misc.

Most of my last year working for United Engineers and Constructors was spent in Syracuse, NY. And Oswego. I enjoyed some things about that phase, which was the tail-end of my nuclear engineering career — the Syracuse Speed Skating Club and living on an expense account, mostly — but I didn’t love being on the road 8-10 months of each year, which is why it was the tail-end.

Not that I loved living in Philadelphia all that much, either. It’s a great town, but I just wasn’t a big city person any more. Visiting is excellent…I spent most of a day in Chicago a couple of weeks ago just walking around and looking at buildings and imagining eating at all the hole-in-the wall restaurants I passed. But the density of cars and people (too high) and trees (too low) always makes me glad I live in a small city in Michigan, minutes away from farms and forests.

Philadelphia did have WXPN, though…88.5 on your FM dial. That and WRTI (90.1) were the first public radio stations I consciously listened to. WXPN in particular introduced me to Bob Edwards, Sylvia Poggioli, Carl Kassell, and a metric ton of great music, and it’s the first NPR affiliate I volunteered at. This was back when stations stuck volunteers in a small room with actual telephones with actual twisty cords and handsets dials and allowed strangers to take Visa and Mastercard numbers from other strangers so they could make next year’s budget.

Because United Engineers wanted me at work at 8 every morning, I volunteered for the early phone shift during Michaela Majoun’s morning show. It was her first year at XPN, and she was fantastic. (She’s still there; she’s probably still fantastic.) So I got up well before dawn and went to the University of Pennsylvania’s campus and didn’t commit any credit card fraud and had a great time inside an actual radio station.

As I left, I stopped at the water fountain to get a drink and while leaning over and slurping I saw a pair of pointy and heavily tooled leather cowboy boots out of the corner of my eye. They weren’t mine — I wore very plain brown ones when I was working at the Nine Mile Point nuke plant, and none at all with my three piece suit at the home office in Philly — so they caught my attention. I lifted my head from the fountain and looked up and then further up and still further up and there was Lyle Lovett’s unmistakeable face and further up still was Lyle Lovett’s unmistakeable hair. So I did what comes naturally: I stammered. “I-I really really liked your latest album.” He smiled, said thank you, got a drink of water himself (from th-th-the same fountain!) and then went into the studio to be charming with Michaela Majoun.

You were expecting more, right? Sorry. But I was expecting much less from that day, so it was 100% worth getting up at 5am for.

All this because we saw Lyle Lovett in concert a few days back, an anniversary present to ourselves. Almost three hours of great music, and as we left the Michigan Theater via a rarely-used exit we found ourselves in the loading area backstage. There, just past the bass player putting away his standup, and after thanking him and the cellist (yes, really, a cellist) for the great performance and picking up a discarded set list which I’ve used to recreate the concert as a playlist for Kat…there Lyle Lovett was, again, taking a photo and chatting with Jeff Daniels.

Nowhere near as close as public radio got me. But close enough.

He’s still really tall.

In order of appearance, yesterday I…

…got soaked up to the hamstrings walking to work.

…made some more research available online. 

…received a royalty check for a previous book. 

…finished and submitted the first draft of the Hawking book. 

…ran some trails in my favorite trail running shoes. 

…ate leftovers and a slice of Go! Ice Cream’s Carrot Cake Pie. 

…read The Love Bunglers by Jaime Hernandez, again. (It killed me, again.) 

…had a sip (or two) of Grass Widow Bourbon from Two James Spirits of Corktown, Detroit. 

…thought, “Hey, I’m really lucky.”  

Today? Today I worked and tutored at 826mi and joined my friend Lara in celebrating her move to full-time writing. And I buried the lede. 

I read your poems aloud

to my wife as she makes us salad,

a task she says she hates

but whose tedium I can relieve

by reading poetry,

which she also says she hates.

She asks for the “New and Selected” and “Other” 

verses while she tears lettuce and

scoops avocado and digs olives from a jar,

 

putting too few in my bowl and too many in hers,

even though when I count them we have the same number.

And she interrupts you all the time with laughter,

putting you in the good company of

every movie, novel, meal, television show, 

or walk with no destination in mind

that we’ve ever enjoyed together.

If you keep writing poetry, then I

will keep reading it to her

and we will keep eating salad,

which I’m sure you’ll agree

is a fair trade.

I haven’t posted something to the blog in a while, but I’m glad to return with an important question, one you’ve asked yourself many times: “Should Jim use shampoo?”

While showering today, I realized that I use the stuff mostly out of habit. Even though I’m not sure it’s actually better for hair than plain ol’ soap, I’ve been so thoroughly brainwashed (or something-else-washed) by the Hair Care Industrial Complex that I’ll take its indispensability as a given. However, I also have to take as a given the length and amount of hair I have on my head nowadays. I should have done that long ago, in fact, which is why I wondered whether I’ve reached the point where it makes better overall sense to just use bar soap. But how to decide?

When in doubt, turn to math.

Start with the average diameter of human hair: via en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hair, it’s 0.0017-0.018cm…let’s call it 0.01cm, though I expect mine is actually on the thin side.

Length of my hair: I cut it to about 0.15cm, and unless I get lazy, the longest it gets is about 0.3 cm…so let’s call it 0.2cm.

Combining these, and assuming each hair is a perfect cylinder, that yields an exposed surface area for each hair of π(0.01/2)^2+π(0.01)(0.2) = 0.006cm^2.

Head hairs/unit area skull: approx. 100/cm^2, via //www.baldingblog.com/category/density/page/5/, which I am glad exists even though I don’t ever plan to visit again.

Diameter of my skull: approx. 17.5cm, so if we assume it’s a perfect hemisphere, that gives an area of 0.5(4π(17.5/2)^2) = 480cm^2.

Coverage: Ahem. I’ll use my wife Kat’s charitable estimate of 60%, even though I think it’s thinned from its original (and presumably average) density, which would mean I should use a lower number to compensate.

So, the surface area of hairs I have left is 0.006*100*480*0.6 = 173cm^2, which is substantially less than the exposed skin surface of 480-π(0.01/2)^2*100*480*0.6 = 478cm^2.

The conclusion is clear. Now, will I get less soap in my eyes?