Pontiac Aztec

I wish they still made the Pontiac Aztec.



Called the ugliest car of all time by Time magazine, but I think it looks cool. And is the perfect size. All the driving reviews for it that I've read are terrific.

October is the Month of Stress

After having dinner with some friends last night (the 3rd meeting of our "See You Next Tuesday" Club), I came home, did some work for school, and hit the sack at around 11:15pm. I'd set the alarm for 5am, in anticipation of hitting the gym this morning.

So I lay there for a while, and sleep didn't come. I tried turning on the fan, to give myself some white noise. No go. I turned on the space heater, because I figured I'd get drowsy if it was extra hot. Nope. I turned and lay the opposite way than I usually do. Nothing. I called the dog up to the bed. I pushed him back down. Nothing. I lay there until nearly 1:30am, then got up and started googling "insomnia".

I googled for a while, then read for a while, trying to make myself completely exhausted. Then, I tried going back to bed. I lay for a long time, and, then, I realized that my alarm clock was going to go off in less than an hour. I was absolutely miserable, felt horrible, and decided to get up again and make sub plans; I would take a sick day. I did so, set my alarm for 7am, called in sick, and then proceeded to sleep in until around noon. The sleep trick of wiggling my toes worked. It was my first sick day in over a year.

In my googling, I saw that insomnia is almost never the result of something physical, but, rather, something mental. There is some sort of stress in the mind that is keeping me tense. I'm very much a roll-with-the-flow type of person. The opposite of neurotic? That's me. I take whatever stress there is and sort of put it on a shelf in my head, assuming I can ignore it and it will go away.

So, what is stressing me out right now?

(1) Money. I'm fronting for all books and field trips and it's costing me a hell of a lot of stress. I'll eventually get paid back, I know, but I always ends up getting screwed. As of now, I've overdrawn my account, and, even though I have a separate savings account with money in it, my debit/checking account is charging me $28 per overdraw. Therefore, a $2 bottle of water that I used my debit card on cost me $30 the other day. I'm also paying nearly a grand to go to NCTE, out of pocket - $300 for registration, $150/night for hotel. Ugh.

(2) This big field trip. I have no co-chaperone. Stressful.

(3) Piles and piles of grading. Stressful.

(4) Day-by-day planning. Stressful.

(5) Even with the loss of 6 pounds last week, still weigh so much that I could get a killer heart attack at 40. 251 on a 5'10 scale, even with some muscle throw in, is unacceptable.

(6) I really need a new car. With #1, that makes it tough.

(7) All these little things. A senior citizen dog who, suddenly, has started shitting in the house and deposits so much hair everywhere that I have to vaccuum every other day. (I complain about Holden, but, really, he is such a huge stress reliever that it's hard to be mad at him.) Friends who are takers, not givers. Other things regarding dating and starting a family that I just don't blog about anymore.

(8) National Boards is a lot of work.

All of it, I guess, is creating a lot of stress in my life right now. To try to alleviate some of it, I'm heading to the gym right now. I think more regular exercise will help the whole insomnia thing, too (I had missed Tuesday).

Thinking about a new car

I bought my 2000 Pontiac Grand Am in the winter of 2001/2002, my first year in Baltimore. It's been a pretty great car for me, fitting exactly what I wanted from that ages of 26-32. I wanted a sporty car with 4 doors. I wanted a distinctive color. I wanted an American car. I wanted something reliable and safe.

It's been all those things and more. I've loved this car.

That's not to say it hasn't had its problems, most of them being my fault. Within a year after purchasing it, I had let my insurance lapse (that was when I couldn't handle the summers of not being paid) and when I re-upped it, GEICO put the minimum insurance on it rather than the full coverage that it needed. I didn't realize it, because I don't notice things like that and assumed that the GEICO lady was re-upping me on what I had been on before. I didn't realize it until I ran into a curb (obscured by snow on a snow day) and both air bags deployed, and Geico wouldn't pay for it because it was a single-car accident. Thus, I've gone about 7 years without a horn or airbags; they would cost $5000-6000 out of pocket to fix.

