Where’s Waldo?
I am thoroughly confused. I consider myself a very rational person. I am a sequential reasoner. If A=B and B=C, then A=C. What is so hard about all of that? Isn’t that what made America great? Well, I am once again staring at the clock and it says 4:44 and I don’t mean in the late afternoon. Both Kim and I were very tired last night after a long day traveling back to our hilltop from New York City. It was a standard five hour direct flight from JFK and we were sitting in first class lie-flat seats again, so its not like I was miserable, but adding three hours of time change onto your day still makes it a long day.
All during my six days in New York, I was waking up in the middle of the night despite the very comfortable bed at the Cornell Club. I suppose I can blame that on jet lag like everyone does, but we all know I am a middle of the night insomniac for what I will suggest is 80% joint and muscle related reasons and 20% head case reasons. I feel like I have been addressing the joint and muscle condition by getting out each morning for a walk with Kim and Betty and even starting a “Perfect Workout” regime once a week to add some high intensity strength training. In all fairness, it was a two-week-old regime before heading off to New York, but I figured that would at least get things going in the right direction, but now I am not so sure.
When looking at my Apple Health phone app (my new guiding light of physical fitness), I can see quite clearly that my physical activity level took an appreciable upward step relative to the last month, quarter and even year. My activity level has appreciably ratcheted up and that coincides with my concerted effort to do so a few weeks ago. We all know that California is where you drive places and New York is where you walk places. I’m not sure that would have characterized my prior life in New York, but its safe to say that is the norm for others. Since I would have no car and I would be in midtown Manhattan during the holidays, I was pretty sure I would be walking a lot more than normal since that is about the only way to get around at all. That was absolutely the case even though I tried to use Uber a lot to overcome the farthest distances. They say you should do 10,000 steps per day, but that’s above my pay grade yet, so let’s just say that I was ratcheting up from the 4k level to the 6-7k level. That was about what I figured, but I had no idea it would come at such a price.
That price was that the 30-degree cold of the City, with its normal humidity level (which feels moist to these chaparral bones) caused my legs and joints to complain a lot more than normal. I really think it was the weather more than the added steps because I could literally feel the cold in my bones. I don’t recall that ever otherwise being the norm from my New Yorker days. That all meant that, given our active City schedules, there was no mid-day napping or resting and there was all this added exercise with added cold weather burdens, so I would have thought I would be sleeping soundly just because my body would seek its natural recovery through sleep. But thanks to the jet lag or the unfamiliar locale (that has rarely bothered this wanderer) I was still on the middle of the night brigade.
We purposefully went to bed early on Tuesday night after son Thomas’ show, which was followed by a half-walk and half-pedicab ride back to the Club. When I awoke in the wee hours I was greeted by a text from Delta telling me that our 8:30 flight was postponed to 10:00. That was just enough to make me consider shifting the Uber back from the scheduled 5:00am pick-up. Kim was tossing and turning so I asked what she wanted and she agreed that we should keep the original pick-up time. That set the stage for neither of us being able to get back to sleep, so we were bright-eyed and bushy-tailed for our 5am curtain call to JFK. At that hour it took us less than 30 minutes. Had we pushed an hour, it would have taken us an hour…we all know how rush hour works. We opted for more time at the Delta Sky Club, which at least had room for us this time and at that hour.
That all explains why when we landed in San Diego at 1pm, we were already close to empty and sleep-deprived for the Uber home to the hilltop. We used our afternoon to unpack and deal with the wrap-up of the trip and the preparations for our overnight to LA in two days. We both sensed that the key to sleep success would be to stay up as long as possible before crashing. Again, these are all well-proven travel tactics.
I had used the last 24 hours to download and grade all of the final exams for my two courses. I diligently cut through the stack and was only left by quitting time last night with one outstanding exam, which was already a day late, a dollar short (as they say) and from a student that is, in my opinion, far less than serious about learning anything about finance. This is an Asian student who’s English is subpar. Usually, my Asian students are top notch, but not this one. I went to bed last night early, both tired in a corporal sense, but also tired of having to deal with this student’s frailties.
Not surprisingly, I awoke after 4-5 hours of sleep (not enough at all after a short sleep the prior night). Was it jet lag or maybe leg and body ache from wrestling the bags and walking the airport corridors? Usually, east-to-west jet lag is not so severe and the combination of lie-flat seating and the lower humidity of my beloved chaparral, would have made me feel like sleep should have come more easily to me than it had. Once up and waiting for my next batch of Tylenol to kick in, I did what I know I shouldn’t but can never avoid, which is to see who wants to send me something in my email inbox. Sure enough, my late night curt dunning notice to the wayward student, had had an impact and there was an email apology and what was supposed to pass for an exam attached.
I did think about it first from a sleep deprivation standpoint, but I couldn’t help myself and I opened the attachment to look at the exam. My mind was now fully engaged and in didactic mode. To my great chagrin, this exam was even worse than I expected. These students are all good at taking a take-home exam to the internet and copying Investopedia or whatever website they land on for a plagiaristic romp. I can actually hear the echo of similar turns of phrase in my ear that I know do not come form communal thought as much as from wrote transcription. I expect a certain amount of that, but also give them thematic buzz phrases which I look for imbedded in the prose to show me that they at least understand the concepts they are copying. Well, this student was not even able to do any of that well and just defaulted to putting down anything including things like to the question: Why is capital structure so important to companies?, and getting back the opening salvo of “Because the definition of Corporate finance is that Corporate finance deals with the capital structure of a corporation”. Very tricky, answer my question by telling me its because I asked the question. Now I am wide awake and incensed.
You see how this works and why I am sitting here at the butt crack of dawn for the second day in a row. It really is my own fault and not the fault of NYC, its weather, Delta’s travel scheduling, my exercise regimen or insufficiency thereof or even the inadequacies of over-the-counter pain relievers. This is about our cultural obsession with figuring out where in hell Waldo is. Is Waldo in New York or Escondido? Is Waldo walking or sitting? Is Waldo retired or still working? Is Waldo asleep or awake? And perhaps most importantly, does Waldo even give a shit where he is and does he really want to be found or maybe found out? Well, Professor Waldo just gave out his first and only C of the semester to Mr. Waldo from Korea and realized that what used to be considered average is now more like a scarlet letter of failure. Too bad its now too late to go back to sleep. Luckily, Waldo has nothing pressing to do today that will require complete wakefulness. Nevertheless, I do hope sleep finds me at some point.