This is my dad.

He is extremely handy.  He can fix almost anything and, if he doesn’t know how to fix it already, he will research the hell out of it until he finds out.  He has repaired televisions, doors, gardens, garages, bathrooms, broken glasses, broken computers, broken cell phones, pianos, and, most importantly, cars.

This Labor Day Weekend, as I was home with my parents, my dad, hawk-eyed, noticed a problem with my car’s windshield wipers.  I didn’t notice, mainly because I know nothing about cars, and also, thanks to living in White People Central, I walk/Metro to work every day and use my car about once every two weeks to go home or to Philadelphia.

“I can fix this problem.  It’s going to cost you a lot of money at a dealership,” my dad said.

“Please let me take this car in.  It’s going to take you forever to fix it, and I don’t want you to waste your time,” I, as an economist well-versed in comparative advantage, pleaded with him.  My dad’s time is more important to me than my money.

“No.”  My dad has the same level of distrust for car dealerships as Elin has for Tiger. “They’re only going to rip you off, especially since your car is old.  I will do a much better job.” My dad is cynical and jaded. This does not run in the family.

“Ok,” I sighed and threw up my hands.  If there is one person more stubborn than me, it’s my dad.

Four hours later, my dad was still checking out the car, and found the source of the problem.  It was a holiday weekend, and my dad was rooting around in my car.  I love him, and even though he likes getting to the root of problems, it was hurting me to watch.

“Let me take it to the dealership,” I pleaded with him.

“No. They don’t have the same standards I do and they’ll replace the wrong thing,” said Stalin.

“I have a repair guy I really trust, who I found from Car Talk,” I begged.

“They’re going to bankrupt you,” said Beria, furrowing his brow.

“I don’t care, as long as you don’t have to stand over the car for hours at a time.”

“Ok.  Call the repair guy.  If he gives you too high of a quote, bring it back here and I’ll take care of it.”

Today rolls around, and I’m on the phone with the mechanic and my dad, alternately, for the span of at least half an hour, because my dad keeps trying to clarify details and I have to keep calling back the mechanic and then keep calling my dad back with details.  I’m like a Wall Street trader. At one point, my dad calls the mechanic himself.

At this point, my dad has spent four hours looking at the car himself, 20 minutes going to the store for parts, half an hour calling me with the back-and-forth, and probably 2 or 3 hours on Saturday.  All time he  could be playing the guitar.

So, finally, in a desperate attempt to claw his time back, I schedule an appointment, and am relieved that he will not be fixing my car this weekend.  Because I am an economist and hate inefficiencies. But mostly because I love him.

A couple of weeks ago, my parents and Mr. B’s mom came to celebrate my mom’s birthday by biking 30 miles on the Mt. Vernon Trail, because nothing says “it’s a day of celebration” to my mom and mother-in-law like not being able to walk for a week. It’s like jointly turning 25 really sent them over the edge.

The first part went really well. Everyone was pumped and cycling under cloudless blue skies through charming downtown Alexandria, by the Potomac River and generally being happy and alive and all that bullshit.

Fortunately, about halfway through the trek just as my muscles were about to ask for refugee status from my body, the parents became distracted like cats on ADD because MUSHROOMS.

If you have ever met a Russian immigrant in North America, mushrooms are Big Deal.  In fact, in a recent survey of things they miss about living in Russia, immigrants place hunting for mushrooms just above free socialized healthcare.  Because the temperatures never get cool enough in the American Northeast, there are never any really good mushrooms to hunt.  So the rare mushroom provides as much excitement as a Bieber sighting.

Fortunately, after they were done evaluating the mushrooms, we were able to continue and finish the ride.

I could say a bunch of stuff about how exciting it is to be able to do really physical stuff with my parents at a time when both they and I do it willingly and appreciate it, or how awesome my mother-in-law is, or how much  I love spending time with my family, but for now I think I’ll just post this picture of Mr. B and my mom’s laser mushroom-honing eyes.

Mr. B: *turns on song*
Me: Is that Prince?  (Mr. B has been into Prince lately)
Mr. B: No.  Listen closer, idiot.
Me: *halfway through the song* It’s Prince?
Mr. B: Does that sound like a man to you?
The song is Simply the Best.
Mr. B: You have problems.
Me: What! I can’t help it that she sounds like a man. I thought that Modern Talking was women until I was 15 and my parents disillusioned me.
Mr. B: You really do have problems.  *turns on Modern Talking* Wow.  They really do sound like women.

The city is gritty, dark, and hard.
The subways rumble on and on.
The rats scurry as the people overflow
Onto the station and up to the neon show.

Outsiders look up, locals look straight.
The hawkers haggle, the hookers wait.
The traffic rushes scornful of the streets
Marred and littered with a million moving feet.

