A Tale of Shared Bicycles in Two Cities

Were I more concerned about saving the planet, the headline on the front page of this morning’s New York Times, “French Ideal of Bicycle-Sharing Meets the Reality of Disrespect,” would have evoked worry about a failed experiment. Like shopping carts pilfered from supermarkets and resurfacing in the Charles River here in Boston, at least a few of the Parisian bicycles purchased for the experiment have been seen dumped in the Seine. Others have been vandalized or stolen and shipped to third world countries.

For me, the headline evoked nostalgia for my visit to Copenhagen, circa summer of 2003, with Dennis and his family. Staying at the 71 Nyhavn, a hip hotel on the water, I loved taking early morning runs or walks around the harbor, finishing up with a stop at a bakery selling pastry so rich that butter stains appeared on the little brown bag even before I began eating my “reward” as I headed back for breakfast with Dennis.

Nothing beats touring with friends or family who live in a foreign country. In Copenhagen, we were lucky enough to get the inside track from the in-laws of my stepdaughter, Julia. Native Danes, they find the tax structure oppressive enough to spend most of the year in the South of France, only to return to their home for summers.

Fit from years of Nordic skiing and the daily bike rides he’s enjoyed ever since retiring to France, Julia’s father-in-law is my kind of fitness fanatic. Stefan knew I would get a kick out of the shared bicycles very much a part of Copenhagen culture. The bikes were chained to little poles that looked like parking meters, and all it took was a coin to release the bike. I got the coin back when I returned the bike.

Without my gel seat pad, the bikes were extremely uncomfortable, and my rides were short. Still, as a woman bred on the cynicism and distrust of New York, I smiled at the notion of the bikes not being stolen or vandalized, at least in any numbers likely to generate headline stories.

The story in today’s Times references the social tensions between haves and have-nots in Paris, and the fact that the shared bicycle experiment is clearly associated with well-meaning “bobos” or “bourgeois-bohemes.” The writers question whether the have-nots are vandalizing the bikes to communicate their rage against the haves.

I am reminded of Stefan’s response to my comment about having encountered a vast horde of homeless people camping out along the harbor, not far from an old hippy commune on “Pusher Street.” A former banker, he seemed skeptical about what I said, and went on to say that the people I saw were most likely camping out by choice. The same high tax rate that’s driven him to the South of France has made homelessness exceedingly rare in Denmark.

Winter is coming to Boston, and though Dennis and I will be heading to Florida for Thanksgiving to see Daphne and Etan, I feel a sense of restlessness that can only be alleviated by planning a trip – even if it’s many, many months away. I’ve written in other posts about the three extended trips we took to Paris when Daphne was a little child, and her dad got invited to speak at international roundtable discussions in France.

Paris oozed with materialism and I loved the shopping – while also knowing I needed to be cautious. That sense was reinforced when a group of wise guys and gals tried to rip a Stefane Kelian shopping bag off my back as I went through a turnstile in the metro.

The only clothing I bought in Copenhagen was a jacket at Anne Feldballe’s workshop. She graciously offered to alter it within two hours, and I’m still wearing it.

I’ll have to wait until we visit our accountant in February, and see how the finances look after taxes. But it would be nice to return to Paris or Copenhagen.

Let the College Admissions Game Begin

Perhaps because Grandma never went to college, she delighted in reporting on where the grandchildren of friends and family members were going to school. She knew she was supposed to be impressed that the daughters of her dentist, Irving Schreiber, were at Bryn Mawr, and said she hoped I might apply to a Seven Sister school. She also reported that her great nephew, Roger, alternately described by his own grandmother as “not college material” and “not a studier,” was at Simon Pierce College in New Hampshire, where he was “taking up space.”

Here in Boston the signs of fall abound. It’s dark when I arrive at my gym at 5:30 a.m. and it’s still dark when I leave at 7. After a soaker of a summer, the foliage is spectacular, especially along the Emerald Necklace. And friends whose kids are high school seniors are plagued with anxiety about college applications.

Yesterday I had lunch with a colleague who told me her daughter had decided to apply early decision to a small, selective college in Minnesota whose ranking has been rising steadily in U.S. News and World Report. A soccer player, her daughter finds it irritating to hear girls on her school’s lacrosse team, ranked #1 in Massachusetts, brag about being guaranteed berths at Northwestern.

