!)

Anyway, I had a great time seeing my parents, meeting new people at the conference, and hanging around in a really gorgeous hotel, so by the time I came home, I had kind of let my Greyhound problems go. The bank didn’t charge us the overdraft fees, but it did set off fraud protection,  which makes the bank disable my debit card and issue me a new one. Looking on the bright side, not having any access to my account for 7 to 10 business days will help us save money.

Then yesterday, I got a form letter from Greyhound, apologizing because of my “concerns regarding not being able to reach customer service”. What? I wasn’t calling up customer service to say hello! I was calling about the THOUSAND DOLLARS I’d been overcharged. I didn’t need a apology because no one picked up the phone, especially that apology completely ignored the reason I was calling, those ten times they charged my card.

So now I’m completely furious again. I don’t want a voucher for a discount my next ticket, I’m pretty sure this has been my last Greyhound trip. Isn’t an old saying about this kind of situation: Overcharge me a thousand dollars once, shame on you. But twice, shame on me. Something like that. But I would like a “Sorry we were incredibly rude about not being able to sell you a ticket, while actually charging you ten times for that ticket. Sorry that when you called about that, our customer service number goes straight to disconnected voicemail.” form letter.

Think they’ve got one of those made up?
Update 3/14: Awesome to see this on The Consumerist! Just to clarify, my bank froze my account because the $1000 in repeated charges set off fraud protection. I haven’t had to pay the $1000. I was required to get a new ATM card, which is en route now, so the real damage is that I can’t access my money until the card arrives. I don’t know a lot of stories where Bank of America is the good guy, but they didn’t charge me overdraft fees or anything.

Update 2: Thanks so much for commenting and showing me that I’m not alone in my Greyhound feud! But please lay off the profanity in the comments! First, reading all these sailor words will make me fall right off the polite-language wagon. Second, my pastor dad is reading!  Thanks again for commenting, even you with the gutter mouths!

Update 3: Some of the charges seem to have come through the from the website (it returned an error saying my transaction had failed and that I should check my info and try again, and I stupidly did). Some of the charges were at the telephone rate, which includes a $6 surcharge, so I know that my card was run both ways. (Blows my mind that I was charged extra to talk to rude people.)

From the blog Simpson's Paradox, please comment here:

Greyhound Form Letter

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