Princess Di

DG was a bully.

Actually, I tend to think of the word "bully" as applying to someone who is a peer of the victim. That is, kids can bully kids and adults can bully adults. Is there a word that better describes when an adult harasses a kid?

Whatever. We’ll use "bully" for the purposes of this post.

I was friends with her son, IG, from the age of five. IG was the same year as I in school. Their family lived around the corner from us, and we shared a backyard fence. DG, an Australian woman, only occupied the role of "my friend’s mother" in my mind—the one of whom you ask to use the phone or the one from whom approval must be sought for sleepovers. I came to learn early in my friendship with IG that his mother was not someone you cross. She was big on respect—more specifically, being shown respect, or whatever she defined as respect. She was the dictator of the household, prone to argumentation and anger. This image of a matriarch stood in stark contrast to my own mild-mannered mother.

I’m not sure when the targeted bullying of me started. The first instance I can remember was one morning following a sleepover with IG at their house, probably in the summer between fourth and fifth grade. After eating breakfast, DG told us to brush our teeth. I did so, then walked outside to find her as she was gardening and tell her that I finished. Apparently, it was not long enough for her standards. She launched into a several-minute tirade about plaque and long-term dental health, ultimately demanding that I go back and brush my teeth again. Humiliated, I slunk back into the bathroom and repeated the task I had completed minutes earlier. I brushed for much longer than I otherwise would have because I knew she was monitoring me. She was satisfied. During all subsequent sleepovers at that house, I brushed my teeth for longer than normal.

Sometime in fifth grade, IG and I were at his house, and he declared he wanted to go to my house to play my family’s computer game Age of Empires II. Now, my mother had raised me to believe that inviting yourself over to someone else’s house was incredibly rude. But, in addition, I had no interest in Age of Empires II. Going along with IG would effectively spell a death sentence for our hangout that afternoon. When I protested his suggestion, he physically charged at me with his typical threat of "tickle torture", which he deployed frequently in the years of our friendship to force me into compliance with his wishes. In a Pavlovian manner, I shrieked, "Aaaahh, okay, fine!" and he relented. I went inside to use their phone to call my mother and ask if we could come over. "Hey mom, can IG come over to play Age of Empires? I don’t really want to, but he does." DG overheard me. After I hung up, she pulled me aside for a ten-minute lecture. All I remember is that she kept saying to me, "You need to be open." I think she meant that I was at fault for not going along with what IG wanted to do. As I sat there and nodded, I kept thinking, "How is this my fault? Why am I the one being punished for this?" IG’s behavior was not addressed or reprimanded.

But the bullying really came to a head in middle school. Our families were in a self-organized carpool program with three other neighborhood families. On the mornings when it was DG’s turn to drive us to school, I was supposed to walk around the corner and meet them for a 7:15 AM departure. On each of these days, DG always said, "Good morning," to me. I started off by saying, "Hi," in response; but then she began insisting that I say, "Good morning," instead of "Hi". I complied, despite the fact that the other three carpool kids were not held to this standard.

One morning, IG was running late in packing up for school. So DG drove with me to pick up the other three carpool kids, returning for IG afterward. While DG and I drove together in the car, DG gave me a lecture about respect and how I was disrespecting her by the ways in which I greeted her in the morning. I cannot recall the thrust of her argument, but the takeaway was that she thereafter required me to say, "Good morning," to her first before she said it to me. I was enraged. What the hell was her problem? Why was she singling me out like this? My eyes looked around as we drove; I caught sight of myself in the rear-view mirror, and I realized that my jaw had dropped open. She must have seen the same thing; she next said, "I’m not saying this to upset you…" Perhaps she thought it was her duty to train me in the ways of whatever arbitrary social rules she felt like imposing upon me, her target.

None of the other carpool kids ever received a similar chastisement. For the next three years, every other person in the carpool program was able to get away with saying, "Hi," or "Good morning," to DG after she said it to them first.

Mornings of DG-driving days were instantly transformed into high-pressure performances for me. I parroted, "Good morning," devoid of any cheerfulness and full of fear. What would happen if I failed to say it to her before she did to me? What would happen if she didn’t hear me? What was the next DG lecture lurking around the corner for me?

