How I've spent June so far

I've been too busy at work lately to write blog postings, and I'm still too busy. But it's late now, and I have several things I've been meaning to get down. I generally consider my bulleted list postings to be cop-outs, but in this case it'll do.

• The recent Air France plane crash really bothered me. Maybe because I had just taken a long, trans-Atlantic flight myself or maybe because my sister is in Denmark right now. Either way, I found that I was unusually moved by thinking about all of the people on that flight. News coverage so often turns casualties into mere numbers, allowing us to escape the full weight of the tragedy.
  
  Each of those 228 dead people has a distinct life story and, in the days following the crash, I found myself pondering the faces and brief (sometimes imagined) descriptions of some of the passengers aboard my Lufthansa flight: Birgitte, the #2 flight attendant with dyed orange hair, the disagreeable fat man whose personal video screen was broken, the kid in the row in front of me who spent the entire flight feeling sick, the Indian woman with digestive troubles who took frequent trips to the bathroom and seeped unpleasant fumes from the folds of her sari, the guy from Thailand sitting next to me who borrowed my pen to fill out the customs form. All of these people have families and dynamic lives, as did everyone on that Air France jet. Every time something forces me to remember this deep sense of humanity, reading the news gets a lot sadder.
  
  
• I've been out of college now for more than two years. An extensive posting on this topic to come.
  
  
• Although I generally believe in most of what Barack Obama says and does, I am getting increasingly worried about the skyrocketing budget deficits. I agree wholeheartedly that healthcare needs a lot of fixing and understand that all of the bailouts are needed to avoid disaster. But it still makes me uncomfortable, both because huge deficits are, in the long run, a bad idea and because I can hear the Republican attack ads already.
  
  
• On Friday I smoked a (Cuban) cigar for the first time. Saturday morning I threw up. And now, on Monday, my voice is still hoarse.
  
  
• If I allow myself to think too hard about 2009 being halfway over, I get somewhat existentially depressed.
  
  
• I recently became briefly fed up with church, but have since decided I was overreacting. The church picnic this past Sunday was great, although I think 11:30 am is too early in the morning to have eaten a sloppy joe, a hot dog, mac n cheese, salad, baked beans, a pickle, 2 slices of watermelon, and Snickers ice cream bar. Watching all of the kids play made me wish (for the umpteenth time) that I'd had the opportunity to experience all of this while growing up.

That's all I can think of right now. I'm hungry and probably too distracted to get any more work done, so I think I'll go home.