Kermit is King

#39 - A dudes day

2012-02-12T16:29:00.000-08:00

Sunday, February 12

Today I am thankful for my brother. He's somebody I like to hang out with.

I went to church this morning, got re-introduced, and got a better feel for the ward here. There are certainly some differences - some people willing to point out that Nephi did not write much in the way of his own character flaws in his own history. That he might really have been overwhelmed by the enormity of his father's death, and what that meant for him and his family. Many other things came to mind that don't belong here, so I won't put them here.

I met Tim at the Poughkeepsie train station at 12:30. We had a nice lunch at the Hyde Park Diner. Filling, not too expensive, and completely unhurried. We then visited a potential house buy in Hyde Park. It's a huge place. Huge. Seriously, embarrassingly huge. On almost 7 acres. And we could buy it. But it has only 1 usable tub/shower, no kitchen at all (no cabinets, no appliances, no fittings), some of the rooms are missing heating components, the lights are removed, etc etc. It's in great shape except for all the stuff that was ripped out. In Tim's words: "This looks like the intended summer home of a Wall Streeter who jumped off the Brooklyn Bridge a few years ago." It does appear to be exactly that. The house is cheap, but would need a lot of investment to make the main floors completely usable. The bottom floor needs another set of investment to be completely usable. When the whole place is done, it will be awesome. Also, it has a creek running through its almost 7 acres. All in all, it is stunning, and would be a TON of work for us for about 2 years. And then it would be great. No need to ever upgrade again.

Have I mentioned that I love it here?

After this house, I took us by the factory where our equipment is, and my new office building. We couldn't go in, of course. Then we saw another house we like. I was only intending to show him the outside, but it was Open House day, so we took a tour. Tim liked house #1 better. I'm not sure yet. There are certainly pluses and minuses to both places.

Then we went into Fahnestock park again. This time, we drove down to the beach. Never in my life did I expect to see a ice-encrusted beach of white sand. But there it was. Lots of hiking trails and things there, but it was 34 deg and windy. Not exactly hiking weather. By this time it Tim needed to head home. Cold Spring was the closest train station, so we went there, and I think he did not have to wait long for the train to come.

All in all, a very nice day. Learned some good things, spend some great time with my brother. I'm tired now. I have a couple phone calls to make, and then I'm going to sleep. What a nice weekend. I hope this next week of work will be a little less tiring. Time will tell.

365 #38 - History in my back pocket

2012-02-11T19:51:00.000-08:00

Saturday, February 11

Today I am thankful for dense sparseness of this place I now call home.

Today was my first full day off since coming here. I slept in, had a nice breakfast, and headed out. My plan was to drive to a house in Hyde Park, stop by a bunch of businesses I wanted to check out for the kids, and spend a few hours in Sleepy Hollow. It was going to be a driving and exploring day.

So I set off, and took pictures whenever I was curious. I ended up with many more than I expected - a very good day. It had been cold - lows in the low 20s overnight. The plants and cars were chilled, and received the morning's snowfall without protest. The roads were still warm enough to melt it; driving was painless.

I reached my first objective slightly overwhelmed. I keep ranting in here about nature and its integration with development. Today, it just hit me. I belong here. This lifestyle is the one I have always wanted - quiet, separation, and at the same time to be able to go places and do things at times of my choosing. If I had my choice today, this would be our new neighborhood. The lots are 0.5 acre at the smallest. One home in short sale here has over 6 acres.

It's a cabin, a home, a refuge, and a resort all in one. I can feel all my stresses leaving as I drive slowly down a narrow road. My kids can be loud, and it doesn't matter. My lights can be on, and it doesn't matter. The blinds can all be open, and it doesn't matter. The neighbors are close enough to ask for help if you need it, but there are hillocks and forests between the houses, and so they are not able to pry on you, and you don't have to modify your life to make them happy.

That sounds really callous. Maybe it is. But I don't get to choose my neighbors. I only get to choose (with Katrina's permission) my home. So if my home can be a place where I am free to either welcome my neighbors or shut them out, that's WAY better than having to think about my neighbors looking in my kitchen window, or my living room window. Or vice versa.

I just feel at home here. I don't need a big lawn. I just want space to breathe freely.

It doesn't hurt, of course, that 10 minutes down the road is FDR's presidential library. A person can hike up and down the Hudson for a mile or 2 in either direction from there, and there is a trail up to Eleanor's personal home inland a little bit as well. A nice park to enjoy. And a little over an hour to the South is Sleepy Hollow, a real place setting for Washington Irving's story. He is buried there, close to the church he attended. It is still standing, 350 years later, and is still in use.

Freedom to breathe, but easy history is everywhere.

365 #37 - FRIDAY!!!

2012-02-10T18:04:00.000-08:00

Friday, February 10

Today, I'm thankful for time. Time to adjust. Time to take stock. Time to rest. Time to reflect.

I slept well for the first time last night. Went without the Sudafed and slept 6 hours straight. That's a 2 week record, I think.

The work week has been interesting. Long days, a little frustration. And some really good vibes today. Today was a really good one, actually. I'm in the thick of things now - it's been 5 days, and I can feel the drive to push things forward coming on strong. It's going to be good. I can feel it.

I stayed late at work tonight, and have been vegging out at the hotel. I bought some groceries yesterday, and I've been snacking through that for dinner tonight. Meanwhile, I turned on the TV for the 2nd time since I got here. The first time was for the Super Bowl. Tonight was to watch the Knicks. I think they're my new basketball team. Jeremy Lin is fun to watch.

Katrina called and we talked for a long time.

I've been driving past a diner ever since I got here. It looks like a diner should - lots of chrome on the exterior, neon. But it's new. The place is BUSY. The parking lot was almost full, and there was a 10 minute wait to get seated. I sat at the bar and had no wait. It was probably a nice place if you were out in the restaurant. At the bar, I could feel the stress rolling out of the kitchen. The food was fine, not too spendy (a filling Monte Cristo for $9.50), and the place is nice. I'll go back, but probably not unless I have the time to wait for a table.

365 #36 - Mr. Tumnus?

2012-02-09T16:46:00.000-08:00

Thursday, February 9

Today I am thankful for antibiotics. Z-Max in particular. I had my first dose on Tuesday. By tomorrow morning, I expect to be effectively healed. My sinus infection symptoms have abated significantly. Today, it felt like the dam broke and the sinuses wanted to drain all at once. That's difficult to work out in an office.

I took care of some work at the hotel early this morning, grabbed a quick breakfast, and as I left the hotel lobby at 6:10, the attendant said, "There's a light dusting of snow. It's nothing." To him, it was nothing. To me, it was Narnia.

Had another busy day at the office; I'm feeling more at home and more like I know what I'm doing each day, as a person should expect. At lunch, I took the chance to go to a couple banks and check out mortgage offerings. Unfortunately, neither bank had a rep available to talk to me. So I got one guy's card, and another bank's blank mortgage application. Both nice places, though.

Twilight here is long, and these days starts at about 5:20. The mountains and hills around here hide the sun early, but the sky is light for a while. Today I was looking for places to hike with Tim on Sunday, and found a huge state park just 10 miles from the office. It's called Fahnestock memorial state park, and it's 14000 acres. Lake Canopic is there. It's called a winter park for some reason. There was a swinging gate across the entrance. I parked outside it. Another car came in behind me, swung the gate open (I didn't notice it wasn't locked) and drove through. I kept walking. There are trails marked on the trees. It is clear that the trails are meant for cross-country skiers. Trails are marked as "expert skiers", and this sign advises skiers to remove their skis before crossing the road. The park is located at the intersection of the Taconic State Parkway and SR301.

Lake Canopis peeks through the forest here.
This shot was taken just off SR301.

In this picture, the other big difference in the forests
is obvious: large basalt formations are everywhere.

Lake Canopis is partially frozen. There are 50 miles of trails
in this park. Imagine if Hagg Lake had a bunch of
forest around it, and was located at the intersection
of I-5 and Nyberg rd. It would be awesome. This is
similarly awesome.

The paved road winds down from the highway to the level of the lake, 100 feet or so lower in elevation. It's a beautiful place, and I hope to be able to explore it more when the family comes to join me.

365 #35 - Becoming the Borg

2012-02-08T18:04:00.000-08:00

Wednesday, February 8

Today I am thankful that everyone has finite capacity. I was able to become confident in my ability to do well at this job today now that I understand it better. And I have, to a small degree, assimilated.

Monday I felt like I was drinking from a fire hose. I walked in the building, sat down, and 30 minutes later was invited to a meeting. Meanwhile, I had my boss stopping by every few minutes to tell me something else, introduce me to someone else, and lots of other activity. It was a busy Monday.

Tuesday I felt worse - less healthy, but the job seemed doable.

Today, I was finally (it's only been 3 days, I know) able to sit down with my comanager, ask some intelligent questions, and get started discussing strategy. We have things we need to accomplish, and we're thinking along the same lines. It was fun - I really like the guy, and I think we'll push each other in a friendly way toward excellence. We're very different - he's a little older than I am, unfailingly polite, a real gentleman. He's not a loudmouth, doesn't speak unless he has something to say. And he honestly tries to communicate well all the time. In my 3 days here, he's been very supportive. Very happy to be part of this team.

I am also, now more so than ever, officially a TEL employee. I got my official badge today.

After work, I stopped by a discount store and browsed a bit. Electric snow blowers are on sale, as are snowshoes, swimsuits, snow shovels, and crayons. Dinner at Subway (it's Febru-any, after all), and then off to the church. It was youth night - everything happens on Wednesday nights here. Young men, young women, cub scouts, everything. The parking lot was pretty much full. I found brother Clark, who we chatted with last time we were here. I told him our situation. It's likely I'll be working in Cub Scouts again. I'll also be a sub primary teacher. Should be fun. And - the ward choir meets right after church. It's a cute building - 2 floors, small blue chapel, lots of space for people to spread out.

So this is on its side. Rotate your head 90 deg clockwise and it'll look pretty normal

I had intended to get a picture of Aria's YW leader, but I felt funny asking people I didn't know if I could take their pictures. So I got a couple pics of the building as well as a ward directory.

I'm going to stop covering work each day in this blog - it least it will get very much more general than the last 3 days. Companies expect a certain amount of privacy about their internal workings, and I need to honor that. So now I'll call the family and go to sleep.

365 #34 - Comme ci...comme ca

2012-02-07T16:34:00.000-08:00

Tuesday, February 7

Today I am thankful for yet another awesome boss.

I enjoyed working for my boss at Nikon. He was awesome. Certainly one of the 2 or 3 best there. Today I learned with conviction that my boss here is awesome, too. Possibly awesomer.

It was an early day - I was at the IBM plant at 6:20. My co-manager met me at the door, showed me how to get dressed in IBM's version of the bunny suit, and we went to passdown. My guys were there. My boss and co-manager decided that it would make sense to split the field engineers basically into front half and back half. I will get the front half, the guys who work Sun-Tue and every other Wednesday. At passdown, the night shift is finished, and they tell the day shift what happened. Day shift asks questions, and then the night shift goes home and the day shift starts to get work done. Along the way, I got a fab tour, and saw the machines I'm responsible for for the first time. I thought back to my time in other factories. That's what those machines were doing!

We went from meeting to meeting, finished about 9:30. 9:30-noon was spent in accomplishing what I could on my new hire training. Still had a lot of access and connection problems. I had a training class noon-1, and then took a lunch break and talked with my brother. After lunch, my boss had time and energy to get me set up. I had 6 different issues, each requiring tweaks, phone calls, and solutions. By 3pm they were all fixed. She is awesome.

So I started my training - lots of videos to watch. Some of it is well-done, some of it is written so high-falutin' that it doesn't have meaning. And of course, it is narrated by actual employees. Some of them are engaging, and some aren't. But I finished a couple of them. And by this time, I knew I had to make a stop at the Wal-Mart pharmacy for dinner.

I stepped out of the office, and saw real clouds for the first time here. The sun was gone behind the hills, and gave them just a bit of color. And I realized that I have already started taking the natural environment here for granted. My commute from the hotel to work is all of 8 minutes. The first half mile is ugly. And then I'm on a country road with some other cars, doing 45 through the forest, with a farm home every once in a while. There are hills everywhere - no flat farmland here. And the hills do not have condos on them. They have trees.

And, honestly, I was tired and desperate for photos. I began suspecting I had a sinus infection last night. Today I made a quick trip to WebMD.com and found that I have the exact symptoms for a mild sinus infection. And I am also certain that that is what my doctor was checking for on Friday. The only problem is that it has gotten worse since Friday. So I drove to the hotel, got the Z-max prescription he gave me "just in case" and headed to Wal-Mart. They take Nikon insurance. So I sat down and waited. 40 minutes later, I left the store, confident for the first time in a week that I would feel significantly better in 2 days. This pond is outside my hotel. The grass is covered in goose poop. At least there are some things that won't change vis-a-vis Oregon.

With my prescription in hand, I walked to my room, removed my pills from their foils, and made my dinner: voila! Antioxidants, vitamin C, Azithromyacin, and pseudo-ephedrine! What could be better? So now my blog is done, and it's nearly 8. My plan for tomorrow is to knock out a bunch more trainings in the morning, talk with a mortgage bank before lunch, and then I have meetings from 1-5. It's been a bit of a see-saw day - some things not working that should, and those things getting fixed. My health feeling worse, and now has a prospect of getting better. Good night!

365 #33 - First day at work

2012-02-06T19:59:00.000-08:00

Monday, February 6

Today I am thankful for guts and clarity.

Work started at a normal hour today. I showed up a few minutes early, and the parking lot was mostly empty. So I wandered around a took some photos to provide some physical context for Dutchess County, NY.

The office building is unprepossessing. Another tenant recently moved out, allowing the office to double in size and go through a complete renovation. It's the best-looking space I've ever worked in. It is decked out to the hilt in TEL motif. What, exactly, is TEL motif? It's a ribbon of sky blue and a ribbon of bright (but not gaudy) green on a black background. It's pictures on the wall that match that color scheme. It's seeing the TEL and TEA logos everywhere. Everywhere includes this sticker, placed on a mirror in a conspicuous place.

The office park is small - it's next to John Jay High School, sitting in the middle of forest. The forests here look fundamentally different than forests in Oregon. For starters, no green during winter. No ferns, no grasses, no evergreen shrubs, no moss. How deciduous trees ever beat evergreens to make a forest, I do not understand. It is also commonly cold enough here to freeze the ground. This is rare in the Willamette Valley, but out here, where 53 F is near the record high for Feb 6, the ground is frozen pretty hard all winter. The photo at the above right shows the correct bodily proportions of legs to brains in yours truly.

The work day was very very busy. I had 4 hours of meetings and 4 hours of variously trying to (and sometimes succeeding at) setting things up for my work accounts. I can get into the timesheet program, I can use the HR self-service portal. The calendar works on the iphone. No mail on the iPhone yet, no access to some of the other intranet portals that I'll need soon. But sufficient progress, it was. I stopped by a house I may rent a room at tonight. It would be a unique place to stay. That's all I'll say about it - acceptable and unique in my life's experience.

After that, I had run my sick body for 10 solid hours and it needed food and rest. But no rest yet for me. I passed by the Poughkeepsie Galleria mall and got a hankering for food court food. It seems that wherever we are, Target is taking away good merchandise to make room for a substandard grocery section. That's what the sign says, although I know you can't read it. Lastly, here's a picture from today that I liked but did not fit well in my narrative.

There was a lot more to today, but I think this has to be it. My work day starts at 6:20 tomorrow morning.

365 #32 - I'm Home!

2012-02-05T20:00:00.000-08:00

Sunday, February 5

I'm thankful to work for a company I can trust.

Today, we woke up at 3:45. Christian had asked to be woken up so he could say goodbye, so I did that. We were out the door at 4:05. By 4:35, Katrina was driving away. That's our minivan at PDX at the very far end of the picture. You probably can't even tell. But it is.

I got a couple carrot-zucchini muffins and a large hot chocolate for breakfast and sat down at my gate. Everything worked like clockwork - on time departure, lovely sunrise over Montana, I think. Somewhere where there are mountains. The clouds covered the valleys, ephemeral silt on the rivers.

I had a quick layover at O'Hare - out of the plane at 12:20, my next flight leaving at 1. I looked around for signage. Nowhere to be found in the C concourse from where I was standing, and no time to mess around. So I fired up my Traveler app. I tell it my flight number, it tells me flight status and my gate. Unquestioning, I followed its directions. First class was boarding. 30 seconds later, Premiers boarded, and I was on the jetway. No time for a potty break, not for this guy.

We came in to LaGuardia from the South - I think I saw Atlantic City and Cape Cod on the way. When we landed, the enormity of what we were in the midst of hit me. This is my home airport. I'm home, driving through New York City. My bags had made the short connection, I got all of them (1 carryon rollerboard, a full backpack and 2 checked bags) and hopped on the rental car shuttle. The car was reserved, as expected, no problems. Since Katrina and I had done the drive a few weeks ago, I had no problems getting out of the city and following I-87 North. I took exit 9 and stopped for a few minutes in Sleepy Hollow. Yep, it's an actual town. The full moon was shining on Sleepy Hollow Middle School at twilight.

The village happens to be about an hour South of where we'll likely live, right on Rt 9. I will post the pictures once I can figure out how to get them off the stinking camera I had to use to take them. This is not a normal problem for me, so it's driving me crazy.

The whole time, I was in a little bit of shock. We're moving here. This is home. I can come down on Saturday and explore Sleepy Hollow. I don't know many roads, I know the names of 6 people in Dutchess County. I have met exactly none of them twice. But I trust that this is the right thing for us. It was certainly not a decision lightly made, nor has it been easy to execute. We're operating on faith - not "go move to the moon, it'll be great there!" faith. But I've had to trust that the new company is going to be good for us. Trust that we'll be able to adapt. Trust that we'll sell our home in Beaverton quickly, that I'll be able to perform at work as I (and they) expect I can.

At any rate, the hotel is fine. I unpacked, got dinner at A&W (I can't handle the root beer any more - too sweet), watched the Super Bowl (Go Giants! My new home town team!), and generally got settled. Tomorrow I start work and in the evening go see the room I want to rent in Poughkeepsie.

365 #31 - The Peril of Being Loved

2012-02-04T23:05:00.000-08:00

Saturday, February 4

...is that you will love in return. Today was my last full day in Beaverton, with roots here. In the morning, I go to NY and start work on Monday, laying roots there. I'm all in - it's the only way to be.

This week has been more emotionally turbulent than I had expected it would be. I've been off to faraway lands before. I knew I wouldn't see any of my family or friends for 2 years when I left for Japan. When we left for California with a baby in our arms, we knew we'd be separate, too. But what I realized this week is that the middle part of my life was very transient. From age 19 to 29, I moved more than 10 times. I've been in this house, with these roots, for 8 years: a significant portion of my life. I have made friendships with lots of really stellar people, and I'm sad to not be able to see them any more. I'll miss them spontaneously stopping by the house, or messaging me on FB, or seeing them at church. Or showing up on my doorstep, hat in hand, explaining that their house had burned, could they (and their 4 kids) stay with us for a few days?

What surprised me the most was the deeper and substantial love I felt for my family. First, the ones who chose me. Sean and Paul came up on Monday and spent about 4 hours working on the yard with me. I had stuff to do, and they had brought along a chipper and completely destroyed a huge pile of brush I had been valiantly ignoring for years. About 3, the pile was done, and they had to head out to help someone else. As I looked in Sean's eyes, I knew him for my brother. The brother who chose me. I love that man, who has always been there for me, and loves me even though he knows every single one of my faults.

As he and Paul left, Paul made sure to tell Katrina and me, "Whatever you need, just ask. We're family." And I believe him. Those were some of the first tears I shed in this whole process. I dearly hope they come and see us; maybe we can hike the Adirondack trail and do a little camping with the boys. (I have extra gear, sir.) Today, my mom and dad came out and helped us again. My dad has been here every day this week - he has worked super hard, mostly, I think, to make me feel comfortable that things are under control as I leave. As he and mom left, I hugged them and said goodbye. More tears. I know I'll see them soon. But I will desperately miss having them so close, and miss having them such in integral part of our kids' lives.

On the positive side, I have to remember that my kids all know their grandparents very well. They are not strangers. They are special, awesome people. As grandparents should be. And I hope we will be able to send kids back to Oregon for a long time each summer, and that our parents will come and see us and stay for long periods.

So - so long Oregon. It's been a great ride. I honestly don't know when I'll live in Oregon again. A new life awaits. New brothers and sisters to be found, new people to help, a new me to find in a certain sense.

This blog will henceforth have a picture each day. The kids were asking for photos today, so I promised I would deliver. I have a couple ideas for tomorrow.

365 #30 - The ball keeps rolling

2012-02-04T06:14:00.000-08:00

Friday, February 3

Today I'm thankful for insurance, medicine, and my father.

My dad is a nice guy. Period. He gets frustrated sometimes, but he's always a nice guy. He's been out here almost every day since we decided to take the NY offer, and today was no exception. This morning I was up and working on the pod early. Dad came abut 9. We spent a few minutes on the fence, then I went off to see my doctor. I walked out with what I wanted - a prescription for pseudo ephedrine. By the time I had stopped at Home Depot to get tie downs for the pod, and then had filled the prescription, it was almost noon. Dad had finished the last piece of neighbor fence. Now there is just the gate and the section in front of the studio left.

We filled dad's truck with old fence boards, pulled out the new walls in the living room, and then I suddenly didn't have that much for him to do. He took home a bunch of spray paint we can't take with us, and he left at about 3.

I worked in the garage until 5, putting things in the pod, clearing off shelves in the garage. I got the white shelves almost empty, which means that tomorrow I can bring down the camping gear from the attic and the Christmas decorations from the rafters. Once that stuff is in the pod, I'll finish clearing out the garage. Still lots to do there, but I can see it being finished today, since I don't have to go anywhere during the day.

This evening I found a choir that I can sing with. They're performing Faure's Requiem in April. I've missed the first 2 rehearsals, but I'm hopeful I can get in. My first rehearsal would be Tuesday evening. I also found several local theatre groups. They have all held auditions in the last couple weeks, though, so I won't get to be on stage this spring. Maybe something in the summer, if Aria can do it.