In seventh grade, the advanced-track science classes—which included IG and me—went on a field trip. DG was a parent chaperone, and she drove her minivan. IG was not in my period, so DG was not my chaperone; however, because we returned in the evening and missed the carpool, DG took me home afterward. As we entered our neighborhood, IG and DG began to get into an argument. It was an incredibly uncomfortable situation for me to be sitting mere feet away from them as they bickered—a spectator. As DG stopped in front of my house, the argument did not pause. I waited for a break in the conversation to bid farewell, or for DG to initiate the goodbye proceedings. A goodbye was not exchanged. Silently, I opened the van door, grabbed my backpack out of the trunk, and went inside the house. DG and IG seemed oblivious of my presence, continuing to argue the entire time.

In the carpool ride the following morning (DG was not driving), IG handed me a note. It was a handwritten note from DG, the thesis of which was that she was upset that I did not say, "thank you for the ride" to her the previous night. She beat the disrespect drum again. When I read the note, I was furious. I had complied with every one of her absurd, nit-picky demands for how to address her up until that point, and yet she felt the need to criticize me for neglecting to adhere to yet another requirement that I didn’t even know existed. Besides, I probably would have acknowledged the ride if she and IG were not in the middle of an argument. What did she expect me to do, interrupt them?

I added, "Say, 'Thanks for the ride,' any time DG drives you anywhere, even if you have to interrupt her" to the ever-growing list of rules I had to follow when interacting with DG.

I could not understand why DG honed her aggression on me. Perhaps her children had heard the lectures she gave me dozens of times; but no other kids were targeted in the ways that I was. It did not seem to bother her that none of the other carpool kids said, "Good morning," to her first, or that they did not say, "Thanks for the ride," every time they exited her minivan. I wonder if she thought she needed to teach me to be respectful; that she saw me as her "project" to turn into what she defined as a well-adjusted person. What if her micromanagement of my speech was a twisted way of her actually caring deeply for me?

That, or she was exploiting my deference to authority figures which my parents and church had taught me. Her kids frequently argued with and talked back to her. I did not have nearly as much gall. Perhaps she got a rush from watching me shrink as she lectured me. Did she get pleasure from seeing me adjust my behavior to satisfy her wishes?

DG was unpredictable, her moods volatile. I never knew if what I did (or didn’t) do would set her off. But I learned a handful of behaviors that had near-perfect cause-effect relationships with her mood. In a strange way, I had control over her in this manner. I held a few puppet strings which I could pull (or not pull) to pacify her or to sour her mood. But I was a benign puppetmaster, albeit inadvertently—because I perceived the puppet as directing the master, rather than the other way around.

Thankfully, these elementary and middle school encounters were as bad as it got. When I was in the latter half of high school, the family began regularly attending our church, and DG got involved with the high school youth group. She hosted student small groups, went on mission trips with us, and joined us in group prayer. She seemed to mellow out quite a bit in those years. Perhaps coincidentally, her hair seemed to reflect this change in temperament; she let her natural brown hair color grow out, overtaking the bleached blonde she used to sport the entire time I had known her (which I had always interpreted as vanity). Part of me was indignant at her change. I wanted people to know that this was not the same woman that I grew up with; she used to be a monster. Perhaps this indignation would have dissolved if she had simply apologized for how she had treated me for many years before.

"Lord, help us."

Someone I went to high school with recently posted a photo of a young child clinging to the bars of a cage—ostensibly in a border detention center—crying. The caption with the photo was, “This is what we’ve become. Shame.” One of my high school teachers commented, “This has been going on for wayyyyy too many years. I can’t even think about it. Lord, help us.”

Now, of course there are problems with the original post. The proliferation of decontextualized photos, memes, and Twitter posts that are sensationally shared and are treated as news or reputable analysis is highly problematic. An example of this was the 2019 viral video of the Covington Catholic High School student shown standing in front of a chanting native activist which has more going on than what is shown in the video but was immediately interpreted as the smugness and white supremacy of MAGA adherents. Complex issues such as U.S.-Mexico border relations, American immigration policy, the treatment of indigenous peoples, and white supremacy are incredibly nuanced discussions that cannot and should not be boiled down to 280 characters or fewer. We have no way of knowing that the photo in the original post was from a border detention center; we do not know when the photo was taken; we do not know why the child was crying; and hell, the caption doesn’t even clarify that this is referencing poor treatment of immigrants at a border detention camp!

