The Indestructible Bottle of Kefir

If you have never had kefir, I encourage you to be adventurous. Go buy a bottle at a grocery store and try it. Very similar to buttermilk, kefir actually tastes quite good. I would suggest starting with the plain one. I have never tried any flavored ones, but I suspect they’ll be much sweeter.

But the story awaits, (and so does the bottle itself).

Our refrigerators at work are cleaned every other Friday or so. Usually a member of the cleaning stuff sticks a “warning” sign on the refrigerator door a few days in advance. The sign includes “Please Save” stickers that we use for any items we do not want to thrown away.

Usually the cleaning is rather aggressive. After all I don’t own the fancy lunch bag with my company’s logo anymore. Nowadays I make sure to plaster the “Please Save” stickers all over my food.

Lately, the refrigerator has been exuding a rather distinct aroma, and not a pleasant one. I have decided to blame a bottle of kefir, standing guard in the refrigerator door. It is a lonely white bottle, about half full, that has been there for a few months. It was “best before” sometime in December, 2007. The bottle must have a special rapport with the cleaning stuff, as I can find no other way to explain how it survived through so many refrigerator cleanings without a single “Please Save” sticker.

This past Friday was no different, and my wishes were not fulfilled. The refrigerator looked wonderfully empty after the cleaning, but the evil white bottle still towered in the door. The refrigerator always smells great after cleaning, but eventually the foul smell creeps out and infiltrates the cold interiors.

So what should be done about this survivor of a bottle? I have considered tossing it myself, but I am afraid of my coworkers’ wrath. Being the subject of a “Who threw out my rotten kefir—I was breeding a new strain of fungus” thread on the company Hassles newsgroup is not an item on my objectives list. I have considered asking the cleaning lady why she hasn’t tossed it yet, but I have a good rapport with this cleaning lady. What if it is her kefir! I don’t want her to start tossing my lunch out every morning.

And so the kefir lives on. Will it live forever?

MBTA Has Fired Mr. Bob Stoetzel

Today I was made aware that earlier this month MBTA has fired Mr. Bob Stoetzel from his post of Commuter Rail director for failure to take action against a non-customer-facing employee who wore a noose around his neck as part of his Halloween costume in 2006. More details can be found in this article from Boston.com.

The news are sad indeed. I have met Mr. Stoetzel personally and felt that he is very experienced and hard-working. He showed genuine interest in improving commuter rail service, admitting its current problems.

TrainRider, a fellow Framingham/Worcester line rider and blogger, posted a very interesting goodbye letter from Mr. Stoetzel.

On MBTA Response About Yawkey Station

Last Saturday Alexander and I received the letter from Mr. Daniel Grabauskas, the General Manager of MBTA, in response to our two letters regarding the schedule changes on the Framingham/Worcester line and the elimination of the Yawkey station.

The letter claims that a passenger count showed only 3-4 people getting off the P528 train at Yawkey. This data is outrageous, as at least 5 of my coworkers used the Yawkey station daily before the schedule changed, not counting all the other people riding P528 train who are not employed by my company.

The letter also claims that elimination of the Yawkey stop caused P528 to run on time. Unfortunately, the schedule change and the elimination of the Yawkey stop happened on the same day. So Mr. Grabauskas cannot state conclusively whether it is the schedule change, the elimination of Yawkey, or both of those changes that positively affected the P528 on-time performance.

Our next steps are to reply to Mr. Daniel Grabauskas asking him to provide us with the details of the passenger counts done by the MBTA Railroad Operations group. We will also write to Mr. Bob Stoetzel, the MBTA Commuter Rail Director, forwarding him Mr. Grabauskas’s letter, and asking him to take action.

MBTA Response On Elimination Of Yawkey

The following is a word for word letter we have received from Mr. Daniel Grabauskas, MBTA General Manager, in response to our letter questioning the February 18th schedule changes and the letter questioning elimination of the Yawkey stop from the P528 train.

