all about me, august 2008

lemme see, went to CO for family reunion, NJ for business, DC to see family, TX for business.

came back, did a tiny deck project with a friend in seattle, then went camping for the weekend.

tonight i got to go to a bday party with traditional russian food, not to mention friends, drinking, toasts, singing, etc -- much fun had by all.

on friday i had an epiphanal moment: on the way back from my friend's house in south seattle, i got lost. for over an hour. i tried to cut around traffic and ended up nowhere near where i wanted to be. and it took me 70 minutes to get to somewhere that enabled me to find my way home. total travel time for what should have been a 35 minute trip: 1:45.

i asked for directions 4 times, and got good ones only once ("I-90 is back that way!" shouted the young men with do-rags and gold teeth. they were right.) and yes, i probably shouldn't have asked directions from the two 300-yr-old men with bottles in their jackets at mid-day who probably haven't owned a car in 10 yrs. my bad on that one. but the goth girl and the ethiopian shopkeeper seemed like they knew what they were talking about -- too bad they were talking about streets that apparently only exist in their minds...

news flash: i have no sense of direction. i suck at puzzles involving spatial concepts (if you wrapped this polyhedron in paper, then removed the paper and spread it out, which shape would you have? i don't know -- that effed-up-looking one, i bet....)

if i walk into a building and take one turn, i immediately lose all idea what direction the entrance is in; if i get into and out of an elevator, the act of turning around 180 degrees wipes my brain clean of all directional references.

when driving, the only way for me to remember N/S/E/W is to visualize in which direction I might find Canada/Mexico/The Pacific Ocean/Pennsylvania. (No, I don't know why Pennsylvania -- that just represents East to me...)

i would make the world's worst spy.

so my epiphany is this: there is no excuse for me not to have a GPS. they apparently cost less than $300 now. if you added up the value of the time i've wasted driving aimlessly hoping to run into something familiar, you could more than pay for a GPS.

you don't see paraplegic people dragging themselves along the sidewalk because they're too proud to buy a wheelchair, do you? no, i didn't think so. i rest my case.

so: anyone got a recommendation on a GPS? i'm thinking a Garmin...