100 Thank You Cards

Some Thank-Yous Are Too Big for Cards

As an “academic” working full time, I spend enough time with page limits, word counts, deadlines, style guides, formatting, etc., that sometimes I want to write freely. So, once again, I’m writing in appreciation with no Thank-You Card attached. I promise one day to return to the script, but today isn’t that day. Today I am going to write some things about my Mom and though there are a million things about her that are worth writing about, I have chosen these three:

 1. Ask any of my Mom’s family to tell you anything about her from when she was a kid and they’ll likely start with little Pam walking to the library, taking out a stack of books, reading them, and returning them the next day so she could borrow another day’s worth of reading. If they don’t start there, they might end up there—it was an important part of who she was. She was a bookworm her whole life, although later, when she was a mom, wife, sister, daughter, aunt, full-time employee, dog-owner, die-hard Yankee fan, and many more things to many more people, she rarely had the chance to lose herself in books for an entire day like she did when she was young. Rather, she would take in a couple chapters at the end of the day, or on her lunch break, or in waiting rooms, or even while on the phone with a friend of hers who was a world class talker. I have a lot of her books on my shelves now; some of them have her name on the inside cover, some of them have scraps of note paper she used to mark her place. Sometimes when I’ve read a book that was hers, especially one she particularly enjoyed, I feel as though this is a new friend that we now have in common. It’s a nice feeling—both familiar and new at the same time.

2. My Mom used to work in the development office of a community college in Bridgeport, Connecticut, one of the most poverty-stricken areas of state. Her job was to raise money for scholarships and to assist students in completing their scholarship applications. She took her work very seriously because she knew the smallest increments of money could make a difference between a student being able to enroll in classes or not, or being able to buy textbooks for class, or not. These students were women with three kids working two jobs while going to class. They were first generation college students. They were people taking the first step toward reaching their goals. She was an ally for them, something worth taking seriously.

I filled in for Mom at her work during her first round of chemotherapy in the summer after I graduated college. Her job was difficult and I couldn’t do 90% of the things she did because they required either the interpersonal relationships she’d built with present donors, or the persuasive grace she’d cultivated to approach new potential donors, or the information she had mentally indexed about every scholarship, or the ability to match students to scholarships. Even though I kinda sucked at doing her job, it was a great experience for me because I learned so much about her. On a daily basis students would come to her desk looking for her so they could thank her for helping them. Because she wasn’t there, but because I look like she did, they were happy to tell me how she had suggested a scholarship for which they were particularly well-suited, given them the right forms to complete, or sent them reminders to meet an application deadline. Many of them stopped by to thank her for these things, and for giving them something perhaps even more valuable: hope. She encouraged them to apply, she believed that they’d succeed. One student said it helped to know someone was believing in her.

It was amazing for me to see the positive impact she had in her role at the school. And it became clear to see how I’d taken her for granted. That’s the funny thing about gratitude—most of the things you have to be grateful for are all around you every day: your supportive parents; your partner who knows everything about you and loves you anyway; your no-nonsense teachers; your funny and brilliant friends; the music on your ipod that gets you through the day; the rescue dogs that are thrilled to see you every time you walk through the door; the friends you make between pages of books; your health; your sanity; your curiosity; your ability. But yeah, definitely your parents. My parents encouraged my brothers and I to get the best educations we possibly could, and they made a million and one sacrifices so help us along the way. They believed in us and cheered us on. Growing up that way was natural and good, but it’s hard to see that gift for the beautiful thing it is when it’s what you’ve always known. Taking a step back, I felt that through her work, I’d gotten to know my Mom in this new way while she wasn’t even there. 

3. My Mom would have been 60 years old today.

Last year on her birthday, I mailed a donation to the head of the Development Office at Housatonic Community College, where my Mom had helped so many students. A big portion of this money came from generous family and friends who donated to the Pam Prestin Scholarship Fund as a wedding gift to Tom and I.

Currently, this scholarship is a way to help some students buy textbooks. In the future, I plan to contribute more so that it can cover the cost of one student’s tuition for a semester, or even for a year. I’ve been educated within an inch of my life, but this is because my parents valued education and cultivated that same value in me (why else would I have self-inflicted graduate school?). I’d like to help other people toward their educational goals, something my Mom did effortlessly and naturally. She cared about education. She loved to help people. She worked hard and encouraged other people to work hard, too. That’s basically who she was. And in this way, she can continue to be that person.

