In seventh grade I subscribed to the ‘tight tank top under loose tank top’ style made possible by The Gap and several trend-setting pre-teens.  In fifth grade I embraced the gloriousness of hypercolor fabric with a classy tank that changed from blue to pink during the hotness of kickball at recess.  I got out of the habit of wearing any sort of tank throughout high school and college because my swimming-enhanced shoulders advised against it, but I generally think tank tops on women work just fine.  To all men everywhere: I never need to see your armpits.

Armpit shirts are going off this summer in Holland. Going off! Every teenage boy and a large hunk of men are wearing t-shirts with the sleeves cut off and the armpit holes enhanced so that they start at the shoulder and end at the bottom of the ribcage.  “Dude, your pits look sweet in those holes.” “Dude.”

The armpit shirts in Holland don't even come with muscles.

Armpits aside, I’ve now lived in Holland, Michigan for a year.  Yesterday, on July 3rd, I attended my first repeat event in the Midwest: July 4th.  When Sunday belongs to the Church in your town, you make the necessary adjustments. July 3rd has a nice ring to it too.  “Yay, we’re almost independent!”

It’s probably time to admit that this isn’t my first time in the Midwest.  During the summer of 2003 I lived in Minneapolis, MN for 40 days and 40 nights. I was doing a geology project making giant plaster models of river channels and measuring how they eroded as water flowed through them.

It was oppressively hot that summer in Minnehaha (the locals will know it), and I needed to take desparate measures.  I spent my time in clothing coated in plaster, but underneath my clothes, I was covered in powder, by choice.  With each step I took, a poof of white dust emanated from every angle of my body.

I didn’t care that I was a walking chalkboard eraser. I needed to douse myself in powder every day in order to ward off the heat and humidity of the Midwest.  Powder? If you have to ask, you’ll never know. Sidenote: I’ve been waiting to use that phrase ever since it was the theme of my high school yearbook freshman year.  Each morning I would arrive at work with my right hand covered in hot coffee and my body drenched in Minnesota heat.  I had a shared office, and by getting into it first each morning, I was able to dump powder down my clothes and then stand in front of our fan for 10 minutes while coaxing my core temperature down ten degrees.  Inevitably, the fan blew the powder all around the room, and my office-mate always commented on the persistent white fog, but I had the cover story of my plaster experiments.

It’s been seven years since my biblical stay in our neighbor to the Northwest, and here I am again in a Midwestern summer. I’m really hot.  I don’t know if anyone noticed the white dust under my chair at work last week.

Do armpit shirts count as business casual?

“You know how your father is, he won’t like that suit,” a mother, sitting on the filthy floor of the Target dressing room, said to her 12 year old daughter every two minutes when she came out to display a new piece of swimwear.  Cheers to ambiance.

Yes, I chose to do the bathing suit shopping for my upcoming vacation at Target.  Their branding team has convinced me that it’s cool enough for me to be seen in the store, and with the state of my body I didn’t want to invest in anything of higher cost.  The Midwest winter has left me without self-control.  It’s easier to eat Peeps than not to eat them, and now that I’m old enough to drive, I can get them whenever I want.  When I was in first grade I stole a marshmallow-filled chocolate egg from Walgreens.  My parents never let me have junk food snacks at lunch.  Carrots, celery, even the occasional pretzel rod to really get things dehydrated – all those snacks came in my lunch bag, but each day at snack time I’d uncrinkle that brown paper and in slow motion peer over the cusp into the abyss that might, just that one day, contain a piece of candy.

One March in 1986, I could take it no longer.  We were in Walgreens for a routine trip to stick our arms in the air bladder blood pressure machine.  With each ‘pfft’ of the machine that was confused at the two small, unmeasurable arms, I became more and more convinced that a marshmallow filled egg would satisfy me for life.

Placing bathing suits directly in front of the entrance of the store is a horrible idea.  Being seen shopping for bathing suits is the same as being seen coming out of the bathroom.  Everyone does it but it’s a sharing moment for nobody.  I’m not at my best with two armfuls of small plastic hangers and spandex.

