Spring Thoughts

Although spring officially started over a month ago, it usually doesn't really feel like spring is in full swing until around Easter.  Spring awakening seems to go hand in hand with the Easter idea of rebirth---the world seems alive again after the long, cold winter.  The days are longer, the air is warmer, and you can smell life stirring in the air, often literally as pollen starts to take flight.

If there's been a year that's needed a spring, it's this one.  The Northeast is coming out of long, hard winter where it seemed like every week there was another blizzard to fend off.  Work has been going at a grueling pace.  After several years of regular layoffs that you could set your watch to, the office is now as lean as it can be.  Morale is low and people are overstretched.  And it's not just my office---this does feel like one of those jobless recoveries.  The stock market is doing better and housing prices are starting to creep up, but the jobs aren't there.  One of the unfortunate lessons that companies have from the recession learned is that in tough times, you can stretch people out and make do with less.  But in the short term memory of business, this situation soon becomes the new baseline.  Tantalizingly, we were actually interviewing for several positions in our group before the mandate came down to stop all hiring.  And worse, that there will be another series of layoffs again this summer.

Still, it could be worse, and I'm not here to complain, especially with the thousands of people with similar experience that are jobless.  However, it has been a tough couple of months for our group.  There's been a lot of hardship and heartache, particularly at a time when everyone is overwhelmed already.  The husband of one of my coworkers suffered a heart attack recently.  Luckily, he is now recovering, but it was a dangerous situation.  The doctors had to perform emergency bypass surgery and he's been trying to recover since.  Another coworker discovered that she had a relapse of ovarian cancer.  She just had surgery last week to try and prevent the cancer from spreading, and hopefully the news will be good.  And probably worst of all, another coworker tragically lost her 9-year old son last week to a sudden, unexpected infection.

At some point, signing a card and sending flowers just doesn't seem like enough.  How do you react when someone loses their child or faces death?  What can you do?  What can you say that doesn't feel trite or trivial?

Luckily, I have not been in a situation where I have lost someone very close to me.  The closest I've come is when our cat passed away last summer (which, incidentally, was one of the drivers for starting this site).  Even writing that makes me feel bad---as heartbreaking as it was to hold our cat while he passed, it sounds incomparable to losing a child or husband.  Part of me wonders whether it would have been luckier to experience death at an earlier age to help make it easier later.  Then another part of me condems that thought as possibly the ultimate selfishness---death is likely not something that you can prepare for or that ever becomes easier with experience, and I'm sure that friends who have lost loved ones would find it reprehensible to wish to experience it sooner.

In the end, these are reminders that life can be tough enough as it is without people trying to make it tougher on each other.  Hopefully spring is truly here and to make things better.

Driving on Green

So now that we have two of them, we must really like the Prius.  In fact, I think that the Prius is a pretty slick car that has a lot of things going for it beyond just being a hybrid.  Some things that we like:

1.  It's surprisingly roomy.  It's a four-door sedan with a hatchback trunk, which really helps increase the amount of useable space.  We've been able to go to Ikea and comfortably load up the Prius with boxes (yes, I know, another sign of yuppieness).  The passenger space is roomy and you can easily fit five people.  To be honest, if you're going to stick with a sedan, than the Prius is one of the better options just in terms of space---to get any larger, I think you'd have to go with an SUV or minivan, which we weren't enthusiastic about.

2.  It's a very quiet ride.  This is mostly due to the electric engine that assists the driving, but overall the Prius has a very quiet, very smooth ride.  The first time we test drove one, it almost felt like we were gliding over the road.  Maybe we aren't manly car men, but I've never really quite understood the need to have a loud engine.  I vastly prefer putting on a cd and actually being able to hear the music in good quality.

3.  Driving is fun.  Okay, so a lot of people are going to pick on the fact that the Prius has a smaller engine and you're not going to win any races with it.  But, I still find that driving it is fun, but in a different way.  As I mentioned before, for me, driving was mostly a chore to get from point A to point B and with the amount of traffic on the East Coast, all you can do is just sit back and go with the flow.  The live average mpg readout on the Prius changes that.  Every ride now is a game to maximize your mpg.  Can you get your numbers a little higher?  How many miles can you get on this tank?  You look forward to driving the next time to try and increase your score.  There are loads of information online about how to best drive a Prius (e.g., search for "Pulse and Glide" and other hypermiling techniques) to improve your mpg.  Currently, I've been addicted to the iPod game Tiny Wings---driving the Prius is almost like a real-life version.  You look for hills to glide down and then fly off.

4.  It's made me a safer driver.  One would think that glancing at the electronic display would be distracting, but I find it the complete opposite.  Focusing on the mpg  readout has made driving much more interactive for me and has arguably made me a safer driver.  I pay much closer attention to the traffic patterns and the road conditions all around me.  I'm constantly watching where the surrounding cars are, where the traffic lights are, the incline of the road, all to maximize the Prius' efficiency.

5.  And, of course, the tremendous gas savings are nice.  I have a short commute, so now I can literally last nearly a month without filling up with gas and when I do, it's only twenty bucks out of my pocket.  My wife has a longer commute, but now she can last nearly a week without stopping for gas, whereas for her older car, she was stopping for gas almost every other day.

To be honest, if you were going to get a run of the mill four-door sedan, I would think that the Prius is right up there even without considering the fact that it's a hybrid.  So while it's still slightly embarrassing that we now have two Priuses/Prii parked in our driveway, we actually enjoy them quite a bit.