So thank you to everyone who was so generous in donating. Because of you, there are a couple students who got to run into the Development Office and tell the person sitting where my Mom used to sit that they won the Pam Prestin Scholarship. :)

Edited to add: for those who are interested in contributing , you can go here to learn more about how to donate to the scholarship, or send me a message. Thanks!

Numberless, Cardless Thank You Cards

There’s an old saying about it taking a village to raise a child. While I don’t yet have experience to say whether this is true, I do know that it also takes a village to complete a dissertation. Or at least, it does when you’re a graduate student studying health communication in a fantastic academic department that is, unfortunately, not affiliated with a medical school, nursing school, hospital, public health department, or any other place in which you might be able to tap into existing networks to work with clinical populations.

Although I haven’t been able to send thank you cards to everyone who has helped me out so far (or anyone lately, because I packed them up three weeks ago and they’re being held hostage by Lion Transportation, Inc., the worst moving company ever, with the rest of our stuff), I do want to take the time here to acknowledge the seemingly endless number of people who have given me assistance on this project so far. Here are a bunch of little shout outs (i.e., numberless, cardless Thank You Cards) in somewhat sequential order:

1. Thank you to ISBER at UCSB for funding my formative survey about the stressors that cancer survivors face, as well as the ways in which they use media to cope with stress. This grant allowed me to compensate my amazing participants. This survey has provided me with a much deeper, much more nuanced understanding of my population of interest. It’s been invaluable.

2. Once the survey was online, it was a matter of finding people to take it. This is where I’ve needed (and received) a ton of help.

a. Thank you to organizations such as Susan G. Komen, Living Beyond Breast Cancer, Young Survival Coalition, FORCE, and the National Breast Cancer Foundation that allowed me to post a description of my study on their message boards.

b. Thank you to agencies such as Susan G. Komen (and its many affiliates), The Wellness Community (and its many affiliates), Gilda’s Club (and its many affiliates), and the Santa Barbara Breast Cancer Resource Center, all of which let their patrons know about my study by posting a flyer, sending out a mass e-mail, Tweeting, or putting it in their Facebook status. SO helpful!

c. A giant thank you to Pam Stephan at About.com’s breast cancer resource page, who wrote about my study as part of her newsletter and by doing so generated a lot of interest for me. The morning that her newsletter appeared online, I opened my inbox to find about 30 e-mails from people volunteering to complete the survey. How wonderful! Pam’s readers are fantastic.

d. Thank you to my friends, family, and colleagues who’ve promoted my study via Facebook, Twitter, blogs, e-mails, or any other means of communication.

e. Thank you to colleagues who’ve been generous with their advice on finding and recruiting participants. I’ve learned, in particular, from Dr. Segrin, Dr. Smith, and the future Dr. Joseph.

3. The biggest thank you to all of the breast cancer survivors who have provided thoughtful, interesting responses on this survey. I have learned so much from everyone who has completed it and these responses have informed my future work to an even greater extent than I could have imagined. Additionally, I’ve also appreciated the words of support and encouragement that many of them offered, as well as the comments or suggestions about the survey. I feel extremely fortunate to have “met” so many interesting, inspiring people through my schoolwork.

4. Then there’s my other pretest, which is an evaluation of video clips for potential inclusion as stimuli in my dissertation. For this, I need to pretest at least 60 video clips, and each clip needs to be evaluated by at least 20 people (don’t worry, I don’t force anyone to watch all 20. I offer them in packs of 6). This pretest is about to wrap up, too, and I couldn’t have done it without the help of:

a. My friend and fellow grad Katy, who offered extra credit to her students for finding videos that fit two important categories. This generated a ton of clips, many of which I pretested. It was extremely helpful!

b. My research assistant Tiffany for scouting out more clips. (I probably ruined YouTube for her for life. Sorry ‘bout that, Tiffany!).

c. My husband Tom for figuring out how to download the clips, store them, and upload them so they could be imbedded in an online survey. Awesome husband! This would have taken me…a year to do? (Sadly, I doubt I’m exaggerating.) He’s the best.

d. Professors (like my advisor) who offered extra credit to their students to take my pretests.

e. Friends who just became professors this Fall and offered my study as extra credit to their students (Dr. Choi!).

f. Friends Katy (again), Tom (again), Amber, Bekah, Andrea, and Allison, who took a pretest and because they’re nerds (I say this with affection), many of them pointed out things I could tweak within the video/survey to make for a smoother experience for participants. Thank you also to Kim, Hazel, Ellen, and Jimmy for taking a later version of the pretest.