The egg theft happened.  I enjoyed that marshmallow egg.   I didn’t understand it as a theft until years later.  I confessed to my mom in college. Both the egg eating and eventual confessing were fully satisfying.

Three laps in and out of the dressing room later I accepted a polka dot suit as the only option.  I’ve been seeing spots everywhere lately.  Spots are super-hip.  Bored with the usual? Add spots.  Feeling chubby? Add spots.  Last weekend I enjoyed this excellent spotted wall in Grand Rapids.

It's easier to paint them than wear them.

I also saw this giant spot, know to many as the Sun, for the first time in months.  Exaggeration is for people that live in sunny places. This was a feat.

It does exist.

Finally, the local grocery store, which also happens to be a behemoth that two Wal-Marts could fit inside, presented this gem in the cranberry juice section.

Unfortunately, it was not possible to get a photo of my spotted swimsuit.

Free the giraffes into their native cranberry bog habitats.

“Let’s push it out of the road and into the church,” said the Michigander.  Yes! Let’s.  As a friend pointed out, I was “lucky there was one nearby.”  Friday was my Jeep’s first day with its new Michigan license plate.  I made it approximately half of a mile before it broke down in the middle of Holland.

If you’re unfamiliar, this license plate was a long time coming. Months of struggling with the California DMV ended with a blog post, contest, and subsequent connection to two fantastic California DMV employees, Jan and Kitty, that Arnold should promote if he hasn’t already.  Arnie can you hear me? I consider it a major life achievement (check!) that a DMV employee called me at home.

"Plate it your way" -State of Michigan

As winner of the contest, Micah Lande was given the opportunity to design my new Michigan plate.

A friendly neighborhood Republican helped push my car out of the street and half-into a parking lot that is shared between a church and the Holland Tulip Time Festival Store.  A patch of ice and tolling church bell prevented us from making it all the way.

Have you seen those mini shorts with writing on the butt that many teenagers think they can pull off but can’t?  My car was essentially wearing butt shorts as it stuck out of the church parking lot.

Don't dare bring one that's not laundered.

Before I even finished dialing AAA I was pre-annoyed with the tow truck company.  What do you do if you work in a job where you are set up for failure?  It is impossible to be excited when calling for a tow, but what a design challenge! Can the experience of a tow ever exceed expectations?

When you are stranded, even in your own town, you see things you would have otherwise missed.  It’s neat to be forced to look at what’s around.  The feeling is similar to doing user studies in design.  How else would you know that the Dutch Costume Resale next week is the 59th straight resale?

It's official.

Remember the days before mobile, internet-ready phones when we read Sweet n’ Low packets as we waited for coffee, and shampoo bottle ingredients as we sat in the toilet at a friend’s house?  Your mind seeks something, anything, to take in to pass the time.

When the truck finally came my Jeep was hoisted up and its butt shorts were rolled through town.  The process was fast – too fast. Shouldn’t there be more pomp and circumstance?  I waited 45 minutes for a process that only takes six?  What a great word – pomp!  More things in life should involve pomp.

There’s a strange exhilaration that comes while watching your car being driven by another car.  Is everyone looking at me? Hey everyone, look at me! It’s a combination of awkward exposure plus pride.

Butt shorts.

I was called out on my consumption orientation yesterday.  I’ve eaten and enjoyed meat my whole life, but during dinner last night I wasn’t sure and my poker face was no help.  I’m not ready to subscribe to one camp or another.  Then “it” was said: “you are a vegetarian.”  But, I’m not ready.  I want to change my affiliation for each new food encounter but society frowns on those that are indecisive or misrepresent themselves.  Why would you try to be something that you’re not?

Why? Because it’s much more interesting for the rest of us. Conflict! Intrigue! Gossip fodder! Go ahead and surpass awkward and head straight to bold.  If Holland put out a magazine that featured a group of seniors sitting smiling on a sidewalk on its cover, it might be authentic, but I probably wouldn’t read it unless the pages accidentally opened because some sort of coffee spill made it cling to the napkin I was using to wipe up the mess.  The saturated area would swell and give the paper that damp bubble that pills like a sweater when wet but feels extra crunchy when dry.