Though it’s been 15 years since Daphne applied to college, I don’t think the conversations have changed here in Boston, or in any big cities, particularly in the Northeast. The pressure to get into the “right” school seems so unnecessary, we say, even as many of us continue to play the game.

I shared with my colleague something my daughter told me about living in Orlando. It was the type of observation that only someone who’s relatively new to Florida could make. Daphne reported that perfectly respectable people have kids going to a community college, which is intended to lead to eventual matriculation at one of the state’s colleges or universities. What’s more, few Floridians seem to think going to one of the state schools will limit one’s opportunities for succeeding in life.

My colleague and I contrasted the situation with Massachusetts. Here the assumption is that community college is a dead end – at best providing vocational training for kids with limited academic potential. Although I know talented people who have graduated from the University of Massachusetts, my own perception is that the school suffers from chronically inadequate funding, and would not be the college of choice if one has the resources to go elsewhere.

I also told my colleague about discussions my sister and I have had, ever since Phyllis moved from New York to Boulder more than 20 years ago. The University of Colorado seems to enjoy a good reputation and tuition a lot cheaper than Colorado College, where my nephew is now a junior. Still, my sister would feel that she had somehow failed as a parent were she to send her son to a big state school – even though her friends and neighbors consider that a perfectly acceptable choice. (I suspect my brother-in-law, a bright guy who grew up in the Bronx and went to the City University of New York, rolls his eyes any time the subject is raised.)

Today I can’t help thinking about the discussions in the home in which I grew up. Dad had a list of schools he’d cite as punishment for not studying hard enough. I can still remember Grandpa’s retort “you get out of a school what you put into it.”

Three Unforgettable Relatives

Yesterday I sat through Joel and Ethan Coen’s recently released film, “A Serious Man.” At 1 hour and 45 minutes, it was excruciatingly long. Despite the film’s humorous moments, I found it painful to see a schlemiel of a physics professor in Minnesota, played by Michael Stuhlberg, searching for God as he copes with the demands of a dysfunctional family and no friends to compensate.

Earlier this week, I heard a quote that made me chuckle: “Friends are God’s way of compensating for relatives.” A cursory Internet research failed to yield the source of that quotation. But it occurs to me that the occasional pain and embarrassment inflicted by the mere knowledge that one has bloodlines going to some very wacky people offers a lot more fodder for story-telling than one's friends.

With that in mind, I introduce you to three of my maternal relatives, none of whom are alive to defend themselves:

(1) Aunt Catherine – My mother’s older sister, Aunt Catherine’s real name had been Sylvia. Amid concerns about anti-Semitism while job-hunting during the Great Depression, she assumed the identity of Catherine King, and it stuck.

Catherine was married to Marty, and the two of them and their two kids lived in a garden apartment in Bayside. When Dad learned they were getting divorced, he said that Marty, who worked for Seagram’s, seemed like too much of a schlemiel to be having an affair.

(My reaction was different. At age 8 I’d been deposited in Bayside for the day while Mom and Dad went house hunting, and I thought I was witnessing scenes from "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?") Dad later said Catherine was named as the “correspondent” in the divorce papers of her tennis partner and second husband, a guy who owned an industrial cleaning company. When that marriage failed, she titillated the family by reportedly taking up with her tennis coach, a guy half her age.

(2) Aunt Pearl – Her first marriage to Moe, a dentist from Syracuse, New York was annulled after just a few months. Aside from the fact that she been 18 at the time, very beautiful and endowed like Madmen's Christina Hendricks, nobody ever offered me a satisfactory explanation of what really happened. (Dad once alluded to the fact that Moe only wanted the opportunity to “sleep” with Pearl.)

She later married a good-natured guy named Irving who ran a Photostatting business while she worked as a legal secretary. Dad took great glee in telling us that that the boss Pearl idolized had his license to practice law suspended for a period of time, as reported in some professional journal.

A social climber who wanted only the best for her daughter, a kid bright enough to get into a prestigious magnet school before anybody coined the term, Pearl had great marital ambitions for her daughter. These ambitions were tempered only by the fact that her daughter was plagued by facial eczema.

When Pearl ultimately became the mother-in-law of a son-in-law born to a woman who had been the second wife of a well-to-do boss, Pearl was elated. Just one fly in the ointment . . . Pearl was outraged to see her son-in-law watching a Thanksgiving football game on TV when she felt he should be completing his doctoral thesis so that her daughter could give up her job and start making babies.