But the primary focus of this blog post is the response from my former high school teacher. For the purposes of this argument, I will assume that the photo is indeed from a border detention center, and the child has indeed been separated from his parents, which is the reason for his crying. (It actually doesn’t matter if I assume this—my former high school teacher has almost certainly assumed this.)

The “Lord, help us” is what gets me. What the hell is the Lord supposed to help us with in this situation, exactly? Help us not put children in cages? What, pray tell, would the Lord’s intervention even look like? Begging for the Lord’s intervention in this manner suggests that our natural human impulses lead us to cage immigrant children, and there is nothing we can do by ourselves to prevent that from happening. It diverts all responsibility for this horrific action, denying that we are also responsible for fixing the solution. It treats the circumstance as inevitable, unavoidable. But this was entirely preventable. Calling upon the Lord to supernaturally fix the problems we created for ourselves is giving up.

 

 

Evangelical Christianity stresses the concept of humanity’s total depravity, which more or less means that we default to wicked behavior from the time we are born. This ideology helps explain the sense of powerlessness behind, “Lord, help us.” As a corollary, evangelical Christianity also teaches—whether directly or indirectly—that you cannot claim any credit for anything good that you do. Instead, God receives all the credit for anything good in the world. This follows from the concept of total depravity; if our default impulses are wicked and destructive, then how could we possibly ever create anything good? This ideology fosters a dependence on supernatural intervention to rectify the world’s brokenness, resulting in our cries of, “Lord, help us”. It also rings of hopelessness and futility—why would we bother trying to fix the world if everything we do is evil?

But, none of it actually matters anyway, because Christians are in the world but “not of the world” (John 17:16). Ultimately, evil in the world doesn’t particularly matter because Christians are to “set your hearts on things above, not on earthly things” (Colossians 3:8).

Christians should not be asking the Lord for help, but should be crying, “Lord, have mercy.”

“Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.” (Luke 23:34) 

Donations

The world is a very difference place since my last post.

Obviously COVID.

But also, Black Lives Matter had a prominent resurgence in May and June following the brutal murder of George Floyd. That social reaction seems to have largely died away from the public consciousness now that media coverage has subsided. But it was quite a potent social force a couple months ago, certainly for me. It was the first time that I felt I needed to deliberately cut myself off from Facebook for a period of time because the content I was seeing was too much for me to handle.

As the movement gained traction and protests showed up in literally all 50 states and in countries around the world*, I felt like I needed to do something. For several days at the end of May and into early June, I struggled to figure out how I should respond and contribute to the pivotal societal moment that was unfolding. Protesting didn't seem right for me for a variety of reasons: (1) There was concurrently a pandemic, and the CDC recommended avoiding large gatherings of people; (2) Protesting requires a commitment to unknowns that unsettles me: the unknown of where the protest will travel to, the unknown of how long it will last, the unknown of how protestors will behave, and the unknown of what level of resistance will be encountered; (3) The measure of a protest's effectiveness, or "success", is unclear if immediate political action does not follow, as I learned in participating in Black Lives Matter protests in Berkeley in 2014; and (4) I was still employed full-time in a white-collar job as millions others lost their jobs or saw wages cut, so it seemed like there was something better I could do with my resources of time and money. I thought about giving a lump-sum donation to an organization associated with the cause, but then I was left with having to make the decisions of to whom to give, and how much to give. Who was most "deserving" of my contributions? How much would be "enough", and how could I measure that? Would my sensitivity to the issue become dulled if I donated once?

Out of a place of paralysis, I came up with an ingenious solution. I posted the following Facebook status:

I'm going to play a game.

