In Quest of Ordinary

October 2012; better living through chemistry 

When you're a kid, all you want to do is fit in, be unremarkable, ordinary.

I look Caucasian and identify as Caucasian, although there's a tiny touch of Africa in my dad's heredity.  It manifests in me in great skin that at almost 60 years old still has few wrinkles, and I can  get a gorgeous bronze-gold tan with minimal effort.  I joke that I can look at a lightbulb and get tan.  The price of that skin is hair that has an (*ahem*) "ethnic" texture.  Hair that earned me my unfortunate elementary school nickname "Brillo." Every day of my young life was a bad hair day with my kind of hair.

Junior high school was an endless struggle of chemicals and rollers, never letting my hair get wet so it wouldn't frizz, never jumping in the swimming pool or going to the beach or walking in the rain, all in the quest to look like everyone else.  Ordinary, unremarkable, because that is the age when, more than anything else, kids wish to fit in.  Straight, shiny, swingy hair that moves was it, in the 1960s.  And the rituals continued through high school, college, and my 20s, periodic trips to the salon for chemical straightening and several hours of combing and roller setting and sitting under a dryer every time I washed my hair.  My fantasy was to have straight hair and that needed nothing more than to let it air dry any time I washed it and it would stay straight, you know, like every one of my friends could do; instead of the incredible effort it took me to achieve an imperfect approximation of that same look.

Fast forward to 2009 ... and there is a process that would do exactly what I had fantasized.  Expensive, but for $700 every 3 or 4 months, I could have the hair of my dreams, silky, shiny, straight, and no maintenance except wash and wear.  I think it truly would have changed my life had it been available when I was in junior high, I might have had the self-confidence to become one of the popular kids.  Heck, it changed my life when I did it as an adult. I loved it, I had to do it if for no other reason than vindication of all the grief my younger self had put up with.  When it was done, it was just like you would expect me to look, blue eyes and pale blond hair.  I grew my hair halfway down my back and let it shine and flipped it over my shoulder and never had a bad hair day.

But then I realized.  I was still spending huge amounts (of money, now, instead of time, because I'm a grownup and can do what I want) to look ... ordinary.  Just as I felt compelled to do in junior high school. See me on the street and you wouldn't think anything of it - ordinary middle-aged woman who's got a decent hair cut but not doing anything special with her hair.  Here's the giant irony: now that it was in my grasp to have unremarkable hair, as an adult, "ordinary" wasn't really what I wanted any more.  If I was going to spend that much money and effort, I wanted to look outstanding, amazing.  Or, conversely, if I was going to end up looking ordinary anyway, I might as well do it for free.

So I'm letting my straight, shiny hair grow back out, and I'll cut it short and curly for our next cruise.  I'll go wash-and-wear, and just be my unfiltered self.  (and save both money and water, too!)

Before we left Michigan, our stylist taught Dan how to cut my hair the way she did, so we could maintain ourselves when we went cruising.  This is my "natural" hair, circa 2006.

Light and Darkness

A friend is an anti-death-penalty activist; her guy was executed today.  It's complicated.

Do not think you didn't make a difference.

In the unchanged world, he lived, and he died, that is all.  Because of you, he was loved before he died.  That is everything.

You cannot fight darkness with more darkness.  You can only fight darkness with light.  You cannot fight death with more death.  You can only fight death with love.

"Perhaps he deserved to die.  But there are those that die, that deserved to live.  Do not be so quick to grant the one, unless you can grant the other."  (my paraphrase of Gandalf the Wizard's comments in Tolkein's Lord of the Rings trilogy; and reminder of the virtue of humility; to the governor of Texas on the death penalty)

Embracing Winter

Who, me?  The one married to the guy who boasts that the only ice he's seen since 2008 is in his glass of rum?  Me?  Winter?

Yeah.

We decided to hang out in Annapolis this year for a couple of logical reasons. I wanted a long period with supertrainer Jen to get my back back into shape so I could, you know, walk normally.  And we'd needed a few months to let the bank accounts rebound after the excess spending of the last glorious winter in St Augustine.

I knew that staying in Annapolis for a year meant we'd experience winter for the first time in 4 years. What I didn't expect was to look forward to it.  But today in the grocery store the shelves were stocked with big orange soup mugs and a sale on canned Progresso soup.  Like all advertising, it wasn't about the item itself; it was about the image of myself using the item, that they tried to sell.  Sure enough, I could visualize myself in the cozy lovely life I fantasized, log cabin in the woods with the trees shedding their autumn-colored leaves outside.  And I wanted that coziness, that safety from the storm.   I could just see myself standing near the fireplace, wearing a well-loved old gray sweater, sipping warm tomato soup from that mug after an invigorating hike in the woods...

