I have always depended on the kindness of strangers

Yesterday, Kate and I flew from Tucson to Chicago after a wonderful reunion with her family.  While we were at the Tucson airport waiting for our 3:20 flight, the folks at the gate came over the intercom to let us know that the plane would be a little late getting in from LA, but not to worry - that wouldn’t affect us much.  

 It turned out that the plane had some mechanical problems with the flaps, but not to worry - the mechanics would get it sorted out and we would be on our way quickly.  Well, the mechanics had some trouble figuring it out, but not to worry - they’ll get it together and you’ll be out of here in no time.  After a few of that kind of announcement, they came clean.  They had no idea what was wrong with the plane, and they weren’t going to get it fixed any time soon.  The soonest they could get us out was 9:30 or 10: PM, when another plane would arrive that they would use for us.

 For the average traveler, this would be pretty darn annoying.  Missed connections and long nights make everybody grumpy.  For us, the news was devastating.  We were counting on being on the plane and in the air by 3:30 or 4 so Hakon could take a nap.  We were counting on arriving in Chicago by 9:30 so we could get him to the hotel, get him in bed, and get some sleep before driving back to Iowa City today.  We were counting on the whole ordeal only taking a few hours, and we had checked all our diapers except a few for the plane.

 This was not going to be a pleasant afternoon.

 I walked around while Hakon toddled and ran and giggled at everything he saw.  That was pretty pleasant, but I saw around 4 that he was getting really tired and would need to sleep.  After a failed nap (we tried just holding him in the darkest, quietest corner we could find, but it was neither dark nor particularly quiet, so he didn’t sleep at all), Kate and I were already pretty frazzled with hours to go before the plane even took off.

 A sweet, matronly woman named Colleen saw us and asked if she could hold Hakon.  We let her take him, and she talked and played with him while Kate sat down and I just stood there, holding the bags, too tired to realize that I could also sit.  Eventually I sat, and Colleen walked off with our boy.  She came back periodically to check in on us, but mostly she just took care of him for the better part of an hour while her husband Doug waited in line to talk to a representative about rerouting their travel.

 A woman working at a coffee shop next to our terminal talked to us about how much she loved Hakon, and offered to steam us some milk if he needed warm milk to go to sleep.  

 Eventually, the diaper situation got dire.  We were on our last diaper and had hours to go.  I assumed that for security reasons (or at least “security” reasons) they wouldn’t let us get to our checked bags, but I had to try.  I talked to Jeffrey working at the gate, and he immediately said he would help me out.  He radioed one of the baggage handlers and said there was an emergency, and to pull our checked bag immediately.  He winked at me and said “I’ve got little ones, too.  I know how it is.”  

 Two little kids, maybe 5 and 6 years old, chased Hakon around the terminal playing peek-a-boo.  Max, the older one, just wanted to hug and hug my little boy til his Mom eventually had to tell him to cut it out.  They both offered their travel stuffed animals for him to play with.

 While we waited, Kate received kind and encouraging words from several people, rather than the annoyed looks we expected from people who had to put up with our poor, tired boy screaming.

 Eventually, we did get on the plane and the flight went very well.  We arrived in Chicago a little before 4, and Kate and I walked very slowly down to the baggage claim, running on fumes.  When the shuttle got there to take us to our hotel, Kate told the driver, “yours is the most beautiful face I have ever seen.”  We got to the hotel, and they were great to us.  When checking us in, without asking us, the guy said “I’ll extend your checkout til 2, don’t bother setting an alarm.  I can’t extend it further myself, but I’ll leave a note here for my manager.  I bet she’ll extend it if you guys need.”  We walked up to the room (the shuttle driver carried our bags up for us) and found a crib already set up.

 Hakon slept (so we slept) till almost 10 this morning.  It is the latest I’ve slept in years, and it was amazing.  Kate went down to the front desk to ask if there was a bagel or something left over from the continental breakfast she could have.  The manager disappeared into the back room and came out with sausage and egg breakfast sandwiches, juice, and yogurt.