(3) Uncle Ben – During the Great Depression, Mom’s 2nd oldest brother was a cop in Harlem. He reportedly bridled when his mother insisted that he arrest a guy on the beach in Coney Island wearing a bathing suit that exposed more of him than she felt decent people deserved to see.

Uncle Ben was divorced from the mother of his child, Leon. Feeling a need to make excuses for the scandal of divorce, Mom said that Ben was very young at the time, and that Leon’s mother had lied about being a lot older than Ben.

He once came to dinner at our tiny apartment on 81st street in Jackson Heights, and my brother and I were excited to meet this glamorous dinner guest wearing a holster. I’m not sure whether his trip to Mexico had come in connection with getting a quickie divorce, but I remember he brought Mom a souvenir, silver candy dish.

After retiring from the NYPD, Uncle Ben went to work selling office equipment for IBM, and remarried a sweet woman named Carmen. After she died, he took up playing polo in Prospect Park. Dad thought a guy in his ‘70’s had no business having that much fun. Though he didn’t quite say it this way, I think Dad believed that when Uncle Ben was thrown from his horse, sustaining serious head injuries, he had nobody to blame but his own mishegas.

Facebook and My Beloved Travelers

“Bon Soir! Nous sommes arrives en Paris and just had the most delicious falafel at L’As in the Marais, after a nighttime tour of the Louvre. Magnifique.” Over the last week I’ve looked forward to Daphne’s status changes on Facebook the way I once looked forward to her letters home from overnight camp. My daughter and her husband, Etan are on a ten day tour of Europe that began in Madrid, included a few days in Barcelona, and will wrap up in Paris.

As a child playing at the home of a kid named Claudia Mansly, I once overheard actor Henry Winkler’s mom tearfully telling Claudia’s mom about the shortcomings of a son-in-law soon to be banished from the family. She cited his failure to send so much as a post card during a trip to Europe as proof positive of his loutishness. Although the incident occurred nearly fifty years ago, I have vivid memories of a time when vacation travel required sending picture post cards to let family members know that (1) you were o.k. and (2) you were thinking of them. Even if the cards sometimes arrived days after you returned home.

While sitting at the airport in Newark, waiting for their flight to take off, my own son-in-law, the consumer tech columnist for the Orlando Sentinel, sent me an e-mail with a link to their flight and hotel info on Dropbox, a virtual online storage system. Although I didn’t like the Dropbox interface causing my Macbook to freeze up, I thought it was very thoughtful of Etan to know that things like detailed itineraries give moms of only children peace of mind.

I also loved logging on to Facebook the next day and seeing Etan’s status change saying “We made it to Madrid.” Even more gratifying was his status change a couple of days later, saying “Here’s @Dsashin on the roof of Gaudi’s Casa Mila in Barcelona.” Etan links his Twitter feed with his Facebook account, and I grinned when I saw the Twitpic of my daughter. She had a big smile on her face, and I was overcome with joy, seeing how happy she looked.

As a communications professional, I often find myself trying to help newbies understand that Facebook is about faces, a warm, visual medium not intended for big blocks of text. For keeping touch with family members traveling or living far away, it can be a lot more personal than the old picture post card and sometimes more satisfying than a phone call.

I love seeing the kids’ photos on Facebook, knowing that I won’t need to wait until I visit them over Thanksgiving to learn how their trip turned out. Since Daphne is the quintessential foodie, especially when it comes to sweets, I especially enjoyed seeing her eying the pastries inside a food market off La Rambla in Barcelona.

Having come into this world early enough to experience telephone party-lines, where mischievous children could pick up a telephone and listen in on other people’s conversations, I like that Facebook provides for socially acceptable eavesdropping. It’s even o.k. to join the conversation by using the Comments function. During the course of Daphne and Etan’s trip, I’ve “listened” to their conversations with other Facebook friends about food and restaurant recommendations. In a world where shared experiences are a social lubricant, I also “heard” that the son of a mutual Facebook friend and professional colleague from Philadelphia was in Barcelona at the same time.

A woman who happens to be a member of my extended family considers it a point of pride that she talks on the phone with each of her daughters at least once a day, often more. When she asked me whether Daphne and I have daily telephone conversations, I felt a tad defensive at first.