Thank you for your letters of February 22, 2008 regarding the elimination of train P528 at Yawkey Station.

I am sorry for the inconveniences this schedule change has on the customers that utilize this station for their local commute. These schedule changes are always done after a great deal of review and are in fact predicated on ridership demand.

I would like this opportunity to explain why the Yawkey stop was removed from the schedule of train P528 and the reason behind that decision.

Yawkey is a single-track station on a double track railroad, having the capability to board passengers from one track only. Our Railroad Operations group performed station passenger counts and the results indicate 3 to 4 passengers getting off the train P528 at Yawkey. Further evaluation revealed that Peak Period Train P531 regularly picks up approximately 30 customers on their homebound commute and that there was insufficient time to stop both P528 and P531 at Yawkey station.

The operations log for January through March show train P528 was operating at only 59% in January, 85% for February (schedule change became effective February 18) and thus far in March its on time performance is now at 100%.

With regard to the seasonal stop at Yawkey for Red Sox games, this will occur approximately 58 times during the season for games starting at 7:05pm. On those dates the outbound rush hour trains will be favored for on-time performances and causing delays to P528.

Thank you for taking the time to write.

Sincerely,

Daniel A. Grabauskas
General Manager

Flash The Cat

My friend put it very well--we are indeed "harboring" a cat. Well, actually it is not really an adult cat, but not a cute little kitten either. Nick and I decided that Flash is a cat teenager. He arrived on Saturday night, and he will leave tomorrow night.

In the evenings, he runs circles around the living room--we attribute it to too much energy and sheer boredom. I wish you could sign cats up for marathons--Flash is definitely champion material. He talks non-stop--actually, it sounds more like wailing. We are trying to teach him not to jump onto the kitchen counters, but we haven't been particularly successful.

When the little black fur ball stops dashing across the room, it climbs into my lap. An open laptop already sitting on my lap is not an obstacle. Actually, Flash enjoys sitting on top of my laptop when it is not in use--Nick thinks it is because it's warm. A few scratches under the chin and behind the ears, and the big yellow eyes look up at me, and purring grows noticeably louder resembling a small tractor.

Can't Keep Me Down

In case you are wondering if I have been snoozing away, check out

• the results of my bake sale that benefits cancer research at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute. (When the proceeds are added in, my current running fundraising total for Dana-Farber Marathon Challenge would go over $5250! Thank you, thank you, thank you for your support! If you have not supported my Boston Marathon run, there is still time to do so--check out http://www.runhelenrun.com/.)
• my amazing long run from Maryland to Washington DC and back

Lucky for you I don't have enough time to go into details on how I baked a Shepherd's Pie yesterday... and how I took it apart... and put it back together again tonight--it was just too bland.

Talking to the Director of the MBTA Commuter Rail

On March 4, Alexander and I had an opportunity to take part in the MWRTA meeting where Mr. Bob Stoetzel, the director of the MBTA Commuter Rail, was the main speaker. Below are some notes we took at the meeting, which I thought maybe of interest.

Things we learned:

• According to the MBTA CIP, the Commonwealth is providing funding for station improvements at the Yawkey Station.
• MBTA, not CSX, owns the tracks between Framingham and South Station
• MBTA does conference calls with CSX 3 times a week, Monday, Wednesday and Friday, to go over every train delay and determine the cause of the problem
• Most of the problems now are caused by mechanical failure
• There is no spare equipment. In other words, in cases of a mechanical failure, there are no spare locomotives, coaches, etc to put in place of broken ones. According to Mr. Stoetzel, the industry norm is to have a 10-15% equipment surplus. However, MBTA has historically chosen to operate under a "if we own it, we use it" policy, with virtually no excess equipment.
• The train crew, including conductors, has to know the reason for a delay. It is the conductors’ responsibility to report the delay to the dispatch and provide the reason. The conductors are supposed to make announcements every 5 minutes on the status of the delay.
• Since December, it is now inappropriate for MBCR to blame a delay on CSX
• The P517/P526 occasional rescheduling is driven by MBTA’s snow policy, which in turn depends whether the mayor’s office declares a snow emergency in the city. Normally there are no outbound trains going past Framingham between noon and 4pm. Mr. Stoetzel made no comment about P517/P526 schedule changes made on the day before Thanksgiving and Christmas.
• ROC—Riders Oversight Committee—allows MBTA riders to be heard. ROC consists of 14 members, 7 of whom are general public. Currently none of the 7 general public members are commuter rail riders.
• New passenger information system is coming in approximately 2 years, that will be utilizing GPS and satellite technology to provide updates in real time. The current electronic display boards are updated via a series of phone calls initiated by the engineer of a delayed train. This system fails often.
• Customer Service emails submitted via the MBTA website are handled by MBCR, not by MBTA staff. Mr. Stoeztel does not have routine access to either the complaints or the MBCR responses. Up until 2 or 3 years ago these emails were handled by MBTA directly.

On the recent schedule changes:

• A study was conducted starting in December, pushed by State Representative, Alice Peisch, to help determine where the problems are
• The latest schedule was built from scratch (and by hand—no software)
• Many delays were caused by what is usually referred to as “residual delay”: if one train is delayed, the train following it has to travel with decreased speed, because it catches up with red signals left behind the delayed train
• To avoid the residual delay, the new schedules increased the time between trains to be at least 20-25 minutes. [I think this may be more relevant to peak direction trains].
• Mr. Stoetzel acknowledges that the schedule changes were geared towards peak direction commuters. Historically, the schedules are arranged with only the peak direction commuters in mind. The reverse direction train schedule is determined on the basis of how best to get the equipment, i.e. the trains, in the strategically correct locations at the proper time to better serve the peak direction commuters. Mr. Stoetzel also said that the reverse commuter volume has been steadily growing, and that MBTA may start looking into how to change the schedules in order to serve the reverse direction commuters better.
• Mr. Stoetzel granted that if the P526 can stop at Yawkey on game nights, it should be possible to make this stop on non-game nights as well. He did not have an explanation for this inconsistency.

Still Baking

By the end of the day today I have baked 49 Devil's Food cupcakes and managed to keep myself from eating any of them. That was before I baked countless Gingerbread Cookies (see my previous post on the subject), and after putting together 12 cups of fresh fruit in jellied white grape juice.

Oh, and because this amount of baking is definitely not enough, I baked pumpkin muffins first thing in the morning--not for the bake sale, but for my breakfast of course.

Stand Mixer's Bowl's Abyss

Besides running over 8 miles today, I have done nothing but work on preparing for the bake sale on Tuesday. What do you do on Saturday to prepare for a bake sale on Tuesday? You make a lot of cookie dough. My refrigerator already is chilling a double batch of peanut butter and a batch of chocolate chip cookie dough.

To help me along, I have this wonderful KitchenAid stand mixer. We are truely a team. It mixes while I measure out the next ingredient. It is a true friend. It never fails. We go back years; coming up on 4 years to be exact. But alas, it has limits. It turns out that the mixing bowl capacity is not infinite. It just happens that the Betty Crocker's Gingerbread Cookie recipe, when doubled, is a bit too much for the mixer's bowl.

Now that you know this valuable fact, please do not try the doubling fit at home. Otherwise, you'll first find a butter/water/molasses mixture splattered all over your kitchen counter and walls. Later you will discover that counting 14 cups of flour, using a half a cup while watching West Wing is pretty much impossible. No, wait. You can count them, but the final count might not be 14. Finally, you will discover, while adding your 14th (maybe) cup of flour, that the mixer speed is terribly slow, and it is emitting an extraordinary amount of heat. It also takes an enormous effort of strength on your part to lift the head of the mixer out of the dough.

As you might guess, I will not be attempting to make a double batch of this recipe again for awhile. In the meantime, I am taking bets on how much of this dough will actually get baked before the bake sale.