I am so glad for the kindness of strangers.  This experience started because of a problem that was out of our control: the airplane was just broken.  Nothing to be done there.  It could have been so much worse if people hadn’t been so dang nice.  But people went out of their way to help a fellow traveler.  Someone who they would never see again, someone who could not possibly pay them back.  I wish I knew where these people lived so that I could send them all thank you notes, but I can’t.  So, strangers, thank you.  

Review: Dark Victory

It's been a busy couple months at the Payne home, but I haven't forgot you, dear reader.

It seems that my love of Batman is well known and understood by my family.  A couple weeks ago, we celebrated Christmas in Texas with my parents, John and JaNae, and Dan and Christina.  Dan and Christina gave me and Kate a special edition of Arkham Asylum, a famous Batman comic book.  When Kate saw it, she giggled, presumably because receiving a comic book as an adult is funny (and awesome).  A few minutes later, I opened a present from Kate: a different special edition of Arkham Asylum.

It's nice to have a thing.

And speaking of that thing, I thought I would get back into the groove of blogging by reviewing another Batman book: Dark Victory.

Dark Victory is another collaboration between Jeph Loeb and Tim Sale.  It follows directly after the events of The Long Halloween, which I reviewed a couple months back (Warning: Long Halloween spoilers ahead).  I'll start with the art.

he art is really fun.  There are, of course, lots of good "Batman is totally bad" pictures.

 There's lots of fun shots of the bad guys:

 Lots of the big blocks of color and shadow that I liked so much in Sale's other books.

 The art includes lots of empty space, often representing the empty lives of people in the pictures.

The last thing I'll point out about the art is how in several places, the main character is very small in the room.  Batman is seen as a tiny smudge in the corner of a courtroom, or Catwoman is barely visible in the shadows of the morgue.

All in all, I love the art, but it is very similar to Tim Sale's other work that I've already talked about, so there's not much to say there.

Dark Victory takes lots of the events and themes of Long Halloween and makes them take the next logical step.  For example, after Harvey Dent's betrayal at the end of Long Halloween, Bruce and Jim Gordon are left feeling lonely and suspicious.  Bruce sums it up nicely:

“I realize now that the burden of ridding Gotham CIty of the evil that took my parents’ lives… must be mine and mine alone”

This feeling of loneliness and isolation gives Jeph and Tim license to revisit the deaths of Thomas and Martha Wayne and explore Bruce's deep feelings of abandonment.  There is some beautiful, dream-like black and white art in the flashbacks.

Jim Gordon's obsession with catching the Holiday Killer during Long Halloween led him to neglect his family, and as a result, Dark Victory shows him alone after his wife left.  It is hard not to make this entire post about how heartbreaking Jim's story is.

He looks tired and beaten.

He looks alone

And that's what the title means, at least to me.  In Long Halloween, the good guys won, but in Dark Victory, we explore the costs of that victory.

We see those costs in very overt ways, like Jim losing his family, but also in some more subtle ways.  There are, for instance, callbacks to the iconic rooftop scene from Long Halloween where Harvey, Gordon, and Batman meet to discuss the killer, but this time, Harvey is conspicuously absent from the image.

The theme of "trusting is hard" is a good backdrop to both introduce new characters, and flesh out some old ones.  Alfred has a larger role, and is much more fun.

 Selina Kyle is back, and her relationship with Bruce continues to be complex.

And we get the introduction of Robin.  Robin is a tricky character, because he is, at his core, an annoying kid.  But, given the story, Robin fits nicely.  He allows us to explore more of Bruce's trust issues after being betrayed by one of his only friends.  He also parallels Bruce's own story, which allows for some nice symmetry.  We see Bruce's parents die:

And we see Dick's parents die:

We see Alfred raising Bruce:

And we see Alfred raising Dick:

It's really good.