Oh - and today I found my room in Poughkeepsie. There's a guy with a wife and 2 little kids who live on the bottom floor. There are 2 college students (and now me) on the 2nd floor. Perfect location and a great price for me.

Meanwhile, the moving company came to do an estimate and the 2nd realtor came by to give some guidance on what the house needs to prepare to sell. Gortja will be picked up on Friday or so, so it appears I'll have a rental car for 3-4 weeks total.

Early to bed tonight - hoping to finish the garage, take the old cast iron pipes out from under the house, and finish adding a couple items to the luggage tomorrow. Flight is at 6am Sunday.

365 #29 - Exhaustion

2012-02-03T06:26:00.000-08:00

Thursday, February 2

Today I am thankful for a good house manager. My wife has always paid the bills. And she has done the huge majority of kids' paperwork, insurance, that kind of thing. Because of our short timeline for my leaving and the fact that she will be living in the house while it sells, she has taken ownership of the moving stuff. Call the garbage company to order dumpsters? Call them back to get the dumpsters removed? Call the window people to come and do the rest of our windows? Call the landscaper to get a quote? Walk through the house with the realtor to figure out what we have to do? And on and on and on. She had let me do the work I need to do and taken care of all that stuff. That's normally the kind of thing I have to do, but she has jumped in with both feet and kept things moving quickly. It has made this 1 week I had here very effective.

I came down with a cold the day before we left New York to come home. It has only gotten worse. And worse yet is the fact that I had a list 2 miles long of hard physical labor tasks that I needed to do. Thankfully, the majority of that list is complete. I still need to help my dad finish the fence, paint the studio, and load the pod. I'd like to clean out the hot tub, but I don't see it happening. And I have found a few things that I did not pack last week that I want to take with me on Sunday, so some repacking will need to happen Saturday.

I have been doing hard physical labor all day every day since Saturday. Even Sunday I took a load of firewood down to my parents' place. The congestion and the stress that makes my stomach feel not-right and my to-do list make sleeping a luxury. But my sick body requires it. Grrr.

Just a few days left. Today we should be able to finish the fence and paint the studio (if the wind calms down). That means I have about a day to load the pod, and then load my backpack with camping gear and pack the guitar to take back to NY with me in a few weeks. Which should be doable.

365 #28 Saying Goodbye

2012-02-02T06:40:00.000-08:00

Wednesday, February 1

I am so thankful for our community today.

As I've been driving around this week, I've been looking at things. This was the last Monday that I'll wake up in my bed in Beaverton. Noticing the way 217 winds its way through Tigard and Tualatin. My last Sunday in the Bethany Ward. The last this or that.

And as I see people, I think, "I won't see him again, almost certainly for years." And I've come to appreciate the community we have built here. I've always thought I was terrible about building friendships, but I guess I'm not that bad at it. We've been able to go out to lunch with friends, and lots of people have offered to help with anything. I'm confident Katrina will be ok if she just uses the phone. We have a lot of support here. A lot of people are genuinely sad to see us go, and several families are thinking about stopping by to see us after we move.

Work done today:
-Kitchen reorg made progress (Katrina)
-Main bath tub is clean (Katrina)
-Finished 1 section of fence and the neighbor's side of another section. We only have 1/4 of the whole job left.
-loaded up dad's truck with another load of firewood
-he also took our lawn chemicals, seed, and the last propane tank
-staged all the wood where it belongs - 2x4s, pickets, and 4x4s
-so now the front is clear, ready for the dumpsters to be picked up and the Pod to be delivered on Thursday
-arranged for Gortja (my SUV) to be shipped early so I can drive it in NY

On Thursday, I'll go get the last materials, start to build the last section of fence, and start to load the pod. I only have 2 things left on my must-do list before I go: finish the fence and load the pod completely. There are many many things on my want-to list, but I simply don't see them happening.

365 #27 - the beginning of the end

2012-02-01T06:21:00.000-08:00

Tuesday, January 31

Today I am thankful that the end of my yard work is nigh. 4 more days, and then no matter what, I am done. I really hope to be finished with the things I have planned.

My parents came over today. We all went to Aria's school first to see a movie they had made based on "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow". Then it was time to work.

Dad and I put up the fence for 2 entire sections. It has transformed the yard from a "large lot" to a "huge, private back yard". It's very very private. Also went by to see Bob, and his wife insisted on the flat side of the fence being on their side. But we need it on our side. So we quoted twice the price and both sides will have pickets. He's paying for all materials. Things done or made progress today:
-Longest section of fence is complete
-Shortest section of fence is 90% complete
-got agreement to replace the last section of fence
-moved 2x4s and pickets to back
-pulled blackberry vines out by the roots
-cleaned remaining garbage from back
-re-organized the kitchen for staging (K and mom)
-sorted through kids' clothes for staging (K and mom)

Lots of stuff done. Lots left to do.

365 #26 - the done list grows

2012-01-31T06:26:00.000-08:00

Today I 'm thankful for family who chose to be my family. The ones who didn't have a choice I take for granted - largely because they were granted to me and I to them. The ones who chose me have a very special place in my heart.

Tasks worked on or completed today:
-bought pickets, hauled them back to the house
-finished the bottom rail for the longest section of fence
-cleaned up all the garbage along the side of the house
-chipped the entire pile of weed plum cutting that have been there for a year
-filled 1.5 dumpsters with garbage
-got rid of a shelf unit, slide, and garden bricks
-dug post holes for back short section of fence
-spent an hour with a realtor going over the house and what we need to do to make it awesome

And Katrina paid off most of our 2nd mortgage. We'll pay off the rest of it today or tomorrow after rounding up some cash.

I had some very emotional moments today, but I want to save a whole post just to talk about it. So nothing here today on that topic.

365 #25 - Disengagement

2012-01-30T12:43:00.000-08:00

Sunday, January 29

The last 4 months of my life have been antiprototypical. Atypical? I am fundamentally an engager. When I do something, I am all in. I find it very hard to be on the fringe of things. Since October 14, however, my entire professional self was engaged in disengagement. I had to be very involved and conscious of not being involved; handing off responsibilities, data, contacts, and any knowledge I had to people who would need it in the future. Because I would not.

My transition away from Nikon entailed lots of meetings, lots of reading emails, and replying just to 1 person, informing them of how I recommended to deal with that issue. Replying to distribution lists would have poisoned my efforts to disengage. Thankfully, by December 15, my disengagement from that employer was complete.

Since we accepted the offer to move to NY, I have been working really hard to disengage from all of my other commitments and activities. I took leave of Cub Scouts (I've been a den leader for a couple years), from teaching music to the church kids, from teaching art literacy to our elementary school kids' classes, and last night, from my a capella quartet. Cub Scouts was fun and interesting - but honestly not my favorite extracurricular.

The art and childrens choir were awesome. But the hardest thing to leave is the quartet. The group's roots are simple: I wanted to sing with a men's choir. I did not want to drive anywhere or sing anything I didn't like. So I invited all the men I knew at church who could sing. And enough showed up that we had a viable group. The membership has rotated a bit, but 3 of us have been the same. We have been through job hunting together, health problems, a baby birth, several performance opportunities, one member (and now 2) moving away. But we have sung at my home almost every week since October 2008. I love those guys. I always will. And from the mood at rehearsal last night, it looks like they're going to find a replacement for me and keep singing. Life rolls on - we learn, we grow, we plant, and hopefully as we leave, the seeds we have planted have blessed someone else.

365 #24 - Saturday, January 28. Taking care of business.

2012-01-29T07:19:00.000-08:00

Today, the whole world showed up at my house on short notice.

We got a ton of stuff done. I spent the early morning in the garage and made some good progress. My dad came over about 9 and started digging post holes with the auger. I did a circuit of neighbors, and got permission from 2 of them. Only 1 left. Then it was off to Home Depot - 56 2x4x10s, 36 2x4x8s, 40 4x4x8s, and a huge bucket of screws. Back home, unloaded the bishop's trailer, and it was lunch time. And then Sean Hawkins came with his boys. And then Leonard Downing came. And then Blake Davis came. By the end of the night:
dad's truck was full of firewood again
2 more sections of fence were down
one section of fence's posts were in
and most of the crossbeams were in
the play structure had a fresh coat of weatherproofing
the garage was in better shape
the walls we put up a few months ago were nearly ready to move out
the shed was gone
the trampoline was gone
front yard leaves raked
bricks from the studio moved
and the wood pile moved to the front.

Roughly 3 times what I had expected to accomplish. That leaves me with some cleaning on Sunday, and Monday morning I'm going to buy the fence pickets. Sean is coming back on Monday, and so is Blake. My dad comes back on Tuesday. He'll be shocked when he sees what has happened.

So thanks to everyone for everything so far. Whew.

365 #23 - Friday, January 27

2012-01-28T07:45:00.000-08:00

Thankful again today for my dad. He's a great guy - he's kind, patient, and always willing to help.

This morning we pulled down the fence on one side of our property, measured the fence line and made a list of materials. We met with the moving company. It's not quite as awesome a package as we had hoped, and the tears came for the first time. It's going to be a crazy, hard-working, stressful few months until we get settled.

It also is clear that, with the timelines for listing the house, selling the house, and the logistics for everything, that getting the family all moved by Spring Break is going to be very difficult. It's likely instead that we'll spend several months apart; I'll get a room in NY to stay in for cheap. When the house sells, the family will come.

It'll work out. We did it in 2010, with a lot of uncertainty. This time, we know what we're doing, we have some choices, and if it's too hard, the family can leave the house and come to NY on short notice.

365 #22 - Thursday, January 26

2012-01-28T07:37:00.000-08:00

Thankful today for easy communications. In a couple hours, I was able to ~~temporally stop time~~ temporarily stop our Time subscription, cancel the Oregonian, and take care of 6 other things on my list. I went by the Nikon office to say goodbye to everyone, and got home to get busy on other things. Like packing.

I effectively moved out of my bedroom today - my clothes are either in 3 stuffed suitcases, or in a couple moving boxes. So Katrina has all the space she needs now, and my stuff is not a big deal. I have a drawer with a couple changes of clothes, and that's all I need until I leave.

My list that remains is largely outdoor. Replace the fence (275ft of it), finish the awesome shed's exterior, make the garage look awesome. Along the way, we have a lot of decisions to make. In the afternoon I got an email from the moving company, and she asked if we could meet on Friday. So we set that up, and things are moving quickly now.

Also today, since Katrina and I had both told our parents over the phone, we went public on FB with the announcement. There was a completely unexpected outpouring of love and support from our community. What nice people we have for friends.

365 #21 - Wednesday, January 25

2012-01-28T07:28:00.000-08:00

The Lord works in mysterious ways. I'm no longer unemployed. Not quite jumping up and down because we have a TON of work to do, but it's exciting nonetheless.

The company called me back today at 1. They had a final offer. It was most of what we asked for. I told the woman from HR that I'd have to discuss it with my boss. She asked what I expected to be able to answer. I told her I expected to accept it.

We hung up the phone, Katrina and I discussed the new offer. We looked at each other, the weight of the decision visible in our eyes. "This is it, huh? This is real." "Yeah, it's real. Are we going to do this?" "I don't know, I don't know, I don't know. Wow. I think so. I think we do." "I can call her back and tell her yes?" "Yes. Tell her yes."

I made the call. 15 minutes later, I had the revised offer letter in hard copy. We had a million phone calls to make and emails to write. I informed my counselor and recruiter that we were done, wrote an email to my brothers and sisters. Katrina and I started making a list of things to do before we left. It is not short.

So I fly to NY on Feb 5, start work on Feb 6. Katrina and the kids follow around Spring Break.

365 #20 - Tuesday January 24

2012-01-28T07:18:00.000-08:00

Today is not the first time I've been thankful for my career counselor. As part of Nikon's separation package, I was provided with career counseling. She sat beside me as I wrote my resume, answered my questions via email on the weekends, gave me hours of her time as I was navigating through 2 parallel sets of interviews. And finally, this morning, we talked about a counter offer.

Once we were set on the approach for the counter offer, I was able to call the new company. But I had to leave a voice mail. A few hours later, HR called me back. We discussed a counter offer. She was not hopeful. But I simply could not take their original offer.

I am less hopeful about this job tonight than I ever have been during this process. The conversation was a bit of a downer. I know I'm the right guy for the job, and they know I'm the right guy for the job. It's just a matter of terms - can we agree on a set of terms that meets both of our needs? We were only about 10% apart to start with.

I also talked with the recruiter I've been working with on the different, local job. He read me an email from the manager, which read "he's a quality candidate, and we'd like to make him an offer, but it will take us a couple weeks to prepare an offer for him. If the other position falls through, we'd be excited to bring him on."

So much for the competing offers. That was not going to happen. So, once again, our prayer is simply that if we are not supposed to move to NY, that the company won't come back with a good enough offer. On the cusp.

365 #19 - Monday, January 23

2012-01-28T07:08:00.000-08:00

Thankful today for awesome parents and kids. They are all nice, good, friendly, helpful people. While Katrina and I were gone to NY, my parents took care of our kids. A week. And on about 5 days' notice.

The day started for us at 6am EST in Queens NY, and by 7pm all of us were home.

Long day. A good one.

365 #18 - Sunday, January 22

2012-01-28T06:57:00.000-08:00

Today I am thankful for the awesomeness of strangers.

We went to church today in what would be our new ward, Poughkeepsie (poo-KI-psee) First. We were waylaid by half a dozen people. I spent half an hour with a member of the bishopric, we sat for half in hour in Primary, we both talked with the bishop's wife for 40 minutes after church. Busy, friendly, awesomeness. The Clarks even invited us over for dinner.

In the end, we felt we needed to meet up with Aki more, so we got lunch at the mall food court and meandered down to Queens. Again, no traffic. We got to her place without knowing her address. We headed for the Astoria Ditmars subway station and found her house from there. We were early, so we found a parking spot and napped for an hour we were both beat.

Yes - Katrina was with me the whole time. But I couldn't say that until we were home. Security measures, you understand.

We passed a lovely afternoon with Aki. Tim came over about 6, we had a very nice dinner, Tim left about 10, and we chatted some more, got to bed around midnight.

365 #17 - Saturday, January 21

2012-01-21T22:04:00.000-08:00

Today I'm thankful for some time to acclimate.

Woke up to 3 inches of snow on the ground, 18 degrees, and lots more falling. Got up and out, caught the 8:40 train to Manhattan. Met my brother at Grand Central station, and spent a couple hours in the Metropolitan Museum of Art. It's pretty amazing - maybe as good as the Smithsonian. It's the only thing I can start to compare it to. Then we had lunch at a deli. Service was terrible, food was pretty good.

After lunch, we joined his wife for a student performance at Juilliard. Good stuff, and nice to step in out of the cold. There were kids sledding in Central Park, the sidewalks were white or light gray. The streets were a gray, dry slush for the most part. Slush in Oregon is half-melted snow. Here, it was cold, so the snow hadn't really melted, and wasn't in a melting mood. So it turned gray, stayed frozen, and gradually moved to the side of the streets.

After Juilliard, we went to Brooklyn where he lives, and had a nice dinner at his house. Caught the 9:05 train home, and drove clear streets back to the hotel. So today, I drove many miles of snowy roads, walked probably 2 miles (maybe 3) on snowy sidewalks, spent 3 hours outside at 20 degrees or so, defrosted, desnowed and de-iced my car twice, and used the Metro North rail system. Acclimation? Check.

Time for sleeping. Church starts in 8 hours, and I really should sleep a little.

365 #16 - Friday, January 19

2012-01-21T21:53:00.000-08:00

Today I am thankful for people who will help and trust you and treat you with respect with no reason to do so.

This morning I went out with a realtor to look at houses in the area. While we're driving around, I mention that I'm unemployed. To her credit, the agent does not dump me on the side of the road. We keep looking at houses. While in the next house or 2, I get a call from the company I interviewed with on Thursday. It was HR, informing me that a formal offer will be out to me later that afternoon.

I found 3 houses out of the 6 or 7 we saw that I like really well. So that was encouraging - all of them would be great for our family. Later in the afternoon, I did get a formal offer. It is the first formal offer for employment I have received since April 1999. It's not one I can accept just yet. The terms aren't quite what I was hoping for. But we'll start negotiations on Tuesday, and hopefully we can wrap it up one way or the other within a few days.

I see 5 plausible ways this works out:
1) awesome company #1 is able to negotiate the offer and we move to midstate NY
2) awesome company #1 is not able to negotiate the offer for NY, but makes something for me in OR
3) awesome company #1 is not able to negotiate the offer for NY or OR
4) awesome company #2 puts together a credible offer for OR and we stay
5) awesome company #2 does not put together a credible offer

So NY is still very possible, OR is still very possible (since I think that company #1 may be able to use me in OR, and company #2's spots are both in OR, and if both fall through, I'll keep looking locally).

The question marks keep getting answered. We're hoping for resolution in the next week or so.

365 #15 - Thursday, January 19

2012-01-19T18:46:00.000-08:00

Today, once again, I am thankful for the last 20 years. I won't repeat myself too much.

But today's interview was make-or-break as we discussed the opportunities I had, what I did with them, and how they shaped me. Question after question was framed in a, "At this place, we have-and-such a situation. Can you tell us about a similar situation you had at your last employer and how you dealt with it?" In every case, I had done something relevant and could talk about it.

At the end, the guy who would be my co-manager walked me out the door, said some encouraging words, shook my hand, and we parted ways. I learned a lot about the company. The interview panel for 2 full hours was my co-manager, boss, her boss, and the sales guy. The manager for Japanese tech support dropped in, the manager for the non-Japanese tech support dropped in, another manager dropped in. They told me about their market position, corporate goals, recent strides, all sorts of things.

In the final tally, my recent study of their technology paid off. I was asked about it, and was able to talk about it intelligently. The Japanese stuff paid off when I spoke briefly with the Japanese manager. Reading the company's annual report paid off. Knowing their competitors paid off. Every single thing I've worked on paid off.

I think. They told me I was the final candidate, so the decision would be quick. Here's to hoping for a call from HR tomorrow or Monday that brings good news.

365 #14 - Wednesday, January 18

2012-01-19T18:30:00.000-08:00

I'm thankful for a great opportunity today. The flight from PDX to Dulles was uneventful, the flight from there to LaGuardia likewise uneventful and very short. It was easy to get from Dulles to the rental car place. And the drive at 9pm out of the city was easy, too. I got to the hotel in 90 minutes, just like Google told me I would.

So many things out of the way. I have only a few more pages of study to do in the morning. And then this entire opportunity rolls out - the interview, its aftermath. Tomorrow is going to be one of the most fateful days of my family's life if it means we take a job out here.

As a kid, I never imagined these kinds of things happening - leaving a job, a company flying me somewhere to interview for a job. Those kinds of things happened on TV - they were Huxtable or Seaver lifestyles, not mine. And where am I? Living the American dream.

It is a steady progression, which I find very intriguing. The Bible talks about the sins of the parents being visited upon the heads of the children. In this case, the goodness of the parents enriches the lives of their children. My parents both attended college. Neither finished a 4 year degree. Both had good, solid, respectable jobs. Both worked hard. My generation are all college grads - a BS, MBA, and PhD. All of us have jobs and careers that our parents never really thought of. Not as in, "I could do that, but it's out of reach." More like, "I don't even know how a person would go about trying to get a job like that one. I can't even consider it." I feel very blessed, and thankful to parents who instilled this drive in all of us without our knowing it. And then enabled us to take these paths to where we are.

Who your parents are, and how they are, can make or break your entire life. As a parent, that means I have to take my responsibility extremely seriously.

365 #13 - Tuesday, January 17

2012-01-19T17:37:00.000-08:00

I am thankful for my kids tonight. They are truly awesome. Aria had her 12th birthday party at Skateworld. We had 10 tween girls between our 2 cars, and they were all awesome. No negativity that I saw, just fun and silliness. Aria has good friends, and the friends that all my kids bring into our lives have been a blessing to us.

The rest of the day was spent cleaning, packing, and studying for my interview coming up. Then, as the weather forecast become more clear, it became very clear that I should not count on being able to drive to the airport in the morning. So after Aria's party I headed off to the PDX Super 8 to stay the night. Sleep hit me about midnight.

365 #12 - Monday, January 16

2012-01-17T15:39:00.000-08:00

Thankful for cake today. Jacob was unable to clean his room today. It was not a big mess. He just couldn't make himself do it. Until dinner time. Christian needed to make dessert for his family for a cub scout requirement, and chose chocolate cake. Jake had to have his room clean to get cake, so after dinner he got it done. Lovely boy.

The rest of today was cleaning (in preparation for Aria's party) and prep for my job interview. Busy days. Good days.

365 #11 - Sunday, January 15

2012-01-17T14:38:00.000-08:00

Thank goodness for the times when you're supposed to prepare something, but don't really. And someone else comes along, prepares for you, does the thing, and then apologizes afterward for messing up your plans.

This morning I slept in, and by the time church came around I had thought about primary, but had not gotten anything concrete yet. We arrived at church, the first hour finished, and I had an idea. I wanted to go over a couple songs just to keep them fresh, and then learn The First Article of Faith song. A new pianist had been called, and she came in, ready to go.

As the kids were filing in, the presidency counselor running the show today came over and asked if it was ok if we mixed in some music with her lesson for the kids. That's fine for me - I'm easy. Once I saw the song list, I knew I would not have much time afterward for what I had thought about doing. We finished up, and she came over and apologized. "Did you have any big plans for today?" I explained that I didn't, and it was no problem.

And I didn't have to worry about what to do, which was nice.

Choir was after church, and that was nice and quick. Good medley of Called to Serve and Go Forth With Faith, arranged by our choir director. In the evening, Aria had her first fireside. She turns 12 this week, and the youth program has been inviting her to activities. She's loving it. From there, we came home and the guys came over. Jim brought over an arrangement he had just done of an 80 year-old song. It was gorgeous. And then we sang out of the Yale Glee club book. We're actually pretty close to having a couple of those songs down. We worked most on Joshua Fit the Battle of Jericho. Love that stuff.