Every time I encounter the phrases, "All lives matter" or, "Blue lives matter" on social media, I will donate $5 to Black Lives Matter. (https://blacklivesmatter.com)

Every time I see a new video of police arresting either peaceful protesters or members of the press, I will donate $5 to the Minnesota Freedom Fund. (https://minnesotafreedomfund.org)

Every time I see a new video of police using excessive force to harm protesters (e.g., tear gas, rubber bullets, vehicles, batons), I will donate $5 to Campaign Zero. (https://www.joincampaignzero.org)

For every day between George Floyd's murder and Derek Chauvin's initial arrest, I will donate $25 to the George Floyd Memorial Fund. (https://www.gofundme.com/f/georgefloyd)

For every day between Derek Chauvin's initial arrest and the increase of charges against him from third-degree to second-degree murder, I will donate $10 to the George Floyd Memorial Fund. (https://www.gofundme.com/f/georgefloyd)

For every day that curfew remains in effect in my city, I will donate $10 to Reclaim the Block. (https://www.reclaimtheblock.org)

The concept of per-infraction donations made a lot of sense to me. For one thing, the recipients of my donations were organizations that served to counteract approximately the infractions identified. For another, it would cause me to direct my donations to the issues that seemed to be the most pressing; that is, the more frequently-appearing infractions would result in a greater donation to the appropriate counter-organization. It also tapped into what I believe is the most meaningful way I could contribute to the cause: financial contribution. I'm certainly not the one who would organize or lead a protest, nor do I have the skills and expertise to work in political lobbying or community education. I believe my greatest asset is to help enable others who have the skills that I lack to drive for true social change. Lastly, donating on a per-infraction basis kept me engaged with what was happening. Admittedly, I primarily remained engaged through the overwhelmingly leftist echo chamber that is my Facebook feed, but that seems like the type of environment that would daylight the exact infractions triggering donations.

When I came around to making the donations, Reclaim the Block was actually redirecting donations. They had been financially saturated due to the heightened publicity they received as a good organization to receive donations. Instead of donating to Reclaim the Block, I donated to one of their recommended alternatives, the Pimento Relief Fund, whose objective was to provide relief funds to black businesses in Minnesota who had suffered either due to COVID-19 or property damage from the protests.

This post is not intended to be a virtue signal. That I've posted it two months after these thoughts were going through my mind is proof of that, as is the fact that I'm not saying how much I donated (which, to be frank, was less than I had both hoped to and been willing to donate). And no one reads this blog anyway, so it's definitely not virtue signaling.

* I frequently wonder if the murder of George Floyd would not have received as much traction as it did if not for the pandemic. I wonder if people who had been sheltered in place for so long so desperately needed an outlet, and the social response to George Floyd's murder was so great in part due to this need. If George Floyd had been murdered in the Before Times^TM, what would the societal response have been like?

Their Monologues

Recently, I attended an event on UC Berkeley's campus called "Our Monologues". In previous years, this event had been known as the "Vagina Monologues", which consisted of performances from Eve Ensler's 1996 play of the same name "as well as other works created by V-Day" (the non-profit formed in the wake of Ensler's play). However, in 2018, the Vagina Monologues student group at UC Berkeley decided to alter the annual event on the basis that "womanhood isn't defined by any one thing and certainly isn't defined based on whether or not a person has a vagina." To that end, the event was renamed "Our Monologues" in 2018, with the first half of the program featuring traditional Vagina Monologues pieces, and the second half featuring original pieces penned by students about their experiences around gender identity, sexuality, cultural identity, and assault and violence against women. By this year, it appeared that the student group had completely overhauled the Vagina Monologues framework; all pieces featured were written by students about their personal experiences.*

I remember this event being fairly well-attended in previous years, with many of the shows selling out. Yesterday's performance yielded an audience of only 119 attendees in a 700-seat auditorium. I wondered if the low turnout was at least in part due to the difficulty of marketing an event with such a generic and literal title--"Our Monologues". There is virtually no stir or buzz created by such an event title. "Vagina Monologues", by contrast, is a much catchier title due to its provocative nature and its explicit feature of an inappropriate-for-dinner-table-conversation subject. Furthermore, the idea of a monologue emerging from a vagina indicates the event title is not to be taken literally. This in turn generates curiosity, mystery, amusement, and a whole host of other emotions that might compel students to attend the event. Plus, marketing an event is much easier if the hook you use to catch people's attention is, "Hey, do you like vaginas?"

