Is there a doctor on the plane?

Day 1 of my California adventure-

My view out the window somewhere between Boston and Dallas.

"Ladies and gentlemen, we are having a medical emergency at this time. If anyone on the plane is a doctor or medical professional, please turn on your attendant call light."

I've seen this happen in movies or on tv often enough, but it was a little surreal to hear those words over the intercom on my flight from Dallas, Texas to Ontario, CA.  The gentleman sitting in front of my row mate was, in fact, having some form of mild heart attack.  I say mild since he was able to stay impressively calm throughout the whole ordeal and because, during the hour and a half he spent in his condition on the plane, it was never necessary to break out the AED.  There was a doctor on board and they did move the both of them to first class.  This is the second time that I have been flying by myself and some medical emergency has occurred in my immediate proximity.

So, my cross country journey was not without some excitement.

The rest of it went by without incident: short layovers, on-time planes, etc.  Also, some interesting airport art.

From a neat sea scape sculpture in the Dallas Fortworth airport.

So my flight came in to CA at about 6 PM pacific time (9 PM to my body clock). My aunt picked me up and we drove to Temecula to get dinner at this pretty neat restaurant called The Lazy Dog Cafe.  She and I got two different, but both ridiculously delicious, steak based meals.

My bacon wrapped coulotte.  The sauce was delicious.

The Lazy Dog had adopted a fun brand of humor.  For instance, the signs on the bathroom had, rather than the standard human silhouettes, silhouettes of dogs in their gender-typical positions (e.g. the boys had a raised leg, the girls in a squat) with the words "good boy" or "good girl" above them.

After dinner, we trotted across the street to the Apple store and I bought the iD green version of my iPad's flip cover.  Yes.  I am that big of a dork.  I'm glad that Jane will be sporting the company color for camp.

My aunt lives in Hemet, CA which was about another 30 minutes worth of driving away.  By the time we got back to her house it was around 9 PM (midnight for my body) and I quickly gave in to the jet lag.

Day 2 -

It's been largely uneventful day, but I did make my pilgrimage to IN-N-OUT Burger.  Which is, you know, super important.

Best fast food burger in the world.

One of the things that I like about IN-N-OUT, besides it being delicious (the food is always fresh – never ever frozen), is that it's got a little bit of a secret society going on.  The regular display menu is really simple.  There's only four things on the menu besides shakes and soda.  But if you know the magic words, you can get all sorts of tasty treats.  There are other hidden goodies in the world of IN-N-OUT, but I won't give you all of them :)

We wrapped up the day with a nice long walk through the golf course in my aunt's community.

The view from the golf course.

A really good abdominal workout

As I vaguely mentioned in Monday's recipe post, I've been trying to improve my running stamina.  This is part of a greater effort to improve my overall health, strength, and fitness.  I've developed a number of really good habits over the past 10 months, and I've managed to see a fair bit of encouraging progress over that time.

That said,  my routine was until recently lacking in exercise that would strengthen or tone my abs.  I'd experimented with a number of exercise regimens designed for the purpose but found that many of them, for some reason or other, presented with pretty awful back pain after the fact.  Additionally, my core is so out of shape that performing most regular abdominal exercises (like sit-ups) is discouragingly difficult and painful.

When presented with this information, my youngest brother Kevin suggested a particular regimen referred to as 7 minute abs, which he would do every morning during track season.  As Kevin is by far and long the single healthiest and fittest member of my family, I took his suggestion seriously.

The 7 minute abs routine requires you to do two rounds of 7 exercises for 30 seconds each but at your own pace.  YouTube provides us with a useful instructive video on the subject.  I like this video a lot because it provides instruction, proper timing, gives you variations on the moves to make them either easier or more difficult, and gives you a visual representation of each group on abdominal muscles as you work them.



Now, because my abdominals are so thoroughly out of shape, I have started out just doing the first cycle of exercises (3.5 minute abs) rather than strain something and seriously hurt myself.