So there you have it. About a million people—friends, family, strangers, survivors, advocates, etc.— have helped me with my dissertation already, and this is just the formative work before the Big Show gets underway this Fall. You can likely expect another post of me profusely expressing my gratitude to those who will lend a hand in the future with that project. 

Lastly, to the one guy who takes surveys for income and somehow found my survey the first day it went live and took it 50 times in the span of 20 minutes with fake responses and computer-generated e-mail addresses even though it was explicitly for breast cancer survivors and you’re not one: you’re not getting compensation, so stop e-mailing me about it.

Thank You Card #13

Throughout grad school I’ve spent a good deal of time studying persuasion, with a focus on health-related behavior change. One of the theoretical tools with which I’ve become familiar is the transtheoretical model (TTM, Prochaska, DiClemente, & Nordcross, 1992). The TTM is a framework used to measure and predict behavior change based on an analysis of behavioral patterns of effective psychotherapeutic practices. It consists of four constructs: stages of change (where you are along the process of behavior change), processes of change (or how it is that you’re moving from one stage to another), decisional balance (weighing pros and cons of change), and self-efficacy (confidence in your ability to change). This model lends itself beautifully to longitudinal research—i.e., following a cohort of wanna be behavior changers over time through the stages. I spent an ultra-fun week writing a seminar paper about how exciting it would be to design a series of persuasive messages based on each process and implement them in sequence to encourage staged change, but eh, no one’s going to do that because it’s a big, resource intensive project that would take forever. It’s much more common for studies to focus on a snapshot in time to confirm that people in specific stages are, in fact, reporting use of the processes that the TTM says should correspond to the stage they’re in. BORING! Clinical work is kinda cool, as practitioners often build and test “stage appropriate” interventions to facilitate behavior change.

Anyhow, I’ve decided to approach writing about Thank You Card #13 from a transtheoretical model perspective, and so I’m going to walk anyone who’s brave enough to keep reading through a case study of behavior change over time. It’s not gonna be that boring, I promise.

Precontemplation (Stage 1) to Contemplation (Stage 2). I’ve always loved animals, and at a fairly early age it became difficult for me to disassociate meat on a plate from a cow grazing in the pasture, or a little pig rolling in the mud (or playing video games). In TTM terms this process is called consciousness raising, where you gain an understanding about the ways in which a behavior has a negative impact on your life. In my case it was achieving an awareness of animals such that I could no longer feel okay eating them. It made me quite sad. So when I was 13, I made two huge decisions that I believed would help animals: I would get a dolphin tattoo on my ankle (hmm…), and I would go vegetarian. However, I was thwarted by my Mom, who refused to give the rubber stamp of approval to either one of these decisions until I was 18 years old. I believe she had the idea that these choices were merely the impulses of youth, and by 18 I would no longer even remember I had wanted to ink up or become herbivorous. It pains me to say that yes…she was right. Er, at least, she was right about the tattoo. And by “pains me” I mean I’m forever in debt to her for her infinite motherly wisdom.

Preparation (Stage 3): Preparation involves both the cognitive effort of planning to change, and the behavioral aspect of making adjustments. Basically, you start turning your intention into actual behavioral change (behavior change lite). Often, this involves the process of self-reevaluation, where you start to consider how your life would be if you changed X behavior. For me, I never shook the desire to be vegetarian. In fact, let’s face it, when you’re 13 and your Mom tells you not to do something, it makes you want to do it even more! Over the next four years, I did enough research into why to change my diet—animal rights reasons, health reasons, environmental reasons—to know it was right for me. Furthermore, I’d read enough to understand how my diet could be even healthier once I became vegetarian. Finally, I went vegetarian days at a time to see how it fit my lifestyle and discovered it felt natural. Corresponding to the process of self-liberation, in which you experience increased belief in your ability to commit to change, I could easily see myself as a vegetarian.

Action (Stage 4): You can stay in the preparation stage of behavior change forever and never move into the action stage, wherein you fully commit to behavior modification. Yeah, I’m going to start going to the gym…next week. I’m going to stop smoking….after the holidays. I want to, but eh… Whatever it is, people find all sorts of reasons to put off hard-to-change behavior because…it’s hard to change. Then there are cases like mine, where I had the motivation and the knowledge to change my diet, I just needed a little push. That push came from Tom Arnold, comedian extraordinaire. (Yes, Tom Arnold factors into my life in an important, meaningful way. Who else can say that?).