365 #10 - Saturday, January 14

2012-01-15T22:40:00.000-08:00

I am thankful that I have the discipline to relax today. The week was a roller coaster, very busy, and there were too many things going on in my head.

I relaxed for a few hours in the morning, did a few loads of laundry, organized our song folders for a gig in the evening. And then, at 5, Katrina and I left. We went to a church building (turns out it was the wrong one) for my quartet to sing at a church function. We got to the right building late, but it was okay, and we sang for about 25 minutes while the audience was eating. It worked out well - we weren't too loud, they weren't too loud. And then we went to Dairy Queen, where I had dinner and Katrina had a dessert.

A nice day. Relaxing. A little overdue.

Both of us are very much looking forward to the interview, and excited that soon we'll have some clarity on where to focus. Right now we have to be laser-focused on 3 different job things, as well as keep our home and kids in shape. It's not working out so well, but it will soon pass and we'll be back to our normally-harried selves. The frantic selves will be put away until the next Big Thing comes, usually every 2-3 years.

365 #9 - Friday, January 13

2012-01-14T06:46:00.000-08:00

Today I am simply thankful the kids are all in school.

We woke up this morning, got the kids out the door, and I cleaned the garage while my dad textured the walls in our new hallway. He left, I filled the garbage can, and I was tired. So at 11am I took a nap. The house was quiet, and no one told on anyone else. And I woke up at 3. I wrote a couple emails for the job hunt, and then made dinner - pancakes, sausage, and hashbrowns.

Nothing important for the evening, either. Just a slow day. Nice to have one of those for a change.

Book Review: The Dispossessed

2012-01-13T07:21:00.000-08:00

Ursule K LeGuin is much more of a genius than I gave her credit for. I have been a fan of Earthsea since I was a kid, and have read every book in the series: most of them twice, some 3 times. I recently picked up a volume of Annals of the Western Shore from the discount bin. Then I read the other books in that series. And then I read about her in Wikipedia. So I read a book that I had purchased as a 12 year-old but had never read.

The Dispossessed stars a physicist. He lives on a habitable (but dry and inhospitable) moon that orbits an earthlike planet that is very rich. The moon's population are the descendants of Odo, an anarchist rebel from the home world. Eventually, the home world got so sick of the anarchists that the rebels were offered the moon. So they left. But how might an anarchist society fare after 200 years? In LeGuin's hands the anarchy breaks down into bureaucracy. Our hero is an anarchist among the bureaucrats that call themselves anarchists.

The story is both a personal journey for him and a societal journey for the propertarian (a word she uses with alacrity) and anarchist societies.

Like Orwell's 1984, the parallels between this future and our present are striking, disturbing, eye-opening, and refreshing at the same time. I can understand Occupy Wall Street better now on a personal level. The economics and politics made good sense to me before, but I understand it personally better then before.

It seems that LeGuin does nothing poorly. The Dispossessed belongs on a Kindle, a shelf, or at the very least, in each of our brains.

Movie Review: Mission Impossible - Ghost Protocol

2012-01-13T07:10:00.000-08:00

Last night we saw a silly movie. This one was sillier than most.

Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol is a dumb movie. Sheerly dumb. Dumb enough that it distracts from the action sequences. The viewer is left thinking, during the action scenes, "Where did that come from? How come the professor is a martial expert on par with the much younger Ethan Hawke? Why is it that chicks who fight in movies have huge boobs? How can a random piece of electronics dropped in a ventilation shaft upload a general's security profile? And why do they call it downloading when it's actually uploading?'

The premise was pretty good. The beginning is intriguing. About 1/3 of the way through, the script gets measurably worse. And it maintains a steady, edge-of-your-seat worserness as the movie progress. Impossibly worser. And the further along the movie goes, the more broken the whole movie becomes. By the end, it has become a montage of crazy action sequences that happen to add up to about 2 hours. And that's it.

Too bad - I like PG-13 action flicks. The recent James Bond, Batman, and Bourne movies have all been excellent. We even enjoyed Sherlock Holmes. But don't waste your time on MI: Ghost Protocol. Let it rest in peace.

365 #8 - Thursday, January 12

2012-01-13T06:30:00.000-08:00

Today I am thankful for divine providence. I don't know what else to ascribe recent events to, other than that.

This morning, I filled out the final online application for the NY job. They use this information to determine the offered salary. At this point, I have a second interview to do, but they have everything they need. It's entirely possible that they will have an offer printed and ready to give to me next Thursday.

And then it was time to clean. I did some laundry, put away some things we weren't using, took out the garbage and recycling, the odds and ends of housekeeping. At noon, we had another mover come to give us an estimate. Then I got dressed for the interview, my dad came over, and I left to buy a tie. Because I have terrible fashion sense and don't trust myself, I went to Macy's and asked for help. I brought 2 ties home, which I hadn't intended. I had intended to buy ties, put one on, and go chill in a parking lot close to the local company. But I had forgotten printed copies of my resume, as well as to write and print out a sheet of references. So I got that done, and headed back out.

The interview went much better than the earlier one had. The job is essentially the same job I had at Nikon, but this company is growing much faster. At the end of the interview, the interviewer told me he wanted to offer me the job. He still had some discussion with other people at the company, but that was likely my final interview. It would take some time to put an offer together.

This has been my first normal week of job hunting. I have had 3 interviews with 2 very interested and solid companies with good opportunities. In the next 2 weeks, the whole process could just be done. I expect we'll have 2 offers, and to have made a decision by Feb 1. Really unbelievable. All I can do is be grateful that by sheer, dumb luck, I was asked to interview for an interpretation contract at Nikon in 1998. Since then, I have been blessed beyond belief. And all those things that have happened since have brought me here.

365 #7 - Wednesday, January 11

2012-01-13T06:11:00.000-08:00

Today I am thankful for unwitting assistance. My old employer does not match 401(k) contributions. They give every employee 3% instead. For the last 10 years, we have not put a penny away for retirement. But our employer, just by sheer luck for us, has saved a significant amount for us.

This morning we went to a local investment office to discuss what to do with the old 401(k). We ended up putting it all into a rollover IRA for now. The adviser was very friendly and knowledgeable. We like him. Turns out there are a lot of LDS financial planners.

We came home, and I ran around the neighborhood doing errands: drop something off, go to Goodwill, this and that. I got home, had lunch, and still felt very unsettled. I needed to study the things my new equipment lines would be doing. I needed a physics textbook. So I went to Powell's. The main store had some cheap Le Guin stuff I hadn't read. I hadn't touched any of her stuff except for Earthsea and Annals of the Western Shore until last week, when I read The Dispossessed. Which was phenomenal. So I picked up 3 books for $11, and headed across the street to the technical bookstore. I browsed through physics, had a book I thought might be useful and understandable, and had just about given up, but decided to ask before I left. The clerk pointed me to a small section on semiconductors. I read every spine, and after a few minutes I found Fundamentals of Microfabrication and Nanotechnology. It was perfect. It has 60 full pages, including useful diagrams, on the equipment the NY job uses. And the copyright on the book is 2012.

In the evening, still a little freaked out by the upcoming interview and lack of preparation for the NY interview, I left the house around 5, and hung out at the church. In the evening I met with the young men and talked about my time as a missionary in Japan.

Meanwhile, of course, Katrina found some more houses in NY, and we discussed things regarding the move. Never ends.

365 #6 - Tuesday, January 10

2012-01-11T07:05:00.000-08:00

Today I am thankful for common sense. I can not imagine how hard life would be if I were bereft of common sense. It helped me immensely in my job search today.

The NY company did not get back to me with travel arrangements yesterday, but I did have the HR person's name. So I did a little research, found her email and telephone numbers, left her a VM and email, and got on my way. I spent a few hours with my aunt on family history research, and we found some new things, and got some other things starting to roll. Often family history consists of 2 hours of searching and finding clues, 30 minutes of requesting a document, and 2 weeks of waiting.

While I was there, the company called to set up travel. I came home, sent my career counselor an update, booked a flight, and then got a call from the company's HR rep. She switched from a travel-to-the-interview mode to interview-the-candidate mode. We spent 20 minutes talking about pay and benefits. All the advice on interviews told me to not talk about this stuff until later in the process, but the company brought it up. So, with a dash of common sense, I engaged in the conversation and found out some things. At the end of the call, she sent me the company's complete benefits package, like I'd see in an offer letter.

The evening was spent at Cub Scouts - we made mousetrap catapults and used a block and tackle. Pretty cool stuff.

365 #5 - Monday, Jan 9

2012-01-10T13:03:00.000-08:00

Today I am thankful for a million things that God has thrown at me in the last 20 years. He sent me to Japan to serve a mission, which sharpened my work ethic, communication skills, and taught me Japanese. He gave me the chance to be a full-time interpreter, which was my dream job when I was 15. He sent me a wonderful lady to marry, and then gave me a dang good job. He gave me health and energy and drive to succeed, and a boss who was willing to take risks with me and my independent streak. I kept that boss for 11 years. Frankly, he's one of the best things about my former company. The company gave me challenging assignments, and I saw a career direction I might enjoy. Then God gave me the chance to charge ahead with education.

And now, after all that, I am not really very qualified to go work on a golf course and mow greens. I'm much more qualified to manage a team of engineers. As a kid, I never dreamed of such a job.

Today, I interviewed for a couple of these jobs. One is in upstate NY. I talked with my new boss there for an hour on the phone, and at the end we agreed that I would head out there next week to interview with the full team. I was excited for that result, and sat down to relax. The phone rang. It was a headhunter. I had been trying to get in to interview for a few other local positions since November, but the managers had been too busy to see me. They had time in 90 minutes. So I got ready and headed out the door. We (the headhunter and I) expected the conversation to last 10-20 minutes. I talked with them for 90 minutes. At the end of it, the manager asked to make sure to talk to them again before I accepted an offer in NY. He's considering me for several positions - the issue there is that the team isn't sure where to put me, but there are several opportunities.

There are certainly pluses and minuses to both companies, locations, and management teams. But there is opportunity out there for the right candidate.

365 #4 - Sun, Jan 8

2012-01-09T22:22:00.000-08:00

Today I am thankful for being useful. I was able to finish off something for Cub Scouts today that should have been done months ago. And I was able to help someone else use it. So that was cool.

We had a good time at church today. I lead music for the younger kids. Today, my accompanist walked in and asked me, "What do you want me to do today?"

My response: "I don't know yet."

"Okay, tell me when you know."

I gave the kids a few more minute to file in and find their seats, did some warmups, and pretty soon we were moving along. We had a good time. The theme this year for the kids is "choose the right".

Then the guys came over, and we sang through our set list for a gig at a church thing this coming weekend. Thankfully, we'll have some new material to sing. Should be fun. I love music.

365 #3 - Sat Jan 7

2012-01-08T09:25:00.000-08:00

I am thankful for the separation of the weekend today. This week has been very job-focused and busy. Saturday gave me a chance to put that aside a little and do some other things.

I took most of the day off from job hunting to focus on our remodel. My parents came over and helped with organizing the girls' room and my dad textured their wall. I was able to spend time in the garage cleaning, even got to sweep it. I can probably get the garage finished after garbage day this week, and then I can refocus on other projects.

We did price a trip to our new place, and I read some of the company's annual report. And in the evening I had a nice, longer-than-usual chat with my best friend from adolescence.

365 #2, Friday Jan 6

2012-01-07T19:08:00.000-08:00

Yesterday brought more news on the job front. I have an interview coming up soon. The difference? This time, I have a person's name, a time, and place for the interview. This particular opportunity is hurtling toward us like a massive near-earth asteroid. It is requiring all of our time and attention to prepare for it. It's a great company, but we would have to move, which makes the decision much harder than if we stayed local. Lots and lots to write about with this one, but I'll save it for later days as things clarify here.

It was a foggy morning here. I left the house at 8:30, hoping to get in a couple hours of hard riding including some hills. Because of visibility, I kept to bike paths along Evergreen until Glencoe Rd. At times the fog lifted, and I was encouraged, so I headed into North Plains. The fog kept falling down off the hills, West Union had poor visibility. Thankfully, the sun was out, and there was no cloud cover, so it was not terrible, but I stayed away from the hills. Once I crossed 26 Southbound on Helvetia, it was bike paths all the way home again. A nice ride. A cold ride. A wet ride.

The rest of the day was focused on the new company and interview preparation. It's really quite an adventure.

365 #1

2012-01-06T07:38:00.000-08:00

Thanks to inspiration from Katrina and a kick in the butt from Erin, here's the start of my 365.

I'm in a job hunt these days. I've been making contacts where I could. Yesterday we informed a company that we're willing to relocate, which was a first for us. I also found a few more positions in my industry that I'm well-qualified for that are local. Today my task is to write cover letters and submit formal resumes for these positions. I also swung by a local interpreting company to get a medical glossary from them. I tested earlier this week, and failed simply for vocabulary. The tester said that I was perfect when I knew the words, but there were too many I did not know. So I have a bunch of things to study.

We did not make progress on the remodel yesterday - the girls' room remains 80% painted, needs the repair work to be sanded and textured. We sold Christian's bed a few days ago. Yesterday was just consumed with researching our possible new location.

Since I'm not at the office these days, I am cooking dinner every other week. My goal is to use up all the frozen stuff so we can clean our freezers. They're kinda gross. So I went to Winco and picked up some resh fruit and a bottle of root beer. Last night was cheeseburger casserole with homemade french fries. Takes a while to cook french fries. But they were the best fries I've ever made. And with the root beer, our fast food dinner was complete.

Then it was evening. I went to Art Literacy training and learned about Bev Doolittle, watercolor pencils, and camouflage painting. The evening was intended to include some resume submissions. I did not get that far - I found a book on the Kindle lending library and started reading. It's rather silly, but worth the read to study the writing style.

How We Maximize Vacation Value

2012-01-02T22:02:00.000-08:00

My wife and I vacation very differently. For me, a vacation is a chance to get away fromthe quotidian and try something new. Forher, it’s a chance to go somewhere and do nothing. Except when she wants to do something. Then we all should want to go do what shewants to do.

This vacation has been blessedly different and better. I, for one, am starting to learn torelax. To really not do anything. It’s not how I was raised. Even now, she is watching Wife Swapdownstairs with the kids while I write this entry. She has started to allow the family tosplit. The older kids and I did not wantto see Santa and the Reindeer a few days ago. So she took the younger kids and her parents to do it. We (the older kids and me) went to the rec center and played airhockey and ping pong. It was a perfectafternoon for all of us.

Today was even better. We had one of her favorite breakfasts (biscuits and gravy), loaded upthe car, and went to the mountain to sled. There is hardly any snow this year. It’s pretty depressing. But wefound a hill and spent 2 or 3 hours there. The sun was out, it was 40 degrees, no wind, and there was plenty ofsnow for what we wanted. It even wasdrifted 6ft deep in places. We ate ourlunch of water, PBJ, and Doritos, and came home. She went upstairs to take a nap. I hung out with the kids downstairs to chillfor a few hours. When she woke up, Itook all the kids to the pool for 2 hours. She was able to get 4 hours to herself, the kids got lots of fun, and Igot a little time to relax as well.

So for us, I suppose we maximize vacation value by findingpleasure in the compromise, and doing so often. Whenever we can make those compromises break in a way that helps thekids, everyone is a winner. 11 yearsafter we started vacationing with our kids, it is finally starting to be fun.

I Let My Son Win Once

2012-01-02T21:59:00.000-08:00

And I don’t feel bad about it. My philosophy with kids has been that if theywin, they have earned it. So I don’t letthem win at ping pong, tennis, uno, basketball, rock paper scissors, nothing.For nearly 12 years I have been relentlessly competitive. All for the kids’ own good, of course.

Yesterday afternoon, that changed. Christian is quite a good ping pong player;every time we play, he gets 2 points head and often keeps the lead for a while. He has been unable so far to seal thedeal. So we played once. I won. I wanted a rematch.

“No, dad. You’rejust going to win!”

“I’ll play left-handed. And you’ll win, I promise.”

“No, you’ll win anyway. You always win.”

“I’m right handed, buddy. You’ll beat me.” The look on hisregretful face told me he was relenting. “You wanna serve first?”

I tossed him the ball, and he took it. With a hint of sarcasm in his voice, he tookthe ball. “I don’t know why I’m doingthis.” And he served.

And he got ahead, and then I got ahead, and then he gotahead. And then I realized that I couldcontrol the ball well enough to win. Itwas 12-12. And I decided to throw thegame. Even then, it took a while for himto build a 5 point lead. And then I settledin for the loss. And I won 2 points byaccident. And then he took the game,21-17.

He was happy – I was happy. He beat me. I was proud ofmyself. For losing. And being ok with it. Now, posting this is self-congratulatory. I get that. And egotistical. I get that. But I still feel good about it. And I won’t tell anybody, now that the wholeworld could find out if they cared.

What is the drumbeat of your life?

2011-12-12T13:10:00.000-08:00

This week is my last week at Nikon. It has been a great ride for me. I've been a contractor, field service engineer, program manager, interpreter, project manager, people manager, been on committees and helped roll out initiatives. Now that it's drawing to a close, I'm looking at the transition and realizing things about myself.

Today, just about 5 minutes ago, actually, I was talking with a colleague about the future. He knows I'm leaving, of course. It occurred to me everyone I know has a drumbeat - it's that thing that is always in your mind. No matter what. Without pause.

For one person I know, it's always, "How badly can this go wrong? And what do I do if it goes terribly wrong?" I know people who always seem to be simmering/angry. The first thing they always say is to point out a problem. I know people who always have a vacation on their mind, or a hobby.

My drumbeat is "What's next? What can I do now?" No matter how far along I am in something, there is always something else to do, something else to learn. With work effectively wound down already, my next thing is a bit of a balancing act:

1) discovering the next turn on my career path
2) doing and learning the things I haven't had time to learn or do
3) filling the idle time with productive work

I want to learn how to draw. Painting would be cool, but just to learn how to sketch is a valid objective for me. I want to learn kanji better, and improve fluency in business Japanese, particularly finance. I want to spend time composing and arranging music. I want to spend some time with my piano and guitar. I want to finish my grandfather's biography and build on the research into his wife's side for a book on her family. I want to finish a multitude of projects around the house. And I want to repair my 3 RC airplanes so they fly well again.

When I get a spare moment, during my commute to work, or between turning out the light and falling asleep, or at moments during the day, my mind instantly fills with these things. Which should I do? And in what way? And how do I balance that with all the other things? Which is the most important? How will they impact my family's life?

I think it is this drumbeat that defines my outlook the best. I am an incurable optimist. I always see the opportunity beyond the challenge in front of me. And I truly, truly (for good or ill) believe I can accomplish just about whatever I want to. And I have always had a list 3 miles long of things that I want to learn and accomplish (do you hear that Spanish and Estonian? You're on my list!).

What is your drumbeat? What fills your mind in those idle moments? This is important to know on a conscious level. It's important enough to your subconscious mind that it (whatever it is) is always there.

Now, excuse me while I spend some time on a bicycle, update my resume, do some laundry, and then go caroling. What's next? I can't wait!

2011-09-11T16:41:00.000-07:00

I love flying RC planes. I don't love crashing them. The two actions go hand in hand however for a still-learning hobbyist like me.

My 2 little planes have both had/are due for a fuselage replacement. They've already had an assortment of minor repairs, and replacements of tails and wings.

Today's big news is the re-introduction of the Super Cub to my hangar. The fuselage has been cracked in half 4 times, and everything except for the wing and electronics and fuselage had already been replaced. I started gathering parts almost a year ago, and a few months ago was the final straw. I was flying my FrankenCub with its 4th set of custom landing gear, hit a power pole, and crashed 25 ft to the ground. She was not going to be repaired this time.

Luckily, by then I already had the motor, servos, speed control, receiver, and propeller. A new fuselage, tail, landing gear, and motor mount, and I could get her airworthy again. 2 weeks ago I had all of that stuff on hand. This week I have been doing the physical reconstruction - removing some unnecessary interior foam, mounting the motor, do a small mod to the battery box to accommodate the larger batteries, installing and adjusting the tail and landing gear. Last night, I finished the soldering. This afternoon, I did the final checks and adjustments - rough and fine correction of the elevator and rudder via the push rods and servos, and caught a reversed servo which would have been catastrophic had I missed it. And, on a lark, I added a bomb bay door. It's not operational yet (no servo installed) but it is hinged and ready for action.

The final configuration for her maiden flight was not ideal but reasonable. I didn't have the electronics velcroed in, but otherwise she was shipshape. She was no longer my FrankenCub; she was my SuperDuperCub. The maiden went pretty well, considering this was the first plane I ever built from the ground up.

Problems: CG was too far forward. Control surfaces were set up with too small throws. She was unexpectedly heavy. The motor mount may be too far pointed down and right. I suspect this because when she was under throttle, it was hard to get her to go up. When I killed the throttle, she glided very nicely. So it might not be a weight issue at all.

Good stuff: The rear wheel was almost perfectly straight. The brushless motor performed as advertised. She can take off literally like a rocket - straight up. Stock full throttle is less than half throttle with the new setup.

Next steps: fix control surface throws (done), redo motor mount to straight setup (I have the mounts, just need to use them). Set up CG after motor mount change. Yeehaw - flying time is here again!

The Beauty of a Deadline

2011-06-14T08:24:00.001-07:00

My barbershop quintet just pulled of a nice performance last night. It was not perfect; there were moments of "what was that?" along with "Ooh, that was nice." Perfectly acceptable for our debut.

We had been discussing and planning and putting off this performance for about a year. I had a terrible work and travel schedule in 2010, and it just didn't work. In March this year, we settled on a date range and venue. In early May, we booked the date. Magically, committing to a date crystallized a lot of things.

"Axel F" would not be ready. "Ward, the Pirate" would not be ready. "Old Man Noah" needed some notes fixed. And so did every other song we were targeting, except for "Wings". Our concentration improved, rehearsals became much more focused.

We're a very democratic group, and rely mostly on self-correction. If I'm missing notes, it's my job to say so, stop rehearsal, and get them fixed. I can also work on them at home if I have a piano. From time to time, some notes will be consistently missed, and then someone else will point them out, and get them fixed. We don't spent much rehearsal time working on blend or diction. I don't think we purposely ignore them; we all just assume that everyone else is ok and doing his best.

