Why can't all interviews be this much fun?

Florida Congressman Robert Wexler on "The Colbert Report"

Morocco itinerary, cont.

I knew this was going to be one long haul, but I hadn't run the numbers until today. From doorstep to doorstep, we're scheduled to travel 14,041.5 miles by plane and car. That's like traveling from Portland to Oklahoma City and back nearly five times. Minus a brief camel excursion, all our travel in Morocco will be via auto. And thankfully, we won't be doing any of the driving.

I've also updated the itinerary map with more specific day-by-day information so relatives, if they're so inclined, can easily pinpoint just where we'll be and when we'll be there.

Morocco itinerary

For curious family and friends:
The where and when behind the "How-can-we-not?" trip.

Fear and vaccinations

"We will end up boarding our flights
barefoot, barehanded and buck naked
except for a hospital gown
they'll make us put on at the airport."
-- Eugene Robinson, columnist
Washington Post, Aug. 11

That, I expect at this point. But little did I know that we would go through something similar to get the green-light from our doctors.

We leave for Morocco in just about one month. So we called Kaiser's international travel clinic to see what, if anything, we would be wise to do before leaving. Turns out the more appropriate question would have been, "What, dear needle-weilding clinician, must you do to me before I go."

After running through a 20-minute phone conversation about any place we'll be sleeping, our dietary habits, medical histories and so on, they worked up a three-page list of recommendations.

Now, really, it's not that I'm ungrateful. And perhaps my views on all this are more colored by the fact I've never done much international travel. But part of me wonders what we Americans -- with our cushy lives, our nothing-is-safe political climate, our genetically engineered food and our general science-as-cure-all culture -- have gotten our bodies and brains into.

Before people from other countries come to visit the States, do their doctors run them through hoops like this? Or is it just when Americans venture beyond their borders that it's like a panic-stricken Desmond fearfully stepping through the hatch door marked QUARANTINE on "Lost"?

To take it a step further, does a litany of shots such as this, which we both got this morning -- Hepatitis A; measles, mumps, rubella; polio; tetanus, diphtheria, pertussis -- contribute in any small way to increasing isolationism?

If so, and I fear it might, I think that's tremendously sad.

Of course, this is predicated on the aforementioned cushy American life, which affords us the means to do a little exploring. And I understand that some folks either aren't able or interested in traveling much. But there are others who might say the poking and prodding just isn't worth the trouble. And there are still others who might see it like going into some wild, unsafe, unimaginable netherworld.

That I don't understand.

It's only by getting out of our comfort zones, by seeing new people and places and cultures, that we'll really get to better understand the world and what -- no matter what we hear or read or take on faith -- is our very little place in it.

So with that in mind, later today I'll dutifully go pick up our travel meds -- the ciprofloxacin, the ioperamide, the oral rehydration salts and the vivotif berna -- whatever all that is, and we'll be one step further down the path of this adventure.

One that, despite any gastrointestinal or more severe inconveniences, will be worth every moment and penny of it when we're sleeping under the stars in the desert, or playing the drums in the casbah, or sharing a meal in the home of a friend's family high in the Rif Mountains and a world away from all we once knew.

Put 'em on notice

It's Friday. Everyone's edgy. Enough's enough.

Just like Stephen Colbert, put all that irritates you on notice.

My list:
1. War on terror
2. The WB network
3. Brussel sprouts
4. Rhett Bomar
5. Workplace gossip
6. Jerky neighbors
7. Bruce Sussman's hair
8. End of summer

Shame of the Sooners

A definition, with apologies to Webster's, as applied to this week's news out of Norman:

A how-to on throwing it away.

Word: selfish
Pronunciation: Rhett Bomar
Function: waste
1 : concerned excessively or exclusively with oneself : seeking or concentrating on one's own advantage, pleasure, or well-being without regard for others
2 : arising from concern with one's own welfare or advantage in disregard of others.
See also: dipshit

I think the young Mr. Bomar would wisely disappear from Norman, and better yet be across state lines, by the season opener.

Earthquake

We had a little earthquake last night. Another of those moments when I'm reminded we aren't living in the Midwest anymore.

At 1:39 a.m., I was just about to go to bed after working the late shift at work. The Colbert Report replay was on and I was laughing about something. Then I thought, wait a minute, I'm not laughing hard enough for the cabinet door to be quivering. But then I noticed the bed seemed to be rattling ever so slightly, too. I looked around and listened to see whether a big truck might be rumbling down Columbia Street or something. There wasn't. And then it was over.

I didn't think anything of it and went on to bed.

Got up this morning and checked the Web like usual. An e-mail on my work account said something about a quake. Turns out it was centered about 15 miles north of our house. The USGS is calling it a 3.8, which is minor. No reports of damage or injuries.

Demise of card collecting

Slate has a good piece up today that reminded me of childhood: Requiem for a rookie card.

"If I had to guess, I'd say that I spent a couple thousand bucks and a couple thousand hours compiling my baseball card collection," Dave Jamieson writes. "Now, it appears to have a street value of approximately zero dollars. What happened?"

Well, shit. There went the McPrince children college fund.

Still, all those cards in my parents' attic are mine. And the memories I associate with them are worth more to me than whatever a Robin Ventura rookie might have brought in.

Maybe it's one of the flaws of our out-of-control capitalistic society. When everything (even, say, cheap cardboard images of men playing a game that are mass-produced for children's enjoyment) has a price tag slapped on it, at some point, you have to ask what things are really worth. The value of baseball cards, at their core at least, was the thrill of opening the pack, hunting down your favorite players' cards and trading them with buddies.

Like so many things, it was fun while it lasted. And damn the corporate schmucks who overinflated the card-producing industry like batting averages balloon against expansion-year pitching.

I begrudingly take this, and the fact that I find myself writing a post on the subject, as further evidence of one undeniable fact: I'm getting old.

Sigh.