About three or four years into my owning the car, I noticed that the power steering made noise when I turned the wheels. As I am prone to do, I just ignored it, although I thought I was just low on power steering fluid and just re-filled it a few times and it was fine for a bit. It turns out that I was slowly destroying my power steering. I'm not good with cars but when I brought it in once to a mechanic, he said the rack and pinion were shot and that the whole thing would cost $2000 to fix. I can handle a car without much power steering, so I just let it go. Around this same time the sun roof also stopped working - when it was open. It was fine because it was the summer, until one day we had a thunderstorm. I ran out to the car and put a garbage bag over it, and brought it into the dealer later. They almost gave up on trying to close it after trying and trying, but finally someone figured it out. The sunroof is now permanently closed and doesn't work.

The most annoying thing just happened about a month ago. My dad, for Christmas last year, got me a GPS. It changed my life. Even when I know where a place is, I turned it on, just so I didn't have to think about when to turn - the device to told me. I get lost all the time and often choose places to go based on not being worried about getting lost. So, the GPS really did change my life. I loved it. However, about a month ago, the cigarette lighter in my car conked out. No apparent reason, and I tried to replace it, to no avail. Probably a fuse or something, something I have no idea how to fix and some mechanic would probably charge me $150 to fix - not worth it.

I've also had some surface problems. My parked car got hit, knocking off the mirror. It was about $100 to fix it, and I didn't feel like it, so I never did. There's also a big crack across the windshield, that I don't care that much about. Plus currently the rearview mirror is dangling down after I hit a big pothole. I've bought the kit to fix it, but accidentally superglued the peg within the mirror, so now I'm not sure if the kit will work. I don't care that much about it.

Obviously, that's my thing. For a long time, I've not cared what happened to this car, because I'm just sort of waiting for it to die. I've loved this car and it's nice to have a paid-off car, but I've needed a new vehicle for some time now. First off, the power steering thing has a capacity to be dangerous, I think. Secondly, I'd feel like a Darwin's Award candidate if I died in an accident because I don't have airbags. Thirdly, the car is not reliable enough to risk on a trip to Michigan, so my trips to Michigan are always more expensive (re: I might have to fly, or rent a car, or both, now) and less rewarding (no gallavanting around the state visiting friends). I barely trust it on a trip to DC.

Still, I love having a paid-off car and, after just buying a new house, don't want to add a car payment to my expenses. I still have a couple thousand dollars worth of credit card on my plate that I'm trying really hard to eliminate before I add a car loan onto my total debt. I only have about a grand saved up. The car is fine for getting me to work and around Baltimore.

I really want to drive home for Christmas, though. And I'd like something a little bigger to cart around my bike or baseball equipment or kids easier. But, I'm not sure what I want to do. I also want something with decent mileage.

I'm having a pretty hard time deciding what route to take. Should I go ahead and just get something cheap, like, say, a 2002 Ford Taurus? I could probably get one for a few thousand dollars, and it might very well be reliable. But how reliable? That's the rub. I'd really like to get a Liberty or a Honda CR-V (both are smallish SUV-types that perfectly fit what I want right now), but they might be too expensive. I don't want to get another bad car loan. I'm not sure whether to save up for something I really, really want, or take the plunge sooner rather than later. We'll see...

Fitness this week

I made it to the gym on Monday and Tuesday mornings for good, intense 90-minute workouts. I'd forgotten how good it feels to go to work fueled on endorphins; it just makes the days so good.

On Tuesday night, I hosted a dinner party. Some friends and I are getting together on Tuesday nights and cooking each other dinner. So far, our "See You Next Tuesday" club (sorry for the vulgarity) is only two weeks old, but we'll continue it for a while. After my impeccable spaghetti and (veggie) meatballs, we watched the game for a while. They were here until around 9, and I didn't start my preparation for the next day until after they left. It takes a solid 2-3 hours to write a quiz and plan a lesson for the 9th graders, so I was up until around midnight. That shot my plans for a gym trip in the morning. It also wasn't helped that a group of loud men decided to park out on the street outside my window and yap for a few hours. I slept about four hours, it seems, and was all messed up.

Yesterday, I was at school for 12 hours, came home, and planned from 7-12 or so. It was a crazy long day, and didn't make it to the gym at all. So, I guess I took Wednesday off, and was up so late I didn't go in for the gym on Thursday morning. I'll make it tonight, though, and am about to head there right now. I'm going to work out extra intensely for missing yesterday.

The conclusion? Staying up late one night messes up my entire schedule and make it harder to live healthy. I have to say, though, hanging out with some friends on a weeknight really broke up the monotony of the week, so I'm still glad I did it.