I’d stayed up late one Friday night watching Conan O’Brien. His last guest was Tom Arnold, and I don’t know how they got onto this topic, but Tom Arnold started talking about a job he had at a meatpacking plant spiking pig heads on stakes as they passed him on an assembly line. Bright and early the next morning, I went to my job working the grill of a snack bar at an ice skating rink and it seemed like every single person ordered extra bacon on his or her breakfast sandwich. I kept trying to get the idea of pig heads on stakes out of my head but it was like Wegner’s white bear study: “I’d like extra bacon on that” wait.. bacon…don’t think of pig heads on stakes, don’t think of pig heads on stakes – Damn it! Pig heads on stakes! Wait, wait… think other thoughts, okay… “Extra bacon?” Not again…Pig heads…OMG WTF? Although I can’t remember the last time I actually ate meat, I do recall the first time I actively chose not to: I was at a diner with my friends later that night after a show our bands had played and I ordered blueberry pancakes instead of a cheeseburger. Simple as that.

Maintenance (Stage 5). In the maintenance stage, you just keep at your new behavior (or lack of behavior, since I’d say the lion’s share of TTM studies concern quitting a negative behavior as opposed to starting a positive one). I’ve found that over the past 12 years, following a vegetarian diet has been easy for me. (It can be hard for people who actually enjoy meat to give up eating it, but since I never did, eh…). However, in going through this practice of applying the TTM to my own life, I can see how I utilized a lot of the processes that help people maintain behavior change. For instance, through the process of social liberation, people make social changes that support their healthy behavior (this, plus my $4.75/hour pay rate were catalysts for quitting the ice rink job). Additionally, people typically form new relationships that support healthy behavior; if I recall, it was about six months after I went vegetarian that I started dating this cute guy Tom, who soon switched to a vegetarian diet as well.

Termination (Stage 6): The transtheoretical model was revised to conclude the termination stage, where people have completed the change process and are not at risk to return to their previous behavior. In this stage, individuals feel no temptation to relapse and have complete efficacy to maintain their new behavior. Actually, among behavior change scholars and practitioners, the termination phase is a bit controversial because the TTM is so often applied to addictive behaviors (e.g., drug use), where for a number of reasons (e.g., physiological or neurological changes), people may not ever move from maintenance to termination. I would say that I’m in the termination stage though. I find it easy to be vegetarian, and in fact, I feel that this diet’s restrictions has broadened my palate.

Anyhow, even though I just rambled for a gazillion words about not eating animals, Thank You Card #13 went to a place called the 8 Oz Burger Bar in South Beach, Miami. I can’t even hazard a guess to how many animals are served there each day, but I can tell you that they make THE BEST VEGGIE BURGER I’VE EVER HAD. Between January 1998 until the present day of August 2010 is about 611 weeks. Let’s say I’ve had, on average, about a veggie burger per week—that’s more than 600 over the past 12 years. And this was THE BEST ONE. First of all, it was a homemade blend of grains and vegetables topped with cheddar cheese, arugula, sunflower seeds, tomato, onion, and avocado and it just flat out tasted good. Marvel at it in all its glory:

Second, part of what made it so exceptional was that we were only in town for a day, and though we’d read that this veggie burger was great, we went there for lunch expecting nothing special—maybe just a Boca burger cooked the same as any other burger, which would have been fine. It exceeded our expectations. The place itself was cool, too, with a lot of good beer on tap, a subscription to MLB Extra Innings, weekly Rock Band competitions (too bad we missed this. We woulda killed it!), and a waiter who recommended cool nightspots (though we watched the Yankees beat the Red Sox on our hotel room’s flatscreen instead). I appreciated the total experience, and the fact that their veggie burger was a menu option into which they’d clearly invested time and thought so that vegetarians could enjoy an amazing burger, too.  

Plus…open until 5 am daily? Rad.

Thank You Card #12

When I started this blog, I hadn’t written much in the previous five years aside from course papers and research proposals. Although graduate school allowed me to develop my scientific writing, I felt like I’d lost the spark for writing in general. I’ve always written throughout my life, and though I don’t think of myself as a writer, I was feeling disconnected from the part of me that put care into crafting a piece of writing to express a thought, articulate a feeling, or document a moment. It would take effort and practice to regain my non-academic writing style. This blog is, in part, a means of challenging myself to do that.