A concert deadline changed that entire dynamic. We're comfortable enough with each other that we don't get offended when corrected. And we started doing that more. We started spending more effort on diction, taming the volume to help blend and pitch. We made some decisive changes on dynamics to give the music more shape. And we were able to hit 10-15 pieces of music in a rehearsal, instead of the usual 5 or so.

Our musicianship improved. Our focus improved. And the final product that we put out is worthy of a listen.

In the end, the deadline pushed us to bring our product from 85% polish to 100% polish. We could no longer ignore the unfinished bits and pieces. For an amateur group like ours, that made all the difference.

What's next? Preparing for another concert, of course. We already have the venue and parts of the program chosen. This one will be better. You'll find information on us and upcoming events at www.themorningstars.org.

Part of the Adult American Experience

2011-06-11T20:35:00.000-07:00

I spent my childhood from 4-12 years old on 2.5 acres in rural Oregon (Barlow, to be exact). For a few years there, my parents had a large garden. The whole family was supposed to weed it. My dad was going to school at the time, and mom was supporting a family of 5 on a bus driver's income. Money was tight, and I suppose that was a pretty good reason to have a garden. I don't think that idea crossed any of us kids' minds, though.

The point is, I hated the garden. The sunflowers were pretty darn cool, but nothing else was worth caring about. The weeds grew, the veggies did ok, but it's because Roundup doesn't even kill things in this state. Everything grows in the Willamette Valley.

And now, I am proud to day that we have had 4 blueberry bushes for 6 years now. They hardly produce anything, but they are all alive. We have had 2 columnar apple trees for 5 years now. They were just about 2 ft tall when we planted them. Now they are 10 ft tall and are loaded with fruit. So we don't kill everything we try to grow. But our gardens have been a couple attempts that did not end well.

This year, I got the best spot in the back yard. The spot where the weeds grow fastest. And I tilled it and planted. Now I have sprouts and seedlings, which I now water with a soaker hose that I bought so they wouldn't die from the heat like our last garden did. And I am thrilled that they are mostly all growing.

The sweet cuc isn't too healthy. I'm hoping it recovers. The zucchini below seems to be a favorite of the slug population. This hill has lost its seedling leaves completely. The other 2 hills are fine, though. I'm hoping this one recovers.

The pumpkins are doing really well. I don't know what we're going to do with 4 pumpkin plants worth of stuff, but I expect we'll do something with them. The muncher cucs are don't too well, either. I don't know what their issue is. It may be that they are planted in a spot with too good of drainage. They seem to whither quickly. But they are looking better now than they were 5 days ago.

The yellow squash at the bottom appears to be happy, just not as robust as the zucchini or pumpkin. None of the cantaloupe have sprouted yet. Hope I get some - it's the only sweet thing I planted this year.

Disneyland et al: a trip report

2011-05-10T11:33:00.000-07:00

Itinerary:

On Friday, we loaded up our SUV with snacks, clothes, kids, and DVDs and drove to Bakersfield. The next day we slept late and wandered down to Dolphin's Cove in Anaheim. We stayed there for a week - 2 days at Disneyland, 1 at California adventure, 1 at the La Brea Tar Pits, 1 in a limo in Hollywood, 1 at Universal, and the last we just left and drive down to Sea World. The next day we spent at Legoland, and after the park closed at 6, we drove to Sacramento. We got home Monday night at 10.

Playful impressions:

Our kids, as a group, were not overly impressed with anything except Legoland. Disney stuff was cool, but the coasters were too scary for the boys, and the boat rides were too tame for the girls. But - with boys aged 5 and 9 and girls aged 11 and 6, we never had to chase a wandering child, had no crying breakdowns in the parks, and lots of laughter all the time.

Our kids determined our schedule. We (Katrina and I) set a target for the time to leave the resort. When the kids were done for the day at the park, we left. That usually meant we spent 5 hours in the park and a total of 1 hour commute time. We would come home, the kids would play on the Wii, we'd have dinner and then once the sun was low in the sky we'd go swim until 9. This worked for us - no strollers, no lockers, and only 1 meal out a day. The kids were happy, and as long as Katrina and I remembered that the trip was for the kids to be happy, and they didn't care about riding every ride, we were happy. I left my laptop at home, Katrina brought her netbook, but we were plugged into the kids almost all the time.

Tips for travelers:

1) Stay local, preferably by somewhere served by an ART (Anaheim Resort Transit) bus. They are reliable, operate whenever the parks are open, and are cheaper for a family of 6 than parking at the Disney parking lot.

2) Get a place with a kitchen. Goodness, how nice. Breakfast? No hour long ordeals at Denny's. We bought some milk and cereal, and the kids were happy. Christian and I made french toast a few times. Dinners were pretty simple, too - a casserole one night, baked potatoes and baked bbq chicken another, takeout Chinese that lasted for leftovers for 2 days. Saved us a bunch of time and frustration (hungry? Get a hot dog from the fridge, kids!) and money, too.

3) The So Cal pass is great. We got 3 days at Disney, plus 1 each at Universal and Sea World for what ended up being about $30/kid/day. No trouble at all.

4) The kids each having their own DVD player in the car was fabulous. We had a 15 hour day in the car on the way down, and everyone was happy. Jake watched Empire Strikes Back 3 times in a row. We got the Phillips, for about $60 each. They're really nice units.

5) Fanny packs rock. I was used to going to grown up theme parks with Katrina, where everyone takes their backpack and leaves it on the far side of the roller coaster. At most of these places, you just keep it with you. With a fanny pack, the kids pack their own snacks, and when they're gone, they're gone. Easy. They aren't heavy, they aren't large, and they aren't expensive.

6) Old kids are awesome and fun. If you are going to Disneyland for the kids, don't take them young enough that you need a stroller. If you are going for you, whatever you want is cool. Our youngest was 5, 43" tall. He could ride almost every ride, walked by himself almost all day, and was able make good souvenir decisions with a little guidance. And he was happy. We did theme parks with babies (4 and 2 years old) and it just wasn't very good. This trip was great.

Impressions of parks:

Disney California is a great park. It reminds me of Disney Sea in Tokyo more than any other park I've been in. The fit and finish of the areas are pretty holistic, with the very notable exception of the disgusting lagoon at Paradise Pier. It's really gross. They've got to find a way to make it not look diseased. California Screamin' is also one of the best coasters I've ever ridden. Fast, lots of vertical, very smooth. When the park is completely built out (there are at least 3 major construction projects underway right now) it will be awesome. Food vending is well thought out, there's lots of open space, and there are some really good rides for everyone.

Disneyland is what it is. I'm not a huge fan - Thunder Mountain is a great ride, Space Mountain is a great ride, but I'm not impressed with the layout, the attention to detail in the different areas of the park, or the food. The food situation is especially bad here. Little shade, few places to sit inside, and little open space. In early May, it's not crowded at all. The summer would be horrific.

Universal Studios was my personal favorite. The Studio Tour is a must-do. It's fantastic. Amazing. 45 minutes of information and entertainment that's exciting for adults and not too scary for the kids. The shows are incredible, the rides are great, and the staff is amazing; really friendly, helpful, kind, all that stuff. They seem really happy to be at work, more so than anywhere else we went. They made the difference for me.

Sea World was really great, too. The mix of shows, zoo exhibits, and rides was a good mix for our kids. It's unfortunate that the best stuff (the Beluga, Dolphin, and Shark encounters) are so much extra. We knew about it, but did not plan to do it. We still had a full day, but if we go back with teens, we'll definitely do one of the extra things. The shows were great, too - the Sea Lion show was the best. Great theatre.

Legoland was the kids' hands-down favorite. We walked in, and spent 45 minutes building cars right away. Then 45 minutes looking at mini USA and the Star Wars models. Then we rode 1 coaster, ate a decent lunch, and split. Aria and I did the Knights Encounter which was really interesting and cool. Katrina took the other kids and did some other rides that were great. We finished the day with the kids shopping at the Lego Store there; each had saved enough for the end of the trip to buy something there. Everyone left happy.

The Limo ride was partially a gift from the grandparents. We were thinking of themed dinners and things, and as we flipped through the brochure, we saw a full-page ad for personal tours. I looked at Katrina, and told her I had never been in a limo. She said she hadn't either. So we brought the decision to the kids, and they thought it would be cool, too. So that's what we did. It was great - in 5.5 hours, we were picked up from the resort, taken to a good spot to see the Hollywood sign, spent almost 2 hours at the Kodak Theatre and walk of fame, drove around to see some celebrity homes and movie locations, and went home. Overall, less than the price of theme park admission, we did all the sight seeing stuff, and got to relax, too.

Great vacation - as good as our big road trip in 2008 to ID and UT or our almost-family vacation to New York and DC last year. No more from me on the topic - Katrina's got a lot more going up on her blog, I think.

Ruminations on a weekend without Katrina

2011-04-16T19:38:00.000-07:00

I love to be with my kids. They are some of the kindest, funniest, smartest, awesomest people I know. And when Katrina is gone, I get them all to myself. She left after lunch yesterday to do some dry pack canning and work on a project with my mom.

I love my wife. She is a marvelous woman - great at being a woman, helping me be a man, and she's possibly the best mom I've ever met. And I never can seem to get much done when she's home. I think I realized why this weekend. It's because when I am home, she is more free to work on her digital life - the scrapbook, her budding interest in photography, blogging, etc. Which means that she is in the office most of the day. But I like her. And I gravitate to be near her. And there is nothing that I must do that is in that office, just someone I need to be with.

So the best way for me to get things done is to send her away. She asked if she could spend Friday night away, and I immediately was excited. After some more thought, I asked if she could spend Saturday night away as well. She said she could.

"Aha!" I thought to myself, "I can do some things that take longer than an hour without her knowing!"

So I made a plan - I'd set a reward in front of the kids with some clear requirements to get the reward, I'd help as much as was reasonable, and if they earned it, fine. If not, fine. Not my issue.

Requirement #1: clean the kitchen. Our kitchen is almost always usable. But things tend to collect here and there: school papers that haven't been returned, printed recipes that aren't in the book yet, crayons, napkins that haven't gotten back in the locked cabinet. That's not just us, right? So clean the kitchen meant that every single item that did not belong on the counter went where it belonged. Mopping the floor was not part of it. The counters would be cleared off and wiped clean.

Requirement #2: clean the garage. Enough that Katrina can park in it again. Which means, once again, sorting through a lot of things that have accumulated in her parking spot.

Requirement #3: complete phase 1 of a project she would enjoy when it was complete. This shall remain nameless for a little while. But I was confident she would love the result and that the kids and I would have a blast doing it.

As soon as Katrina left and the kids were all home from school, we had a pow-wow. I laid out the requirements. The reward would be a trip to the Portland Garage Sale at the Expo Center. I asked if they wanted me to push them. Nobody said yes. One kid said she wanted me to push some other kids. So that was it. We had a LOT of fun on the project. I'm confident the finished project will be fabulous. I just need another 10 hours here and there to complete it. We all had a lot of fun, and even the little guy stayed with it until the end.

Then it was time for cleaning. I was busy until 9:30 at night cleaning, making dinner (cheeseburgers and home made fries), and the kids worked until about 6. I thought somebody would konk out around 9, but at 10:45, all of them were still up and busy. So I send them to bed, played some football, did some laundry, and slept around 1.

By that point, the kitchen was done, and the garage had seen some major improvement. I figured the kids had an hour left in there, and it would be done. We all woke up around 8. I had breakfast, showered, and the kids, without a single word from me, got busy on the garage. 20 minutes after my shower was done, the garage was done. They got dressed, put something solid in their tummies (breakfast had been brownies I baked at midnight), and we took off about 11. The garage sale was pretty awesome. We're going back next year with a larger budget. The kids were patient, spent their $5 wisely, and even the little guy stayed right with me the whole time. No wiggling engaged in, no discipline needed. Awesome.

After lunch at our favorite locale hole-in-the-wall buffet, we've been hanging out. The kids made a stop-action Lego movie, and I'm about 10 minutes away from putting our attic stairs in. The hole in the ceiling is prepped, the measurements for how it will fold down are done. I just have to lift it up there and screw it in now. Then clean up, of course. The kids have 1 room to clean, and I have a couple loads of laundry to do to finish off the night.

And then, hopefully, I can finish another milestone or 2 before I collapse. Depends on that ladder, which is a must-do.

Triplett History: Finding my grandfather

2011-03-17T22:32:00.000-07:00

Family history on my father's side has been easy - I saw a book that went back 200 years when I was in high school. Never thought much about it. Recently, I have done a lot of research into my mom's side. My maternal grandmother's ancestors were easy. My maternal grandfather's were not. Today the pieces come together.

First, the information I had 2 weeks ago: Born in 1903 in Poulsbo, WA, real name unknown, orphaned at 9 years old. That's it. I've been back and forth with my uncle a lot the last few days, and many things came up:

my G-grandfather's name was John Franklin Triplett. He died in 1916-17 in Spokane in a car crash. My G-grandfather and G-grandmother's marriage was a second marriage for both of them and he's the only child of that marriage.

Today, I spent the afternoon with my mother teaching her about the research I've done and how to do some of it herself. New things: my grandfather gave my grandmother a Bible in 1954 with his parents' birth and death dates. My grandfather has a couple half-brothers who died by drowning in the 1920s. My G-grandmother's full name (including her married name from her first marriage).

So - this morning I was able to search through Washington State's vital records and find John Franklin Triplett. He died in Spokane in 1917. I ordered his death certificate. This afternoon, after learning my G-grandma's name, I looked through the census of 1910. There they were: John F and Martha Triplett. 2 sons in their 20s, 1 son who was 11 years old. All born in Missouri. It matches a 1900 census I had seen before.

To sum up the information I have now about my grandfather: my grandfather's name was not Francis or Jack. It was John, like his dad. He was born in Nov, 1898, not 1903. He was born in Missouri, not Poulsbo, WA. He was orphaned at 19, not 9. He did not spent his childhood on the streets.

Next steps: marriage certificate for the G-grandparents and birth certificate for my grandfather. I call him little Johnny for now, until I see his birth certificate and know what his full name was. The trail is no longer cold. This 1/4 of my family tree will soon be filled in.

Glenn Family History, First Edition

2011-03-12T23:05:00.000-08:00

So I've been working on the Sults, my great-grandmother's parents and immediate family. I thought, "What about Joel P Glenn, my grandma's dad?" So I Googled his name and Idaho. And immediately there was a page about him. Turns out the guy who lives in the house Joel built in 1910 is a big history guy in Council, Idaho. And he's published stuff.

So Joel went byJoe. He was a good singer. A bass, it seems. He and Cora Belle built a house in 1910 and lived there until 1924, when they sold it and moved to Toledo, Oregon. It's a few miles inland from Newport. I don't know why. Maybe feeding their 14 kids and keeping them sane all winter in a 24' x 24' house proved too much for them. "Let's go somewhere where we can let them play outside all winter, Cora." "Sure thing, Joe. I'll stop sharpening the butcher knife now. I won't be needing it after all." "That's good, dear."

Back to digitizing documents now - double-checking dates and names from hand-written records so I can roll it all up into something easy to digest.

Also - Sult update - I found where JT and Ann's homestead was. It's on the corner of Nasi Ln and Farm to Market Road between Roseberry and Donnelly. That creek right there is Boulder Creek.

Sult Family History - JT and Ann, part 1

2011-03-07T17:52:00.000-08:00

I got bit by the family history bug, and now I'm infected. My grandmother is Amelia Kathryn Glenn. Her mother is Cora Belle Sult. Her mother is Grace Hall, her father is Charles Sult. Charles' parents are John Theodore Sult and Ann McCormac. The only history I have of my family that is written down is of JT Sult, Ann, their kids and grandkids. I have the family tree for the Sults, but I want to fill in their story. Since I have a start, I'm going to share what I've got, how I found it, and I'll add as I find more information.

This is from my mom's cousin, who gave a hard copy to us years ago. I took digital photos at my uncle's house last summer, and now I'm typing them up so they can be shared by the whole family. Here's the first part of it.

----------------------

John Theodore Sult and Virginia Ann McCormac were married at her home in Linn County, (Mound City) Kansas, April 25, 1878. They moved to his farm in Wilson County, near Fredonia, where the three oldest children were born. They sold the farm in the spring of 1885. Levi McCromac and J.T. Sult bought 150 head of cattle and prepared to go West.

In April they were ready to start from the home of A.J. McCormac, with Ann driving the team of mules. While they were loading, the team became frightened and ran, injuring Ann so that it was imp[ossible for her to make the trip. J.T. and Levi started on, leaving the family with her parents. They went as far as Kingman County, where his sister, Mrs James Reese, lived.

In July, twins were born. J.T. came back in the late summer and moved the family to Kingman County, where Laura May died, Nov 25, age 4 months. The next spring the family, with Theodore Sult, a nephew of J.T. started West again, with Ann driving the mules, J.T. the ox team, and Levi and Theodore the cattle. That summer they traded “old Bob” for Topay, a young filly, so that Charley, age 7, could help with the cattle. (Topay became a family institution; all the children and several grandchildren learned to ride on her. She finally died of old age about 1911.) They spent that winter in Wyoming, near Bushnell Creek, about 65 miles from Cheyenne. There was good open range here, and they bought hay for the cattle during the worst of the winter.

---------------------

Here's some more stuff I figured out by looking at birth dates, maps, and place names. Mound City was founded just 20 years before J.T. and Ann were married there. We don't know why they moved West. When Ann was injured hooking up the horses, she was 6 months pregnant with twins. They moved West in spurts - leaving Mound City for Fredonia (90 miles away) then selling the Fredonia farm and moving back near Mound City. Then JT headed 241 miles away with the cattle while waiting for Ann to heal and deliver their twins. When they left Kansas for good, they had 4 kids, the youngest was just 9 months old. It took them 2 years to move - 1 summer to get to Wyoming, another to get to Western Idaho.

I have more bits and pieces, but I'm going to add them as I go. For any family members, I'll be adding things in Google Docs, and I'll share them all with you if you're interested.

Allowing natural growth

2011-03-01T18:04:00.000-08:00

We have 4 awesome kids. They came in pairs - older 2 separated by 2 years, then a 3 year gap, then the younger ones separated by just 16 months. Since our younger kids were born, the other kids have been the "big kids".

That changed tonight, and the story to how we get there is instructive, I think.

It is true that people become who you expect them to become. We expected our big kids to be good examples, responsible and kind, etc. We expected our "little kids" to not be as advanced. Of course they would be behind the big kids, but it was clear that when we were dressing our 4 year-old girl and her big sister was dressing herself at 3, that we had given in to what someone called the "soft bigotry of low expectations". Compound this with the fact that our little kids were the littlest kids we got to be around. They were the only ones we got to snuggle with, who said funny things, who needed help putting on their seatbelts.

Of course, it wasn't them that needed the help. We needed to give the help. We needed to feel needed. And it was all of us - parents, older siblings, grandparents. We all conspired to keep our little kids little.

Well, our little girl started kindergarten and turned 6, and she was having trouble adjusting to the big wide world. We started to make some conscious changes to our expectations of her and how we served her. Today, some things came to a head. I turned the corner by my bedroom door to find her sitting on the floor crying. The exchange went something like this:

L: Dad, it really hurts my feelings when people call me little. It's a little bit of an issue.

T: I'm sorry sweetie. Who does that most? Is it mom and I or the older kids?

L: It's mostly you and mom and the older kids and everyone.

T: Well, when we need to say things like, "get the car seats for the younger kids", what should we say?

L: I just want to be big, because I am big.

T: Okay. So do we call you and your little brother the big kids and the other kids the old kids?

L: (smiling) Yes. I would like that.

I thanked her for telling me her feelings, and promptly spread the news around to the rest of the family.

What is particularly salient about this event today is that she felt something, told me, figured out what she wanted to make it better, and was able to have a good conversation with me about it to find a solution. I didn't have to draw it out of her. It was her initiative. It is the most grown-up thing she has ever done. And I'm proud of her for it.

Bye bye little kids. I think my next opportunity will be in about a dozen years when the grand kids may start coming.

On being sacked but employed

2011-02-13T18:30:00.000-08:00

Firstly, don't worry - I'm not demoted, or in any way in danger of losing my job. It's not like that. So now that you aren't worried, here's a little something about what's going on in my work life.

For the last 10 months, I've been working on a major project for the company. I could see that it needed to be done, it was on the periphery of one of my areas of responsibility, and it looked challenging. So I started asking questions and doing things to move it along, and soon found that it was "my project". I worked with a lot of people on 3 continents to get the project going. Some had expertise, some had logistical responsibilities, some had oversight of one aspect or another and had to buy off on technical decisions. I was genuinely busy and doing something important for the company.

During most of these 10 months, I was doing my "day job" for a couple hours a day, and spending the rest of my time on this project. Since September, I've been on the project 40-70 hrs per week, averaging about 60 hrs per week for that period. It's been busy. I haven't been able to help out at home like I like to, volunteer at the kids' school like I like to, or have any hobbies at all, actually. Even the men's group I sing with fell down the priority list. And forget about going on a date with my wife.

So in January, the time came to execute on the things I'd been preparing for since last April. We had answered the technical questions, prepared the documentation, completed training, identified and acquired the tools needed for the job, and now it was simply a matter of manpower. How quickly could we get the job done? We thought we had a good schedule, but it turned out to be inaccurate. 2 weeks ago, it become apparent that the job took a lot more manpower than I had planned. So the schedule slipped. Badly.

And my boss came to town, pulled me into a conference room, and told me I was no longer the project manager. My review would suffer, but that's all. I still had a place at the company, I just would get to focus on my day job more. Somebody new would be the project manager.

So - I lose the prestige and visibility of running the project, but I no longer have to work 70 hrs a week. And there's no change in pay. Hmm. Not so bad. On the one hand, the thing I want most in my workplace is to feel like I'm making a positive difference. And I was doing that. I made a mistake, sure, but I had made a lot of good decisions beforehand. And I was not going to be able to walk away from the project. I was too invested in it, and knew too much about it to simply hand it over. So I'm now a major support person for the project - I monitor what's going on, take care of a small subset of tasks as my specific responsibility, ask questions if they need to be asked, and answer questions when I am asked. It's still a full time job for me, and it's not all sunshine and roses for the new project manager, but I'm no longer nauseous with worry. It's no longer my problem.