This is getting long, but I really liked this book.  I would definitely recommend it, with the one caveat that you should read Long Halloween first to get the full impact.

Underwear

Well, adoring fans, you have probably realized by now that my blog is going to be full of pictures of my baby, complaints about Harry Potter (many, many more of those to come), and other such unimportant things.  But once in a while, I like to talk about more serious things.  Long ago, I had a separate blog for those things, but not anymore.  Now it's just all in one big pile here at Stuffed With Science.

I belong to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.  That's a mouthful, so I usually just say I'm a Mormon.  Much easier.  A couple weeks ago, the Church released a video that really surprised me.  It was a video about something that I hold very near and dear: garments.  You may know them as "the weird underwear that Mormons wear all the time."  The intent of the video was to explain garments to everyone who has ever asked themselves "why do they do that?"  And I think it was fantastic.

Last year, a friend of mine asked me about my garments.  Since it is not something I generally talk about, I really bungled the response.  So, if you are reading, I'd like a mulligan.  The question was "why underwear?"

It is a good question that I honestly had not thought a lot about.  Why choose that article of clothing in particular to be the symbol of my devotion to God?  Well, the nice thing about symbols is that there doesn't have to be one right answer.  It can mean different things to different people.  I've had a year to think about it, and this is what it means to me.

Underwear could be fairly described as the dirtiest article of clothing.  It is the one against your skin that gets all the sweat and oils and whatnot.  It touches all the parts of your body that you have to keep covered in public.  And God takes that most profane, filthy thing and makes it sacred.  In the same way, God can take the dirtiest parts of my life and make them clean, as described by the prophet Isaiah:

Come now, and let us reason together, saith the Lord: though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they be red like crimson, they shall be as wool.

He can make me, the vilest of sinners, pure and holy.

And that is a beautiful thing.  That, to me, is why the garment is underwear.

Extra Life roundup

Extra Life was really, really fun.  And exhausting.  And now it's over, which is sad.  And a relief.

If you somehow don't know what I am talking about, congratulations on your recent awakening from your month-long coma!  If (and this is much more likely) you are sick of me talking about it all the time and filling your Facebook timeline with it, know that I'm almost done.  I just wanted to record some thoughts and memories so I don't lose them, and I thought people might be interested in knowing about the experience.

First, the facts.  Over the course of about a month, Kate and I solicited donations in anticipation of the game marathon.  Our goal was to raise $154 to give to the Children's Miracle Network.  That's one dollar for every day we've been blessed with a healthy, happy baby.  Thanks to our very generous friends and family, we obliterated that goal, and ended up raising $230.  Which was a small but important part of the five million dollars that Extra Life raised this year.

On game day, we tag-teamed games for 24 hours (actually 27, because we had to stop a few times to be parents).  We worked together on a puzzle that we received as a gift a few Christmases ago.  I generally don't like puzzles that much, but it was a really nice break when we were sick of looking at screens.

Kate played Super Mario World for SNES.  It is way harder than we expected.

I played two different FPSs: F.E.A.R (which I've heard good things about, but didn't really get into) and Modern Warfare (which was super fun).

Hakon played peek-a-boo for about an hour and a half, which he really enjoyed.

We played a very simple tabletop RPG with John and JaNae over Google Hangouts (since they live in Texas).  John was GM, JaNae was a doctor-turned-sniper/medic/mercinary (full disclosure: I zoned out when she told her backstory and was too embarrassed to ask her to repeat it), Kate was a telepathic circus bear, and I was a former Boy Scout leader who hated bears.  It was exactly as nerdy as it sounds, and it was perfect.  

We wanted to play more games with our other donors, but by the time we thought of it, it was just a little late to get our act together.  But that's something we'd like to do more of next year.  We are also trying to think of other ways to make the experience more rewarding and interactive for donors for next year.  Maybe a raffle for something game-related or something like that.  We are very open to ideas, so leave them in the comments or drop us an email.