If something contradicts itself an even number of times, is it true?

Holland took the opposite route. It put out a magazine cover that screams of an urban identity and downhill skiing.  Wow! Now this was a magazine I couldn’t pass up.  I even picked it up with bare hands from the free stack near the coffee shop bathroom and paged through, vigorously looking for the place where the secret urban mountain is located.

Would the urban mountain have good hot chocolate? Tattooed people? Democrats?  Would it be a haven for the apres-ski set? Are there other half-French words I could learn there? Are there sandwiches named after movie stars?

I’ll skip ahead.  We all know that Holland didn’t deliver on the urban mountain, but kudos for the generative cover. In this era of diminishing print media ID magazine has shut down but Holland magazine was packed with enough intrigue to get me to page through.

I wonder if the urban mountain has any vegetarians?

I hurled my body down an icy chute yesterday in a day of luging that just might have made the entire state of Michigan worth it.   In order to luge, you lay down on two big blades and the flimsy hammock that connects them and flex your entire body.  To turn, you look the direction you want to go and use your calf to lean your outer blade into the curve.  In order to stop, you sit up and pick up the front of the blades, or, in my case you allow yourself to continue to hurl until you smash into a giant foam cube.

I wish foam cubes had a greater presence in life.  Awkward conversation with someone you wish you were friends with? Lean over into the giant foam cube.  In the middle of saying one of those sentences that you can’t figure out how to end so you keep adding more and more words hoping that some kind of closing magically comes out of your mouth?  Fall face first into the giant foam cube.  Giving a presentation and a booger accidentally floats out of your nose? There should be a giant foam cube for that too.

It’s a subtle sport, the luge, and Michigan should be proud to be home of only one of three such tracks in the country.  I’d like to take part in more sports that can only be done here, but I’m not sure what they are – any ideas?  What would a Michigan triathlon look like? Deer hunt, snowmobile, luge?  Each state should design its own sport.

My whole body hurts today.  I wonder if the Olympians hurt this much after their races? Speaking of hurting and Olympics, it’s that time of year again – time for me to get teary while watching the Olympic torch relay on TV.  Each runner with an emotional story – it’s like watching a hyper-condensed version of Extreme Makeover Home Edition – waterfalls.

The Olympics are in Canada and the US government has its commercials on TV in case Americans get any crazy crazy ideas about not coming back, or don’t realize that Canada is a different country.  The spots are reminders to bring a passport if you go see the games, and the website they’ve created for it is www.getyouhome.gov.  The embedded subtlety, that getting home is more important that going out and seeing the world, is on par with that of a luge turn.

Our country and Apolo’s facial hair may always stay the same, but if you’re looking for something new, let Michigan deliver you down a hill on a luge.  We have foam here.

Hello again, chin fuzz.

I’m partial to one side of the street in downtown Holland, MI.  I’ve tried the other side, but really, I have no interest in it other than looking in at the seniors eating bagged lunches at the downtown retirement home.  Brown paper lunch bags are fantastic in their own right, but I also slow my gait and people-watch the elders as they watch me.  I like the messaging that’s packed into a senior citizen.  They’ve seen everything come and many things go and, with each one you may or may not have a gold mine of experience, a fortune cookie message that you might save in your wallet or leave on the table.  I don’t know what age you have to reach to employ the Q-tip hairdo, but if it’s bold enough to tackle my straightness I will embrace the halo of white fuzz as my own.

That's it?

In the meantime, I usually walk on the non-retirement side of the street.  I counted 40 storefronts between my house and the one coffee shop that makes me feel like people live here.  Out of the 40 storefronts, eight of them are empty. For effect, I’ll repeat this fact in a different, generalized, and therefore slightly inaccurate form that highlights the economic downturn: twenty percent of the stores in downtown Holland, Michigan are empty.  The feel of a barren corridor of previously Papyrus font-laden establishments is particularly enhanced on Sunday, the day when nothing is allowed.  I went out to breakfast this morning and found myself excited as we pulled up, simply because the place was open.

