Four more years...

A few days ago, Phil and Rachel (they go to school with me; sometimes we trade snack packs) put up a big two-digit number in the upper left-hand corner of dry erase board that covers a wall in our school's newsroom.

This wasn't any arbitrary two-digit number; it was the number of days until I graduate. I think we're down to 44. (By the time I post again, we'll likely be down to...two.)

There are things that are good about school--positive things that can't be reproduced later in life.

When I'm out of school, I'll make a list of things that I miss about school.

But for right now, here are the things I'm looking forward to when I leave:

1. Sleeping in a bed that's mine.
I have been subletting or living in something that resembles a dorm room since August 2000. That's a long time. I don't even have my own sheets anymore. Or pillows. It's not worth it.

2. Not feeling guilty when I don't have time in the morning to make lunch.
In college, lunch cost $5. Now it costs five real dollars. Or even more. If I make lunch, that's less money but more time. Maybe I should have paid more attention in micro so I could figure out what the opportunity cost of me making lunch vs. buying lunch is. Maybe not.

3. Stability.
I have moved everything I own something like 12 times in 23 months. That's a lot. After the next two, I'm done. For at least a year.

4. Ironing board.
People who move a lot don't own ironing boards. There's only so much ironing on the kitchen table using a towel that one can do. I've about reached my limit.

5. Routine.
I know that I chose to go to journalism grad school because every day is different from the next. And I haven't begun to regret that decision...yet. But routine can be nice. I don't get up at the same time, or come home at the same time, day to day. Don't see the same people. Don't go to the same bars.

6. A full set of pots and pans.
My one pot and two frying pans don't cut it. But then again I don't know how to make many things beyond stir fry and omelets. And shakshuka.

7. My friends to all be in one place.
That's never going to happen.

Ein li koach (part two)

I wake up at 6:30 on Friday morning to pack. My flight is at 10:15. I plan to leave my apartment at 8:00, but take forever trying to cram all of stuff into bags that can’t really fit so much stuff. So when I get into a cab at 8:50, I need nothing short of a miracle—i.e., no traffic on the highways—to make my flight.

In less than half an hour, I can already see airplanes overhead—we’re at O’Hare in record time! I get out the sheet of paper Travelocity sent me telling me which airline I’m flying and almost pass out from stupidity: “MDW,” it says, not “ORD.” Which means this: I’m going to the wrong airport. I’m supposed to be flying out of Midway—not O’Hare—in less than an hour. The devil’s in the details, it seems.

So we turn around and head south to the other Chicago airport, you know, the one I should have been at from the start. I’m sweating the whole way there, but there’s nothing I can do. We’re not weaving in and out of cars fast enough. Then we’re stuck behind a row of trucks. Then we hit a toll. And another toll.

At some point I realize that I only have enough money in my wallet to pay for a cab ride to one airport, not two. So before we hit the pre-Midway traffic, we stop at a Citgo to hit up the ATM—while the meter’s running, of course.

I get back into the car, get out the sheet I printed from Travelocity to check the airline I’m flying (déjà vu is pretty sweet, huh?) and direct the cabdriver to the ATA curb. It’s 9:53.

The curb-side check-in guys tell me there’s no chance I’m going to make the flight. The guy at the ATA ticket counter inside (where I go after cutting the whole line, of course) says I have no chance of making the flight. I say I can run really fast. He says my bags are overweight. I knew this. But I didn’t have a choice. I left so much stuff in Chicago to begin with (like my guitar, over-the-shoulder bag [I look like a school kid with my backpack on the D.C. Metro these days] desk chair and lawn chair, to name a few), but I just had too much stuff. I figured I would finesse my way into not paying the fee.

Since there was no time for that, I smiled and gave the ticketing agent my credit card, muttering under my breath, “You’re the first person ever to charge me for overweight bags, and I have overweight bags all the time,” to which he replied, “Huh?”

(At some point during this transaction, the cab driver came running after me. Seems I had left my cell phone in the car. Why not?)

The ticketing agent says, fine, you may make it, but your bags won’t. I say, put them on the next flight, I’ll pick them up tomorrow, and then I make something up about how me catching this flight will determine the future course of human events.

He didn’t buy it, but he gave me the ticket anyway.

With my winter coat draped over my shoulder, my backpack—filled with all the odds and ends I couldn’t fit in my suitcases—on my back and my garment bag—with three suits and a dozen shirts and pants—in my arms, I began sprinting to the gate—the gate, B24, of course, being the furthest gate in the airport from the ticket counter.