Getting it off

Got my butt up to the gym this morning, worked out from 6-7:20 or so - all cardio. I'm still a bit shocked by how much weight I've put on since the last time I weighed myself. No wonder my clothes weren't really fitting very well.

I was exhausted at around 5pm today and ended up napping, so now I've got some energy, unfortunately. I'll still try to hit the sack by 10.

The other thing I'm doing: no beer until Christmas. I don't even drink that much beer, just once a week, a few drinks on Friday night, but I'm going to give it up (a friend bet me that I wouldn't. I'm a sucker for a bet.) Next off the list is cereal. It's just too easy to eat and too good. Cutting out a few of these things will help cut my caloric intake.

257

I don't usually pay attention to my weight. As long as I'm exercising regularly and feeling good and feeling good about myself, I figure I'm pretty healthy. I wanted to track my weight loss this summer, but my scale's battery ran out and I never bothered to replace it. Plus it's a new-fangled scale that calculates percentage fat, and I never really trust that number, and I can barely use it. So I just don't care.

I bought an analog scale. I'm up to 257. That's unbelievable to me. I've gained 55 pounds in the last five years, after losing 118 previously. I've been exercising a couple of times per week so far this school year, as I seem more busy and stressed otu than usual and can't find the time.

I will now. I'm back to morning workouts, starting tomorrow. This is absolutely ridiculous.

Soul Food

It's Teacher Inservice Days, so we have a bit more flexibility with lunch than usual. In other words, we have more than 25 minutes to eat and don't have a bell that signals we have to get back to work. We took advantage of that today, by heading down to West Baltimore for a new restaurant: Immeasurable Chicken and Waffles.

I'd just heard an NPR story on chicken and waffles, so I knew a little bit about this southern delicacy. I was still really curious what it looked like, and was eager to go. I'm still a vegetarian, so I wasn't going to partake (and, frankly, it's fried chicken and chicken wings that most make me want to be a vegetarian - I hate seeing people eat off bones - so there was going to be no temptation).

I got a waffle, some eggs, and hush puppies. The waffle was about the best I ever had - it nearly melted in my mouth. The eggs were mediocre. We had three rounds of hush puppies at our table, and the first round had some frozen corn in them, but the latter two rounds were toasty and good.

Everyone else pretty much enjoyed, but it took nearly an hour to get everyone's food out there to us. There were 8 of us there for lunch, and the place had a few other tables there, and a few people getting takeout. There appeared to be just 4 or 5 employees, total, and they were a little overwhelmed by our large party.

So there's my restaurant review. I'm trying to write a little every day.

Dissonance over the Top-100 List

Facebook and the death of anonymity has pretty much killed my blogs, but I'm trying to fight it.

A friend presented a challenge not long ago: determine your favorite 100 artists of all time. We're set to get together and compare our lists, probably with a few drinks, in the next few days. My list started out at over 200, but I've narrowed it down to around 120 by now. I still have cuts to make, and will decide how I'll do that, probably on the fly.

Toughest is marrying my two musical lives. In college, I was mostly a singer/songwriter type. I loved folk music and alternative music, especially girls with guitars - Weezer, Juliana Hatfield, Patty Griffin, etc. In the last six or seven years, though, I've developed a love of hip-hop, particularly hip-hop with a political conscience - Common, Mos Def, K'Naan. I still love the old genre, but how can I compare the two? Part of this makes me put both Tracy Chapman and Kanye West in my personal Top 5, and that's pretty easy. But how do compare, say, Lisa Loeb and Kid Cudi? Lisa Loeb's album Tails was one of the first that I loved, and I still think it holds up pretty well - great production, with Loeb's voice out front of crunchy guitars in a CD that rocks a lot more than you'd expect. Her lyrics can be a bit precious, at times, but, sometimes, they perfectly capture the awkwardness of my youth, meshing winsomeness and poetry, as in her mega-hit "Stay" (and I'm still amazed that that song hit #1 when she was un-signed - could that ever happen again with our megaconglomerate radio stations?), as well as "Do You Sleep?", "Waiting for Wednesday", and "Snow Day" - all songs that still hold up today, nearly 15 years later. I have 3 or 4 of her albums, but I haven't bought a Lisa Loeb album in a long time, and didn't go see her when she was at the Recher about two years ago. Still, she still holds a place in my pantheon, at least somewhere in the top 100, right? (She's checking in at around 75.)