Although my daughter and I live in the same time zone, we both have jobs requiring frequent attendance at evening meetings and receptions. Not to mention the fact that my early morning fitness routine means I have a much earlier bedtime than Daphne. So we usually talk on the phone just once a week – unless there’s something pressing either of us wants to discuss.

When I mentioned this to Jane, a Facebook friend who also happens to be married to my stepson Josh, she had a really sweet observation. She reminded me that Daphne and I keep in touch with each other’s lives using Facebook but also Twitter and blogs. On the morning Jane and I had our little conversation over brunch at Gage in Chicago, I remembered that I knew exactly what Daphne was doing. She was judging a pet costume contest in Orlando, and I looked forward to seeing the pics on Facebook.

5 Thanksgivings to Remember

Most Saturday nights I dine with Dennis at La Morra, a Tuscan style bistro just down the street from our home in Brookline. Though some might roll their eyes at the thought of my almost always ordering the tagliatelle al ragù, I think of it as a cherished ritual. I look forward to enjoying this dish the way I look forward to dining on turkey and cranberry sauce at Thanksgiving.

This weekend I attended a business retreat at a hotel on Cape Cod, and of necessity found myself going through a buffet line on Saturday night. I was glad to see honey roasted sweet potatoes and a carving station with a turkey. When I got to my table, a woman saw the display on my plate as a reminder that she needed to make Thanksgiving plans – deciding whether to host the dinner at her home or invite everybody to a restaurant.

Dennis and I look forward to the ritual of gathering with loved ones. We know the core group will be based on work schedules and geography. This year we will be heading to Orlando, where in addition to having Thanksgiving dinner with Daphne and her husband, Etan, her in-laws, Don and Janice, and her aunt and uncle, Helene and Steve, we will also enjoy what I hope will be a week of sunshine and warm weather.

Still, I have fond memories of five Thanksgivings since Daphne graduated from college:

1998 – Thrilled that Daphne was starting a job at Parents magazine by mid-October, I feared that she might have to work the Friday after Thanksgiving, making a trip home to Boston impractical. She’d probably cringe if she knew this, but on her first day of work I called the switchboard and without giving my name, asked whether the staff would have that Friday off. When the operator gave me the answer I was hoping for, I explained why I’d asked, and she could not have been more understanding.

1999- Even more thrilled that Daphne had traded up to a job at WSJ.com, I pretty much assumed that she would be working not just the Friday after Thanksgiving, but Thanksgiving too. Dennis, not yet my husband, had invited me to join the holiday celebration convened at his home, and I was pleased that I wouldn’t be alone. When I connected with Daphne, she assured me that she and her colleagues had purchased take-out Thanksgiving dinners at a place near the office.

2003 – With Daphne writing for The Daily Press in Newport News, VA, my sister, Phyllis, based in Boulder, suggested that our respective families gather in historic Williamsburg, where Daphne was living. It was early August when she made her proposal, and Dennis’ one caveat was that we have Thanksgiving dinner at the Williamsburg Inn. It took me more than two months to nail down the reservation. Phyllis meant well when she also asked my brother and his family, and my parents to join us, but that’s where the disconnect occurred. My brother’s response to my e-mail trumpeting that I’d finally landed a reservation for 10 people at a table near the window overlooking the gardens put me over the edge. If he and his wife were planning to travel with their exchange students, couldn't they have told me beforehand?

2005 – Now that Daphne had moved to the Orlando Sentinel, I thought of Thanksgiving as a pretext for a warm weather vacation just as Boston was starting to get cold. Over the course of many telephone conversations, Daphne and I discussed the possibilities for Thanksgiving dinner. She told me the Whole Foods in Winter Park was not as nice as the one in West Newton, MA, and that I might be disappointed. Ultimately I suggested talking to one of the paper’s food writers, Scott Joseph. He suggested Chez Justin’s Park Plaza Gardens, a beautiful airy space with good food. But the best part of this Thanksgiving was meeting Daphne’s new boyfriend, Etan, at dinner on Wednesday evening -- just before he headed off to celebrate with his family in Philadelphia.

2007 – Daphne and Etan, living together in a cute little bungalow with a big veranda, invited both sets of parents to Thanksgiving dinner at their home. The food, which included a turkey cooked by TooJay’s Gourmet Deli, and Etan’s orange sweet potato casserole with marshmallow topping, was great. Etan provided post dinner entertainment with a product he was testing, a gizmo offering hundreds of movies. To this day, I’m not sure what to make of it, but the only movie all four parents could agree on was Fracture, about a psychopathic wife-killer played by Anthony Hopkins.