It's an odd place - I'm very disappointed in how it worked out. I think that given what I knew at the time, I made a reasonable set of assumptions. I did due diligence to check those assumptions, but no one who could have improved them gave me any feedback in time to affect the outcome. At the same time, despite the disappointment, I got to go hiking with Liberty instead of working on Saturday. And I can sleep well. All in all, I'd have rather had both worlds, but given my new set of realities, it's certainly not all bad. Lemonade from lemons.

I learned some very important things about myself and my work world from the experience. Not appropriate for this forum, but important for me and my future.

Book Review: Son of a Witch

2011-02-12T23:35:00.000-08:00

The sequel to Wicked is not its equal. Neither as imaginative nor as gripping, it is nevertheless an excellent reading experience.

Either Mr Maguire had a singularly lonely existence, or he chooses to make his protagonists exceedingly lonely. Liir, the protagonist in this book, is monumentally a loner. More so than his mother ever was. Part of this is his personal feeling of separation - never knowing who his mother was, growing up without any real friends in a mountain castle. Who wouldn't feel out of place in the Emerald City if they grew up in such a solitary situation? But part of it (and this is the best part about the book) is Liir's very conscious self dialog about his own nature. Is he a success? A failure? An obedient servant of the Empire and thus not accountable for what the Empire requires of him? A murderer of children? A magician? Is he even whole?

In a very opposite way to most of the mass-market fiction I read, Liir is very humanly messy. He does not come forth out of the author's head fully formed, a la Zeus or Harry Potter. He's a mess. And it takes him the entire book to get a handle on where to even start with defining who he is.

The book moves along pretty well. Maguire is not bound to put a certain amount of chronological time into a certain amount of pages. There are minutes that take a page, and 9 months that take 20 pages. He slows the book down when the action requires it. Takes some getting used to, but it's very pleasant. And Liir, overall, is a likable character. I wish the best for him, and feel for his background that leaves him so poorly prepared for life among other humans.

The book has 2 major flaws in my mind. One is my puritanism coming through: sex in these books is casual in every sense of the word. Commitment and sex do not go together, fidelity is not something any character strives for. If a spouse is faithful, it's simply by chance. This is not the way the world really works, is it? I don't think it is. But why Maguire chooses to separate commitment from sex is beyond me. I think it's an affectation of this type of fiction, and it saddens me. The other major flaw is that key plot elements just seem contrived. Princess Nastoya knows that Liir can help her, but how he ends up doing it is flagrantly contrived and completely unnatural. "It's the end of the book, and I have to have Liir help her, how can I do that in 5 pages?" Frankly, the whole Nastoya subplot was poorly executed. But this idea of fate pulling the strings and characters unknowingly doing what fate has decreed for them robs the characters of some of their nobility.

A good book, one which makes one think. And that's good, because you then have to sift out the moral issues from the writing issues, and come to a better understanding of the piece as a whole.

Now I need to check out the 3rd installment and complete the series. Time to see what the Thropp 5th Descending will do.

Book Review: Wicked

2011-01-30T21:55:00.000-08:00

I have been building a library since I got a paper route at 12 yrs old. I lugged everything around for 20 years, until I did a purge 2 years ago. I'm more careful now, both in what I buy and what I keep.

That said, I'm a sucker for well-bound books. And I'm a sucker for cheap. And I love musical theatre. So I've been curious about Wicked for a long time, and when Borders had both Wicked and Son of a Witch bound in 1 gorgeous volume for about $10, I couldn't resist. A year later, I've finally finished one of them.

Wicked is set in Oz, during the reign of the Wizard of Oz, and follows the antagonist Elphaba (later known as the Wicked Witch of the West) from her birth to her death. She was born to the family of a country preacher just after the Wizard came to Oz. Frex, her father, was out preaching a lot and her mother was lonely. It is quite certain early in the novel that Frex is not her biological father. She grows up as a misfit - her green skin is unique, her personality too individualistic and honest to fit in with the Munchkin country folk. She spends time in the marshes, in the land of the Quadlings, where the father of her half-sister was from. She spends time at college, grows in horror at the authoritarian regime of the Wizard, and is a thoroughly likable character. Mostly.

The book is gritty. It does not shy away from discussing the nature of evil, sex, infidelity, forgiveness, family drama, murder, civil rights. Main characters die. It is not meant for kids. It is not excessively vulgar, either - if you watch basic cable, you see and hear worse things all the time. But it is an intense, deeply reasoned, and richly imagined book. The plot lines are interesting, if ambiguous (not The Unconsoled, but not Harry Potter, either), the characters are drawn complexly, and the many ambitious plot lines come together quiet well considering that the author has to contend with Dorothy's entrance at a critical juncture in Oz's political history.

Flaws? It's got some. Glinda is not as fleshed-out as I'd like. There's a lot more to her than we get to explore, which is a pity. The book spends a lot of detail on important period in Elphaba's life, and then it moves 7 years. For the way the story is told, it works. This one book really could have been 7 books for all the detail and complexity happening in it. But the one thing that I hated about it, absolutely hated, was that Elphaba's transition from a complex person to someone full of malice is not given adequate treatment. For 95% of the book, she is a sympathetic character, trying to help others and make the world a better place, to fight against the despotism of the Wizard, and never a powerful witch. In the space of 10 pages, she is transformed to someone who sends crows to peck a little girl's eyes out. It's not believable. It's awkward. And it's a shame, because the book is otherwise amazing. Start the transformation 50 pages earlier, and I forgive you, Mr Maguire, but in this form, the ending needs work.

I loved this book. And I'm glad I have the sequel, Son of a Witch, to keep me occupied from time to time when I can spare a few minutes.

Random thoughts for today

2010-10-03T03:41:00.001-07:00

Random thought #1:

My daughter is in 5th grade. 5th grade was the year I started to understand myself and find what I loved. It was the year I did my first play, an elementary-school version of "Midsummer Night's Dream" complete with Elizabethan English. Just less of it. And I'd guess a lot of the innuendo was cut. I lost the script somehow.

At any rate, I was cast as Demetrius, opposite the charming, intelligent, and so very cute Sasha Christy as Helena. Naturally, during the show, I got a massive crush on her. It was an unrequited crush, as demonstrated by one of my favorite memories of that entire year. Tom (as Demetrius) "Spurn me, reject me, only let me follow you!" Sasha (as Sasha, with complete disgust all over her face) "Gross. Do you know what that means?" I honestly had no idea what she was talking about.

I wonder if my daughter will have similar experiences. Ah, 5th grade.

Random thought #2 :

A little bit of "life on earth" perspective. I was sitting in church today, thinking. I thought about going home to my kids, how glad I'll be to see them. My girls have cried because I'm gone. They'll be glad to see me. We've talked on the phone (Google phone is amazing for international travelers, BTW), but it has been 3 weeks since we've seen each other. The reunion will be sweet.

I've been away from my Heavenly Father for 35 years now. I hope that I have been a good enough kid that when I see Him again (a long time in the future), that we'll both be happy to see each other again.

Random thought #3:

I really really really really hope that Katrina lets me take Aria to rehearsal on Monday. But I'll do whatever she wants me to do - I've had plenty of time without little ones the last few weeks. Plus I can use the time to resolder my airplane battery connectors. They need it.

The Criterion for Success

2010-08-29T07:58:00.000-07:00

I am getting older. Thankfully, so are my children. I love the craziness inherent in 4 year-old boys and the instability inherent all of us that comes to the fore so much more often in small children.

But my oldest child is 10 now. As with most of our parenting peers, we’ve tried pretty hard to give her opportunities to grow. Whether that means giving her as little help (and as much encouragement) as we can with her homework, or arranging music lessons or sports classes, we’ve tried to get her input on what’s interesting and do the research to find a good fit for her. In the last 2 years, she’s come into her own as a singer. She started group voice lessons, which doubled as a children’s choir, and really enjoyed it.

Once she realized she liked it, she went on the offensive. She fought (pretty hard) to sing a duet with an older girl for the church Christmas party in 2009 and nailed it in front of 500 people. She put together a solo for her choir’s performance and was excellent. She sings with me sometimes just for fun, and she can stay on the melody while I improvise a harmony.

Then, last Christmas, we got last-minute tickets to The Singing Christmas Tree. Aria had never been to the Keller auditorium before, and she’d never seen a professional-quality musical, either. She liked it. When we went NYC on vacation this year, we saw West Side Story on Broadway. Loved that, too.

So in our “it’s a new school year, what extracuriculars should we arrange for the kids?” conversation a few weeks ago, Katrina and I wondered aloud about the Singing Christmas Tree. With a little help from Google, we found the audition location and time, and that the paperwork to register was supposed to be in the day before. That was the first week of August. For a Dec performance. We submitted the paperwork, spoke to one of the audition judges, and were assured everything was ok.

The audition was last Monday. Aria and I showed up 15 minutes early, right on Tommy time. I always show up early for auditions. We sat and watched as more and more people filed into the room. After a short introduction by the children’s choir director, the parents were sent away, and I left my daughter to her first-ever solo audition. She was purely excited, no nerves at all. And she was very confident.

An hour later, I went back into the room to find her chatting on the hearth with 2 other girls. She was happy with her performance, and we went home, hoping for the best.

Tuesday, Katrina took the other kids out for the afternoon, and Aria chose to stay at home because her foot hurt. Katrina’s email was open on her computer, and an email popped up with news that Aria had been accepted. She called me at work to tell me the news. I cried. What else was there to do? My child had asserted her individual-ness and come out on top.

I am impressed by her maturity. She is ecstatic. I am ecstatic. I am very very pleased that she was chosen for the show. Half of the kids didn’t make it. But I am more proud that she tried. She found something she liked, stuck with it, found she was good at it, and became as accomplished as she possibly could become given the opportunities available to her. Then she saw an opportunity to stretch herself even more, an opportunity to take a risk of rejection. And she took it. That was the real milestone. This was not something her parents could protect her with or influence in any way. We had done what we could to prepare her, now it was out into the wide, cruel world to see how she flew, and if she could land.

Pondering this situation and how to define success, I came to conclude that success can be easily defined in this formula: success = (successful attempts) + (failed attempts). It is no more complicated than that. A life of unmitigated success is a life in which one didn't take many risks.

It is one of the singular challenges of parenthood to prepare our kids for the attempt:

the desire to make the attempt,
opportunities for an attempt
have the ability to self-evaluate the wisdom of the attempt,
have the courage to make the attempt
the equanimity to take success gratefully and gracefully
the maturity to work through a failure to prepare for another attempt

Despite our parenting, Aria made it through. I do consider this her first step into the wide world. But she’s ready for it. All I can say to her is: “You go, girl – you’ve got a lot of living to do.”

Dieting Update

2010-08-02T18:48:00.000-07:00

Many moons ago, I wrote a post about 2 small dietary changes I had made and their initial results. To review:

1) no snacks in my drawer at work

2) severely reduce my sugary drink consumption (no pop at lunch, no choco milk at home)

In 3 months, I lost 15 lbs. Then, in January, I had to go to Phoenix for a 3 month work assignment. I gained 5 of it back. I was ok with that. I got back on the wagon in April, but didn't see much in the way of results. I was biking to work, but not doing much else by way of exercise. Then we had a vacation, immediately followed by a week of the bike in the shop.

When I got the bike back, it was July 6. 25 days until a planned solo century with lots o' climb. So for the first time, I was training hard and had no snacks at the office. Lunch time became very productive. In addition, I took a cue from my big bro, upped my protein intake and downed my bread intake.

Result? Dropped 7 lbs in 4 weeks.

I figured out my basal metabolic rate (which was really handy), how much I was biking, and how much I was eating over the course of a regular week. Guess what? My normal food intake was enough to meet my BMR. So by keeping my food intake steady but upping calories burned, all my exercise was losing fat. And building muscle. Turned out it's really not that complicated.

Now, I'm not dogmatic. When we go out to eat as a family, I'll get what I darn well please. When I go to Taco Bell, I'll get the Big Box Meal. I had a root beer float last night. But on my long bike ride on Saturday (112 miles, over 6000' of climb), I ate 2500 calories and burned 10,000 calories. I also ate a normal breakfast and dinner, for about a net burn of 5,000 calories.

I've still got about 20 lbs around the middle to lose, and I'd like to increase my upper body mass, but I'm on a sustainable path, and that's very exciting.

Now, off to the studio to repair my airplane. Gotta fly!

Aventures in Flying - The Super Cub

2010-06-06T15:59:00.000-07:00

When I was 10 years old (or so), my big brother had a remote-control gas-powered airplane. I thought it was the coolest toy ever invented in the history of chromosomes. Ever since, I have wanted my very own airplane, but not badly enough until about 9 months ago.

The exact date (even the month) is lost in the annals of my mind, but I did a bunch of online reading, and went to the local hobby store. (Insert plug for Hillsboro Hobby here. They are the best.) The guy recommended the Hobbyzone Super Cub, hands down. I put down the money, and soon I was on my deck at home, assembling the behemoth. It has a close to 4' wing span, and 3' body, and looks like an honest-to-goodness airplane to my eyes. I flew it a bit, crashed it a bunch, and repaired it a bit. I took it out flying with my kids last fall, and nose-dived it full-throttle into the ground. The fuselage lost a large chunk of foam, and I repaired it, but it still wasn't flying well. I thought it needed a whole new fuselage, and wasn't willing to shell out the $$.

A close look at the propeller a few months later showed that it was rough where it had hit the ground a few times. I took a hobby knife and cut off the rough edges. Voila! Up in the air! This was just last weekend. I really learned finally how to land the thing, how it turns, the importance of trim - appreciating it as a vehicle instead of a toy. I fell in love with flying.

Wanting to share my joy of flying, the next afternoon I handed the controls to Aria. The first time, she did fine - I gave her the controls while she had plenty of safe airspace. The second time, I gave them to her when we were close to some trees. A sharp turn, a bit of panic, and the plane went full throttle into the ground again. This time, the fuselage broke in half. The decals held it together.

So I'm fully into this hobby, having a lot of fun. I find that there are many many others with Super Cubs that they love. And I took this opportunity for a major repair to explore modifications.

Look for upcoming posts on:

1) Changing connectors

2) tools for modifying foam

3) replacing landing gear

4) the wonders of LiPo

5) Center of gravity in model aircraft

6) modifying the battery box on a Super Cub

7) Using the Veho Muvi to take video from the air

Not that many of you will be interested - frankly it's a rather esoteric, technical topic, but it's a brand-new type of experience for me (I've always been capable this way, but more talented with artsy-fartsy stuff).

Wahoo! Come with me to Gorilla Glue and Dremel Land!

Book Review: Growing Up Bin Laden

2010-05-25T06:54:00.000-07:00

I read a fair amount of current events/political books. This is one of the most enlightening I've ever read (right next to Richard Clarke's Against All Enemies).

The book is the life story of Najwa Bin Laden, Osama's first wife, and that of her fourth son, Omar. The mother and son take turns writing chapters. The book is arranged chronologically, sometimes with Najwa and Omar telling their different takes on the same events. Jean Sasson pops in just a few times to give a more news-oriented view of what happened when Osama's activities are unknown to his wife and son.

It turns out that Osama bin Laden wasn't always a terrorist. He went to one of Saudi Arabia's finest private schools, speaks English (and Pashto and Arabic) fluently, and has a very nice family. He became a jihadist when he was America's hero fighting the Russians in Afghanistan. The story of how he transformed from a nice guy to an extremist is illustrated here. And it turns out that he does have a warped view of the world. For instance, when al-Qaeda bombed the embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, he rejoiced. When cruise came in and destroyed his training camps, he railed against the US, "Why would they kill Muslims? Why would anyone kill Muslims?"

The book is valuable for more than the story of Osama bin Laden. It is ultimately a story about family life in a conservative Muslim culture. Why do Muslims still practice polygamy? How does the husband take care of all his families? How does he interact with his kids? How does a woman in a burqa go shopping? What are her aspirations? It's very enlightening as a primer on all these aspects (and more!) of conservative Muslim life.

And it should be required reading for Americans who vote. We must both a) understand our enemy and b) understand that most people (even his wife and kids) are not our enemies. Read it. It'll do you good. The hardcover was on sale at Freddy's a few weeks ago. Paperback should be out soon.

Book Review: The Host by Stephenie Meyer

2010-04-11T07:38:00.000-07:00

Twilight, it's not. It's significantly better.

The Host refers to an invasion of the body snatchers-type scenario. Aliens invade earth stealthily, taking over human bodies. Some of the human minds don't go away, though, and therein lies the rub. What do you do when a parasite and its host become friends, and belong in both an alien society and a rebel human society?

] The book starts out slowly, or rather, too early in the story. The first hundred pages are essentially back story. We meet a whole cast of characters we won't ever meet again. The idea seems to be to help the reader understand the alien culture better before our hero gets put in with a bunch of humans scrounging for their survival. I am used to reading books that take a while to get going, and I love SF, but this was still a little bit of a slog for me.

The next 500 pages, however, are paced well, deeply charactered, and have a satisfying plot line. It's not hard SF - those looking for some biological way for this to be plausible will have to look elsewhere. Meyer raises some significant questions - is humanity a matter of biology, or a matter of character? Can love be biologically limited? If an alien were to invade earth, stop war and crime completely, solve all of our health problems, and ensure the biological salvation of homo sapiens and the earth's other species, would that necessarily be a bad thing?

I will admit, the ending was a little unsatisfying. Too pat, not powerful enough. I think of the first ending of the book as the end. You'll know it when you get there. It's more powerful. The 2nd ending is for the readers who have to have a Disney-happy ending to their fiction. Nothing wrong with that, just not my preference.

We loved this book - highly recommended.

My son is baptized

2010-04-10T21:59:00.001-07:00

Today was a special day at for our family. Christian turned 8 last month, and April 10 was the day set for his baptism. I've always wanted my kids to get baptized. And I've always wanted it to be their choice - I didn't want them to feel forced, or that it was just expected of them. Someone who is baptized and makes that commitment - to stand as a witness of God at all time, and in all places - has to understand what that means. If you leave that understanding out, you miss the meaning of the covenant completely.

Over the past few weeks, Christian and I have had a lot of talks. Meaningful and deep talks, the kind that kids don't often seek out, and that some parents are afraid to have with their kids. We've talked about the birds and the bees, the meaning of baptism, the Holy Ghost and how it speaks to us. What it means to bear another's burden, to mourn with those that mourn and comfort those that stand in need of comfort. The importance of repentance and getting a clean start.

To Christian's credit, he put serious thought into the decision on whether to be baptized or not. He wasn't sure if he was ready, and he was nervous about this big step. I'm so glad he thought of it that way. In the end, he decided to do it, even though he was nervous. It was a good day for him, I think. The gathering afterward at our house was kinda busy for him; he got in his jammies and konked out without saying goodnight. The guy was tired.

It was also a good day for family. There are ties of blood and ties of love, and the love was running thick around here today. Some childhood friends of my mom's who have been part of my life since I was conceived were here, Grandma Joyce flew up from San Francisco to be with us, Sean and MyLiege and 2 of their 4 kids came (the other 2 were excused absences), Katrina's parents and mine, and sister Avery came, too. Aria gave an excellent talk that she wrote herself and delivered like a pro in front of 100 adults.

A great day. 1 more for God's kingdom. He has entered in at the gate, now we get to help him along the path home.

Book Review: The Entire Percy Jackson Series

2010-03-29T22:51:00.001-07:00

Blech. Erp. Urgh. Gurgle. Can I write any more yucky stomach noises to summarize my love for the Percy Jackson books?

I'm a YA fiction fan. Have been since I was a kid. I recently went back to visit some old favorites, and was widely disappointed. The Black Cauldron? Sexist and predictable. The Dark is Rising? Similar, but less trite. Wizard of Earthsea? Well, that series is actually full of winners. I will keep them prominently displayed to tempt my children into great reads.

The Percy Jackson and the Olympians series has caught fire lately. My daughter's teacher read book 1 to the class. She's loving them so much, she'll stay up until 10 at night to read. She'll grab one title, and her best friend will grab another, and they'll sit in the same room and read. "I like it already," I'm thinking. Then I picked one up as an airplane read.

The book is written about a 12 year-old, just as a 12 year-old would write it. It's supposedly a real-time memoir, which is the book's conceit. And Rick Riordan unfortunately does a wonderful job of capturing the cliched, sarcastic writing of a 12 year-old. Blech.

The issue I have is not the writing style (though that's annoying). It's that the story is also a story from a 12 year-old. I've read the first 3 books. Origin for each book: New York. Keeps the story grounded, sure. Hogwarts. I get it. OK. Destination for book 1: LA. book 2: Bermuda triangle book 3: San Francisco. There are 30-50 pages of setup, then the kids go on a cross-country travel. They get miraculous help at exactly the right time, despite dangerous monsters. From the tiny sneak peek at book 4 that my daughter gave me, book 4 is likewise a NY to west coast trip. I really don't care what monsters they'll meet and defeat next. I want to care about the characters (see my review of The Host) but I just can't. They are unlovable.

I just can't describe the yuckiness here. Vocab is repetitive, phrasing is too predictable. "Characters" is too large a compliment for the names in these books. Characters they are not - they are caricatures. Riordan makes a character untrustworthy and thinks that makes them deep. Good people are good. The camp director makes a show of not liking them but helps out when needed. The enemies are described too powerfully, but fail terribly battling teenagers. It's all just sooooo predictable. I'll slog through them. Just book 4 and 5, and then I'll have to wait a year or 2 for book 6, I hope.

A Wrinkle in Time awaits. That's worth the slog, if we can build some reading momentum. Maybe Earthsea after that. Or Pern. Hmmm....

My First Attempt at Weight Loss

2009-12-10T06:27:00.001-08:00

So my doctor told me in September that I needed to lose my the chub around my middle and gain some muscle mass in my upper body. This meant a diet + exercise. Rrrrrrrr.....