To wrap things up, I just want to express my gratitude again to the people who donated to make this happen.  We are so happy to have contributed to such a good cause, and we are thankful to those of you who supported us.

Sticky Post: Extra Life

Just a brief post that will stay on the top of my blog for a couple weeks.  Kate and I are participating in Extra Life, a charity that befits several children's hospitals through the Children's Miracle Network.  There is more detail on our page (click through!), but the basics are here:

• Kate and I will be playing a 24 hour game marathon to benefit Extra Life on October 24th-Oct 25th
• All donations will go to benefit University of Iowa Children's Hospital
• Donations go to research and toward treatment for families that can't afford treatment for their kids

We would appreciate any donations, big or small.  Our goal is to raise $154, which is one dollar for every day we have been out of the hospital with Sam Hakon.  

How I met your terrible final season

Kate and I have enjoyed How I Met Your Mother for the last few years.  If you haven't seen it, it's a fun sitcom about a group of young people living in New York.  It was never exactly high art, but it was a fun TV show.  Then, on the homestretch, everyone involved with the show apparently forgot what they had been doing for 8 years.  The final season was just awful, and I need to dissect it to figure out why.  It's who I am; it's what I do.

This post will be full of spoilers.  I would normally say "don't read this if you haven't watched it," but to be honest, my recommendation is that no one watch the final season.  This season should be buried beneath Yucca Mountain so that no human accidentally stumbles into it.  So I don't mind spoiling it.

First, some background and some speculation.  Jason Segel, one of the five main actors on the show, decided to quit after season 8 so that he could focus on his film career.  All the other actors wanted to stay on for a 9th season, and eventually convinced Jason Segel to stay along as well.  I'm guessing that convincing him looked something like this:

This conflict and its resolution lead to one of the major problems with the 9th season (and this is where I am speculating): lack of funds.  The production value of the season is just absurdly low.  Distractingly bad greenscreens are omnipresent, even for settings where previous seasons used sets.  Did they lose those sets over summer break or something?  The entire season is shot like a bottle episode, with probably 80% of the non-greenscreened screentime taking place at one location. What little money they had was apparently thrown at guest stars.  Pretty much anyone who had ever appeared in the series made a guest appearance in the final season.  Big, expensive names like Bryan Cranston popped in for cameos that didn't add much.  Even people with no connection to the show, like a random song by Boyz II Men.  It just looks like they had no idea how to allocate their money wisely.

The show was contracted to end with season 8, but then halfway through that season, they negotiated to make a 9th.  This lead to some major problems with pacing in the 9th season.  We learned earlier in the show that Ted met The Mother at Barney and Robin's wedding.  The entire 8th season built up to the wedding, and ended with all the main characters on their way to a bed and breakfast for a 3 day weekend leading up to the wedding itself.  There were two choices of how to handle season 9 with that setup:

1. Have the wedding take up the first episode (or even the first few, since a lot is going on).  Ted meets The Mother, and the rest of the season is them falling in love, courting, etc.
2. Stretch the wedding over 22 excruciating episodes, culminating in Ted meeting The Mother

They, sadly, opted for the latter.  They changed the format of the show by making the entire season a single serialized story, rather than a mostly episodic array of stories with longer arcs buried in subplots, as in previous seasons.  I'm not opposed to serial story telling, but this team was not used to telling stories that way, and their inexperience shows.  The episodes are padded to the point where they feel about 20 minutes too long.

Not only does the pacing problem mean we spend too much time being bored at the wedding (which, granted, adds some realism), but it necessarily means that we don't spend that time elsewhere.  So we drag through that awful wedding and then gloss over some really interesting things in the last two or three episodes.  I said this before, but now I mean it.  Major spoilers lie ahead.

Robin and Barney end up getting divorced (after we invested literally hours of our lives watching them get married).  I don't mind that they did, but I hate the way the writers made it happen.  They got in one fight (over the availability of WiFi, no less) and the next scene they're telling everyone they got divorced.  