5 Takeaways from a Weekend in Chicago

Having grown up in New York and lived in Boston for more than half my life, I love having a connection to Chicago. It was circa 1996 that my stepson, Josh, moved there to marry his law school sweetheart, Jane. Today they live in River Forest with their daughter, Claire, a precocious second grader with a big heart.

Aside from enduring the discomfort of post 9/11 air travel, Dennis and I always look forward to our weekends in Chicago, and wish we got there more than once or twice a year. For Dennis, the Art Institute of Chicago is a must.

On this particular visit, the high point for my husband is making a collage with his granddaughter at the Institute’s Ryan Education Center. A beautiful sunlit space looking out at Millennium Park, the children's art room is perfect for shooting photos in natural light. I hesitate posting any of the ones I took with our new Nikon D3000 amid concerns Claire’s parents may not want her image to appear on the Internet.

Here are my own highlights of the weekend:

(1) Brunch at The Gage. Despite reports about this being a noisy restaurant, it's delightfully quiet at 10:30 a.m. After selecting the mile high stack of ricotta limon French toast, I order a basket of scones and muffins for the table. My better judgment suggests that I cut the scones in quarters so we can each taste everything. The white paper strip covering the white tablecloth where I do my handiwork immediately develops an enormous grease spot – proof positive of a deliciously high butter content.

My favorite is the asiago cheese scone. Which is not to say I don’t savor the blueberry scone sprinkled with sugar crystals evoking childhood memories of sugar cookies from Horn & Hardhart -- except that these are a thousand times better. A zealous calorie counter, I also sample the pumpkin muffin with little gobs of cream cheese filling, and the apple caramel muffin.

(2) A 5-Mile Run Along Lake Michigan. My penance for pigging out at brunch is to run until my Polar heart rate monitor says I’ve burned 600 calories – regardless of how my knees feel. The air is a bit chilly, and since the serious runners are resting before the Chicago Marathon, the path along the beach is wondrously peaceful. The water is greenish blue, and were it not for the signs, I could be in Barcelona -- that other city of signature architecture -- running along the Mediterranean. Knowing that I put up with Boston’s brutal winters because I can spend the warmer months rowing on the Charles, this run helps me understand why people put up with Chicago winters.

(3) Visiting Hanig’s Shoes. I'm on a mission to find a Moncler down coat that won’t make me look like the Michelin Man. But as I leave our hotel on E. Delaware and head for N. Michigan, I get side-tracked by Hanig’s, whose selection of high end, good-looking comfort shoes puts Harry’s and Tiptop in New York to shame. Not needing anything is different from taking pleasure in beautiful things. I try on a pair of black Mephisto loafers that will work beautifully with jeans or a pantsuit, and also a pair of high black, fake crocodile, waterproof boots by La Canadienne. Counting my pennies, I have the items shipped to avoid the sales tax.

(4) The Saks Experience. Still in search of my Moncler coat, I begin with Nordstrom’s where a thoroughly likeable sales woman helps me sort through several different styles, none of which seems quite right. At Saks, I encounter a “just what’s out there” saleswoman who seems irritated that I have the audacity to ask for the location of the Moncler collection – while she's helping another customer. But when I ask if she’d hold one of the quilted Moncler’s just overnight, she volunteers that Saks is about to have its 25% off, Friends and Family promotion.

After scouting out Bloomingdales, which is about to start a 15% off promotion, and Neiman Marcus, which has no promotion, I return to Saks less than 30 minutes later. This time I notice a black, non-quilted ¾ length Moncler with fur trimmed hood and a belt. Had I seen the indifferent saleswoman I encountered on my first Saks visit, I surely would ask for her help. The truth is that there's no one in sight.

At the exact moment a different, perfectly pleasant saleswoman appears and starts helping me remove the coat from its hanger, Ms. Indifferent makes her epiphany. Proclaiming me her customer, as though for life, she dismisses her colleague. All goes well until I ask her to ring up my sale. Writing down my credit card info and shipping address on a scrap of paper, she says company policy mandates that nothing be rung in until the sale actually begins. Had she given me something quasi official looking, I'd feel better. Does the opportunity to save 25% on a coat listing for $1475 make it worth putting up with Saks’ diva in residence? I think so, provided the coat arrives by mid-next week.