When I say I don’t think of myself as a writer, it’s because I’m shockingly unimaginative, which limits me to writing only about what I know. Writing is also the one area of my life in which I am super organized and structured. I love to map it all out so that I know where I’m going. This allows me to wander a bit before arriving at my point, which is apparent here to the extent that I often talk about one or two things before getting to the TYC itself. As a means of implementing structure here, I developed a basic set of rules: write a post per week (FAIL); keep each post to (what others would consider) a manageable length (FAIL); give cards to people who can see/read them (i.e., no fictional characters, no inanimate objects). I also made a list of people to whom I was certain I’d give a card—close friends, family, mentors, and others who’ve inspired me—and put one aside to so that I didn’t run out before I got to them.

One of those people was my friend and peer Jiyeon. Jiyeon and I share an advisor and have overlapping research interests, so we’ve spent a lot of time working together over the years. We’ve often been responsible for tasks that could be tedious or monotonous or difficult or just plain time consuming (…or all of the above). Despite that I just made it sound like life as a graduate student researcher isn’t all fun and games, I can look back on the hours we spent in meetings or class, working on our stats homework, editing Julia Roberts movies to use as experimental stimuli, or sitting around while running subjects and think, “Man, that was so fun!!!” Jiyeon is great company. She’s usually in a good mood, she’s got a sharp sense of humor, and she’s one of the few people I’ve met with whom I felt instantly at ease. I remember having coffee with her when I was trying to recruit her to the program, and feeling like I was talking to an old friend.

The photos below also demonstrate that she is a good friend to animals!

I also appreciate that Jiyeon is very wise. Evidence of her wisdom can be seen in the decisions she makes, and is highlighted by those for which I’ve made the opposite choice. For instance, there was one course that she dropped and I (foolishly) kept based on advice that went against my intuition. (Oh, to go back in time and drop that course and take something—anything—else!) I spent the quarter struggling to learn something—anything— and meanwhile she was taking a useful statistics course. We had the same options, but she made the right decision. Jiyeon is self-aware enough to know what’s best for her, and is independent enough to make the corresponding choices. I admire these characteristics and find that they’re especially useful in research, when you’re confronted with decision after decision, any of which can determine the success or failure of your work. I often know what’s best for me, but sometimes lack the boldness to go against the grain. So Jiyeon is an excellent role model as I’ve tried to cultivate these qualities in myself. Now when faced with doing what I feel is best versus what someone else thinks I should do, I think “What Would Jiyeon Do?” and then work up the courage to actually do it.

Finally, this blog is ultimately about Thank You Cards, and TYCs are triggered not by just people being awesome, but more by specific acts of awesomeness. Thus, TYC12 is for Jiyeon because she did a huge favor for me this summer by presenting my paper at the International Communication Association conference in Singapore when I couldn’t be there. We both study media effects and emotion, and my paper applied different media effects theories to explore the ways in which families coping with chronic illness could use media to regulate emotion. Even though her specialty area is risk perception, rather than coping or emotion regulation, she accepted without hesitation and did a fantastic job. For that, I’m grateful.

So, in the spirit of Jiyeon, I made a good decision despite the fact that doing so requires me to break my fourth blog rule, which was that I’d write about TYCs in the order in which I’d given them out. I haven’t even given her this Thank You Card yet; I’ve included it along with a couple birthday gifts that she has to wait for til she gets back from Korea because shipping them there cost more than the actual gifts. But I do want to use this post to say HAPPY BIRTHDAY to Jiyeon, as well as to thank her for being an awesome friend, and someone I aspire to be more like.

I especially would like her powers to pacify a wild tiger with her hand. How brave! :)

Thank You Card #8

This past February I turned 30 years old, and while I thought this milestone would be a terrifying herald of my mortality and I’d wake up all gray and wrinkled and arthritic with the Reaper at my bedside, it turned out when I woke up I could recognize no more signs of my advancement toward old age than I could the day before. Huh…weird. And even if I had woken up all senescent and on the edge of this life and whatever comes next, I would have been grateful to have been able to have lived out my last days in Puerto Rico. Yes, the sting of turning 30 was muted by the turquoise ocean, hot sand, and warm breeze of Palmas del Mar, on the southeast coast of the island.