The same happens when The Mother dies.  We see a 3 second shot of her in a hospital bed and I must have missed the narrator telling us she died, because I wasn't sure of it until a few minutes later.  Again, I don't mind that she died.  This show handles serious topics like death semi-regularly, but it's the glossing over it that I mind.  We wasted hours learning that the room that Marshall and Lilly stayed in was haunted, but we can't spare a few moments when The Mother - one of two characters named in the title of the show - dies?

Related to that last point, I have one more gripe about pacing and time allocation.  They did a huge disservice to the character of The Mother with all of this.  She was in the show so little that we didn't care about her.  I know that this was intentional (because Ted was really in love with Robin).  But the fact that it was intentional doesn't make it good story telling.  When Marshall's Dad died, it was poignant and heartbreaking.  When The Mother died, I was only sad that she didn't take Ted out with her.  They didn't give us a chance to care about that character, and that is really a shame.

In the end, my big problem with this season was that they tried for a mix of touching and funny (again, like when Marshall's dad died) but ended up just being depressing.  Barney gets married but loses his wife and ends up grasping for meaning in his bastard child.  Ted and The Mother look bored and depressed any time they're on screen.  I'm not sure if that's because the life choices Ted has made have left him in a miserable marriage or because the actors are sick of the bad writing.  After years of pretending to love his wife, Ted hooks up with his best friend's ex wife and thinks that will make him happy.  What a great end to such a fun romp!

Blech.  After we watched it, Kate and I were so depressed that we had to chase with the Venture Brothers.  I recommend you do the same.

 

How I used my smart phone to get into running

Technology is kind of amazing.  Everybody carries a computer in their pocket that is orders of magnitude more powerful than the computers that put men on the moon.  And we use that technology to play stupid timewaster games.  I've tried to use my phone to get into shape, and I feel like it's been tremendously helpful.  I started writing a post about all the different apps I used to do this, and it was getting way too long.  I decided to cut it down to just two apps, and if people are interested, I can write more posts about the others.  These two apps that I am talking about today are both for running.

The first is Runkeeper.  Runkeeper is a GPS enabled app for running or walking.  It tracks your runs and tells you distance, time, speed, etc.  While you run, it can play music from your phone to keep you entertained.  It also gives you a pretty good web interface to look at old runs to track progress.  There is a way to have it post automatically to Facebook, but I am too dumb.  So, whenever I go on a run I am proud of, I screencap it and post it to let everyone know how great I am.

Not that you would be proud of this, but I was.

The big problem with Runkeeper is that running is boring.  I know that's not really a problem with the app, but Runkeeper doesn't help much.  Playing music just doesn't cut it for me.  A better app for making running fun is Zombies, Run!  It's kind of hard to describe, but the takehome is that it is awesome.

Zombies, Run! is like runkeeper, in that it is a GPS enabled running app that keeps track of your runs for you.  But what sets it apart is the story.  Rather than just listening to music while you run, it plays a story.  So, over your headphones comes what is essentially an audiobook about the zombie apocalypse.  You take the role of Runner 5, a runner for a small group of survivors.  Every run is a "mission" for the town, where you have to run for supplies, rescue other survivors, or do other important things to keep the town alive.  It's really fun.



And if you're not much of a runner (as I am not), you can start with the Zombies, Run! 5k trainer, which is an 8 week training course that takes you from "can't run at all" to "can run more than not at all."  I just finished that (which is what made me want to write this post), and it was a very good, gentle teacher to get me started.  In the 5k trainer, you have a completely self-encapsulated story about (shock!) a new person coming to town and being trained as a runner.  You have 3 workouts a week for 8 weeks, starting with very easy ones (run for 15 seconds, walk for a minute) and ending with much more intense ones.

If you think you might want to try getting into running, go drop $1.99 on the 5k trainer.  It is great, and it really helped me make running enjoyable.

I don't have a good way to end this post.  Go try these apps!