(5) A tour of Claire’s room. Although I could end this mini-travelogue with dinner at Hugo’s Frog Bar and Fish House or drinks at Jilly’s Piano Bar, where we meet pianist and cabaret singer Nick Russo, I’d rather talk about spending time with a very literary seven year old and fellow blogger. By way of background, last summer Claire was a guest blogger, reporting from Zoo Camp for Animal Crazy, the Orlando Sentinel blog that just happens to be written primarily by my daughter, Daphne.

A child of privilege who’s surprisingly unspoiled, Claire insists that I see her ultra girlie room with white furniture and a collection of Madame Alexander dolls, some of which have passed down from her Aunts Julia and Melissa, some gifts from Grandma Anne. I suspect they gave her the dolls because she understands they are fine, decorative objects, not toys. Though Claire tells me the American Girl dolls are too delicate for serious play, she takes them from the toy box where they’ve been tossed, and gets special pleasure telling one of them can’t see me until she puts the doll’s wire-rimmed granny glasses on.

Halloween is approaching. Would you be surprised if I tell you that Claire has decided to go as Annabeth Chase, a fictional demi-goddess with a Yankee’s cap that can make her invisible, a sword and shield, and a Camp Half Blood t-shirt that will hopefully provide cues to trick or treaters who haven’t been initiated into Rick Riordan’s Percy Jackson and the Olympians series?

My 6 Reasons for Hating Air Travel

“You suffer when you travel.” – Lillian Lagos, the mother-in-law of my stepson, Jeremy.

As of this writing, I’m on United Flight 533 bound for Chicago. It’s the Friday heading into the Chicago Marathon and Columbus Day. Just across the aisle, two parents are trying to placate a screaming toddler.

They seem like good parents. When they first boarded, the dad pulled out a trio of board books, one of which told a tale about a tractor and had wheels with tires the kid could turn. As the tot became more and more restless, the dad tried walking up and down the aisles with the kid in his arms.

Now the mom is resorting to a box of raisins. True to form, the tot eats one, and then commences throwing the raisins.

I remember the drill with my own Daphne, soon to leave for a trip to Spain and France with her husband, Etan. First reading aloud the stack of paperback children’s books brand new and never before seen. When that trick began to fail, it was juice and animal crackers, great for throwing and at least not sticky.

I’m happy about Daphne and Etan’s trip, and even a tad envious. Distant memories of the trips to Paris I took with Daphne and her Dad, and the more recent memories of the trips to England and Italy I took with Dennis leave me riddled with nostalgia.

The reality is that I hate trips requiring air travel, and it has nothing to do with fear of flying. Here are 6 reasons:

(1) Even with my mandatory aisle seat and a mere two hour flight, it feels horribly confining to be squeezed into a tiny seat, especially when the person in front of me, well within her rights, reclines her seat – bumping the screen of my 13 inch MacBook.

(2) Needing to take off my coat, shoes, and belt in public as I go through the TSA screening. (In a moment of free association I remember my father threatening to take his belt off. This was pre-air travel, and an attempt to curb an unruly child that now seems laughable because it was just a threat.)

(3) Having to carry my shampoo, conditioner, and leave-in conditioner in three ounce plastic bottles. In a moment of great rebellion, I took a larger bottle of eye makeup remover that was ¾ empty, and a big tube of toothpaste with just enough left in it to see me through the weekend. Eat your hearts out, TSA screeners. You once confiscated my new, unopened toiletries, and I assure you it won’t happen again.

(4) Being reduced to getting my regular clothing plus gym gear for an entire weekend of very changeable weather conditions – including the possibility of cold and heavy downpours – into one Tumi carry-on that holds a lot more than it looks like it can hold. The only issues are whether it will fit in an overhead compartment in its fully tumescent state, or whether I’ve forgotten something essential like running socks.

(5) Begging Dennis to fit our Nikon SLR -- lovingly encased in a camera case bag -- inside the Swiss Army carry-on he began using after I told him that it was too heavy for me to place inside the overhead compartment, even if I stood on the seat. (Dennis begged me to take a point and shoot, but I insisted I was looking forward to shooting some nice landscape shots of the Windy City, perhaps from one of those boats cruising Lake Michigan.)