My norms might be shifting and I will be the first to tell you I’m a bit delirious, but I still know a winner when I hear one.  On the radio station that used to wake me up with sub-par humor but has switched to all Christmas music, all the time as of November 1, I heard a radio contest this week where the winner was to be awarded one dozen frozen pigs in a blanket.  One dozen, frozen, pigs in a blanket – might as well throw in a whole chicken and can of hairspray.

The potential joy of the arbitrary will keep me listening to the Christmas music for another 40 days.  Pigs in a blanket can overcome pa-rum-pa-pum-pum.  Why is the unexpected refreshing?  Why does it take the unexpected to show us the obvious?  What is the most unexpected item I could put in a brown paper bag?

On Tuesday I had the best Mexican food I’ve had in Michigan in Florida.  A conference for work brought me to the strange land I like to call Orlandio.  I haven’t been anywhere exotic lately so I survive on the thrills of extra “i’s,” the occasional “la” preface and rolled “r” for special effect. I asked my hotel clerk for a good restaurant within walking distance and she described something that sounded like an Applebees.  More excited for the walk than the food, I almost set foot out the door when she clarified that though it was technically with walking distance, I would have to cross a highway, four lanes in each direction.  Details.

I turned to my friend Yelp for some good Orlandoian cuisine recommendations.  Surely I’d find a hidden gem that I could brag about tomorrow.

When IHOP comes up in the top five restaurants in your area, it usually signals that it’s time for some self-reflection.  Instead, I decided to investigate the person that took the time to leave a thoughtful review of said IHOP.  Incidentally, Carlos took his family there on Christmas one year, and they all got candy canes.  He’s also rated several other IHOPs (many have food on par with each other) as well as an A&W (they have good root beer), a Ramada Inn (the jacuzzi is watched over like a hawk by the receptionist), and 94.9, the local radio station that hosts the Delilah show (she’s got all the lovers tuned in).  Carlos can you hear me? You are fascinating. I won’t find a place for dinner by reading your nearly 400 reviews, but I will find myself re-energized by humanity.

Halloween Mexican decor in Holland, MI. Note the healthy ceiling tiles.

In the depths of Yelpers lacking the texture of Carlos I found Garibaldi Mexican Cuisine, and thought it would be fun to go there alone, eat alone, and be the only person in the restaurant.  The self-reflection bit started to kick in and I was wishing Carlos had come along.  Driving back to the hotel I was struck with the state of Orlandio.  Crap stores shaped like giant shells selling crap.  Back to back overbuilt establishments hawking cheap plastic trinkets and 4/$5 tshirts suck up against one another form corridors of crap.  It’s daunting and disheartening but also reaffirming and recharging.  As designers we have a responsibility to make meaningful products out of quality materials. The crap parade has to end.  I’m surrounded by cheap signs flashing at me in the night with weird emo songs coming from the radio.  If I was in a movie this would be the opening scene. I’m a stranger, lonely in a run down city at night.  And then, “PLEASE TAKE A RIGHT TURN, FOLLOWED BY A…CONTINUE TO FOLLOW THE ROAD.”

Hertzina (I call her that because my dad calls her that) is the GPS.  She talks to him.  Tonight she’s talking to me. The voice that jars the rest of us out of our self-stardom fantasies soothes my dad.  He’s liked computer voices for as long as I can remember.  “Good morning, Paul,” says his laptop in a warm tone only a robot can deliver. “Good morning,” he replies.

The rows of strip malls remind me of an overworked field that needs to lay fallow for a year or more to regain some nutrients.  Naturally, this brought me to stop at a Friendly’s.  The smell inside was almost unbearable, but I had a black raspberry cone anyway. I was living the life.