A head-scratching production decision that the group made this year was to project speakers' scripts on the screen behind the stage. (I wondered if this was an attempt to combat "ableism"--deaf attendees may not have otherwise been able to experience the material, and an ASL interpreter would likely have been prohibitively expensive for the student group.) Not only were speakers' scripts shown on the screen, but the emcee's lines were also displayed. This effectively killed any of the "jokes" that the emcee made. The audience could anticipate the jokes by reading ahead. And, if the jokes are scripted, then your delivery had better be masterful; unfortunately, the emcee's was not. The display of the emcee's lines also seemed to discount the praise that the emcee gave to performers; for instance, "Your story is inspiring," or, "We are so proud of you," rings somewhat hollow when the feedback was written in advance and the text is right there for everyone to read.

Another disadvantage of projecting the script on the screen is that speakers could use it as a crutch. Embarrassingly, several speakers who clearly had not rehearsed enough** had to turn around in the middle of their monologues to read their lines...for their own monologues that they wrote about themselves. My theory is that in general, it may be easier to memorize a script that someone else has written. Memorizing a retelling of your own story could be difficult because you may tell it so many times, and each time you tell it, you use different words. Essentially, the speakers memorized and recited one specific iteration of their narrative at this event. Each time you tell the story, some details may not seem as important, and others may rise to the forefront. Perhaps these particular monologues were a microcosm of this phenomenon, resulting in the speakers having difficulty recalling what they wrote.

If nothing else, the words projected on the screen were distracting. It added another sensory input for the audience to consume. I was unable to fully engage with the speakers' delivery because I focused on reading the text. I could not experience the emotions they hoped to conjure in me. And, if the speaker deviated from what was on the screen (which they often did, sometimes by only a word or two), that caused me a delay in engaging with the content because my brain was busy identifying and making sense of the discrepancy.

Another feature of this year's event was the creation of a "safe space" in the lobby of the auditorium. Attendees were encouraged to practice self-care--"however that looks to you"--including stepping out and making use of the safe space if the content became too much for them. (Surprisingly, the word "trigger" was not used.) The safe space in the lobby consisted of a blanket on the floor with pillows and a teddy bear as well as a table with various activities on it, including coloring pages, play dough, and 24-piece puzzles.

The "safe space" in the lobby

The activity table within the safe space

The design of this safe space readily suggests several things. It reminds the users of a simpler time of life (i.e., childhood), perhaps before they had experienced trauma. It also conjures the desire to be protected, and therefore for there to be a protector to act as a buffer between the users of the space and the more complicated aspects of life. Needless to say, the safe space was an open invitation for infantilism. Rather than encouraging the attendees to engage with their potentially troubling emotions and to critically evaluate why certain feelings arose, the event organizers presented regression into childhood as a solution. The safe space design reinforces the notion that the users do not have power over their trauma or their situation, and ignoring the core issues is an acceptable coping mechanism.

There are some secondary problems with the safe space's design as well. First, why should a safe space be needed when the attendees voluntarily paid money to come to the event? Would they not have already accepted the risk that the content could be upsetting? Second, are teddy bears, coloring books, play dough, and puzzles items that are universally associated with childhood, or do they conjure a white, American, middle-class experience of childhood? Third, there seems to be an assumption that the items in the safe space are indisputably comforting. Is there a chance that attendees could be triggered by those items, perhaps if they were sexually abused as toddlers or young children?

No one used the safe space.

Before the first speaker began, the emcee declared, "White men: this is not your space," and then proceeded to deliver a backhanded unilateral denunciation of white men. If the event's focus was on womanhood, then why were white men specifically admonished? What about black, Asian, trans, or cis men? (This question became even more relevant when after the first speaker, the emcee said, "So what I'm getting from [speaker]'s monologue is: men suck!"--not just white men, but all men.) Furthermore, this declaration directly contradicts the decision to change the event title from "Vagina Monologues" to "Our Monologues"; that is, it contradicts the mantra of wider inclusion and nuance of individual experiences within communities. In general, the ultra-leftist narrative is that white men are pure evil and are greedy for dominion over every space they occupy. Consequently, white men are immediately vilified and have their experiences and opinions discounted simply due to the intersection of their skin color and gender identity. Nuance is granted to individuals within all communities except for white men.