(6) Experiencing the anxiety of going economy class, knowing that by the time Group 5 is called, there will be no space left in the overhead compartments for our suitcases, and all because those other self-indulgent travelers used the largest carry-on pieces permissible by the regs, augmented by bulging knapsacks.

Readers, please use comments section to add your own gripes about air travel.

Confessions of a Junk Food Junkie

Earlier this week the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported something I applaud heartily -- a reduction in sugary or salty snacks, and soda and artificial fruit drinks sold at high schools and middle schools. I learned to love both in the New York City Public Schools, but I’ll get to that later.

My friend Mary Ann and I met last night for one of our monthly girls’ nights out. These dinners provide a special opportunity for two professional women to catch up on the latest gossip. Not to mention indulging our taste for foods with the high sugar, salt and fat content we both agree would be harmful to the health of our husbands.

We dined at the Pie Bakery & Café in Newton, Massachusetts. No diet Cokes for us. I felt virtuous getting a bottle of water and she a bottle of sparkling water as the two of us ordered spinach pie with a deliciously flaky crust. I suspect the sodium in the feta cheese accounted for me downing my water pretty quickly.

Right before dinner I stopped in at National Jeans to purchase a pair of black, Paige jeans with the high spandex content I’ve seen modeled by the many college students indigenous to Boston. Though the size 28 zipped with no trouble, I took the size 30 because they felt comfortable when I sat down on the little bench in the fitting room.

The size 30 also allowed me to have the deep-dish apple pie with ultra buttery crust and vanilla ice cream I’d been craving since waking up that morning at 4 a.m. to hit the gym. Mary Ann is more committed to healthy eating, and ordered a less caloric apple pie with oat grain topping and no ice cream.

Granted, neither of us gorges on potato chips or Moon Pies, and if we hadn’t opted for water, I’ll bet we’d have sipped white wine, not soda. Our tastes are a lot more sophisticated than when we went to school. But I can’t resist sharing with you my own memories of sugary and salty foods as a school child:

(1) In first and second grade in Jackson Heights, we ordered milk for snack time. The sugar making the medicine go down was the box of cookies each kid brought from home. If successful in manipulating Mom, I got a package of chocolate covered grahams or Mallomars. If the manipulations failed, I had to settle for Fruitana raisin bars, Fig Newtons, or worse yet, Social Tea Biscuits. The cookies were supposed to “last,” but I usually reported running out before the week was over.

(2) By the time we moved to Forest Hills for fourth grade, I had to eat lunch in school. On those occasions when Mom tried to sneak fruit into my lunch box, I arrived home in a bad mood. My classmate, Bonnie Merzer, always had Yodels in her lunch box, presumably a sign that her mother was more loving than mine.

(3) Potato chips or Cheese Doodles, the ultimate in salty snacks, constituted a “side dish.” Although Mom rarely permitted me to have my favorite, salami on rye bread, which she considered unhealthy, I usually got her to include the requisite bag of Wise potato chips carrying the owl logo consistent with wisdom.

(4) The only beverage sold in my school cafeteria was milk. Though I doubt Mom really fell for my story that the milk might be sour and make me sick, she usually indulged me with sickeningly sweet Hawaiian Punch or Hi-C orange drink masquerading as something healthful. For a special treat I might get root beer flavored Cool Aid or pink lemonade made from frozen concentrate. I made it known that apple juice was not an acceptable substitute.

Is it any wonder I have lousy eating habits? I suppose the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention or their predecessors were more worried about polio vaccinations.

A New Way to Nickel and Dime Myself

Photo courtesy of ehow.com

As with many of my moneymaking schemes, this one started with an article in The Wall Street Journal some time in late August. The reporter said that the best deal for folks who don’t carry a credit card balance is a Charles Schwab Visa card. Why? Because you get 2 per cent back on every dollar you spend – deposited into your Schwab brokerage account.

Shortly before Labor Day, I used a lunch hour to march myself down to the Charles Schwab office in Boston’s financial district. The whole thing seemed simple – sort of. I needed to fill out the Schwab brokerage account form, write a check for $1,000, fill out the Schwab Visa application, and then mail all three items -- in one envelope provided to me by a pleasant young man, whose only office adornment was the requisite framed photo of people I assume were his wife and two kids.