In 2004 I was also in Florida, and also semi-detached from reality.  I arrived in the panhandle (that’s in the central time zone FYI) the day after Bush won re-election.  I didn’t understand how as I hadn’t moved to Michigan yet and didn’t realize that Republicans existed, and proceeded to probe the issue with the people that worked the Navy base that we were using to set up our equipment.  Post-election probing doesn’t work.  I went to sea on our research boat and deployed instruments that took microscopic pictures of the sand on the bottom of the sea bed.  The waves picked up and I started puking over the edge.

I bet Carlos was at IHOP.

When you wander the streets of quaint towns like Holland, MI, you overhear things being said in the local language.  Most of these words are recognizable, but recently I heard a squawk of a word that should come with a warning.  Both parts of this word come with the flat A sound merged with a number of Y type noises.  Cover the ears of your children and say it with me: backtrack.

Beyehcktreyeck!

This kind of lust is for sun only.

I find it odd that someone in the town planning committee didn’t yell ‘backtrack’ when the they decided to roll out the town visual identity signage.  Conservative but suggestive – wow! This might be a spicy place after all.

Words like backtrack make me wish I knew more about linguistics.  Actually, I wish I knew more about a lot of things, or that I, at the very least, retained info that I know I used to know.  Have you ever opened up an old notebook from school and marveled at the type and scope of information you once retained?  Why, body, have I decided to forget useful back of the envelope math and instead decided to retain the memory of standing bent over in the middle school girls locker room, waiting patiently as the passive-aggressive gym teacher counted my vertebrae to make sure I didn’t have scoliosis?

This rainy, Michigan weekend is devoid of sunlight.  On one hand, I finished my indoor skateboard and now my bare feet can grip soft leather like never before.  On the other hand, the gods at Hulu keep trying to convince me that I’ll dance awkwardly and my eyelids might darken if I would only take

The internet thinks I would take a pill for 16 weeks for this...

Latisse.  Who wouldn’t risk permanent eye pigmentation for the chance at creepy eyelashes?

Can an ad be an ad without letting me know it’s an ad?  Will we ever get to the point that advertising is something I crave? As much as I like saying the word ODST, I’ll never play Halo.  I will, however, quickly succumb to any number of user experiences.  Tease, embed, dangle, lust, tactile, grasp, assume, embody…a stream of consciousness that I dare you to use on me.

It’s raining.  Can I get scoliosis from sitting on the couch?

I’m an asterisk.  Last week I arrived home from a great trip to San Francisco and moved around the house in slow, heavy stomps.  Walls quivered as I leaned on them, faucets sweat as I gripped them, and couches groaned as my croaking mass of influenza lay sedentary for eight days.

I never got tested for H1N1 for a couple of reasons, all of them unacceptable.  First, since I’m new to this area, I haven’t found a doctor yet.  The thought of actually finding a doctor when you’re sick is daunting, and when you’re healthy, it’s boring.  I lay on the sofa sweating and the only doctors that I could think of were those that practice sedation dentistry.  Second, if I did have swine flu, I didn’t want to have to tell people I had it.  The new girl has swine flu. It would have ruined me at recess.  I will remain neatly tucked inside one of the sixty degree angles in the asterisk of H1N1 total cases.  If you read me in eight point font on the bottom of the page you’ll find out that I’ve done my part to widen the error bars for epidemiologists.

Don’t blame me, blame feta cheese.  It all began on my trip back from San Francisco when I boarded my delayed and twice switched flight from Chicago to Grand Rapids with a Greek salad I grabbed at O’Hare.  United smooshed me in a middle seat but with only 24 minutes of flying time I didn’t really care.  I ate what I thought was an innocent meal quietly in the darkened aircraft as we waited to push away from the gate.

The flight attendant walked slowly down the aisle and did a double take at our row.  She looked at me, “can you lift up your salad?”  “Lift it up?” I slowly raised it a few inches above my lap.  She leaned down in slow motion and took a big, strong, SNIFF.

“Yep, It’s your salad!”  She exclaimed while executing a perfect ‘bend and snap’ recoil for the now quiet aircraft that contains six of my new co-workers scattered about.