My first go at the routine was pleasantly successful.  I was pleased to find that all seven exercises were quite simple to execute, and allowed me to actively feel which muscle groups were being used for each move.  What's more, by that evening my abs were actively sore; not the kind of sore that denotes strain, but the kind that lets you know those muscles actually did good work that day.  Because of the soreness, and because I didn't want to overdo things right off the bat, I gave my abs a day or two of rest after that initial run.  Since then, I've been doing them almost every day with little or no soreness.  I've also been quite happy to find that even after a week and a half of doing this regularly, I've had no back pain.

Beginning next week, I will likely start pushing myself to do the full 7 minute routine.  Hopefully I will be well on my way to doing the full set every morning before I head off to CA for camp.

Spicy Tuna Wrap

I was beginning to feel like it was time again to share one of my little culinary creations.  I've been working on improving my running stamina (usually with the encouraging presence of a cheerful yellow labrador by my side).  Often I come back from these steadily more strenuous runs around lunch time, notably hungry from the effort.  The following recipe was developed to answer that hunger without undoing all the good I'd done with a fast, unhealthy snack.

A quick note for those who don't like (or think they don't like) tuna: growing up, I hated the look and smell of tuna (notably, it didn't help that my dad would mix it up with five others things I didn't like).  As an adult becoming more conscious of nutrition and healthy choices, I recognized it's value as a quick and easy way to get proteins and good fats into your diet.

As such, I set out to develop a recipe that combatted my distaste for tuna, giving birth to the following tuna concoction.  I was more than pleased with what I came up with as it has turned out to be pretty tasty.

You will need the following for the tuna mixture:

-5oz can of tuna (once drained it's really just 4oz)

-Grey Poupon mustard (or your favorite yellow or spicy mustard)

-Paprika

-Crushed red pepper

-Ground cayenne pepper (optional)

-Cheese (not pictured, because I won't be using it, and also optional; I'd recommend provolone or a shredded mexican blend, though)

Drain the tuna and place it in a bowl.  You should add the spices to your taste, but I recommend a few teaspoons of paprika, a couple shakes of crushed red pepper, and a little pinch of the ground cayenne.  Mix those into the tuna and then add one to two tablespoons of mustard and mix.  I love Grey Poupon for the taste and the nostalgia, but I'm pretty sure this would be tasty with a nice helping of any kind of mustard (maybe even honey mustard…  Sounds like a nice experiment for another day).

You can leave this cold, heat it up in a pan, or zap it in the microwave--depends on your preference.  From here, you either have a tasty snack with crackers (like Wheat Thins) or you can pull together a tasty wrap.

For my regular wrap you will need the additional following:

-Your favorite whole grain wrap

-Baby spinach

Lay down a thick layer of baby spinach along the center of your wrap:

Fork your tuna mixture over the spinach.

And wrap!

It's delicious AND nutritious.  I will tell you how nutritious it is!

We found the tortillas I use for wraps at Trader Joes and they're great.  They're whole grain, only 100 calories per tortilla, have no trans fats, and give you 27% of your daily recommended amount dietary fiber.

All of that spinach amounts to about 15 total calories, another 6% towards dietary fiber, a little protein, and lots of spiffy vitamins.

The tuna, which clocks in at about 120 calories, gives you 13 grams of protein, and almost no fat at all.  Tuna is also a great source of Omega-3 fatty acids.

The mustard comes in at an almost negligible 20 calories.  If you did go with a spicier mustard, you probably got a fair little dose of sodium, though.

The spices add big flavor and pretty much no nutritional value either way which is great.

So, all told, this filling wrap gives you:

-About 255 calories

-9 grams of dietary fiber (33% of your recommended daily amount)

-About 15 grams of protein

-Less than 7 grams of fat (NO trans fats)

-And a fair smattering of healthy vitamins and minerals

If you melted some cheese into your tuna, you would of course need to add some calories (~98 cal. for a slice of provolone; ~90 cal for a quarter cup of reduced fat mexican blend shredded cheese) and fat (around 8 grams for both).  Also approximately 21% of your daily recommended calcium :)

My life in Apple computers

Macintosh SE/30.  Photo courtesy of Wikipedia.