I get to the security checkpoint, put my bags on the belt, unpack my laptop, and run through the metal detector. But the security lady wasn’t ready for me. (But I didn’t beep, for Christ’s sake!) So I have to take off my shoes and empty my pockets—full of everything that didn’t fit into either of my suitcases or my backpack. I go through the metal detector—again without beeping—and collect my things. Somehow a battery has ended up in my shoe, but there was no time to fish it out.

I am out of shape, so carrying a heavy backpack and a garment bag—which now had my laptop in it since I couldn’t re-cram it into the backpack—would be tough enough while walking. Carrying all that weight and running/trudging/galloping through the terminal at as close to a dead sprint as I could muster was nearly impossible. I careened down moving walkways, zigzagged in between parents with strollers and even almost knocked over a deaf woman who couldn’t hear my cries of “excuse me.”

I finally get to the gate, huffing and puffing. (The huffing was real; the puffing was for sympathy.) But the door to the skyway/jetway/plane sleeve is locked. So I start banging on it. It’s 10:03. I am not late. In fact, after all of that, I am more than 10 minutes early. A man who looks like a security guard comes over to me and wonders why I am banging on the door. Duh. I make an excuse that I had the flu (not the bird flu) earlier this morning and didn’t even think I’d make it to the airport, but here I was, and I wanted to board the plane.

I walked down the jetway, smiling and still huffing, at 10:07, and I landed in D.C. at 12:54—having a great story but really and truly, I just didn’t have the strength.

Ein li koach (I don't have the strength)

There’s a Hebrew saying Israelis use in lieu of throwing their hands up in capitulation. Ein li koach means, literally, I don’t have the strength, but colloquially it means something closer to I can’t stand to live another second under these conditions.

Just like the way I fake translated the saying above, it’s often used in a very melodramatic way. If someone has a lot of things to do, and little time in which to do them, they may whine, ein li koach.

But it’s especially when Israelis don’t feel like doing those things will they break out the ein li koach. For school kids, it’s like a disease. Wonder why your ninth grader isn’t doing her English homework? Likely she’s got a case of ein li koach.

The problem I have with the phrase is that nine times out of 10 it’s excusable. It’s as if anyone afflicted with ein li koach can just kick back relax and let the energy they’ve “lost” flow back inside them.

I found that one actually excusable case of ein li koach last Thursday and Friday, as I was in the process of moving from Chicago to D.C.

It all began last Tuesday through Thursday when I was in St. Louis visiting old Wash U friends. Some were still students there, some graduated my year but had found themselves still in the Lou. Anyway, I had to return to Chicago Thursday morning because I was moving to Washington, D.C., Friday morning.

So the scene is set, and the drama begins.

I got to the St. Louis Metrolink station Thursday morning to take the St. Louis version of the “L” to the generically named Union Station. There I was scheduled to board an 8:30 Amtrak train back to Chicago. The (first) problem (of many to come) is that Metrolink doesn’t take $20 bills, and all I have is twenties. Awesome. So I have to find a convenient store in the neighborhood to break my $20. And my train leaves for Chicago in 20 minutes.

Eventually I make it to the Metrolink and get off at the station called “Union Station.” Logical? Yes. Did I have any idea where the Amtrak hut was in relation to the mega-mall that the 1920s era Union Station has become? No.

I see a sign marked “trains” with an arrow pointing to—guess what—actual trains! And I see a track in the distance. The “trains” I found, though, were better equipped to bring the boys to the (army) bases (circa WWII) and not to bring me to my home. These trains, these tracks had not been used in about 60 years. So I had little more than 60 seconds to find my train, or I was stuck in St. Louis for the day with only 25 hours until I needed to move myself across the country.

I did what has only been attempt once before in history by a guy in St. Louis—I asked for directions. (The last time that happened Lewis and Clark found Sacagawea, whatever the hell that is.) I ran through parking lots, federal office buildings and almost into a moving car but got to the station in time—8:29!—only to be told that the train was delayed an hour and a half. Four hours later, when I was still sitting at the Amtrak station and not looking forward to my six-hour train ride, I thought, man, I really don’t have the energy for this.

By the time I got home, I had enough time to eat, shower and do laundry—but not to pack—before my going-away party. So I left the packing for later. Shouldn’t be so hard, right? In future, the order should be pack then party, not party then pack. I’ve learned my lesson, or so I thought.

(to be continued...)