Baggage

The weekend before last I flew up to Bethesda, MD for a two day Navy Reserves symposium for medical/dental officers. The meeting was good because I got to see a few people I haven't seen in years and years (kind of like Facebook!). The flight left something to be desired though, not so much because of the 3 hour delay departing DC, but because of the new rules for baggage. If you haven't flown in a few months, you may not realize that most airlines charge you a fee to check a piece of baggage in - i.e. $15 per bag! What a rip off! Long gone are the days of checking multiple bags (not that I regularly did anyway), but what this is now doing is creating a new class of cheapskate passengers who, in order to forego paying this fee, don't check any bags in and instead lug all their shit onto the plane and cram it into the overhead bins occupying every square millimeter of space. Their baggage may pass the maximum size allowance, but it's still pretty damn big nonetheless. I've learned not to stow anything in the overhead bins, especially if its fragile, but God forbid if you have to put a laptop computer up there. You can pretty much kiss it goodbye! What it boils down to is that people bring way too much crap with them, even for domestic travel. My solution is that they shouldn't charge for checked baggage, which goes into a cargo hold, but instead they should charge according to how much volumetric space inside the cabin you and your bags occupy. Yes - that means obese people pay more! Extra-large bags and extra-large people are directly proportional to a less comfortable flight for me and plenty of other small/slim people who can pack a little more frugally and take up less space. How many times have you been on a flight and had a beefy arm or thigh of a neighboring chunkster taking up to a quarter of your space? Oh, and get this - when the beverage cart came out, they charged not only for beer and soda, but also for water! WTF!! And God love the flight attendants - I really empathize with them because they don't make these rules, yet they are often the targets of the wrath of ignorant, inconsiderate people.

Hey, enough of my ranting!! Here's a pic of me and my buddy Paul, and Paul and his wife Efrat, at the Dogfish Head ale house in Gaithersburg, MD. Paul's currently in his anesthesiology residency at NNMC. It was quite the weekend of ethnic foods. Friday night we had a menu of Israeli dishes prepared by Efrat and a neighbor (both are from Israel); Saturday we had Indian; Sunday we had Ethiopian. Gochisosama deshita!!

"It is what it is"

Yeah, I was away from the states for a couple years, but when did this expression become the phrase sensation that's sweeping the nation? It seems like I hear it everywhere now! Who came up with this? Was it in a commercial or a movie? I've overheard somebody saying it at least five times in the past two weeks. It sounds like such a cop out, to be used when you can offer no real insight into a matter or situation, kind of like "c'est la vie" or "call a spade a spade". It's an automatic conversation ender. Maybe that's a good thing. The next time I'm in line at the bank or the grocery store or on a plane and a stranger tries to spark up meaningless conversation, I'll just offer up "it is what it is" and turn away or close my eyes and pretend to nap. I predict it's going to become as ubiquitous as the expression "dude", being applied to everything from high school exams to traffic fender benders to presidential debates (e.g. "Senator McCain, what are your views on the $700 billion bailout of our country's largest financial institutions?"; "Well Mr. Moderator, it is what it is" (cue relentless applause)). Just wait, "IIWII" is going to replace "WWJD" on bumper stickers. They'll be T-shirts, buttons, motivational posters. America is becoming the "It is what it is" culture! "It is what it is" fever -- catch it!!

Word Of The Day

boondoggle |ˈboōnˌdägəl; -ˌdôgəl| informal
noun
work or activity that is wasteful or pointless but gives the appearance of having value : writing off the cold fusion phenomenon as a boondoggle best buried in literature.
• a public project of questionable merit that typically involves political patronage and graft:
: they each drew $600,000 in the final months of the great boondoggle.

AKA - What I'm doing this weekend in Bethesda, Maryland as part of the reserves. Be back Sunday night!

Photo Of The Day

Saw this on the Beatles site as part of an article on the release of a DVD entitled "All Together Now" coming out on 20 Oct (my birthday!) about the creative process behind the "Love" album and Cirque Du Soleil show. Geez, I hope I don't get sued by Paul McCartney for posting this!

Vinyasa Uprising!

Om My God! Where have I been? What's up with that! I've become the world's laziest blogger. Sorry kids! I have been really slacking. Let me update you since I last blogged. I started my new job. It's a great office, with nice people, but it has been a slow start. My patient load has been minimal and I've been working at getting referrals. Anyway, my life doesn't revolve around that completely. I've been doing a lot of surfing, yoga, and a little travel. Akemi and I attended a yoga conference called "Vinyasa Uprising" in Miami Beach from 10-14 September. It was my first, and not to make it too cliche, but it was "enlightening". I had a great time, as well as a couple ass-kicking sessions. I've driven through Miami a couple times on my way to Key West, but this was my first time to actually visit the city. I was pleasantly surprised. I actually really, really enjoyed it. I don't why, but I had these preconceived notions of the whole city being like one big scene from "Scarface". It wasn't like that at all. Yes, it was very ethnic (filled with great restaurants), but I didn't fear being shot and I didn't witness any drug deals going down. (OK, now that's just being racist, you bastard). As far as the conference goes, I'm a very open-minded person (dare I say liberal? deep-down, yes, but don't tell anybody I told you!), and this event challenged my perceptions to the max. Yes, there was the physical aspect of the yoga classes, but there was something deeper going on there too, complete with lots of yogi spiritualists, meditation, and sanskrit chants. No, there was no Kool-Aid drinking involved, but I think something snapped in the spiritual recesses of my mind. Suddenly I have this insatiable urge to drop out of society, travel to India, and become a Vedic monk in the middle of freakin' nowhere for a few years. For a moment, my third eye opened and all became lucid.

And then I went back to work on Monday.

But anyway, check out a few photos. Also, I've been posting boatloads of photos on my Facebook page. Just look me up under "Bernard Hofmann". More posts to come, I promise.