I'd been a certain weight from 18-28, then gained 30 lbs, and had stayed there for the last 7 years. When it comes to weight control, I'm a simple guy. Calories in > calories out = weight gain. The reverse = weight loss. I had made some attempts to lose weight just on the input side, but it never worked. This time I would try both.

1) Avoid empty calories. For me, this meant eschewing soda at lunch completely. And it meant cutting my Nequik consumption from 1 pint/day to 1 pint/2 weeks.

2) Don't have snacks in my drawer at work. If the snacks are there, I eat them. So I finished off what I had, and didn't buy any more. There's still a vending box there, so if I NEED a snack, I can get one. But it's a lot less tempting.

3) Increase salads as part of meals.

4) continue my bike commute. We ended up taking the insurance off my car to force a 1-car situation, and it's working. I bicycle for 40 minutes every single weekday.

5) Add weight lifting. Increases muscle mass, burn some calories while lifting. Plus the muscle mass burns calories just sitting there.

So no major changes - I don't count calories, I don't run for an hour every day, I eat completely normal meals, and I'm not hungry.

Result? Lost 12 lbs in 3 months, increased my upper body muscle mass a little, and I can see it everywhere. My jeans fit better, I feel more confident, and I can lift more than I used to. I was never huge, but I will soon not be an overweight American. Just a couple months to go, and I see my Dr again. I'm going to be happy to see him. And maybe I won't have to get cholesterol meds.

For inspiration, check out this article from Peter Bregman at the HBS site.

A Belated Trip into English Literature: Longfellow

2009-10-28T22:15:00.000-07:00

This is not a book review per se - it is a review of a collection of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's poetry. This is the first book of poetry I have read all the way through. It's embarrassing to say, but it's true. I still have a book of EE Cummings that a dear friend gave to me. It's on my "will read soon shelf". And I actually will, after almost 20 years.

I picked Longfellow to start with because he was accessible. Not too out-there. Not too anything, really. My own poetry is very similar. And there was some famous stuff in it. I wonder if there's a lot of symbolism I'm missing, but for some reason, I don't think there is.

So - overall: Longfellow has a few themes that resonated with his time. One was death, and the idea of life after death. Those always go in pairs. Love is another - always requited in the end. The individual's responsibility to improve his life is a third. Fond looks back at one's younger days is another. These themes continue for 296 pages in this book. By the end, it all sounds trite.

Now, Longfellow didn't go out to be a high-falutin' poet. He was a college teacher of foreign languages who wrote poetry on the side. So he had to sell his stuff, and he did. Give the guy credit for creativity.

High points in this collection: The Falcon of Ser Fedrigo, a lovely O Henry-esque tale of love and sacrifice. Beautiful story. The Builders - simple allegory, easily memorized, good message. The Tide Rises, the Tide Falls - it leaves just one image in the mind, simply and easily conjured up again.

The best thing? The Song of Hiawatha. All of Longfellow's themes come to fruition here in high form. The Song of Hiawatha is long - over 100 pages in my edition. It tells the story of the Native American mythical hero Hiawatha, from his birth to his final journey in his birch-bark canoe into the setting sun. I had heard of this poem before, but I know nothing about it - not how he wrote it, how he researched for it, or how accurate the legends are. But it's full of details of Native American life - how to strip the bark of the birch tree, the respect the natives had for the tree that gave its life for the canoe. The culture-changing nature of corn cultivation. The stories of the North, South, East, and West winds, the calls of the birds. He treats the culture with a lot more respect than I thought he would (this is the mid 19th Century, remember), and I loved the rythmic pounding of the poem. He'll say an idea, and then repeat it slightly differently to give the idea a different tone, and the tension builds that way.

The most disappointing? Either Evangeline or The Village Smithy. For being as famous as it is (Under the spreading branches of an oak tree, the village smithy stands...) it packs little punch. I wonder why it's so famous - it doesn't stand out in this collection at all as being something special. Evangeline is just a ridiculous premise, and sexist to boot. It's promising to start with - the young couple is to be married, but they are separated and sent to America under the king's orders. The he lives a life, and she spends her whole life pining away after him. And finally, they meet by chance as he lays dying from the flu. Come. On. Spare me. Not interesting in any way, I just had to plow through that one.

Overall - Longfellow is a good read. Read it aloud to your kids. Then you get a two-fer. If you don't got kids, skip Evangeline but read the rest. Especially Hiawatha. You'll never forget the shu-shu-ga.

Scripture Story Book

2009-10-20T20:28:00.000-07:00

For several years, as we've read and studied the scriptures together, I've translated them from King James English to modern kids English. The exercise is fun for me, and brings the characters to life for my kids. So it's time to write it down, and leave it in the cloud.

I'm no scholar - I've done my study, went to seminary as a high schooler, etc, but I don't know Latin or Greek, and I won't get into esoteric stuff. The whole idea here is to make the stories come alive. I can do that. There will be a mix of OT, NT, and Book of Mormon. Each post will be labeled as the chapter, and verse numbers will be scattered through the paragraph.

Enjoy. I hope I will.

Flu-enabled Book Review: Lone Survivor

2009-09-27T11:31:00.000-07:00

My son shared his sickness with me this week, so I spent 2 days sick from work. When I'm not feeling well, I read.

Just by chance, I had been lent a copy of Lone Survivor by Marcus Luttrell the day before. It is the true story of Operation RedWing, an attempt to capture someone Marcus pseudonymous calls Ben Sharmak. 4 SEALS go into the Afghan mountains. 1 survives.

The book is comprehensive of the experience - he spends 2 chapters on SEAL training, some more time on life in Baghdad and his first month in Afghanistan. Then he dives into Operation RedWing. From the initial insertion to the firefight with Sharmak's army, and then Marcus' final capture by friendly Afghans who save his life and grant him sanctuary.

There are stereotypes a-plenty: the tough, cussing, lovable SEALS, the wimpy liberal media, the evil Taliban. There isn't a lot of gray in Luttrell's world. Maybe he doesn't do nuance. But the man is tough, loves his buddies, and loves his country. He needs this "I am invincible and my cause is right" attitude to do his job well, and it's a job that needs doing. And he doesn't hate all Afghans. He's just so used to interacting with Afghans that he's supposed to fight that it takes him a while to figure out that the friendly people are actually friendly.

The book is really informative, engrossing (although his arrogance bugged me sometimes), and makes you think. Operation RedWing went awry when the SEAL team was surprised by 3 Afghan goatherds and a flock of goats. The unarmed goatherds surrendered and waiting while the SEALs discussed their options. Kill them now and get out to save themselves; let them go and hope the goatherds didn't tell anyone about them and get out. Option 1 meant almost certain trial for murder back home. Option 2 meant that they all might die. Evidently, tying them up was not an option.

If you don't mind constant profanity, this is as good of a first-hand account of a SEAL operation as you're likely to ever read. I came away from it changed.

Concert Review: Casting Crowns

2009-09-26T06:26:00.000-07:00

I'm generally not a Christian Rock listener. I know that God is great, and sure I love Him, but music can say so much more about our journey on earth. It was at first with skepticism that I listened to Casting Crowns about a year ago. They turned into one of my favorite bands.

Casting Crowns is a 7-person ensemble: 3 guitars, lead vocalist, piano, drums, and violin. They all work in youth ministries in Atlanta. Being a band is a secondary thing for them. Their music is viscerally real - you can tell when you listen to them that these songs are from real experiences. And they're good. The lyrics are not overly predictable, the melodies are not too predictable, either. The performance is tight - what you hear on the album is what you hear on the stage.

Stained Glass Masquerade starts off with, "Is there anyone that fails? Is there anyone that falls? Am I the only one in church today feeling so small?" and goes on to deal with the facade we so often put up at church despite the turmoil in our lives. The Voice of Truth tells the story of the lead singer's struggles with dyslexia and ADD, "...and the waves look down and they laugh at me, reminding me of all the times I've tried before and failed" and he vows that because "the voice of truth tells me a different story, the voice of truth says 'do not be afraid'", he will listen and obey the voice of truth.

These are heart-rending, and strengthening stories that have helped Katrina and I to reconnect with each other and get better perspective on our lives.

The concert was great. It was at the Rolling Hills Community Church in Tualatin. It seats a little over 2,000 people and it was nearly a sellout crowd. Brenton Brown opened. I didn't know any of his stuff, and most of it was praise songs. But some of them were really nice. He played a subdued 40-minute set, and Casting Crowns came out. There was a lot of good music, some genuine plugs for Global Vision, some explanations for where songs came from, and some preaching. It was a really great mix - entertaining, uplifting, awesome.

We'll go to their next show in the area, too. It had better be soon!

Mortality and Sugar

2009-09-19T22:47:00.000-07:00

I had a physical 2 weeks ago. The blood work came back, predictably, with high cholesterol. I'd had the diagnosis before, but I had 2 infants, school, and work to deal with and I put it off. With Katrina's consent.

This time, I have no excuses. I am known in the office for having a desk drawer piled to the brim with snacks. I'm a little overweight by medical standards, but perfectly normal by American standards. Nonetheless, it was time to lose those extra 30 pounds.

Directions from the doctor: gain upper body muscle mass, change my diet to low-fat and low carb. Come back in 6 months for a retest. Goal: reduce/remove belly fat, reduce bad cholesterol to more reasonable level. Given that calories consumed - calories burned = weight lost/gained, I resolved to work on both sides of the equation.

1) add some weight routine to my bike commute. Slow start on this, but I've been off the weights for a few months

2) reduce snack consumption at work. No soda at work this week, haven't opened my Oreos, and cut my Hershey mini-bar and cashew/cranberry consumption in half

3) reduce high fat/high calorie portions in meals. I've substituted salads and fruit for larger portions of entrees.

Results: I am shocked, SHOCKED by the difference in my concentration level at work. I'm getting more done with higher quality. I used to grab some sugary thing to "get going", but now I realize that the constant sugar buzz made thinking simply impossible. I'm able to deal with a low-level hunger pang for longer. I don't know if I've lost weight this week. I'm going to give this particular lifestyle a few weeks to see if it makes any difference in my Dr's goals, and then I'll start to weigh in. I'll go more aggressive if I need to at that point.

So I guess the big shock is that sugar is bad. Lay off it, America! It only brings you down!

September 11th in Perspective

2009-09-11T11:48:00.000-07:00

8 years ago this morning, I woke up, got ready for work, kissed my wife and baby girl goodbye and, humming to myself, plopped into my black 1990 Ford Taurus to go to work in Silicon Valley. The first things I heard out of the radio were simply unbelievable. NPR was reporting that airplanes had run into skyscrapers in NY.

At the office, we had 2 TVs tuned to the news. I watched one of the towers crumble on live TV. I was struck with horror, and thought to myself, "This will be known as some kind of terrible Tuesday forever." I had watched people die on TV. It made my skin crawl to realize it.

The unity and grief I felt were real and visceral. I was shell-shocked for the rest of the day, and took several weeks for my life, even on the left coast, to feel normal again. But normal was different - there was a war in Afghanistan and the whole world was behind us. Terrorism had suddenly become something that did not just happen in far away places any more.

Over the past 8 years, I've put 9/11 in a long list of obvious tragedies that never should have happened: Stalin starving the Ukrainians, the Holocaust, Pearl Harbor, the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the firebombing of Tokyo, Chernobyl, Rwanda. Those were all events that had a date. And most of them get press coverage. I've also added a long list of individual tragedies that do not receive similar attention: deaths from diabetes, drunk driving, child abuse, addiction, torture.

I will never have as deep a connection with 9/11 as I do with drunk driving. When I was working as an interpreter, I got a call from the Japanese consulate one evening. I had to call the family of an exchange student and tell them their daughter was not going to survive the night. I met them in the hospital later to discuss taking their child off life support. Death due to drunk driving is 100% preventable. It kills thousands of people each and every year, not just once. I have a similar personal connection with cancer and mental illness.

I do not expect anyone else to share my personal connections with these issues. Everyone has a life story that speaks to them uniquely. In my life story, 9/11 was a major event. Hearing a father wail in agony when I told him his daughter would not live was life changing. Talking a dear friend through a suicide attempt was life-changing.

So I don't begrudge people their desire to keep 9/11 as a private day of grief. In their life perspectives, that will always be a defining moment.

For me, who has been touched much more strongly by other life events, please allow me to put 9/11 in my own life perspective. A tragedy, certainly. But over 100,000 people have died from drunk driving in the last 8 years. 21,000 people die each year from lack of health care. Do 2,9993 individuals who died on the same day overshadow the same thousands that die on individual days? In my life perspective, they do not.

So think of 9/11 in your way, and I'll think of it in mine. We will probably never agree. And that's okay. We've lived different lives.

Book Review: The Final Encyclopedia by Gordon R Dickson

2009-09-08T07:06:00.000-07:00

This is my first book by Gordon R Dickson, so I offer no judgments on him as an author. This is one of the last books of the Childe Cycle, a series that Dickson started early in his career and hadn't finished 30 years later.

The story involves Hal Mayne, a remarkable 16 year-old who was found as an orphan and raised by 3 tutors from very different societies. Dickson posits the homogeneity and mutual exclusivity of these societies as a given - the Dorsai are all good fighters, the Friendlies are all religious fanatics, the Exotics are all wimpy rich philosophers. The people on other inhabited planets are not really part of the story. There is a group of people called the Others that are gradually taking control of human societies, and Bleys Ahren's goal is to stop humanity's evolution so that he and the Others can control it. Hal's job, obviously, is to stop Bleys from his nefarious plot.

Hal is a very likable character. I did not like Eragon early on his journey. Hal is never petulant, though, and doesn't complain. He is extremely fortunate in that meets the exact people he has to meet to survive at every step of the way. By the end of the book, Hal is in his early 20s. This is just one part of an epic story - there is no final showdown at the end. That must be in the next book. Dickson lets Hal take some hard knocks, and he is not immediately well-liked. He comes through each right of passage pretty well, though.

This is a largely intellectual book - the ideas and societal flows are just as important to the plot as the life-and-death action sequences. There are large sections of bloviating - page after page of expository, reminiscent of Atlas Shrugged. The most important thing any character seems to do is give a 10-minute speech to a large audience. This will obviously motivate them to give up everything they have for the speaker's cause.

Despite the novel's obvious oversimplifications and bloviatingness, though, I found myself drawn to it time and again. I wasn't sad when it was over - but if it had continued I would have kept reading. Overall, a good book, a coherent book, and a book with characters we can like even though the minor characters are caricatures. It is also an interesting thought experiment on the future of humanity - this is a future that sounds somewhat plausible, and that is what makes it worth the effort.

Who is sitting around your table?

2009-08-31T15:52:00.000-07:00

There are certainly ties of blood that bind us. There are certainly ties of friendship that bind us. There are certainly ties of love that bind us. Who is to say which is stronger?

I've been extremely blessed over the course of my life to encounter wonderful people with whom I've had familial relationships. The first I can remember is Grandma Berry. I had Grandma Farnsworth (paternal), Grandma Triplett (maternal) and Grandma Berry. It's just how the world was. Grandma Berry had a huge berry farm (there's a story behind how she got the name), and we'd go see her a few times a year. She's my mom's best high school friend's mom.

When I was 12, my brother moved from Cheney, WA, to Canby. I didn't know it at the time, of course. We became brothers when we were 15, probably. More on Sean later. About that same time, I gained another set of parents, Paul and Carol Hawkins.

After Katrina and I married (how similar is this to a true, deep, and love-filled friendship?) I gained another set of parents and a brother through her. Then I gained a daughter, and then we found yet another grandma after we moved to California. Even though we've been gone for more years than we lived there, Grandma Joyce comes up for births and baptisms, and I meet with her whenever I can when I'm in the Bay Area for business.

Now that Aria is entering 4th grade, she has friends who come over often. They sit with our family for dinner, do scripture study with us, go to church with us, help clean the house when we're all cleaning the house. This is life at the Farnsworth's: if you are in our home, you're family. We love you, we'll take care of you, and you're always welcome.

What brought this line of thought on is a magical moment in our camping trip last weekend. Sean and his 2 boys, Aria, Christian, and I hiked a few miles into Marion Lake. Just as it was when we were teens, Sean and I rarely have anything to figure out. When we're together, our kids are shared, food is shared, frisbees, equipment, time, everything is shared. It's so natural and easy that I don't have to even think about stepping on toes. The kids understand and catch it. On our way home, we stopped at Al's for dinner (Mill City - highly recommended). There were 6 chairs around the table. Clockwise, it was me, Sean, Aria, Djeryd, Christian, Eric. Our families were perfectly blended, every other person a Hawkins or a Farnsworth. Everyone was happy, making jokes and being together.

And nobody even noticed that it might be odd. This is who we were: a loving family. I'd do anything for those kids. And Sean would, too. And they'd all help each other equally.

Who is at your table? And how are they joined to you? Blood? Love? Friendship? Can you decide which are more important?

That Government Bureaucrat is Not Some Zany Villain - She's My Mom

2009-08-31T14:25:00.000-07:00

When Republicans get on the media to talk about healthcare reform these days, they always take pains to insult my mother. Yes, my very own mommy. For she is the person they have cast into the role of death-deciding villain.

My mother works for the State of Oregon in the Department of Senior and Disabled Services. She has a degree as a Medical Assistant, which she uses every day as she helps people who are elderly and/or disabled to get the assistance they need to survive. She is a government bureaucrat. She is not a nameless, faceless villain who tries her best to deny people the help they need to survive. Admittedly, she is disappointed by how often the system is exploited. But she is also gratified that she can help as many people as she can.

Have you met people who live on welfare? I have. I have relatives who have abused the system their whole lives. I have other relatives who really really tried to make it, but needed the stopgap to get back up on their feet and become self-sufficient. Will any social-good system be exploited? Certainly. There are certainly people who receive charity from churches and nonprofits who could make it on their if they cared to.

Does that mean that we should stop these programs? I say no. There are too many examples I know of people really need help. My church teaches that when someone is in need, we shouldn't blame the needy person. We should give if we can. And if we can't, we should be able to honestly tell ourselves, "I can't help this person, but I would if I could."

For instance, I know someone very well who has serious health issues. She was unable to keep a stable job, and of course unable to afford health insurance. The situation wasn't one she chose, and it wasn't for lack of trying. Thankfully, she has been able to pull through it, and now is glad to contribute her tax dollars to helping others in the same situation. Another family member paid into these programs her whole life, and never expected to be on the receiving end. Through a terrible chain of events that tore her life apart, she depends on help from the government to survive.

No matter the program, there will be a pool of money, people who want the money, and people who decide how the money gets distributed. Some people who want the money won't deserve it. Some people who distribute the money will make bad choices. But that's what we got, because we aren't omniscient. We can leave someone with lupus to die on the street, or we can help them. It certainly isn't any individual's choice to become sick.

So don't blame the bureaucrats. They're not the bad guys here. The bad guys in the health care debate are those who refuse to be the Good Samaritan. Wasn't the guy who made up that story a Christian? Somebody named Jesus?

Movie Review: The Message

2009-08-24T12:14:00.000-07:00

As part of my ongoing study of Islam, I was loaned a copy of "The Message". I started it 2 months ago, and got back to finish it yesterday. It's not a typical film, so I'll start with some context for how the film was made.

The film's genesis was to make a movie in English about the prophet Muhammad (hat tip to Wikipedia). Islam, however, forbids visual and audio depictions of Muhammad or his immediate family. So you never see his face or hear his voice. The film had many muslims as advisors to ensure its accuracy. The film's initial Hollywood backers dropped out, and the film ended financed by Muamman al-Quadafi. Yes, that one. The film's release sparked protests, and even a huge hostage crisis in the US.

On to the film: it was released in 1976. Anthony Quinn plays Muhammad's uncle Hamza. The acting style is definitely melodramatic, so don't expect a "Shadowlands" kind of subtlety in the acting. The script is also stunted in the same way. It's too bad, really, that such a great story was taken over the top this way. So if you're looking for entertainment, I'd not recommend this movie.

The movie, however, is wonderful as a cultural and religious education. For starters, it is the only movie about Muhammad that Muslims are allowed to watch. That's quite an accomplishment in and of itself. It was filmed in Libya and Morocco, also important to give it authenticity. The film depicts very clearly the torture and execution of the early Muslims. Not too bloody, and the camera turns away as the spear goes into the victim's chest. But you hear it, and this stuff happened. Somebody actually died that way for their faith.

We learn that Islam's call that everyone be equal upset the social order: no more slaves, no more peasants. That Islam's requirement that all Muslims be brothers upset the tribal system of distributing justice. The guys in charge were very happy to stay that way, thank you very much. The idea that common people should learn to read aligned all of Mecca's powerful people against the Muslims, and very nearly stamped it out. We also learn that even at its beginnings, Islam was a religion of peace, the same as it is today.

It's not a popcorn movie - I'd consider it a real-time documentary of Islam's beginnings. It should be required viewing for all US voters, though. The value of some measure of understanding on Confucian, Buddhist, Hindu, and Muslim ways of thinking is invaluable. In this time in world history, we all owe it to each other to try to understand the world at large. The steps we take today and in the next 15 years will echo for the next century. Let's not waste it.

A Belated Trip Into English Literature: Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator

2009-08-24T11:50:00.000-07:00

I have very fond memories of Mrs Brockart, my 2nd grade teacher, reading "James and the Giant Peach" to us. I was a Roald Dahl fan for life. Turns out I didn't read anything of his myself until last year, when I burned through "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory". It was a winner, so I picked up a bunch of used paperbacks at Powell's. James and the Peach? Witches? Yep and yep.

Today's review is "Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator", predictably the sequel to the Chocolate Factory. It is a fanciful and entertaining read. It is also almost completely nonsensical. Not the "The Unconsoled" kind of nonsensical, but a "These are humans in this story, but nothing in here makes any sense whatsoever" kind of nonsensical. I liked it, once I got on for the ride.

The book is really a series of chronological vignettes, with no plot line, climax, or denouement. Remember the essential elements of a story from jr high? Forget them. The book is fun to read, but not engrossing, and easily forgotten. There are pieces (vicious Knids, Wonka-vite) that will stay with me. And Dahl's poetry is just wondrous. But there are no life-lessons to be learned here, no deeper meaning to ruminate on, and no characters that are complete enough to connect with.

