Going through old business cards.

I still have a stack of business cards from work. They're mine. Or at least they have my name on them. Plus various jobs that I haven't held in years.

Steam, it's how you feel to make it real.

For the last few weeks, I've been a regular visitor to the gym. Last spring, I had a good routine going, with both kids out of the house for a few hours each week. But this fall finds me in the gym three days each week. I can't say I'm enjoying it, but my blood pressure is down, which is why I'm there to begin with.

There was a delay to the start. School took an extra ten days to get going, given a strike by the teachers. The hardest part of the delay was not the actual lack of school. It was the uncertainty. We had the end of the summer pretty well planned, and then it kept inching along.  But the teachers won some needed concessions, and we got ourselves back in order.

So when I finally got to the gym sans kids, the goal was not just to exercise, but also to take a breather. That sent me straight to the steam room.

A distinct left turn.

About a year ago, I left the world of municipal city planning and took up community activism as a part time profession.  But it's really not gotten off the ground because, at the same time, I also took up amateur domestic sanitation, amateur child caring, amateur chauffeurism, and amateur athletics.  The emphasis, if you can't tell, is the amateur.

I am a stay-at-home dad.

But it's taken a ton of work to get this household to the well oiled machine that it is.  And when I say well oiled, I mean that everyone is covered with something slick and greasy.  I truly am unsure how the human species has survived without professional and highly trained people raising every child until the age of majority.

We also upped the ante.  We have decided to live in the urban core of a major American city.  The margins for error are narrower and the scope of danger is wide.  We have survived for an entire year, and in talking to other parents who stay with their children, we do very well.  We have organized activities and no one has been maimed or killed.

But there are things that could be easier.  Let's see where they are.

APA National Conference

There is something appropriate to arriving at the national conference of urban planners via the train. Sometimes it it's the hard sites that remind you why you're in this business.

Gender Income Differential

One of the interesting aspects of the wage gap between men and women is that it can be easy to ignore for traditional nuclear families.  If the wife doesn't make the money, the husband can pick up the slack.  Such an argument ignores the fact that there are a huge number of families that don't have a second income as a safety net.

That number is 10 million. [Citation]

These families are headed by a single female, who is only bringing in 72% of what a family with a male wage earner does.  And it is a growing population.  Take some of the neighborhoods around Washington DC that have 20% of the households in this category.  Most of these areas have a median individual income of $40,000.  For every 10,000 people, you would be taking $22,000,000 out of the economy.

But at an individual level, the numbers are simply terrible.  On a median salary of $40,000, 72% is an annual salary of $28,000.  That takes a monthly salary from $3333 to $2400.  That $900 is a larger drop than the average American family spends on any expense other than housing.  [Citation]

RNC Convention

Listening through Governor Romney's acceptance speech, I tried to hear any references to cities, houses, or infrastructure.  Not deciding about our votes based on one answer, it was simply to try noticing where the larger economic policies result in on-the-ground improvements in the way we live.

Thinking through the speech, the Governor completely avoided any type of concrete examples of his policies.  Most of the things he talked about were very nebulous.  There was very little about putting foundations in the ground or new trains in stations or new phones on systems.

And that may be a hurdle folks will have a hard time connecting between Governor Romney's business prowess and his potential political abilities.  The work he's done in business is one of moving huge investments from one bucket to another.  That is not about jobs or new homes or nicer places to live or better trips to work.

Let's see how the other side does next week.

Fat, walkability, and wellness.

The CDC mapped self-reported BMI today.  It produced a pretty succinct map.

From Gawker

Pundits can hang whatever story on this that they want, including parallels to the bible belt, political leanings, or just snark.

I would actually say it has more to do with this:

From Walkscore.com

Walkability is not a particularly high facet of life in the same states that have a strong obesity rate. Unfortunately, the solution to poor walkability is not about improving will power or cutting fried Oreos out of your diet.  It's about changing the structure of land use, putting places people go near where they live, and getting away from a dependence on cars.  Alas, no easy solutions.