What risk were the organizers attempting to mitigate by denouncing white men? Were they afraid that a white man would stand up during a performance and go on a rant? Or could they not conceive of the notion that maybe some white men wanted to attend to learn from the women speakers?

I think the conclusion that I've arrived at is that I've grown out of the Berkeley hyper-liberal shell that I might have occupied at some point in the past. Although this shell that many students don does seem to become tighter and tighter every year as the volume inside the echo chamber reaches deafening levels.








* Hot take: In my experience, at ultra-leftist events such as this when speakers talk about their experiences, it frequently devolves into a pissing contest of who has the most trauma or who can present themselves as the most marginalized. (Footnote on a footnote: Another example of this sometimes happens at political rallies or protests; speakers declare that they are an immigrant or the child of immigrant parents, and then insert a pause in their speech, which frequently manages to be filled with applause and cheers. Somehow, the quality of simply not being from here is a virtue in itself.)


** The event began with an brief video screening featuring the three event organizers. As the organizers spoke in the video, their eyes frequently darted away from the camera, clearly to read the off-screen script. That they were reading a script also created awkward pauses and inflections in the delivery. Did the organizers just go with their first take? Would it have been too much to ask that they rehearse more?

2019 in flight

GOALS FOR 2019

At the end of 2018, I set the following goals for myself with respect to air travel in 2019:

1. Track seat assignments and arrival/departure gates
2. Fly on a B777 and a Horizon Q400 aircraft
3. Fly out of my hometown's airport (CCR)
4. Avoid flying United
5. More in-flight alcohol!

Here is how I did.

1. Goal met. I tracked seat assignments and arrival/departure gates for every flight I took in 2019.
2. Goal met...sort of. I flew on a B777 for the first time on American Airlines on a MIA-DFW segment, and I flew on a Q400 for the first (and second time) on Porter Airlines on YUL-YTZ and YTZ-BOS segments. I did not fly a Horizon-operated Q400, so I technically did not meet my goal to the letter of the law. However, the spirit behind the rule was that I wanted to fly a Q400, independent of airline, and I knew that Horizon operated them. To that end, I would claim that the goal has been met to a satisfactory level. I recognize that I hindered myself by lumping three criteria into a single goal (B777, Q400, Horizon).
3. Goal not met. I haven't managed to do the CCR-BUR flight on JetSuiteX yet.
4. Goal met. I am exceptionally proud of this goal because of how much I hate United, and because they dominate the SFO market. Thanks, Alaska!
5. Goal met. This was a low bar, because I could have had one in-flight drink in 2019 and I would have met the goal. However, as a later graph will show, I went beyond simply meeting this goal.

 YEAR-OVER-YEAR TRENDS

44,958 miles flown in 2019, measured as great-circle distances in statute miles. 25% decrease from 2018; 73% increase over 2017.

38 segments flown in 2019, with a "segment" defined as beginning with an aircraft departure and ending with its subsequent arrival at another airport. For example, A SFO to ORD itinerary with a connection in MSP would be two segments. 17% decrease from 2018; 90% increase over 2017.

$5,561.02 in airfare paid in 2019, which considers the actual amounts that were charged to the card, inclusive of airline credits, miles used, taxes, and fees. 42% decrease from 2018; 63% increase over 2017.




MORE ON MILES

"Others" includes Air Canada, Copa, Delta, jetBlue, United, and none.

"Others" includes B757 (2018), B777 (2019), CRJ (2018 and 2019), GLAS (2018), and Q400 (2019).




MORE ON MONEY

Southwest's "Wanna Get Away" fare class and the Porter flights are included in the "Other" category.

When compared with 2018, the average cost per mile flown for business remained constant at $0.18/mile; for leisure, it decreased from $0.12/mile in 2018 to $0.09/mile in 2019.

The leisure distribution is skewed due to tickets purchased with airline miles. Combining this graph with the next graph, a negative correlation between per-mile cost and ticket purchase lead time (i.e., how far in advance the ticket was purchased) becomes apparent.

"Lead time" is defined as how far in advance of departure the ticket was purchased.