“Excuse me?”

“Your salad.  Your salad smells like throw up.  Someone said they thought they smelled throw up, but it’s your salad. The throw up smell is coming from your salad.”  Her proclamation was crisp each time she rephrased it.  I was sitting face to face with one of the life opportunities that you look back on with a thousand good things you could have, should have done.  Not wanting to ruin the moment the way she had ruined my dinner, I unbuckled and stood up half way in my chair:  “Don’t fear folks, it’s just feta.”  Silence.  At least I’d tried.

I ate a few more bites of throw up salad before closing it and shoving it in the seat pocket.  The short flight meant they didn’t come around to pick up trash, so I carried the scarlet letter off with me in a great display of not making eye contact with others.  The next day I was stricken.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yGFRi_ueq-M&feature=player_embedded]I measured my recovery by my ability to compute.  I read no emails for three days and took another to write short replies that said I’d actually reply later.  As of last night I was looking for Super Mario Brothers emulators.  I watched three grainy clips of Michael Phelps, looked for more, and then it dawned on me.  I was better.

I’d like to see an online diagnosis tool that determines your level of illness based on the type of computing you can tolerate.  I’d also like to see a full size sculpture of that flight attendant bent at the waist, nose leading the way, made entirely out of feta.

Apparently, nobody sculpts in feta.

As part of its plan to emerge from financial ruin and regain more of its former customer base, United Airlines gives very special treatment to its formerly Premier passengers.  Yes, It places us in the back row of tiny aircraft, smooshed into the half-seats that accompany this fine machinery.  Seats 17B and 17C straddle the even more emaciated aisle, and the flight attendant straps herself into a jump seat that pulls down in between to block the bathroom, that instead of running water, has a big bottle of generic Purell gel sanitizer.

If I turned my head to the right, I could smack the flight attendant a big wet one on her cheek.  The proximity of her face to mine and the gentleman in 17C is enough for both of us to make our own uncomfortably awkward jokes, neither of which approaches advanced beginner on a comedy scale.  If this proximity isn’t enough, she pushes the discomfort one more notch up to a dark brown toast as she delivers the entire round of pre-flight announcements from this position.

Find someone that is sitting near you right now.  Sit side by side so you warm to each others body temperature.  Make sure your partner’s face is no more than four inches from yours. Now,  bring a microphone to your mouth and tell a story that everyone in the vicinity has heard before.  Are you mature enough for this experience? Please report back.

with the sweet sweet scent of lavatory in the air, smooching might be an option...

I look around our packed aircraft and sigh because I believe that flying has lost all of its glamor. In reality, I have no idea. In my head air travel was once all martinis, silver, supple leather, jaguars, and fur-lined hoods, Now we sit in CRJ 700s, round bodies splurged next to one another so that if you popped the roof off the plane and flipped us over we’d be a nicely formed human Jell-O mold.  Jiggle jiggle.

I’m flying from Grand Rapids to Chicago and on to Boston.  My reading material is stranded in my gate-checked bag but I can take in enough by reading the headlines of the USA Today of the man sitting in front of me through the crack between the seats.  I exhaust each page faster than he does because he has the luxury of seeing all of the text.  He’s doing a great job of dominating his air space.  Flying may not be glamor, but there is no argument that it’s not sport.  An elite athlete in the sport of economy-passengering is trained at jumping into line at the earliest possible time for his or her boarding number, manipulating overhead bin space without making eye contact with others, and maintaining the largest sphere of air around his or her seat via body position and reading material.  The USA Today man has played his seat mate for a chump and it’s clear who will not have a place on the podium.

To cap off this fantastic experience, the flight attendant reads off connecting gate information for more people than are on the plane.  Why does she bother?  Do you ever not double check this information once you enter the terminal?  Aside from glorious Virgin America, is anyone experimenting with the flying experience?

It’s now the arbitrary time to shut down electronics.  It’s also my cue for moisturizing my right cheek.  Just in case.