In what could only be described as the best Christmas gift ever, my Dad and stepmom Hazel had invited Tom and I go to with them (along with my brother Adam, stepbrother Michael, and Dad and Hazel’s friend Danny) to spend a week in a gorgeous condo on the beach in February. I had to think for a second about whether I could go because I had a dissertation proposal to write. After literally a second’s thought, I didn’t see any reason why I couldn’t write my dissertation proposal in Puerto Rico. As you can tell from earlier posts, I’m excited about my dissertation. I have that sense of unbridled optimism about it that one can only have about a research project that’s still in its pilot stages and you can envision data that is collected quickly and easily and—like the best magic ever!—is supportive of all your predictions. (Ah, if only…). This is all to say that I enjoy working on it, and this enjoyment is motivating. So while I couldn’t envision myself with my laptop on the beach, I could imagine writing in the evenings after returning from the beach, and at night after everyone else fell asleep (which is exactly what I ended up doing). But now I realize I’ve managed to make a post about an insanely fun vacation suddenly about my boring life as a grad student, so let me just stop right here and show you some pictures while I collect myself and focus on writing words about fun things. Fun things, not work; fun things, not work; fun things, not work…

This was the view from our condo’s balcony. You could walk to the beach in about 3 minutes.

Here’s the view from my beach chair. :) And let me just address this now, because I’m only on TYC8 but you can already see a pattern emerging in which Tom is featured in a lot of the pictures. I don’t expect this to change, and that is basically because 1. neither of us are particularly faithful about documenting our the most memorable moments of our lives in photographs, but now that I have the blog to consider, I’m slightly more likely to take a picture than I was pre-blog, and much more likely to take a picture than Tom is; and 2. he’s really cute, so why not? More pictures of Tom = better web traffic.

Here he is contemplating this particular Mojito’s place amongst the best tropical drinks he’s ever had. Was it the best? Or the second best after the Dark & Stormy he had in Bermuda? (Actually, this picture was taken right after he met The Hat, so he’s probably contemplating buying it right now and of course we all know how that turned out.)

Oh wait, here’s a picture of me! I’m actually sitting in my favorite spot in San Juan, the fortress at El Morro.

This is one of the views from up there. I really like watching cargo ships pass into and out of the bay. I probably could have stayed there all day.

Okay now that I can focus on vacation, I can tell you that our typical “vacation” day schedule was something like this: wake up, eat breakfast that Dad and Hazel made, go to the beach, take a break for lunch, go back to the beach, go home, work on the dissertation, have dinner, play some board games, work on the dissertation some more. The vacation was perfect and I’m forever grateful to my Dad and Hazel for bringing us along; to be honest, a thank you card isn’t sufficient in this case, but I will say I’m looking forward to the day when I leave grad school poverty behind and Tom and I can be the ones to give excellent Christmas gifts to our loved ones. 

To top off this amazing week, Tom and I had the most fantastic adventure getting back to California. First, we boarded our American Airlines flight from San Juan to LAX, and sat there waiting on the plane while the crew addressed a mechanical issue. I had a book to read and Tom immediately passed out, so it wasn’t a big deal. After almost two hours, the powers that be decided that the part that was broken couldn’t be fixed and would have to be replaced. They let us all off the plane and told us a new part was on its way and our flight would be rescheduled for later that afternoon. They gave us some food vouchers and though you’d think that an airport is one of the least vegetarian friendly places you could be (which is usually true—cheese sandwiches for $9, salads you have to pick meat out of), this airport was different because it had an El Meson, which can be thought of as something like an oasis for vegetarians amidst the desert landscape of McDonalds and other nasty airport restaurants.

You can kinda tell how psyched Tom is about it in this photo, even though it’s blurry and far away and taken on my cell phone.

What vegetarian wouldn’t be excited about eating a reuben or Philly steak sub made with fake meat? We went there for breakfast/lunch, and then later for dinner, cause our flight never left. After about 12 hours of delays, American Airlines finally called it quits and reschedule our flight for 6 am the following day. We were given  accommodations at a hotel in a hospital in not-so-nearby Bayamon, but ended up hanging out with Adam (whose flight left at 3 am the next morning) who was playing poker at the Ritz Carlton when our cab driver couldn’t find the place after driving around an industrial park for what seemed like an eternity.

We killed some time at the Ritz by watching some boxing on television in the bar and playing the slot machines. Fortune smiled upon us!

I dunno what’s up with Tom’s face here. He should be happy because look—we each won about $50 in a game where you’re not actually supposed to win! But by this point it was closing in on 2 am and we’d been awake for almost 20 hours, so you have to understand this is probably the expression of equal parts euphoria and exhaustion.