Interestingly, the leisure ticket with the largest purchase lead time also had the highest cost per mile. Generally, this relationship tends to be inverted.

When compared with 2018, the average lead time for business increased from 9.6 days in 2018 to 10.2 days in 2019; for leisure, it increased from 68.8 days in 2018 to 88.8 days in 2019.

MORE ON WHERE

A "visit" is defined as a segment either originating or terminating at a specific airport. So, connections grant two visits to the airport at which a connection occurs.

The size of the font is directly proportional to the number of visits.

All routes flown in 2019.




WHILE IN FLIGHT

A "pushback pause" is defined as the time when the aircraft is stationary after being pushed back from the gate. Specifically, it begins when the aircraft stops moving backward and the tug begins detaching, and it ends when the aircraft begins moving forward on its own power.

"Bags checked" includes bags that must be gate-checked due to lack of overhead bin space due to passenger demand or aircraft type (e.g., regional jets usually cannot accommodate roller-board bags).

Behold, the goal of consuming more in-flight alcohol was met.




HIGHLIGHTS FROM 2019

• First time flying...
• ...on these aircraft types: B777, Q400
• ...with these airlines: Porter
• ...to/from these U.S. states: Massachusetts
• ...to/from these airports: AUS, BOS, YTZ, YUL
• First time redeeming miles to pay for a flight
• First time flying first class
• First time consuming alcohol while in flight
• First time renewing status on an airline

GOALS FOR 2020

The following are my goals for my air travel in 2020:

1. Hit my fifth continent: Australia (I have ~$100 credit available on Qantas which expires in October 2020, and I have an active Australia travel visa which expires in November 2020.)
2. Achieve airline status again (although it does not need to be with Alaska)
3. Fly out of my hometown's airport (CCR)
4. Fly in every month of the calendar year

The Backstories for the Customers in "Chocolate with Nuts"

Jerrett (33 years old). Jerrett is the second oldest of three siblings with an older brother and a younger sister. His parents divorced when he was 14. He is a graduate of USC with a degree in business, and then he worked in management consulting for three years. Afterward, he began an MBA program at Wharton, but he dropped out after one semester due to a compelling job offer in product management. He is currently VP of Sales for a major food distributor, and he works remotely most of the time. He lives with his wife of seven years and 5-year-old son, but he frequently takes what he tells them are "business trips" to spend weekends in Vegas with the woman he has been seeing for the last four years. She lives in Seattle, but she and Jerrett have agreed to meet in Vegas as a neutral meeting place. Jerrett enjoys gambling, and has managed to keep that vice a secret from his wife by siphoning off a portion of his salary into a hidden bank account that she is unaware of. (He files the couple's taxes each year, so she doesn't notice any "missing" income.) Unbeknownst to him, his wife is currently considering leaving their marriage and leaving him with the responsibility of taking care of their son.

Sadie (31 years old). Sadie is a nurse at the local hospital. She graduated at the top of her university class and shortly thereafter married her high-school sweetheart. After three years of marriage, she filed for divorce from her ex-husband because of his heroin addiction. Four years ago, she met her current husband, Fred, who was one of her patients at the hospital. He came to the hospital following a workplace accident at the warehouse distribution center where he works. Sadie and Fred have been married for two years and have been unsuccessful in their attempts to bear children, with Sadie experiencing a miscarriage five months ago. Sadie is highly disciplined and organized in how she runs her life, handling her and her husband's finances, attending yoga class five days each week, and maintaining a strict diet. Chocolate is the only junk food that she permits herself to eat.

Josh (28 years old). Josh was an overweight kid throughout elementary, junior, and high school because of the abundance of sweets that his parents bought growing up. He was bullied incessantly for both his weight and flamboyance which resulted in a later diagnosis of anxiety and depression. Josh attended community college for five semesters but did not complete his associate's degree. While in community college, he worked part-time at a local retail store, eventually being promoted to shift manager. He also began going to the gym, and after losing over 100 pounds, he became obsessed with fitness and nutrition. He ran his first marathon five years ago and has run at least four marathons every year since. Today, he works part-time as a personal trainer at his gym, but he is struggling to make ends meet financially, as his gym does not provide him health insurance to cover his ongoing psychological therapy. He has been aggressively pursuing a romantic relationship for the last three years to no avail due to, as he characterizes it, the unwillingness of Bikini Bottom guys to commit. Josh is not publicly out and is uncomfortable with any references made to his sexuality.