I have been a Mac user since I was old enough to understand what a computer was.  Around the time I was four, my father bought his first computer which I believe was a Macintosh SE/30 (the poor thing's still knocking around in my family's basement somewhere).  It was a big beige box, had a grey-scale screen, and I could play Lemmings and a pretty graphically interesting version of Chess on it.

In the mid to late 90s, the Mac Performa 5200 showed up.  It had a color screen, provided me with access to SimAnt and Warcraft II, and introduced my family to this crazy thing called the "Internet".

In the intervening decade or so, my parents and two brothers have cumulatively owned three more desktop macs, six mac laptops, numerous iPods that represent a pretty complete timeline of the product's history, and my mother's first generation iPad.  I am currently on my fourth iPod (Touch), my second laptop (a spiffy 15-inch MacBook Pro), and, as previously mentioned, an iPad 2.

So, all told, my family could probably furnish a half decent Apple museum.

Given my technological background, I find it serendipitous that I should end up in a career field that favors the macintosh platform so much.  Apple computers are, and have been for a long time it seems, the technological companion of choice for creatives of all types; graphic design and desktop publishing included.

These days, the self-projected Apple image is very young and hip; very much a plug in with my generation.  But, getting just slightly more to the point of my post today, I am intrigued by a particular, much less main stream population of mac users.  Back in the day when Apple first appeared, the Apple I was just a kit for hard core technology hobbyists.  From there and from the ever advancing succession of Apple computers, clubs were formed to provide support networks and forums for discussion among mac users.

The neat bit is that a lot of these old groups still exist--often with original members still intact.  Not terribly long after my family first moved to Rhode Island, my father found one such group and has been attending their monthly meetings with fair consistency since.

The group, known simply as the Aquidneck Island Macintosh User Group (or AIMUG) is one of those clubs that has existed since the dawn of Apple, and seems to consist mostly of my father's generation or older with an occasional tentative appearance by someone's child or grandchild.  I've attended with my father on at least one occasion and found the company to be fairly pleasant.  The group seems to largely fulfill its original purpose as a forum in which questions may be answered, and new applications for the technology can be explored.

It's a bit of a bummer that the group has not, for whatever reasons, managed to phase in the younger, and not at all sparse, generations of mac users.  I don't know whether it's a question of effective PR, the prospective cohabitation of widely diverse age groups, or simply that, for my generation, computers have become less the hobby and more the vehicle for our hobbies.

Trying to incorporate younger mac users would be, at the very least, an interesting social experiment.  Perhaps that's a project for the future.

Career considerations

College is essentially behind me now.  With two months of iD Tech at UC Irvine in my pretty much immediate future, it's tempting to put off thoughts of my career until August.  But my brain doesn't work that way.

Any 'conversation' I have with myself about my career has to include the two major influences in my professional life: graphics and iD Tech.

Through Rhode Island College and my work with the newspaper, I've found a love of design, of publishing, of managing, and of communicating content (and acquired formidable skills at it to boot!).

Through iD, I've found of love of teaching, organizing fun, and being involved in child development.

Ultimately, I would like my main career to be set in the publishing world; I think I'd greatly enjoy doing layout or being art director for a magazine, or designing and typesetting book's for a major publishing house.  It's a bit dorky, but I think that'd be great fun.

That said, I've thought fairly seriously about pursuing a career with iD.  'What career,' one might ask, 'is there in seasonal employment with a tech camp company?'  The answer being to reach for their full-time positions, namely, to eventually become a regional manager.  One would do this by eventually becoming Director at one of their smaller locations (like Brown), then directing at increasingly larger locations, taking on more responsibility, honing big camp organizational and problem solving skills.  From there one could be hired as a Regional Manager, and be in charge of several camps.

It's a tempting thought.  iD has only benefitted from its growth, it's continued to do well in spite of the poor economic climate, and it's just a great place to work.

This means figuring out a way to work in the meantime while keeping my summers open for iD.  One way I've devised to potentially do this is to get certified to substitute teach in RI (something that only requires a college degree), and do freelance graphic design and publishing work.

That being said, I've got a couple of self-motivated publishing projects in mind for the longterm.  I will probably go into more detail on those in the future.