We took a taxi with Adam to the airport, and after parting ways with him, we tried to get some sleep on the terminal chairs. Tom had limited success; I had none.

The whole time I was thinking, “Yeah, this sucks…but it’s great!” because with most airlines, the worse your travel experience is, the more ammunition you have later when you complain and ask for compensation. Bad things can result in good, good things later on.

The terminal opened at 6 am (though our flight was supposed to leave at 6, so most of the passengers had started arriving at around 4 am) and because the crew wasn’t schedule to start until 7, we sat around some more, and then boarded the plane and sat around some more before we took off at around 9.

We were finally airborne 24 hours after our scheduled departure. Yay! I immediately fell asleep and didn’t wake up until we had landed in Los Angeles, where there was no gate for our plane so we…sat around some more.

I know by now you’re probably thinking, “Wait, so if you already gave out TYC8 to your family, why are you writing about this?” And that, my friends, will be answered in the next installment of this blog, which I’ll get around to writing some time this week.

Thank You Card #7

No one in California ever really believes Tom and I when we say that the best pizza in the country can be found in New Haven, Connecticut. And I get their skepticism, I do. Unlike New York style pizza or Chicago Style pizza, New Haven style pizza (also called “apizza”) isn’t famous. In fact, most people outside of New England probably don’t even know New Haven has its own style of pizza. But, my friends, it does, and it’s awesome. The best thing about it is that because it’s cooked in brick ovens, the crust is simultaneously crispy and chewy.

Much the same as Connecticut residents must pledge allegiance to either the Yankees or Red Sox (or okay fine, the Mets), most Connecticutians (or whatever we’re called) also have a favorite New Haven pizzeria to which they are undyingly devoted. The top three are Frank Pepe’s (where it all began), Sally’s (which is good, but loses points because 1. you have to be prepared to wait sometimes an entire day for a pizza, 2. they don’t have their own webpage for me to link, and as a consequence I went to their Wikipedia page where I found that 3. they were thanked in the liner notes of a Michael Bolton record), and Modern. Even though Tom and I used to live just around the corner from Pepe’s (see?)…

…our favorite New Haven pizza is Modern. The pizza below has broccoli, eggplant, and I don’t remember what else… and man, it was so good.

In sum: New Haven style pizza is amazing, but its legend of deliciousness hasn’t spread far enough to where it’s an accepted truth that it’s at least as good as—if not better than—any pizza you can get in Chicago or NYC. But I can’t even type any more about New Haven pizza because it’s so good and pizza in California really isn’t very good; and anyway, Thank You Card #7 has nothing to do with pizza and everything to do with sushi.

Aside from having the best pizza in the country, New Haven is also home to Miya’s Sushi, which has to be one of the greatest places to get sushi ever. Now, to be honest, I haven’t done as much research on sushi as I have on pizza, so I don’t know if Miya’s has the best in the country. I’m actually prepared to concede that it probably doesn’t, which isn’t to say that their food isn’t exceptional, because it is. As a vegetarian, I’m especially fond of Miya’s because of the amount, variety, and creativity of their vegetable rolls. Not only do they have delicious standards like broccoli or asparagus rolls, but they have mad scientist creations such as the “Chinese Pygmy Rodeo Roll” (seasoned potato skin stuffed with cauliflower and scallions topped with havarti cheese and lemon dill aioli) and the “Hot-headed Cowgirl Roll” (avocado, cream cheese, papaya, burdock, and hot pepper wrapped in a coconut covered roll—pictured below), among many others.

They also have a selection of sake that’s excellent. I can actually say I’ve sampled all of the sakes because when Tom, my brother Adam, Dad, and our friend Michele went there for dinner this past winter our waiter gave us a free sample of each one (see evidence below).

And dessert? They have some crazy desserts! This one below is approximating something Biblical.

And then there’s this one, that just straight up kicked my Dad’s ass (though when this picture was taken, he didn’t yet know the ass kicking that was to come, so he looks really happy…or drunk on all that free sake?).

But to be honest, it’s not just the vegetables rolls or the sake or the desserts that make Miya’s awesome, but the fact that Tom and I always go there with great people. In fact, the last time we were home, we went with a ton of family and friends (including our friends Stacy and Eric who actually had their first date there and were married in September ‘09. And for the record, they really love Miya’s, Stacy’s just all “Wait…are you going to post that on Facebook?” in the picture below because she’s anti-Facebook).