Brandon (42 years old). Brandon is an ex-Marine who attended the University of Nebraska after completing his service. He was a member of Sigma Chi fraternity and received a degree in political science. He works a relatively mundane job in City Hall processing permit applications for residential and commercial development projects. He lives with his wife and his two daughters (ages 8 and 6). His mother also recently moved in, as she suffers from dementia. At times, Brandon has wanted to return to school to pursue a program in architecture, but he feels that he could not afford to pay for school while raising two daughters. In addition, he feels that he needs to spend as much time at home as possible to help care for his mother.

Mary (78 years old). Mary is a retired schoolteacher who lives with and takes care of her mother, Barbara. She is one of seven siblings, four of which are still alive but live far away (mostly to maintain distance from Barbara). Mary's husband passed away 24 years ago at the age of 56 from bone cancer, after which she became jaded and generally unpleasant to be around. As a result, her three children (two sons and a daughter) keep minimal contact with her, and Mary has never met her two youngest grandchildren. Mary resents her mother for choosing to obtain costly ongoing life support, which has for decades eaten away at the inheritance that Mary was hoping to receive.

Barbara (110 years old). Barbara grew up in New York City. She met her husband, a farmer, when she was 17 and they were married when she was 19. Together they moved to southwestern Kansas and had seven children. The Great Depression hit as many of their children were in their teenage years, and the family's tight financial situation put a heavy strain on the relationship between Barbara and her children. After the Dust Bowl decimated the family's livelihood, they moved westward. Barbara's husband managed to open and operate a successful hotel chain, but despite the family's improved economic situation, Barbara maintained an austere home environment. Her husband eventually sold off the hotel chain and passed away three years later at the age of 72 (and she was 70). Barbara had two strokes in her 70's and has had ongoing life support since she was 79. She moved in with Mary and her husband the following year, requiring costly retrofits to Mary's home to accommodate Barbara's medical needs. Barbara's greatest fear is death.

Douglas (37 years old). Douglas and his wife own a psychic business together; he conducts tarot card readings and she is a fortune-teller. They have attended Burning Man every year for the last three years, and are "very excited" to return this year. One of the foundational pillars of their marriage was that neither ever wanted children. On the night of their wedding reception, Douglas and his wife drove to the hospital for him to obtain a vasectomy. In his spare time, Douglas enjoys gardening, reading, playing the flute, and meditating.

Joseph (54 years old). Joseph is a farmer who specializes in growing and harvesting barley. He grew up in the house he currently lives in and did not obtain more than a seventh-grade education. In recent years, his livelihood has been threatened by the competition brought about by agro-businesses, but he has been kept afloat by sales of his crop to an organic grocery store that only purchases from small, local vendors. While munching on a chocolate bar, he spoke about the store: "It's real 'spensive, but I sure is glad fer it."

Fitzpatrick (30 years old). Fitzpatrick is a licensed real estate agent specializing in corporate office parks. He is an alumnus of the University of California at Santa Barbara, where he earned a reputation for being a party animal and a ladies-man. In college, he was arrested for public indecency and belligerence and held in the county jail overnight. Charges were dropped when it was revealed that he had actually been fully clothed and was not, in fact, indecent--he was just ugly. He is currently in his third marriage, which has lasted one year and three months so far and is his longest marriage to date. His previous marriages lasted six months and thirteen months.

Tom (39 years old). Tom is a professor of mechanical engineering at the local university. He obtained his bachelor's degree in physics from UCLA and his master's and PhD in mechanical engineering from CalTech. He held a post-doc position at MIT before being offered a tenure-track professorship at his current university. His students generally regard him as a good professor, although student course evaluations have revealed that students' chief complaint is that he often explains concepts in an extremely long-winded and circuitous fashion. Tom has no history of romantic relationships, perhaps due to his compulsive hoarding habit. He is active on Yelp and has achieved Elite status for the previous six years.