I don't have a log cabin, or woods full of maple trees.  And I know that winter will also include chilly fingertips, icy docks, and dark mornings.  But I'm going to buy myself one of those big mugs, and browse the Web for soup recipes, snuggle down, get slow and contemplative and quiet, light some candles and make the very very best of the coming season.

COLREGS

There's been a lot of coverage here (and here and here) of a bad boat crash involving high speed and drinking on the part of one of our legistators.  The other boat was a guy trailing his grandchildren tubing.  Lots of injuries - fortunately, all are expected to recover - and lots of blame to go around.  Speed and alcohol for sure on the one boat, potentially speed, distraction and/or erratic driving on either or both boats.

The accident investigation to determine who was at fault hasn't been completed, yet.  Lots of conversations online and with boating friends speculating about "who had the right-of-way?"

See, with boats, there is a clear set of rules explaining what to do in various situations where boats meet on the water.  They are the "COLREGS" - International REGulations for Preventing COLlisions at Sea.  They explain which boat has to alter course if two appear to be on a collision course - sailboats yield to tugs, for example, and power boats yield to sail; in this case it's about which boat is more maneuverable.  The boat that has the right-of-way also has obligations; it must maintain its course and speed so the boat that is charged with avoiding it can predict where it will be.  COLREGS also give general rules to be followed at all times (keep proper watch, keep speed safe for conditions); and codify old traditions that describe the pattern of lights that will allow boats to see each other, and just by eye to identify each other's type and some indication of their orientation and course at night.

It's my fantasy, so I keep thinking, it would be so cool if we had some sort of COLREGS for everyday life.  Just imagine how smooth social interaction would be if everyone knew and followed the same rules to avoid. if not boat crashes, then personality clashes!  I get that etiquette is intended to do just that, sort of, but it varies from culture to culture and even from region to region. But remember that whole bit in the COLREGS about lights, so you can instantly look at another boat and from its lights at night, understand what kind of boat it is and where it's headed?   What I'd really like in my hypothetical COLREGS for social interaction, is the equivalent of those lights - so that on meeting a new person, you could instantly understand their true nature and intentions.

Note: This post is in no way a reference to either current national politics, nor any of my former lovers.  Nope.  None.  Not any.  (Yeah, right.)

Appropriate, Somehow

Yesterday, Aug 23, was the fifth anniversary of my dad's death.  He was an engineer and a materials expert, fascinated by new gadgets and processes.  Somehow it seemed very fitting to me that yesterday was also the day we got 4 coats of the wonderful copper-epoxy bottom paint we've been so excited to try.  I don't know whether he would have thought the concept of adding copper powder to epoxy to repel barnacles and other marine growth brilliant or wacky, but I'm sure he would have had an opinion!

Stirring pure powdered copper into the 2-part epoxy

Four coats of the stuff made our hull sparkle!

Mel at work early in his career.  He quit smoking in his 40s, but  continued to have a messy desk until the day he died.

Its All Good

It's hot.  It's sticky-icky humid Washington in summertime hot, and the aircon can't keep up.  And I'm sitting here, dripping, and basically waiting for evening when it cools down.  Waiting for the day to be over. 

Whoa!! What's wrong with that?  What's right with that?

A day - a single day - doesn't seem like so much in the middle of your life, but has infinitely more value at the end.  I'm letting this day basically dribble away, this day that has, whatever else, sunshine and freedom and relative health and Dan in the same room with me.  There were times when I was facing a deadline, when I would love to have an extra day before (whatever-it-was) was due.  Or my friend whose husband has only a few more months to live, I'm sure she would gratefully take this day, sticky-icky temperature and all, and add it to his dwindling supply if she could.

How could I take this day for granted?  Maybe somewhere there's a cosmic reset button on today?  Or at least, on my attitude?

Playlist for Dan's birthday included: The Beatles' "When I'm 64" (of course! Thank you Daniel S. for the mp3 version) and Jimmy Buffett's "I'm Growing Older But Not Up." He rarely seems to want frivolous stuff, so its been cool to see that while we've been here, he's been pretty excited about pirate history (blog post coming!). We've been to the pirate museum, gone on the pirate ship, and now, for his B-day, bought pirate costumes and signed up for (are you ready?) swordfighting lessons.