And I contrast her with someone like Kid Cudi, the type of artist that the post-25 Mark listens to. I heard his song "Day and Night" over the summer, and it was catchy, smart, and fresh, and I waited for months for his CD to come out. Slightly before that, a pretty great 2nd single, "Make Her Say," came out, and, not only did it feature Kanye rapping again (thanks, we need no more 808s nor Heartbreaks), but a funny verse by Common, and one of the most interesting samples (I'd never heard of Lady Gaga before that) I've heard in a while. So the CD came out a couple of weeks ago, and it hasn't left my CD player since; I love it. For me, it's a musical equivalent of a book like Frankenstein or a film like Magnolia: the word of an audacious, brilliant, and unbridled (and imperfect) young artist. It's bold, soulful, ambitious, and full of pathos and humor. Man on the Moon flawed (some of his pop cultural reference make me roll my eyes... Charles in Charge? Really?), but the flaws make it even more ingratiating; they're the flaws of youth, of ambition, and I like it even more. Cudi is no studio puppet, he's a kid with a clever head on his shoulders, an ear for a good beat, and the guts to pull it all together and not listen to the editors. I love it. Mary Shelley forgot about characters in her debut novel, and was repetitive at times, but that's okay - it almost makes the book better, she had a great idea and just went with it. PT Anderson's film Magnolia is my favorite film for that reason - just so bold and unrestrained, it just grips me like a vice. Same with Kid Cudi; I find there's combinations of wit, love, and grief in almost every song, and discover new songs every couple of days that blow me away.

So, where does Cudi end up on the list? Does he make it, as he only entered my musical consciousness in, say, July? Where does he fit alongside Lisa Loeb, who I've listened to since 1995 but not much in in the last 5 years? (Anyhow, so far, Cudi is checking in at around 83.)

Odd, cool dilemmas I can have with myself over this list. I'm trying to finalize by Friday, where I think we will be comparing our lists over at the Hamilton Tavern, while I eat a veggie burger with a fried egg on top. Perhaps I'll make my list public here on this blog around that time. I'm sure you all are clamoring.

Nostalgia returns

My college roommate called me today, totally out of the blue and just to say hi. It was the exclamation point on a general nostalgic feeling I've had lately. My friends from high school (14 years) have dwindled to 1, maybe 2; my friends from college (9 years) have dwindled to 5 or so. J is a friend I hope to retain until the end of our lives, but we still seem to let months come between phone calls. The different paths our lives have taken since we moved together to Baltimore 9 years ago are pretty striking. Then, we were both 1st year teachers in Baltimore City, 23 years old and fresh with teaching degrees from Michigan State University. I was placed in a functional high school with kids who mostly care and want to be there; he was placed in a rowdy middle school and was forced to teach out of a trailer. He lasted just a few weeks before succumbing to the feeling that he wasn't doing any good and the students would be better off without him; he quit and became a substitute teacher in the county, and after the year moved to Florida to teach. He quickly got a girl pregnant (the kid is now in kindergarten), eventually moved to Alabama, and now is a truck delivery driver. He taught through last year, but couldn't live on a teacher's salary, which down there is about half of what mine is in Baltimore. He doesn't own a house yet, but has a son, who he shared custody of with his ex-girlfriend.

I've visited him just once since he moved down South, and he hasn't visited Baltimore since he moved. We talk a few times a year, and unfortunately lately our conversations have turned more argumentative, mostly about politics. We didn't bring any of that up today, and just caught up; hopefully next time we talk will be less than six months from now.

The last couple of weeks have been full of things like this: Wally Pleasant's "Restless College Years" has come up at least three times on my I-Pod, randomly; I got an apology email from someone I have a complex history with; the email was nice, and, while I haven't responded to her yet, I might; I rejoined my former gym, Bally's ($99 for 12 months, and even though I'm still part of the Y and the Y has a great location for me, Bally's has better equipment and is less teeming with kids), and I love returning to my old "stomping grounds" of Towson.

Trader Joe's is just begging me to start shopping at Wegman's

Two Saturdays in a row, and both times Trader Joe's has been out of Tofurky Deli Slices. I asked about them both times, and both times they assured me that they haven't stopped carrying them, that they just ran out. Today, apparently a woman bought 12 packs.

I love these things, though, and might just have to start heading up to Wegman's more often. I went there for the 2nd time a few weeks ago, and my head just about exploded with all the great options there. What an amazing store. I dropped way too much money, though, so I am going to try to limit my time up there. Plus it's a little bit of a hike.