A few weeks ago, I moved from a house with a WalkScore of 49 to an apartment with a WalkScore of 97. The transition is everything I wanted to be and more.

For a carless individual, having three real grocery stores less than .35 miles away from my home is amazing. A library less than .5 miles away  is simply beautiful.

I walked to everything in town in Mongolia. Well, I didn’t have much of a choice, and there wasn’t much. Now, I live in live, breathing neighborhood in a big city.

What a great way to start summer.

How the City Hurts Your Brain

This paragraph struck a cord with me.

The reason such seemingly trivial mental tasks leave us depleted is that they exploit one of the crucial weak spots of the brain. A city is so overstuffed with stimuli that we need to constantly redirect our attention so that we aren’t distracted by irrelevant things, like a flashing neon sign or the cellphone conversation of a nearby passenger on the bus. This sort of controlled perception — we are telling the mind what to pay attention to — takes energy and effort. The mind is like a powerful supercomputer, but the act of paying attention consumes much of its processing power.

I have felt my brain getting overwhelmed like this a few times in the last few years. I knew that a lot was happening but everything seemed to wash over me a bit slower than it should.

• When I first started my Peace Corps service, after living in my 35,000 person town for a few months, I took a trip to the capital, a city of a million people for official business. On the cab ride from the airport, as the city slowly became bigger and more complex, I felt my brain picking up weird bits of pieces of my surroundings – a person waiting for a bus or a car turning. However, I couldn’t process the whole picture until the end of my ride. I never felt that again when I came into the big city.
• Every time I went to a grocery store during my Peace Corps vacations to China and US. I couldn’t simply take it all in. I would focus on pieces that would jump out at me. OMG SYRUP!
• Times Square – September. Lights. Noise. People. What?
• Las Vegas Airport – September. Lights. Noise. People. What?

Now, the article says that the sensation happens to your brain whenever you are in a city. However, after the quiet vastness of Mongolia, my brain couldn’t handle these intense city situations until some extra resources were called to handle the extra strain.

I am so happy that I was in America tonight.

Thank you for sharing the glory with me, Seattle.

January 2008 – As I sat in an airport going back to Mongolia after my America visit, I overheard political pundits discussing Clinton’s cry before the New Hampshire primaries. After arriving in Mongolia, I took a trip up north to visit a fellow Peace Corps volunteer. Sitting in a car in -40F, waiting for the driver, the Mongolian man sitting next to me listed the major Presidential candidates, “McCain, Obama, Clin-ton.”

Spring 2008 – During the Obama and Clinton showdown, I had to explain to more than a few friends that the Presidential Election wasn’t until November. Of course, there was some confusion. “What’s happening now?”

August 2008 – In a bar in St. Petersburg, I explained my support of Obama over Clinton to two students – one Dutch and one Polish.

Mongolians, Polish, and many others know more about our primaries than Americans know about foreign countries. Yes, our election is a big deal.

Tomorrow, kids, tomorrow.

I love FactCheck.org. I also am enjoying their 2008 Election Roundup of the best and bizaree ads of the season.

A couple of my favorite moments from Colorado ads:

• “Boulder Liberal Mark Udall is as shifty as Middle Eastern sand.”
• “They say the only things you can count on are death and taxes. And Marilyn Musgrave’s lies.”
• GOP takes video of Mark Udall at the airport and tries to make him look shady.
• Here’s Udall’s response the Bob Schaffer ads.

The first trick or treaters of the night were two greedy middle school (or maybe high school) aged girls that were barely dressed up. One of them was texting the whole time at the door.

You better do better than that, Ballard.

However, I did get a, “You have the best candy ” comment.

Edit: A giant PACK of children just came to the door.

Today, I completed my mail-in ballot from Colorado. I voted for Barack Obama.

I also voted for Mark Udall, against folk from defining a person, and for and against other stuff on the LONGEST BALLOT EVER (since 1912).

Edit: Oh yes, because I couldn’t vote against it, I donated a very small bit of cash to No on Prop 8. If conservative church groups are throwing a bunch of money at trying to pass this horrible measure, then people that believe in equal rights should try help the good guys.

A fantastic, visual representation of the journey it takes to become an American citizen (link via Metafilter).

The graphic did leave off one (long shot) route to America, diversity immigrant visa lottery. During my time in Mongolia, I had many many people ask me about green cards, and beyond marriage to an American, that visa lottery is it. Even attaining a student or travel visa is out of reach for most. Perhaps this chart should be hung in the US Embassy supported American Center of Culture and Information in Hovd.

America – the world’s biggest tease.

Satire. The only way I can process…all of this…America.

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