After we got home, we were sitting in the cockpit (dressed as pirates!) and almost immediately some dockwalkers came past and begged for a photo. Its kind of a kick, posing with swords with random strangers. (Who knows how many facebook pages we'll be on?) These people were from Russia, Israel, and Columbia, and were having a blast! So now we're St Augustine cultural ambassadors. Playing is good!

A Holiday Thought

Originally Posted in the Annapolis Capital: December 25, 10:43 am | (permalink) | (0 comments)

 [photo: starfish instead of snowflakes complement this garland seen on one of our daily walks around downtown St Augustine]

I can’t help it – plastic icicles hanging from palm trees just don’t get me into the holiday mood. Maybe it’s because we spent so many years in government service assigned to snowy places like Michigan and Wyoming before coming to Annapolis; or maybe it’s just the cliché images we’ve been bombarded with. Whatever, but songs like “Let it Snow, Let it Snow, Let it Snow;” or “I’m Dreaming of a White Christmas” have been running through my head, jarringly incompatible with the 80-degree sunny days we’ve been having. Day before yesterday, we took the dinghy to the beach for a picnic, waded along the water’s edge picking up seashells and watched dolphins playing in the harbor. A lovely day, but not a lovely “two-days-before-Christmas-catch-the-spirit” kind of day. For me, that means coming home to a crackling fire in the fireplace, not coming home to wash off the salt and turn on the air conditioning.

And then this morning I woke up next to the one I love, safe and well-fed, on a boat, in an interesting new city, and realized another holiday image that doesn’t depend on snowflakes or reindeer. It’s the image of gratitude, and the realization that the greatest gifts aren’t the ones that come in packages wrapped in shiny paper. Cliché? Maybe. But maybe it’s a cliché because it’s repeated often, and it's repeated often because it’s very, very true. The greatest gifts are not those that you can touch with your hands; they are the ones that you touch with your heart.

Wishing you all peace, love, joy … all the things that matter most, this holiday season.

I Loved This Story

Reads like a fairy tale, but if the website is to be believed this is history, not fantasy. Cool!

Alvilda

Alvida (aka Alwilda, Alfhild, Alvild) was the daughter of Synardus, the king of Gotland. Her parents kept her locked in her room, and set two poisonous snakes to keep away all but the most ardent of suitors. The most persisant and brave fellow turned out to be Prince Alf of Denmark, and though he passed the test Alvilda's parents were none too happy about the match. Deciding she wasn't ready to be wedded to some stuffy Prince, Alvilda took advantage of her parents' irresolution and hightailed it out of there. She joined a crew of cross-dressing women, but had barely got started in a career in terrorizing the Baltic coast when they came across a crew of pirates that had lost their Captain. They were so impressed by her capable skills that they voted unanimously to elect her as their new leader. With these fresh reinforcements beneath her ruthless guidance, this formidable woman became such a nuisance to the merchant trade that her former betrothed, Prince Alf, was dispatched to bring the troublesome pirates to justice.

Alvilda and her crew fought back to the best of their abilities, but in the gulf of Finland they were bested at last. Prince Alf and his men boarded the pirates' ship, where hand to hand fighting ensued. After sustaining heavy casualties, Alvilda's crew succumbed and she herself was taken captive. With her beauty concealed by a face covering helmet, she was taken prisoner, and it was only when this helmet was removed that Prince Alf realized who the scourge of the seas had been. For her part, Alvilda was so impressed by how Alf had fought in battle that she married him on the spot. She went on to share his wealth and throne as Queen of Denmark, and together they had a daughter, who they named Gurith. Whether little Gurith followed in her mother's ocean going ways is not known.

My Dad Would Have Loved These

He used to keep multiple xerox copies of funny engineer jokes in a special folder, to share with friends. Thanx to Ed B. for showing me this one.

	Akin's Laws of Spacecraft Design*
Space Systems Laboratory - Department of Aerospace Engineering - University of Maryland

Home

1. Engineering is done with numbers. Analysis without numbers is only an opinion.

2. To design a spacecraft right takes an infinite amount of effort. This is why it's a good idea to design them to operate when some things are wrong .

3. Design is an iterative process. The necessary number of iterations is one more than the number you have currently done. This is true at any point in time.

4. Your best design efforts will inevitably wind up being useless in the final design. Learn to live with the disappointment.

5. (Miller's Law) Three points determine a curve.

6. (Mar's Law) Everything is linear if plotted log-log with a fat magic marker.