My take-away: I hope that somedy I can write some poetry as uncluttered from reality as the gems in this book. It's worth the read just for that.

A Belated Trip Into English Literature: Fahrenheit 451

2009-08-05T12:40:00.000-07:00

Welcome to today, class! The pieces of Bradbury's classic are immediately available here and now: flat TVs that take up whole walls, TV programs filled with characters who really do, say, and are nobody in particular. Where children are taught to read, but nothing is ever printed. Where people who are wealthy prey on the poor and don't care about it even if they know about it.

Paper burns at 451 deg Fahrenheit. The protagonist's job is to burn books where he finds them, until he realizes that the current state of affairs is no way to live at all. He turns on the system by degrees, losing his entire way of life and gaining a new one.

Bradbury paints his verbal portraits in bold strokes - mixing words together to get his effect, grammar notwithstanding. At times it comes a bit too quickly - the most momentous moments in the book go by in a blur of a few sentences. He takes quite a bit longer to describe how a character feels at a single given moment.

I loved how he set up the book, and the first half is a really great read. It's intriguing, complicated, and has so many parallels to the media-marinated world Americans live in. The last half has a lot of physical action, and Bradbury leaves too much to the imagination in too many places. It's still cool. A predictable denouement, probably more so because of the post-Bradbury imitators than that Bradbury was predictable. I would have liked the book to be longer because the ending wasn't neat. It is one big loose end that needs attention.

The book isn't long, it goes by quickly, and it has a lot of lessons for us as we travel down the slippery slope of life lit by backlit screens. Read it, and especially make your teenagers read it.

Next: Ulysses (for real. Yeah. But give it a few months, ok? It's super-dense.)

A Belated Trip Into English Literature: Animal Farm

2009-07-24T21:49:00.000-07:00

I was not in AP English in high school. My university English consisted of a few composition courses and a playwriting course. But I've always considered myself well-read. In the last few years, it's become clear that I wasn't well-read, I had just read a lot of stuff.

So it's time to step back, visit Dickens, Faulkner, Joyce, Carroll and company. The first step was George Orwell's Animal Farm. I read 1984 in high school, and moved on from George Orwell. But I have kept a copy of Animal Farm for the future. Which was this week.

It's a diminutive book - just over 100 pages in the copy I have. The story is simple: assuming that farm animals could talk, what would happen? The story follows the animals as they overthrow the farmer and run their own society. As it happens, the first idea is to run the place as a commune. Before long, the animals that lead the rebellion over the farmer turn into cruel taskmasters themselves.

The allegory to totalitarian thinking is intentionally obvious - Orwell only uses the allegory to give his theories about the origins of totalitarianism the veneer of fiction. It's not far-fetched, and matches the morphing of totalitarian states from peasant rebellions to despotism in realy history as far as I can tell. The book is not complex. It is not involved. It does not have stunningly emotional moments. But it is a little chilling.

I also see many shared elements with Clavell's The Children's Story, which chronicles in about 50 large-type pages the Soviet invasion of the US. Both are worthy reads - both to understand the thinking of 1930s and 1980s America, the dangers of conformity and oligarchy (are you listening, GE?), and the poison of complacency.

Some animals may be more equal than others. And that truck driving away? It really is the butcher truck, no matter how many times FOX tells you it's the ambulance.

Next up: Farenheit 451

Movie Review: Nacho Libre

2009-06-26T18:20:00.001-07:00

I was extremely surprised by this movie. I expected something more like Napoleon Dynamite, and I'm glad it was so very different. I usually hate vehicle movies - once you've seen 1 Adam Sandler movie, you've seen them all. Once you've seen 1 Jim Carey comedy you've seen them all. Carey's dramatic stuff is different. So I was very skeptical, but my brother told me a year ago that this was a great one. So I took the plunge.

Premise: the movie's premise is perfect - original, based in reality, and just odd enough to be funny by itself. It's neither ludicrous nor predictable.

Acting: once you accept the premise and throw any ideas about reality away, the acting perfectly fits the stage that is set. Nacho is a friar who secretly wants to be a wrestler. Somewhere along the way, he gets to fulfill his dream. But he is conflicted when his fame and money get in the way of his priestly duties. And the beautiful nun (that has amazing hair and makeup) is tempting, too. He's a conflicted good-hearted soul, as are all the other characters. Jack Black (the only marquee name in the film).

Nobody over-acts, which is easy to do in a straight comedy. There is no hint of Monty Python-style acting here. It's very normal, easy to watch. Natural.

Directing: this film was directed with a light touch - nothing about it is heavy-handed. The director really gets out of the way and lets the movie happen. I'm sure this is difficult to do.

Cast: perfectly cast. Nobody in the cast looks like a movie star except the nun. And that is as it should be.

So I loved this movie. I haven't written much about it. What makes it different? It's a comedy that is not in a race to deliver one-liners at a gallop. This movie makes you laugh, but you have to wait for it. And it's a pleasant wait. It's like a walk through a forest teeming with wildlife - it's a nice place to be, and then from time to time you are surprised by something, and it's wonderful. Also, I love the fact that I can put this movie on for my 3 and 4 year-olds and know that it's entirely safe. No swearing, nothing sexual. Remarkable restraint in a comedy of any ilk.

So it's a gorgeous film, and I hope more are made to the same standards. Time to go watch it with my kids again!

A return to notes: Sanford, Jackson, Fawcett, Politics

2009-06-26T17:51:00.000-07:00

I realized as I was looking for my position paper on Global Warming today that I hadn't written a note in a long time. so here are some thoughts to get out of the way before I start posting about Mexico and how awesome it is to be a kidless couple for just a week to recharge.

Sanford: I know what Sanford is going through in many ways. It's obviously a tragic situation and a whole host of poor decisions belong solely to him. I have definitely noticed a different tone with him than I did with Spitzer or Clinton, though. In both cases of Dems, Republicans screamed for their resignations. The same standard does not apply to Sanford for some reason, even though it is clear by now that he used taxpayer funds to partially finance his dalliance. Definite double standard here, frustrating that there are so few self-aware Republicans to cast Sanford's sin in the same light as Clinton's or spitzer's.

Jackson: Jackson had a bunch of hits - the first song I ever remember hearing on a boom box was "Thriller" on the bus in 2nd grade. Those big 4th graders sure listened to weird music. Otherwise, like so many others, I feel for his personal life and respect his ability to take the pop music world by storm.

Fawcett: I'm a little too young to have been very involved with her. I'm very glad she took her battle with cancer public. It seems that she's done it with class, though I haven't read or seen anything she's done.

Obama: overall, he's been working very hard to fulfill his mandate. He campaigned on healthcare reform, energy, environmental stewardship, transparency, and being bold. Nothing is perfect of course, but given this imperfect political world, he's done really well. My biggest disappointment: he has not moved nearly aggressively enough to restore lawful treatment of terror suspects. No more torture is good, closing Gitmo is good. Retaining the "right" to detain people for indefinite periods of time without putting them on trial is very bad. Keeping the pictures secret that the Federal courts has ordered released is also bad. He promised transparency, let's get some.

Life: life is good. Had a fabulous vacation with just Katrina, and the kids had a blast with their grandparents. work continues apace. Way more on the vacation in the next few days as I blog (with pictures!) about it.

I finally got it right - after 10 years

2009-05-10T15:53:00.001-07:00

Mother's Day has always been a challenge for me. Not more than anyone else, I know, but still: I've always tried to be very good at anything I did, and I wasn't getting Mother's Day right.

I think it revolved around my selfishness. I've learned a lot about that side of myself over the last year, and worked to overcome it. So this year, I feel like I finally gave Katrina the tribute she deserved as my companion in life and raising our children. It turned out that the dollar amount wasn't important at all. It really was the thought and the effort that counted.

This year, I thought and planned for a few weeks, and it worked out really well. I got the motorhome ready to go (de-winterized, checked out, packed) and got sitters for the kids, and took her away on Friday for a night at Cannon Beach. We did fun, no-stress stuff, got home Saturday and she wasn't ready for the piece I prepared for the recital. Another good surprise.

It was all about her - I got flowers on Tuesday, and didn't even get her a card. But I think this weekend will be one she'll always remember fondly.

10 years, 10 Mother's Days. And I finally got one right.

On Lanscaping (the verb)

2009-05-07T13:08:00.000-07:00

Last night I got home from work and was feeling edgy. Usually that makes me either bury my face in a book or bury my brain in a game of Red Alert 2.

I chose to put on some shorts and work in the yard instead. It was such a good choice. We were trying to get a major remodel done, and this week the loan was denied. Not enough equity. So we decided to put our energy into the back yard. We have a very very very long list of things on the yard to do list, and it's high time the to-do list shortens up.

I went to the shed, where I had stowed the stump-digging tools: an old shovel, a flat crow bar, a hand saw, and a sledge hammer. Toting them off to the back fence line, I looked at the sky above and the mud below. It was breezy, and the rain had been off and on all day. I dug. And when I hit a root, I'd clear the area with the crow bar (to dig with), and then saw through the root. Then I'd whack the trunk with the sledgehammer and see what root needed attention next. It's therapeutic. And I'm starting to understand people who say that. I still don't understand why, but it is.

In a little over an hour I had another stump out. I carried it over to the hard debris bin, and now I don't have to think about that particular lump of twisted wood ever again. Nice. I've been thinking about those lumps of twisted wood for 2 years now.

So now I've got the bug - 46 stumps to go, lots of roto-tilling, a fence to repair/replace. Katrina bought a Costco play structure this morning. We'll remove the old barkdust under our current play structure, redo the ground, build a play house, maybe put in a sport court. Evening are sounding really pleasant.

Book Review: The Golden Compass (or Atlas Shrugged for kids)

2009-04-29T06:41:00.000-07:00

I picked up an omnibus volume of Philip Pullman's "His Dark Materials" trilogy a little over a month ago. I finished it last night.

Story: this is an alternate history with mythical/religious elements. The time is now, but the last 300 years are very different from our last 300 years. The church is powerful, technology is stagnant, and powerful forces are at work. In steps Lyra Bellacqua, a precocious 12-year old girl.

The story follows Lyra and her companions through parallel worlds (each similar to but a little different from our own). The social/religious fabric is rich and complex. There is enough detail about it to get a sense of it, and enough tidbits of information thrown in here and there that it makes it seem real. You know how a good author has trouble deciding which parts of their world to not write about, not trouble making the book long enough to sell? Pullman is one of those. There are hundreds of stories he could tell about this universe he's created.

The main characters are compelling, but oddly so: they are miniature versions of Ayn Rand's characters in The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged. They are able instantly to tell if a person they meet is worthy of their friendship or not, and they are always right. They are able to get out of any situation by the force of their own will. Their eyes are intense, so that other people are afraid of them because of how inadequate they'll feel. And they are going about the business of completely reversing the order of the world.

The books are engrossing, the story is fabulous and deep, and some parts of it make you want to cry. It is not, despite what you may have read, an anti-God or anti-religious book. In its alternate world, the Church (always with capital letters) is repressive and seeks only to dampen people's spirits and kill the joy in the world. It does reflect the author's atheistic view, and if his view of religion in general were accurate then I suppose it could be subversive. The thing is that Pullman's vision of Christianity does not at all match with what I live. It is an alternate reality, and will remain so.

I highly recommend these books - they're a great experience. I'd put them next to the InkHeart series. More serious than Peter and the Starcatchers. Less grown-up (and more, in some ways) than Twilight.

On my first piano performance since 1982

2009-03-05T11:32:00.000-08:00

For FB readers, you can read this note with normal formatting at http://kermitisking.blogspot.com.

I'm taking piano lessons at the Hoffman Academy. It's relatively new, run by a young guy named Joseph Hoffman. The staff is great - well-educated, friendly, talented, and engaged in the local music scene. Joseph has done some arrangments for the PMCO, Dave Thomas is published as a researcher specializing in Russian music, Becca is part of a band that has paying gigs. It's a good and fun place.

The culture is laid-back in a certain sense - nobody makes you feel bad if you didn't make any progress that week. But it's intense in that the staff will take you as far as you are willing to go. These are pros who really really love what they do, and it shows. Part of the experience includes performance opportunities. There is the recital every term, and there is also a "come together" week every month or so. This provides some cost-reduction (and free time) for the academy, as they provide 2 teachers for a group of 4-6 students. But the value-add is that the students play for each other. It's very informal, and everyone just plays what they've been working on.

I'm rather outclassed at this point. I'm the only man taking lessons there (most are children, as you'd expect), and there are 4 women who take lessons there. All of them are vastly more capable than I am. The first student to play did a Bach innovation (I think), #10. Not flawless, but very good. My first thought was, "Holy cow, the lady can play!" I took out my little Bartok piece (get it here, this is a great site), #1 of his book for children. After saying how new I was to this a few times, I played/stumbled through it. I wasn't as nervous as I might have been. It is a difficult piece for me - both hands attacking different rythms and changing hand positions. And I wasn't perfect at it. But it was good enough given that I'd only had it for 6 days. The response was positive - we spent a little time going through it, we all played through it to give it some musicality. And then it was time for the next student to go, and she did some crazy Beethoven that was extremely technical. Amazing.

So it was a good experience - I'll be less nervous for my next session since I know what to expect. And I'll spend a little time finding a piece that fits me better. The Bartok was ok, but I'll need something that uses my voice, too. I'm a singer at heart, and a piano going without vocals just sounds lonely to me. Time to have fun with it and claim this art form as my own as I have with vocal performance and theatrical performance.

Life is to be lived - forget that, and you might was well give up the habit.

How Things Have Progressed...

2009-02-23T21:07:00.001-08:00

...with work, family, and life.

Work

I had 2 people move to a different department, and was able to fill their spots with 2 more excellent people from other departments. A lot of people applied, and all were qualified for the positions. I had the luxury of balancing technical ability, personality, accomplishments and potential all at once. In the end, I wished I'd had 6 spots. I would have been very happy to take my top 6 candidates.

It was a true gut check. I had known several candidates since I was a newbie to my company. Some I'd worked together with projects, and some had mentored me. Some I'd taught Japanese to a few years ago. In the end, I realized that my company pays me to manage its money wisely. And the best investment of its money was to invest in the 2 people I chose. 1 of them I'd known for a while but had never been directly involved with, and the other I had never heard of. Not being able to tell some friends whom I think the world of that I'd be able to offer them a position was difficult. But as a manager, it was the best decision for me to make.

Family

The kids are getting older (as they tend to do), and each is entering a different age bracket. Aria is becoming a tween. She speaks intelligently, can reason, deal with disappointment well, and likes to explore. There are still too many times when she clings to a preconceived notion and won't listen to a new one. But she's getting better at it. The biggest struggle we have now (thank goodness this is our biggest one!) is that when she gets a redically new type of homework assignment (like her first book report) she is so decided that she doesn't get it that she won't listen and engage as we try to help her understand it.

Christian is getting better and better at reading - you can't quite see his face light up with it yet, but he's very very close. If we don't push him, I think some day soon he'll come to us and say, "I read this whole book!"

Libby is finally leaving the toddler stage and becoming a little girl. She wants someone to play with, and enjoys playing house.

Jakers is, probably because of how unavailable Katrina and I have been, a holy tornado. He can talk really well, but the boy will grab anything he can find, open it, and eat it. Tonight, we found that he had opened (and eaten!) a new stick of deodorant. It wasn't on his breath, though. He says he ate it. We haven't found it anywhere else.

Life

With interest rates low and a family that is getting bigger (if not more numerous), it seemed like the right time to take advantage of the opportunity to do an addition. So we're looking at adding 1300sf. The drawings are in progress, and if the financier thinks the new work will appraise high enough, we'll be in business. 2 weeks for the drawings, 2 weeks for the financing, 4 weeks for the permits, and 3 months until project completion. Assuming there aren't big problems with the first 3 steps.

The Morning Stars is still a blast. We're at 6 members now, and watching our capabilities grow has been lots of fun. They're great guys to sing with. We warm up with the hymnal each week, and it seems that more and more often we're at performance quality on our first run through. Which is cool, especially when we're reading something new.

Piano lessons are fun as well. It's a little humbling to go back to beginner level. I was secretly hoping that I would get something more difficult and work on it longer to improve my skills. Turns out that it's best to do it from the beginning as a beginner. But I'm getting better. And now Aria and I have some duets to play, and our skills are improving quickly. Yay! Soon I'll be 2-handed at the piano.

One more thing: I've had a few plastic bags of old family photos (of my uncles in the military in the 50s) and I scanned them all recently. Really cool. I'm getting the scanned and printed versions ready to pass around at this year's family reunion so my uncles and aunts can comment on them.

Sesquicentennial Report

2009-02-15T07:24:00.000-08:00

A smooth and seamless event it was not.

We made it to the capitol mall at about noon. We wandered around the blacksmith areas, saw the old trucks there, and visited some of the statuary on the grounds. We tried to go inside, but there were people guarding the doors. "The entrance is closed until 1, there are too many people in there."

So we walked around some more. The governor was there on the steps outside, and made a little speech. Cool to see him in person. We got in line (in line to get in the Oregon capitol building???) at 12:55, and got in at about 1:20. The place was packed. The main recepetion area (with the Oregon Seal on the floor) had a little room to move, but there was no movement in the connector hall between the front and back of the building. Christian wanted to buy some rocks at the gift shop. 20 minutes in line. The lines to get the free birthday cake and hot dogs were 20 minutes each. So we skipped those. We did find the cookie decorating area, and my mom decorated cookies with the other 3 kids while I was with Christian buying rocks.

Now who decided to have the hot dogs and cake inside the building? I really wanted the kids to get a sense of the wonder of how the government works in a way that's a little more fun than it was on school field trips. We were able to peek in the House chamber, and we pointed out the governor and his office on the 2nd floor. So it wasn't bad, but it wasn't as fun as I had hoped it would be. We'll go back some day when the legislature is in session and spend a day there looking at the paintings and walking through Oregon history and observing the legislature at work together.

Pics are posted on FaceBook.

On My First Adult Piano Lesson

2009-02-10T18:17:00.001-08:00

A little over 2 years ago, Aria and Christian started piano lessons with Joseph Hoffman at the Hoffman Academy. They learned a lot and had a lot of fun. But their parents didn't do so well at followup. It looked very likely that we were going to move for work, so we dropped out. And the next year was just too busy with me in school, etc.

But I finished in June and have had some time to decompress, so it was time to head back to learning. This time, Aria and I enrolled in partner classes at the Hoffman Academy. This is a cool place - highly recommended. Great staff, great price for the quality, good location.

Partner lessons are what they sound like: 2 students, 1 teacher. The homework assignments for both are similar but not always identical. The idea is that the students reenforce each other. For Aria and I, it also means that we play piano together every night.

We showed up for lessons early - our session with Kim was due to start at 6:15, but we were there at 5:45. We sat in the car for 20 minutes waiting, which was totally my fault. We walked in the place, and found Dave Thomas in the back room, finishing with some vocal students. Kim was in the next room, and had just started to eat an apple. Turns out that she gets a break between students.

In our first session, I did a ton of things I'd never done before. I improvised at someone's request. I did an improve without title first. Then Aria did one called Snow. Then she picked Thunder for me to do. We practiced singing and plunking the notes out (Kim called it voice matching). We transposed a song from D to C. And one of our assignments was for Aria to play an arrangement of "Go Tell Aunt Rhodie" on the right hand while I accompany with the guitar. So lots of variety - this is not a place where you see a song and master a few songs. This is a place where you learn to transpose, improvise, play by ear, and read notes. All at once.

It's a little outside my comfort zone, which is good for me. I'm loving it.

Reply to Peggy Noonan's latest column

2009-02-06T16:26:00.000-08:00

I posted a reply like this on the WSJ forum. I lost the copy paste, so rewrote it below. The post is in response to a post by Peggy Noonan, the conservative columnist. The whole column is here.

I responded to this part of the column:

On Wednesday, in an interview with Politico, Dick Cheney warned of the possible deaths of "perhaps hundreds of thousands" of Americans in a terror attack using nuclear or biological weapons. "I think there is a high probability of such an attempt," he said.

When the interview broke and was read on the air, I was in a room off a television studio. For a moment everything went silent, and then a makeup woman said to a guest, "I don't see how anyone can think that's not true."

I told her I'm certain it is true. And it didn't seem to me any of the half dozen others there found the content of Cheney's message surprising. They got a grim or preoccupied look.

The question for the Obama administration: Do they think Mr. Cheney is essentially correct, that bad men are coming with evil and deadly intent, but that America can afford to, must for moral reasons, change its stance regarding interrogation and detention of terrorists? Or, deep down, do the president and those around him think Mr. Cheney is wrong, that people who make such warnings are hyping the threat for political purposes? And, therefore, that interrogation techniques, etc., can of course be relaxed? I don't know the precise answer to this question. Do they know exactly what they think? Or are they reading raw threat files each day trying to figure out what they think?

In the post, Ms. Noonan restates the conservative talking point that either we torture or we'll have another (and worse) terrorist attack. This is equivalent to saying that operating under the rule of law is a bad thing; that American law can not deal with terrorism. That the only way to deal with terrorists is to operate in an extra-legal manner.

This is a bad assumption. Most obviously, the reverse is actually true. Places like Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Pakistan and Egypt are well known for poor treatment of prisoners at the least and torture or murder at the worst. Where did the majority of 9/11 hijackers come from? Suadia Arabia. Where is Al-Qaeda based? Pakistan. Torture, rather than extracting extra important information, instead reenforces the idea that "the state is evil and must be overturned". Its continued practice means that we get old information that is probably inaccurate, while new terrorists are hatching evil plots and have not been captured. It creates a new threat while not obviating the old threats (because either you have the potential perpetrators already in custody or the plot has changed since you captured them).

This is a false choice, and somehow that has to get through the chatter and make some sense. Torture does not equal safety. It equals tyranny.

What Ripple Effect? and other thoughts

2009-01-24T19:21:00.001-08:00

In this economy, I'm not seeing many ripples. I am seeing a large number of tsunamis and dominoes, however. They are even starting to reach their cold mixed-metaphorical hands into my workplace and into our personal financial decisions.