It was an exceptionally fun evening, and part of what made it magical is that Adam had given me some $ as a belated birthday gift, which Tom and I used to pay for all the food and drink we had. But not only that, Adam also gifted us with a bottle of Firecracker Sake (our favorite) before we left Connecticut the following weekend.

Hells yeah, look at the beautiful orange-red glow. It’s like a sunset in a bottle, only sweeter and spicier. So, Thank You Card #7 went to my younger brother Adam, prompted by the fantastic (and timely) gifts, but also because we always have so much fun hanging out with him when we go back home. I probably could have made an entire post about that (rather than about New Haven cuisine), but Thank You Card #8 will cover some more fun times, so stay tuned for that!

Thank You Card #6

The dogs know now that any time Tom or I drag our red suitcase from the garage into the house that something’s going on. To be fair, they probably have some indication that something’s going on when we start cleaning like crazy in the day or two prior to the suitcase’s appearance, but it definitely confirms their suspicions. They used to see the suitcase and look at us accusingly, like, “Oh you’re going somewhere without us, are you?” (or at least that’s what my guilt led me to imagine). These days, the suitcase is still a harbinger that Mom and Dad are going away for a little bit, but now it’s a cause for celebration, because it also means their Auntie Stacey is going to visit. Look how happy Mishka is!

When we only had Mishka, we were always able to rely on our friends and our neighbor to take care of him while we were gone. Mishka’s an easy-going dog and all our friends love him. It was never a problem getting someone to go over our place and walk him, or throw a ball around, or watch a movie and share tri-tip steak with him (Uncle Haaris!). Things got a little more complicated when we adopted Yuuki because whereas Mishka is happy being the lone wolf, Yuuki constantly wants to be near people and demands attention. (She likes having people around so she can tell them what to do. Little Big Dog Syndrome.) She also has a more of a routine than Mishka does. Look, here she is after I woke her up early from a nap. Clearly, she’s thinking “There’d better be a damn good reason I was awoken prematurely from my beauty sleep, as well as some compensatory premium rawhide treats for this disturbance…”

So yeah, Yuuki is used to living The Life, and our travel threatened her lifestyle. We realized that that the system of care that worked so well for Mishka wouldn’t work for Yuuki, and decided to hire a dog sitter next time we went away so we could count on the same person visiting the dogs at certain times and for a certain total amount of time each day.

It was some dumb luck—or serendipity—that when we were planning our honeymoon last summer, Auntie Stacey (back then she was known as “this girl Stacey, who maybe can dog sit?”) was just moving from Boston, where her family had a black lab, to Santa Barbara, where her landlords (and everyone else’s, it seems) wouldn’t allow dogs. She’d posted on Craig’s List as someone who could provide excellent dog sitting (which is the kind we wanted) for “almost free” (which is the kind we could afford). To be honest, she sounded too good to be true. Initially I worried that maybe she’d be just some crazy person who was going to steal all our stuff (by which I mean our flat screen HDTV, the only somewhat expensive thing we own), or that by “almost free” she really meant $50/day (which is still less than some dogsitters charge).

But every once in a while, the things you think are too good to be true are actually even better than you imagined. Stacey came over to meet the dogs and get the grand tour of our apartment (all 350 square feet of it), and the dogs immediately loved her. The first time she dogsat, she watched them for almost three weeks, during which time she’d give us updates on how they were doing, what activities she did with them, and little characteristics she noticed about them (like how they each greet you differently — Mishka by barking and spinning in circles, Yuuki by standing on her hind legs and scratching at you until you pick her up). Sometimes she sent pictures, too!

Here’s one of Yuuki in the car on her way to go shopping. And though you can’t really tell from that picture, Yuuki loves car rides. Here’s actual proof of that:

Auntie Stacey also made a journal of sorts of all their daily activities, which was an awesome surprise when we got home.

She’s watched them four or five times since then (we’ve traveled a lot lately), and it’s always a huge relief to know that our dogs are being cared for by someone who treats them like they were her own dogs. In fact, whether or not she’s free to dogsit is a major consideration when we make travel plans—I can’t imagine anyone else watching them now. And it’s funny, because though Thank You Card #6 went to Auntie Stacey for being the Best Dogsitter on the Planet, she often thanks us for letting her spend time with The Best Dogs on the Planet—so I guess everyone wins!


* This post also functions as an endorsement. If you’re a pet-owner in the Santa Barbara area and have been searching for a great pet-sitter, please leave a comment or e-mail me and I’ll forward you her contact information.