7. At the start of any design effort, the person who most wants to be team leader is least likely to be capable of it.

8. In nature, the optimum is almost always in the middle somewhere. Distrust assertions that the optimum is at an extreme point.

9. Not having all the information you need is never a satisfactory excuse for not starting the analysis.

10. When in doubt, estimate. In an emergency, guess. But be sure to go back and clean up the mess when the real numbers come along.

11. Sometimes, the fastest way to get to the end is to throw everything out and start over.

12. There is never a single right solution. There are always multiple wrong ones, though.

13. Design is based on requirements. There's no justification for designing something one bit "better" than the requirements dictate.

14. (Edison's Law) "Better" is the enemy of "good".

15. (Shea's Law) The ability to improve a design occurs primarily at the interfaces. This is also the prime location for screwing it up.

16. The previous people who did a similar analysis did not have a direct pipeline to the wisdom of the ages. There is therefore no reason to believe their analysis over yours. There is especially no reason to present their analysis as yours.

17. The fact that an analysis appears in print has no relationship to the likelihood of its being correct.

18. Past experience is excellent for providing a reality check. Too much reality can doom an otherwise worthwhile design, though.

19. The odds are greatly against you being immensely smarter than everyone else in the field. If your analysis says your terminal velocity is twice the speed of light, you may have invented warp drive, but the chances are a lot better that you've screwed up.

20. A bad design with a good presentation is doomed eventually. A good design with a bad presentation is doomed immediately.

21. (Larrabee's Law) Half of everything you hear in a classroom is crap. Education is figuring out which half is which.

22. When in doubt, document. (Documentation requirements will reach a maximum shortly after the termination of a program.)

23. The schedule you develop will seem like a complete work of fiction up until the time your customer fires you for not meeting it.

24. It's called a "Work Breakdown Structure" because the Work remaining will grow until you have a Breakdown, unless you enforce some Structure on it.

25. (Bowden's Law) Following a testing failure, it's always possible to refine the analysis to show that you really had negative margins all along.

26. (Montemerlo's Law) Don't do nuthin' dumb.

27. (Varsi's Law) Schedules only move in one direction.

28. (Ranger's Law) There ain't no such thing as a free launch.

29. (von Tiesenhausen's Law of Program Management) To get an accurate estimate of final program requirements, multiply the initial time estimates by pi, and slide the decimal point on the cost estimates one place to the right.

30. (von Tiesenhausen's Law of Engineering Design) If you want to have a maximum effect on the design of a new engineering system, learn to draw. Engineers always wind up designing the vehicle to look like the initial artist's concept.

31. (Mo's Law of Evolutionary Development) You can't get to the moon by climbing successively taller trees.

32. (Atkin's Law of Demonstrations) When the hardware is working perfectly, the really important visitors don't show up.

33. (Patton's Law of Program Planning) A good plan violently executed now is better than a perfect plan next week.

34. (Roosevelt's Law of Task Planning) Do what you can, where you are, with what you have.

35. (de Saint-Exupery's Law of Design) A designer knows that he has achieved perfection not when there is nothing left to add, but when there is nothing left to take away.

36. Any run-of-the-mill engineer can design something which is elegant. A good engineer designs systems to be efficient. A great engineer designs them to be effective.

37. (Henshaw's Law) One key to success in a mission is establishing clear lines of blame.

38. Capabilities drive requirements, regardless of what the systems engineering textbooks say.

39. The three keys to keeping a new manned space program affordable and on schedule:
1) No new launch vehicles.
2) No new launch vehicles.
3) Whatever you do, don't decide to develop any new launch vehicles.

40. Space is a completely unforgiving environment. If you screw up the engineering, somebody dies (and there's no partial credit becausemost of the analysis was right...)

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*I've been involved in spacecraft and space systems design and development for my entire career, including teaching the senior-level capstone spacecraft design course, for ten years at MIT and now at the University of Maryland for more than a decade. These are some bits of wisdom that I have gleaned during that time, some by picking up on the experience of others, but mostly by screwing up myself. I originally wrote these up and handed them out to my senior design class, as a strong hint on how best to survive my design experience. Months later, I get a phone call from a friend in California complimenting me on the Laws, which he saw on a "joke-of-the-day" listserve. Since then, I'm aware of half a dozen sites around the world that present various editions of the Laws, and even one site which has converted them to the Laws of Certified Public Accounting. (Don't ask...) Anyone is welcome to link to these, use them, post them, send me suggestions of additional laws, but I do maintain that this is the canonical set of Akin's Laws...