Mark Thoma's Other Blog

One of Those Days

Today started well. I left some Diet Cokes in my car overnight and it was so hot that when I got in and started driving, one of them exploded and shot all over the car. I then missed my turn and headed the wrong way on the freeway. I eventually got things mopped up and headed in the right direction, but it wasn't the best start I've ever had. I also sent an email that I regretted just before hitting the road. Oh well.

A Street with a Familiar Name

Weird. I'm traveling, and in a strange city, and I was a bit turned around tonight trying to get back to my motel. I looked up, saw "Thoma Street," something I'd never seen before, thought why not, so I took it. And somehow it ended up on the street I needed to be on. It's a really short street, it crosses a "V" near the bottom (like an upside-down A), and only goes between the two-sides of the V, but the other side of the V is exactly where I needed to get.

Huh. If I ever see another Thoma Street, guess I should take it.

Tune In and Turn Off

I decided I wasn't going to watch CNN unless there was a good reason to do so (and so far there hasn't been), so as an alternative I turned it to CSPAN (yeah, I know).

The guest was Anne Coulter and she was talking about her latest book, at least that's what I gathered from the few seconds it was on while I fumbled to get the channel changed as fast as I could.

So I turned it off. There was a time when leaving the TV off would have been hard, and I never imagined I'd go days with it off as I sometimes do now. It was on day and night when I was growing up and it was simply part of things. However, I can't claim any success as I'm now more attached to my computer and internet connection than I ever was to the TV.

Outdoor Office

Nice Place to Work Today

Travel and the Call of the Blog

I visited the state of New York for the first time, Ithaca in particular. I gave a talk to the Future of Minority Studies Summer Institute on using blogs as a means of bridging the gap between academic research and public policy (it was at Cornell this year -- there had been a session the day before on the challenges of being a scholar-advocate, and I followed up on that theme). The invitation to speak came out of the blue, I do not study the issues this group is concerned with, but people said it went well.

It was greener, colder, and rainier than I expected. It reminded me somewhat of Eugene in terms of greenness and climate, though you could tell it was more humid than Eugene, but the buildings were much older and there were no fir trees to speak of. So it was obvious I wasn't in Kansas anymore, or Eugene for that matter.

Due to the rain today, my flight out of Ithaca was canceled, so I sat all day expecting to go to Philadelphia on an alternative flight, then as far west as I could get from there. But after waiting six hours, that flight was canceled too. So I decided to get to a bigger airport and got the last seat on the flight to Newark, NJ which is where I am now. I scheduled a flight to Denver at 7:00 a.m., 4:00 a.m. my time (just past bedtime for me), and get to Eugene around 11:30 tomorrow morning. Long as I have internet access, I'm happy (or at least not yelling at ticket agents).

Fun day. One thing did make me stop and think. After waiting all day for the flight to Philadelphia, I thought it was going to go at one point and I was writing the post at the time. I found myself hoping the plane was delayed a bit so I'd have a chance to finish it and post it before I had to board. That was after waiting all day. Then I realized how crazy that is.