In other thoughts, I'm very interested in Obama's first week at work. He's been very busy, no? So far, he's taking action to deliver on his campaign promises as well as govern with pragmatism. That missile strike in Pakistan? Not the act of a weeny liberal. The plan for economic stimulus? Not the plan of a bleeding-heart liberal. Obama is governing from the center, with a vengeance. He ran to the left of Hillary, which is still where he is. Which shows that real political liberals don't get very far. I've really liked his approach. And I love the look of his cabinet and appointees. Especially the picks for OLC and DOE. These are both cases of completely apolitical political appointees. Both candidates are very qualified in their field, and are accustomed to leading where people will follow. The OLC choice in particular was like an addict setting limits for himself: she's a fierce critic of over-reaching executive power, and Obama can expect that if he does things he's not supposed to, she'll stop him.

The office at home is coming together nicely. We went to City Liquidators in Portland and found a pile of beautiful wood. We're refinishing it and turning it into a huge T-shaped desk for the new office. We have a bunch of extra, so we've been experimenting on a smaller piece to make sure it turns out like we want it before we do all 28 sq feet. Cost for a similar setup that still isn't quite right: $1000. Our cost: $300. It's gonna be bee-you-ti-full!

The audition today was a blast. Sometimes when you audition, you do a less-than-acceptable job, and you think, "I blew it". Sometimes you audition and you think, "That wasn't my best run ever, but it was good enough. If they don't pick me, it's not because I screwed up." Today was one of the latter. This performance was a big step up for us as a group (The Morning Stars) because of several factors. The piece was more challenging harmonically and rythmically than we've done before, the audience was a lot more discerning, and we had to make a change on the fly because one of our members wasn't able to make it. And despite all of that, it worked out. Yeah! I expect to hear soon whether we made it or not, and I'll post.

Adventures in Islam Part 3

2009-01-21T13:18:00.000-08:00

The next 60 pages deal not with what Muhammad did, but with who he was. Muhammad the man was a good man - kind to his wives, generous with the poor, and always interested in helping those who needed help. After his first wife died, he became a polygamist, but there is little evidence that he had sexual relationships with anyone else besides his second wife (many years his junior, and married after Kadijah had passed away). Muhammad was illiterate, and only marginally familiar with Christian and Jewish thought. He was geographically distant from the centers of Christian thought, and much of today's Christian Orthodoxy was decided during his lifetime, or shortly before.

As a prophet, Muhammad relied on revelation to guide him. In several instances, he was rebuked by the angel after committing errors. These rebukes are preserved in the Qu'ran. Muhammad never claimed to be able to work miracles. Those who look for miracles in his life point to the creation of the Qu'ran, the spread of Islam, and Islam's enduring popularity.

The Qu'ran is a collection of revelations Muhammad received from the angel Gabriel. The chapters (suurahs) were kept as oral tradition until several years after the prophet's death. About 30 years after Muhammad's death, inter-tribal warfare made the need for a definitive version of the Qu'ran very clear. A few years later 4 official volums were made. 1 was kept in Mecca, and the others were sent to Islamic centers in the region. All other copies were ordered burned.

The Qu'ran is organized by length of the suurah. There was no fixed chronology (the oral tradition did not preserve the date of the revelation). Further, the suurahs often deal with more than one topic. Thus, the Qu'ran had to be organized in some arbitrary fashion. Length is just as good as any, so that's what it is. Once I finish my text, I'll dive into the Qu'ran, and leave favorite quotes in this blog thread.

Inaugural thoughts

2009-01-20T06:30:00.000-08:00

Today, as on every inauguration, is Aria's birthday. She is 9 today. We talk about politics a lot in our home; a few days ago, Aria said that she felt really special because the inauguration was happening on her birthday. Like it was made just for her.

I am glad to see short-sightedness leave Washington. We can disagree on Bush's record on terrorism. There are plenty of anecotes about his administration's dismissal of the terrorist threat. There have not been any more foreign terrorist attacks on US soil since Sep 11. But we had Anthrax, we had the DC overpass sniper. Americans have been targeted worldwide, Iraq has become a terrorist breeding ground. In the longer term, Bush has stacked the playing field against US anti-terror efforts.

How can being so aggressive terrorism backfire? Simply. Terrorism grows when people have no hope. By destroying the foundation of Maslow's hierarchy, people in Iraq and Afghanistan have nothing to lose. So more of them turn to terror. You can not defeat terrorism with violence. Violence begets violence, and "We'lll all be blind and toothless" according to Tevye.

So I am very excited to see a longer thinking President, who genuinely wants to understand the world around him. This is a man who wants to hear opposing viewpoints, who is still battling his lawyers about having access to his personal email while President. This is a President who cares about me. We'll never meet, but he's been through much of what I've been through, and he knows and cares about people like me.

Obama has been a poor college student, he has been uncertain where his future would lie, he has had to pay back student loans. He has lived in a small apartment while raising children. This is not a First Family who enter the White House out of touch. These are people who buy milk at the store (remember that Bush 41 moment?), who find bargains on the clothes rack, who drive normal cars.

Welcome, Barack. We pray for you and those who will work with you. We're in a terrible mess. May God help you.

Professional Personal Communication (or why Katrina is so awesome)

2009-01-19T13:13:00.000-08:00

Like an awful lot of people, my work provides a cell phone for my use. As long as personal use is not excessive, they don't mind me using it for personal business. Thus it is that Katrina will call my cell when I'm away from my desk. Or when the land line is busy.

Sometimes I'm out on a lunchtime bike ride. Sometimes I'm running an errand. Oftentimes, I'm in a different part of the office or on a conference call. So sometimes I can talk, and sometimes I can't. I pick up whenever I can. But when I'm busy and I pick up, I have a rushed manner. Then Katrina wonders if I'm having a bad day and want to talk about it, and it takes longer to end the call so I can get back to what I was doing. Frustrating for both of us.

To Katrina's credit, she brought it up last night after I got home from rehearsal. Instead of this uncomfortable dance on the phone, she asked that I answer the phone and say something like, "Hi boss. Can I call you back in a few?" Easy as cake.

This could have been (and with countless other people would have been) an involved, "You don't understand me!" thing with hurt feelings on both sides. She could say that I don't think she's important, I could say that she doesn't understand what I'm doing at any given moment. We'd both have a good argument. And we could stick to our arguments and go to bed angry. Instead, she's thought through a solution from both sides of the story, and asked for what she needs in a way that doesn't negatively impact what I have to do. Easy. Painless. And wonderful.

This is how a partnership/marriage/friendship should work. Lovely. How lucky I am!

Miscommunication and redemption

2009-01-15T12:18:00.001-08:00

It was late, close to bed time, and Aria had some homework due the next day. She was tired and frustrated (it's her first book report) and wasn't making good progress. I tried to help her by asking leading questions, but she just had an exasperated look on her face. "I just don't get it!!" At some point, I told her (maybe too strongly) that she needed to buckle down and just write down the answer to the question. She asked a question, I replied. She then replied to me in a way that was insulting to me.

I took offense and parroted the words back to her. She said, "You don't understand!" I parroted back her words again, and then the doorbell rang and I had to get it. I told her we'd talk about it in a few minutes. I left her crying at the table. I felt justified. I took care of the business at the door in about 10 minutes, and as I walked back into the house, I caught up with her in the play room. I asked her what I didn't understand. Turns out that I had answered in the affirmative, and she had thought I answered in the negative, which fueled her offensive response.

Turns out I was a big oaf. I was reminded, again, that nobody means to be offensive. If I take offense at something, I have to take the effort to confirm that the sentiment I understood was the sentiment conveyed. In this case, it wasn't. I apologized. I told her I should not have gotten angry, and I labeled the incident a miscommunication. We hugged, she forgave me, we moved on.

Moments like that are one of parenting's biggest perks. It really makes me a better person all around. As a follow on, just yesterday or the day before I heard Aria remark in passing that she had had a miscommunication with someone. What a kid.

Also - I found out by accident (I do this sometimes just for fun) that Aria can do fractions now. We were measuring to hang up a mirror in her bedroom, and I asked her what 18 - 4 1/2 was. She gave me the right answer. Then I asked her what half of 4 1/2 was. Again, she was right. Cool.

How do you feel when one of the happiest parts of your teen years comes back full force?

2009-01-14T08:58:00.000-08:00

Imagine that you had a very close friend, someone you confided everything to, for almost 10 years. The years in question? 9th grade - early adulthood. You shared music, aspirations, pictures from vacation. No matter how bad your other friendships got, or how frustrated you were with your parents, you thought that she would always understand. Somehow, you lost track of each other. You both moved, got married, there was no such thing as Facebook, and letters sent to her old address came back unopened: "Return to Sender".

You looked around every once in a while as you built your net presence over the next 10 years: she was one of the people you looked for when building your friends in MySpace. A few years later, it was LinkedIn. A few years later, Facebook. No luck. You conclude that she's probably married with a different name, and doesn't want anything to do with you.

Then one day, you get a Facebook message. It's the face you know, but a different name. And all those happy feelings and memories come back. Turns out she is happy to find you, is happily married, and is still living in Lille, very close to the French/German border.

Such was my elation this morning. My pen pal found me! There are few things that last 10 years that don't have some kind of bitter taste to them. We fight with our friends, our family. Work doesn't go so well. We start a new hobby and get injured. We get stuck in a life rut. We hurt someone's feelings. Our 10 year pen pal-ship doesn't have any bad memories for me. After 10 years out of contact, it's wonderful to revive those happy thoughts.

One of my best friends from those formative years is back. Maybe this technology thing is cool after all.

Adventures in Islam, Part 2

2009-01-05T11:42:00.000-08:00

I'm 3 chapters into my primer on Islam. I've learned a lot of stuff, most of it is pieces of history, names and places that aren't particularly relevant in understanding Muslims today. It will inform my study of the Koran, and gives a better background for asking interesting questions. Do you have something that you don't want to ask questions about because you feel so ignorant that you're afraid you'll also look stupid? Yep. That's where I'm starting from. Much like when coworkers or friends start to talk about wine (sorry, sommeliers), any talk about Islam would just leave me behind and not be very interesting.

So, to sum up 60 pages of reading: Muhammad was born in the late 500s on a band of land called the Hijaz. It runs along the Red Sea coast of Saudi Arabia today. At the time, there were bands of Christians and Jews in the area, but the Arabs were polytheistic pagans. Life was centered around the tribe, and the shaykh was not just the administrator of the law; he was the law. There was no "law of the land" as we understand it today. Quick example: if you killed someone from your own tribe, you'd be forced to pay damages or killed yourself. If you killed someone from a neighboring tribe, your shaykh had complete power to prevent you from prosecution. It may start a blood fued between the tribes, but that was at the shaykh's discretion.

Muhammad married late (age 25) into a wealthy merchant family. This family, the Quraysh, controlled the city of Mecca. They had decreed that within a certain radius of the Kaaba that violence was forbidden. This was the first zone of law that we would understand as such. After 15 years of marriage, Muhammad was meditating in a cave and got a visit from the angel Gabriel. Worried that he might be posessed by jinn, he consulted his brother in law who was familiar with Christan and Jewish scripture. He assured Muhammad that this was from god, and that Muhammad had been called as a prophet. Kadija, Muhammad's wife, was also an early believer.

The message that Muhammad started to preach was one of sacrifice and submission. Islam means "to submit". His first converts were the poor in the city of Mecca. His rich relatives eventually forced him to leave the city. He took his followers to Medina, where he became not only a prophet a civic leader, but also took on the role of military commander. His arrival in Medina starts the Hijrah, the Islamic calendar. Much like the birth of Christ starts the gregorian calendar, the Hijrah starts on September 24th in a certain year, which is year 1, day 1 of the Muslim era.

Within 8 years, Muhammad had gone from a "crazy guy preaching in the streets of Mecca" to the Prophet of Arabia. He had a huge army, and Arabia had submitted to Allah. Muhammad died in the 11th year of the Hijrah, at his home in Medina. By the year of his death, Islam had spread over the entire Arabian peninsula, with missionary forces preaching the Word to tribes scattered all around. The Koran was finished, and despite some wrangling for the "I am the next prophet" title after Muhammad's death, Islam was an ongoing concern.

The Arabia that Muhammad left behind was much different from the one he inherited. Arabia was now populated by monotheists. Islam allowed for Jews and Christians to practice their religions in peace. Muhammad's call was specifically to preach to those who had not received the revelation from God as Moses had for the Jews or Jesus had for the Christians. Law was no longer dependent on a person's tribe so much. Laws were part of Islam, and administered universally. Care for the poor was ingrained as a virtue.

Interestingly, Islam was carried forward by both military (conquering towns and forcing its residents to convert) and spiritual (sending teachers to preach) means. I've got a ton to learn before I can say a whole lot more about it than that. It is a tribute to Muhammad's skills as a man and personal character that he was able to accomplish such a huge cultural shift in his lifetime. Now, on to more study and fun!

Christmas comes but 4 times a year...

2009-01-02T12:12:00.001-08:00

This Christmas season has been really wonderful. I'm not in school, I've learned a lot about how to be a better guy this year, and the kids are older and enjoy it more. It's been an extended season for us - we put up the lights the week after Thanksgiving, got the trees later that week, and we had our last Christmas present-opening event just last night.

Our 4 Christmases were all different: the extended-family party for my mom's side at our house, our private family Christmas day, Christmas with my sister, brother, his wife, and parents at our house on the 29th, and then again with Katrina's family in Springfield last night.

People are nice and wonderful, the gifts were fun to give and to get, the kids all really had fun with it (not having an infant is wonderful!), and Katrina and I didn't have the tension we've always had around Crhistmas time. This is the first year (of many) that the Tom Grinch hasn't showed up.

A happy new year to you all - may 2009 be as wonderful a year as any we have seen!

Yay for reading

2008-12-27T15:46:00.000-08:00

My family is a bunch of readers. Nothing extra-special about that, but it does allay a niggling little fear in the back of my mind. I wanted my kids to read. It's more about opening their horizons beyond our little pocket of Oregonian suburbia than it is about being brainiacs. Which is cool, too, but...this is far cooler.

Last year for Christmas, someone bought Aria a set of Ramona Quimby books. It wasn't all of them, though, something the publishers made very clear on each book cover. So we walked into Powell's City of Books last night (just Aria and me), and looked up at the category board in the main entrance. I squatted down next to her. "Look up," I said. "Where do you think we should go?" "The Rose room!" "Why?" "It says 'Children'!" "So which way do we go?" "Hmmm...that way!"

So we walked around, found Dr Seuss and some other stuff. Eventually we found the Beverly Cleary stuff, and Aria found the rest of the Ramona books. She nodded at her Dr Seuss book and a princess picture book she had picked up for her little sister, and said, "I don't really want to buy these. What do I do with them?" "We put them back." So that's what we did.

After we had found my books on Islam, she insisted we head back to the Rose room. "Why?" I asked. "I saw Twilight there, and I know mom would love it." So we went down and found it. And then we walked 4 blocks through the 4 inches of remaining snow (does that make it like 16 inches for 1 block? Better story...) and drove home.

Before she went to bed, she'd read 14 pages. This morning she read another dozen or so. She's a reader. By her own will, and without pushes from us. A little prompting? Sure. But we haven't had to push her. Her world is opening up. I'm so glad. Even if it's opening up to 1950s suburbia. It's the first crack in the door to the wide-open world of literature.

Adventures in Islam, Part 1

2008-12-26T21:16:00.000-08:00

Other religions have always interested me. I bought copies of the sacred writings of Hinduism, Islam, Baha'i-ism and attended church with my friends of different Christian sects while in high school. I served a mission for my church in Japan, overwhelmingly Buddhist and Shinto with a smattering of Soka-gakkai. As an undergrad, I took an underwhelming course in comparative religion as a sophomore, but dropped out of college the next term.

I didn't take it much further than that. I had lived abroad in a very different cultural landscape and found that people had much the same values and aspirations as I had. I got it. Not a big deal; those different world views didn't affect me much.

Eventually, I became a very autonomous supervisor at work. I had more than a dozen highly trained and very professional engineers working in my department. One of them is a devout Muslim. My entire crew (I think) knows I'm a Mormon. I don't preach to them, but I don't gamble or go drinking with them or swear, so at least they know I'm a little on the prudish side (what do you call that? Prudish sounds so pejorative, but it's a little more visceral than "behavioral conservative".)

This man and I have become friends as well as coworkers. I'll call him Mike. It's not very Islamic-sounding, but that's kinda the point. Mike and I began to ask each other questions about our families and religious observances, because that's something that's as common to us as talking football is with other men. So we've built a close relationship. We trust each other, and have high regard for each other as men of faith and family.

As I looked around for music for The Morning Stars to sing, I found some traditional spirituals, ordered some Estonian folk music, and wondered if I could get some Muslim religious music. So I discovered Nasheed (Nashid), Muslim holy music. And I asked Mike about it. He was working a short week one week, and I didn't get any mail from him for a full day or so, and he apologized and said his family was celebrating the Eid. So I looked that up.

It piqued my curiosity. Islam seems to be a very cradle-to-grave, morning-until-night, holistic worldview. It doesn't seem to be squeamish about the necessities of living. Killing an animal to eat requires understanding that you are taking a life. Meat doesn't come from styrofoam packages. It comes from living animals that in other times might have been a beloved pet. Doing what God says to do is really important, as when you fly your aging father halfway around the world to perform the Hajj. A life centered on God is the only way to live. That doesn't mean you can't watch YouTube. But it means that you're careful to maintain your focus toward the divine.

At least that's the way I see it today. I have great and growing respect for Islam. So tonight, when Aria and I went to Powell's to use some of her Christmas gift card, I picked up an introductory text to Islam and a translation of the Koran. This is where the adventure really begins.

Movie Review: Australia

2008-12-17T12:29:00.000-08:00

Disclaimer: I'm an actor and a playwrite, so I'm a bit snobby about production values.

I saw Australia with my wife last night. It's the best movie I've seen in a while - one of those that you see, think about, and then ruminate on.

Plot: It's 1939. Lady Sarah Ashley is a British duchess in need of money. Her husband is in Australia taking care of their ranch, Faraway Downs. She wants him to sell it, but he won't. She is convinced he's having an affair, and goes to Australia to sell the ranch and reclaim her husband. She arrives to find her husband dead and the ranch in total disarray. She joins forces with a local cattle herder (Drover, played by Hugh Jackman) and a mixed-race boy (Nullah) to save the ranch. Baz Luhrman (Moulin Rouge) who also co-wrote the script adeptly mixes historical realities about whites' poor treatment of Aboroginals and the Japanese invasion of Darwin in WWII with a story about love, family, greed, and revenge. The movie is called an epic because it simply is.

Acting: A fine cast. Hugh Jackman (X-Men and especially The Illusionist) is very human in this movie. Luhrman lets him play with everything - from macho "Let's save the cattle!" to his friendship with an Aborigine, to mourning Sarah's death. A great job.

Nicole Kidman (The Translator, Batman, Moulin Rouge) plays Lady Sarah Ashley. After watching this movie, I don't understand the hoopla over her Botox. I couldn't tell. She has a hilarious stint (some critics didn't like it) as the fish-out-of-water royalty in the Outback to star twith, becomes a partner in saving the ranch, and finally as a passionate advocate for righting wrongs. It's a wide range, and she pulls it off very well.

Nullah (I don't think I've seen the kid before, and don't know his name) is also excellent. During the course of the movie, his father abandons him, his mother dies, he is sent to a missionary island, thinks Sarah dies, is captured by police, and sees some of his friends die, too. He plays happy realy well. He never gets to grief, but the kid's maybe 10. He does every other emotion really well, and serves as the story's narrator for quite a bit.

The villain doesn't get as much face time as maybe he should. He's evil incarnate, and that's too bad. He never gets real depth.

Filming: shot on location in the Outback, the film is a paean to Australian history, culture, and nature. The color often looks like a colorized B&W film - everything is vibrant. The camera shots pan huge vistas, and dramatic camera angles (the cattle stampede along a cliff for one) are par for the course. This movie is meant to be theatrical in the heightened-emotions sense of the word. It's a beautiful movie to watch just for the artistry of the screen-as-canvas.

Writing: excellent script. Could have used some more villain development, and some more time on Nullah and his mother's relationship. Nullah went from having a broken home to being an orphan in about 10 minutes of movie time, and we didn't see him develop as much as we should have. The racial tension is often palpable - the segregated bars, the poor treatment whites who are friends with black get, the mixed-race children being torn from their parents. You feel it. This racial tension is given more of the villain role than the guy who plays the villain is.

Recommendation: If you are an adult, see it. There's a little swearing, but it's not bad (the F-bomb comes out once, but if there's a tasteful way to use the word, this was it). There's a sex scene that I closed my eyes for, so you'd have to ask Katrina about it. It's a PG-13 movie, though. I plan to buy it, and show it to my kids when they're in 8th or 9th grade. Powerful movie with great social themes and excellent production values. It's a winner on my list.

My wife loves me

2008-12-09T11:33:00.000-08:00

"How do you know?"

Because I saw what she was going to get me for Christmas. And it arrived this morning. And it's awesome.

A month or so ago, I went in to the office at home and as I stepped over the baby gate, she told me I couldn't look at her screen. She closed the tab she was on. Then she went out. And I was unable to resist. I looked up her history and saw the biggest, baddest tool box on earth. Stainless steel, 400lbs, casters, full-length ball bearing slides, the works.

This is the woman who, 9 (!) years ago gave me a Craftsman saw and drill for our first married Christmas.

The thing that makes this a special gift for me is that true gift giving has to be about the receiver, and not the giver. This tool box, while providing some ancilary goodness for her, is all for me. It replaces a portable tool box she got for me 8 years ago (!) when we were apartment-dwellers. It will allow me to stop complaining that other members of my wonderful family take tools and do not return them. It will allow our tool bench (old kitchen cupboards) to become something other than a garage version of the Exxon Valdez. It recognizes my handiness; it is plumes for my manliness; something shiny that isn't a decoration.

I hope what I've planned for Katrina is as cool for her.