Detroit to D.C., 2006 Version

Those of you who know my current job situation are probably aware that I just arrived into the D.C. area late Thursday night. But, there's more to the story. I flew into Detroit from LAX at 7:30am on Wednesday on the Tuesday night redeye, and my friend was there to pick me up at the airport. I dropped her off back at her apartment, then went to campus to buy a U of M decal for my car. I then went downtown to the Detroit RenCen to have lunch with my favorite GM coworkers at Detroit's Eastern Market, where I traded stories and rumors. Then I checked into my hotel at the Hilton Inn in centrally-located Southfield in the early afternoon. As strange as it sounds, I hard a hard time getting to sleep that afternoon, even though I only 'slept' for 2 hours on my flight. I caught up with my friend Herman for dinner at his son's favorite restaurant, where we celebrated his son's 7th b-day. There was a pretty intense thunderstorm later that evening in metro Detroit. The following morning, I got a call from Herman. His minivan of 5 years wouldn't start, and the battery was the likely culprit. I enjoyed helping Herman out. I think my timing was auspicious, as I was close enough to take him to get a new battery at the Sterling Heights AutoZone that very morning. After checking out of the hotel around noon, I found myself a bit behind schedule. I just arrived at my hotel in the outskirts of DC late last night. I barely squeaked in before they closed the front desk at 11pm, because it's one of those efficiencies that don't operate a front desk most of the time. I made it in 5 minutes before. The next day, I got up, and opened a new checking account. I planned on seeing some apartments in the Alexandria area, but I was so exhausted by the 9 hour drive, I wound up checking out one apartment on a lark in the Vienna area. The traffic in and around the D.C. area, on the side streets as well as the highways, are not the place to be for the faint-hearted on Friday afternoon. I got some groceries at a local Costco, and gassed up my car at $2.95/gallon. Saturday, I got up early to get a head start on the apartment-hunting process. I hopped onto Leesburg Pike Road, connecting Loudon County to Fairfax County. There was unusually heavy traffic that morning, even given D.C.'s notorious travel woes. It turned out that my path took me right in front of the chapel that was conducting the funeral service for Fairfax County police detective Vicky Armel, who was killed on May 8 by an 18-year old gunman armed with an assault rifle for no apparent reason. The turnout was impressive to say the least, and I had to admire how this loss was so closely felt by the community, and by the greater law enforcement and emergency services family. One of the most impressive gestures was done by a fire department, who brought in 2 large ladder trucks, parked side-by-side, with their ladders extended so that they met in the shape of an "A". In that "A", a large American flag was hanging, visible on both sides of VA-7. What a tribute. By the way, I found my apartment later that morning.

The 'Tapestry' that changed everything

I am a soft sci-fi buff, which means I'll watch all the 'light' sci-fi shows that are out there, especially the epic-level stuff backed by major studios: the Star Wars movies and games, Babylon 5, the various "Star Trek" incarnations, and Battlestar Galactica, original and re-imagined. As much as I find the technology and subject of space exploration fascinating, what I enjoy most about these shows is that they are blank canvasses for some tremendous epic-level storytelling and character development. One of the episodes of "Star Trek: The Next Generation", (or TNG) really had a profound effect on me, 1993's 'Tapestry'. In this episode, Picard experiences his own death from a random terrorist attack, and is transported to the 'afterlife' by his archnemesis 'Q'. Q gives Picard a chance to relive a pivotal part of his own life in order to save himself from dying decades into the future. Picard does so, by playing it safe, and avoids being stabbed in the heart as a recent Starfleet Academy graduate. Instead of requiring an artificial heart, he gets to keep his original one. However, by 'playing it safe' in the events leading up to the confrontration that he manages to avoid, he changes his entire outlook, and Picard re-appears as a lowly blue-suited science officer on the Enterprise, rather than as the Captain. When I saw the Picard whose life had been 'saved', but living out his life as a less-ambitious lieutenant, rather than the Captain that we all know him to be, living a 'dreary' life, and handing reports from one superior to another without any hope of advancement, it was my wake-up call. When I first saw it, it blew me away. It was 1993, and I was working as a lowly insurance adjuster, living at home with the folks, and hanging out with many of the same people from high school. Right then and there, I knew I had to do something to change the trajectory my life was going in. It was from this episode that I found the motivation to get my ass into grad school, which led to my ability to leave L.A., and the west coast, and even the country, altogether. Without this to really highlight the fact that I had my choices ahead of me, I dread to imagine what my life would have turned out to be. Granted, I'm not the captain of a starship, or even a director or manager in any line of business or enterprise (no pun intended). I still have yet to prove myself on so many levels, and thus the verdict on my life is still out, but at least this episode can always serve to me as a reminder, no matter where I am that I still need to forge ahead.