Little did I know how much time and energy this would involve! By the latter part of September, I was feeling agitated about having made some online clothing purchases that involved just a plain old Master Card with no money back. And all because my Schwab Visa card had never arrived. When I began querying Dennis as to whether he had really mailed that envelope the pleasant young man at Schwab had handed me back in August, he grew testy and suggested that I talk to the folks at Schwab.

More time spent at the Schwab office, where a pleasant young woman checked the logs, determining the envelope Dennis swore he mailed had never been received. She suggested I put a stop payment on that first $1,000 check, to be drawn on my account at Citizens Bank, then write a second $1,000 check, and helped me fill out all new applications. Done!

While arranging to stop payment on the first $1,000 check, an equally pleasant young man at Citizens did his best to sell me on a Citizens credit card instead. The terms of that card are still elusive, but I vaguely recall that one offer involved money back on gasoline purchases and another promised money back on purchases from whatever category you spent most on in a given month. He waxed enthusiastic about both offers, saying one of his colleagues had already gotten enough money back to finance a trip to sunny Aruba. No thank you.

When Dennis and I checked the mail last night, we spied an envelope containing the elusive Schwab Visa card. Despite three tries on validation, always with a voice mail promise of being connected with a “customer satisfaction specialist,” I ultimately received a less hopeful voice mail telling me the party I was trying to reach was unavailable and that I would be disconnected.

This morning I finally validated the card. Meanwhile, I need to respond to a voice mail from yet another pleasant young man at Schwab calling on behalf of that pleasant young woman I’d visited earlier this month. She was at home sick, but wanted me to know that first $1,000 check I’d sent had somehow been discovered in Schwab’s office in Orlando, Florida. She promised I’d be credited for the stop payment fee, but I’ll need to call her tomorrow.

Wish me luck!

Where are My Gym Pals?

In an age of spam and computer viruses I rarely open e-mail from people I don’t know. So I’m not sure what caused me to open an e-mail sent to me at work from an AOL account I didn’t recognize. But I was very touched when I read the message.

A lawyer and lover of all things political, Paul sent me an e-mail saying that he and Eileen, a full-time mom with an MBA, had been wondering why they hadn’t seen me at Gold’s Gym for a while, and hoped I was o.k. Over a period of years, the three of us often chatted on the stair masters at 5:30 a.m.

Paul and I would discuss the odds of various political races, and occasionally the scuttlebutt on upcoming gubernatorial appointments here in Massachusetts. Eileen and I debated the merits of various restaurants and vacation destinations. All of us spoke about our families, especially our children. Upcoming birthday, anniversary, holiday plans and newly released movies were the staples of our conversations.

Time spent on any exercise machine can be deadly, and our chats certainly made the time go faster. We never saw one another outside the gym, and we may never see each other again, but I got to know Paul and Eileen well enough to miss them.

Relationships are important to me, and I thought about that when I left Gold’s Gym at the end of June. I’d joined that gym nearly a decade ago, while still living in the suburbs. Gold’s, located in an industrial park in Needham, was just a little further from home than the Newton JCC, where I’d been a member for nearly 20 years.

I’d walked and run the indoor track of that JCC while mourning the death of my first husband. That JCC was also where I spent hundreds of hours on a Concept II rowing ergometer – usually while chatting with a periodontist named Steve. He ultimately introduced me to his widower friend and lawyer, Dennis. Dennis and I are happily married, looking forward to our 10th anniversary.

Dennis still goes to the JCC, and provides me with reports on mutual gym friends, saying they still ask about me. Shortly before we got married, I switched to Gold’s for its 5 a.m. opening. But when we moved to our condo in Brookline in 2007, I began thinking about whether I might find a gym closer to home. The issue of distance caused me to begin assessing Gold’s housekeeping, climate control, and equipment issues with a more critical eye.

New ownership at Gold’s last spring brought change, including a requirement that I exchange the membership card I’d been happy to keep in my wallet for a large plastic disc to be placed on my key chain. This tacky promotional ploy irritated me enough to cause me to pick up the phone and call Health Works, an all women’s gym with two locations closer to my new home than either Gold’s or the JCC.

Health Works doesn’t open until 5:30. But in addition to towels, they provide vanilla scented body wash, mango shampoo, and a nice conditioner. Although I usually shower at home, their showers are clean, and I occasionally enjoy sitting in the whirlpool after a weekend workout.

Once in a while I run into old neighbors or professional colleagues. But my primary relationship at Health Works is with my noise canceling headset and Motown. That makes me sad.