And yet the congregations grow.
Worldly masses turn and flow
To money as Muslims do to Mecca.
And pilgrims walk amidst the glimpses of gods in Tribeca.

-Prabhath Avadhanula

Because we don’t do enough traveling on weekends between various family members, some moron decided it would be a good idea to go to the City for the weekend. It seemed like a good idea at the time. Also, to enhance our “authentic and educational New York experience,” some moron decided to book our “hotel” not at an actual hotel, but through airbnb.com, in which people rent out their apartments/homes by the night.

New York is huge and overwhelming and disgusting in mid-July.

As soon as we got off the bus at Penn Station, the humidity began to drip over us like a wool blanket and, as we descended to the subway, it felt like we were in a burlap sack that was at the bottom of an ocean. We got off around Spring Street, in SoHo, where the apartment we were staying at was. But, because of miscommunication, we found out we wouldn’t be able to get into it for another four hours, so we walked around with a backpack and purse-full of crap for three hours until we could get in.

We felt like this:

Walking around Chinatown, much more vibrant than the ones in Philadelphia, DC, or even San Francisco, we sweated through a maze of unknown tubers and roots and went back through Little Italy to get to the subway to go to Central Park to cool down. Pinkberry was my only solace.

In fact, looking at it again, I want some right now.

We swam through the thick air to the Frick Collection and concluded that it should instead be called “Dead White Guys Balling Out of Control” collection, because, honestly, if you have Renoir AND Monet AND Vermeer, you have too much money and spare time.

We made our way to Central Park, hoping it would be a bit cooler, but the feeling of being in a concrete burlap sack only intensified. Mr. B’s spirits wavered. My spirits evaporated, even though I did get to see Mr. Andersen.

Finally, finally, we got to the apartment, dripping, and relieved.  And it was only then that I realized how small New York apartments were.  There was no room for anything other than our backpack, so I was glad we packed extra-light.

New Yorkers: How do you do it? How do you fit it all into 5 square meters and manage to make it look chic and stylish? And without central AC?

By the way, I slept in one of the drawers in the dresser, where, out of the direct sunlight, it was at least 5 degrees cooler.

After meeting up for dinner in  Park Slope with friends,  we collapsed and steadily sweated all through the night with the Mighty Little AC unit that could chugging away frantically in the living room. Needless to say, the next day,  we were happy to be on the bus home and almost cried with joy when we came back to leafy, green Arlington- a stone’s throw away from the Pentagon and downtown, but yet extremely residential.

If the above sounds like a post hating on New York, it is.  I was extremely excited to go, to take in the culture, the nightlife, the Jew-ness, and everything else that I can’t get from D.C.

New York is amazing.  It has everything anyone is looking for and, even though I had no specific itinerary, everywhere we went, there was something happening that we could stop, watch, and be entertained by.  it has amazing food of such quality and variety that it’s impossible not to want a second stomach just for a day or two.  I will definitely be back in New York sooner or later.  The city is especially good to take in on crisp, fall days.

But for me, a sometimes-introvert who needs time to recharge after being in social environments, New York is has me constantly “on” and is exhausting in a way that my beloved D.C. is not.  New York is bright lights and concrete, and D.C. is stately monuments and the lazy, polluted-as-hell Potomac gliding by.

Obviously, it’s not just me, because there are hundreds upon hundreds of threads of which city is better, and it obviously depends on who you are and what you need.   For me personally, what I need is to be in a European-type city with a diplomatic focus and a pace of life that’s a little less crazy.

Also a portable fan.

I hate starting to run.  I hate putting on the running clothes, going out the door, and feeling my heart pound during the warmup. I hate how I don’t run as fast as other people, and how sometimes even music doesn’t motivate me to push myself.  I hate how my legs are short and I’m not aerodynamic.

But, when I’m in the middle of running, it’s not so bad and I start thinking I can finish this mile,  and towards the end, it gets really, really good.

My entire life, I’ve always been striving for something in school-an A on the next test, a perfectly-completed homework assignment and, when I graduated, I started feeling empty, like I had no goals to push for.  Running gives me a very good pushback.  At least until I apply for grad school.

So, after the success I had at my last 5k, and all the training I did, I ran a second one on July 4, this time not alone.

That’s right.  I convinced Mr. B to start running! And Mr. B’s mom, well, I didn’t need to convince her. I think she would have kept going if the route was longer.  Probably would have run all the way to New York City and then come back to bike some more.

This particular 5k was lots of fun because there were so many people and everyone was in the holiday spirit.  The day was beautiful and we ran along the Delaware River separating Pennsylvania from New Jersey. And, afterwards, there was watermelon.

It was also very exciting because I made it through the whole race without walking, and shaved 4 minutes off of my time, to finish just ahead of a 74-year-old man. Mr. B, of course, after only running for two weeks, finished at the top of his age bracket. Mr. B’s mom and I yelled at him for that one.  Men.