Entry 621: Week 2 In UP (The Heat Was Hot)

One thing we didn't think about when we booked our stay out here is air conditioning. In DC, it's pretty much a given that a rental place will have AC, at least a window unit, because summer temperatures are unbearable without it. And then as a child, we never needed it out here, because it would maybe break 90 a day or two during the summer, and almost never would it creep out of the low 90s. But times (and climates) have changed. You need AC here now, if only for stretches like we just had of six straight 90+ temperature days, and unfortunately, there isn't an AC unit at our Airbnb, and we never even thought to check.

But the worst should be past us now. Forecasts are calling for that lovely low-80s weather to come back again starting tomorrow. We survived the heat though a combination of sleeping in our underwear, creative utilization of box fans, and, most helpfully, staying at my parents' place. They do have AC, and I've stayed over there -- here, rather -- I'm here now -- the past four nights. S stayed with me two of the nights, but then she wanted the bigger bed of the Airbnb, which is much less hot solo, and Lil' S1 wanted to stay there as well (his room there doesn't get ridiculously hot), so we've split up, and they've stayed there, and Lil' S2 and I have stayed here. Not ideal, but it's worked out, and it's just a few days. Like I said, things are supposed to get back to normal tomorrow, and there are no 90+ days on the 10-day forecast.

The thing about this area also is that even on days it gets blazing hot, it doesn't really do so until late afternoon. In the morning, it might even be a bit chilly in the shade, and then it gradually gets hotter peaking at about 5pm. What this means is that by the time you're ready to go to bed, your house is totally cooked, but you can still do things in the morning outside. And we've been doing a lot, so much so that I'm going to turn this post in a listicle.

• I ran a 5K with some of my family members. I finished in 26:20, which was 39th overall (out of 374) and third in my age/gender bracket. It's a decent time, but not super impressive (8.5 minute miles), so you can tell that the competition wasn't too stiff. My goal, which I made up two nights before the race when I registered, was to break 25 minutes, and I think I could have done it, if I knew the course in advanced and timed myself throughout it. I was just guessing my pace, and when I guess I always go slower than I do when I'm actually monitoring it. But whatever -- if I actually cared about running for time, I would have, like, trained for this thing, rather than deciding it sounded like fun at the last minute.
  
  
• Last night we went to S's friend's lake house for her five-year old son's birthday party. It was great. The kids played in the lake the entire time, and we adults drank delicious wine (wine is their family business) and ate tacos. It seemed like it was on the brink of turning into a boozy all-night affair, which I might have been up for -- we used to have those types of parties at my friend DK's lake house, and I remember them fondly -- but we had to drive back to UP (we were out in the boonies near Olympia), so it wasn't in the cards.
  
  
• It was just as well, as I got to my sister's and brother-in-law's just in time to watch the Amanda Nunes, Julianna Pena fight on my their awesome home theater. One of the most entertaining lopsided fights, I've ever watched.
  
  
• S's good friend E is kinda randomly in town right now, so we met them for dinner on the waterfront. Well, technically, I only had beer, because my sister and brother-in-law had a cookout at their place, and I ate so many ribs, I felt like I never wanted to eat again, but everybody else had dinner. I've said it before, and I'll it say again: Tacoma is so underrated as a beautiful city. The vistas from Ruston Way of Commencement Bay are breathtaking, and the mountain has been out in all its splendor since we arrived.    

 

That's all I got for today. It's already 11 here, and I'm trying hard not to get too far off my quasi-early-to-bed-early-to-rise schedule.

Until next time...

Entry 620: Week 1 in UP

One week is in the books here in UP. It went by quite fast, as has every moment of my life since junior high. A mindset I sometimes fall into that I try very hard to avoid is the getting-through-life trap. This is when you just start viewing life as something you need to accomplish instead of something you should live and feel. It's a weird thing because having a successful life -- however you define that -- is an accomplishment, the greatest one of all, but unlike other accomplishments, once it's over you don't get to bask in the satisfaction of achievement; you die. So, probably one shouldn't be in such a hurry to achieve this accomplishment.

Anyway, Week 1 was good. The kids went to day camp and seemed to really enjoy it. I wish we had booked them for at least another week of it, but we weren't sure what they would like, so we scheduled something different each week to avoid getting locked into a camp they hated. There are few things worse as a parent than fighting your kid each morning to get them out of the house, and there are few things worse as a child than having to go somewhere you loathe for the entire day.

We spent a lot of time with my family, which is good, as that's basically the whole point of coming here in the first place. My boys are seeing of lot of their cousins Q & A (ha-ha... never realized that before) to the point that we have to build in little breaks lest they get sick of each other. I mean, if they stop getting along, that's our stay down the drain. But, thankfully, there are no signs of that happening so far. Among their activities this week were a trampoline center, pizza dinner, ice cream at the grandparents, music in UP Center, and then tomorrow we're going to see Thor. I really have no desire to see this movie, but S gets annoyed at me for "not want to do anything," so I said I would go.

By the way, what S really means when she says this is, "you show insufficient enthusiasm for the things I want to do," because "not wanting" is a continuum. There's would-prefer-a-different-activity-in-a-vacuum-but-I'm-more-than-willing-to-go-with-the-flow-and-do-what-everybody-else-wants-to-do, which is where I am with seeing Thor, and then there's absolutely-don't-want-to-do-this-and-will-resent-it-if-you-rope-me-into-it, and then there's everything in between. I think S doesn't do the greatest job of distinguishing between these two poles. Also, there's an asymmetry because S openly hates on some things I like to do. For example, I don't think we've ever taken the kids to a sporting event together. I can only think of going to a single sporting event with S ever -- a cricket match in Australia -- and she left early. Another example: S wanted to go to Portland* while we're out here, which doesn't sound super exciting to me, but if instead she said, "Hey, let's go to Eugene to watch some of the World Track and Field Championships," I would have been all-in. And it's not just sports. S has never once expressed interest in joining me at trivia night or a crossword puzzle tournament. Which is all to say, take the whole me "never wanting to do anything" with a grain of salt. Although it is true that I don't like to travel nor plan events nearly as much as S does, and I frequently point out the downsides of things, even of things I want to do, so she's got me there.

*We are probably going to go to Vancouver, BC for a few nights, which is more appealing to me. The only time they riot there is when the Canucks lose the Stanley Cup.

One thing I wanted to do that we did do is take a day trip to Seattle to visit friends. We left yesterday morning around 10:15, expecting, based on the Apple Map estimate, to arrive around 11:10, and we didn't get there until 11:35. For some reason, the app had us get off I-5 at the Mercer St. exit and took us to 99 through the heart of the city. That's not the way I would go, but I thought, maybe the app is smarter than me, so I followed it. It might be smarter than me -- it's certainly possible every other way would have been worse -- but it was very slow-going between I-5 and 99. It was a little taste of Seattle traffic and an ominous portent.

First stop was my friend LB's and her husband BB's place. LB was one of the first people I got to know as an undergrad, even though we went to different schools. She was really good friends with my roommate and soon-to-be good friend TB, and so she would come to visit him, and we would all hang out. She's also a Tacoma kid (as is BB, although I didn't meet him until he married LB), so I'd see her around sometimes, when I was home for the summer or what have you. I remember once I ran into her at some sort of upscale grocer in Tacoma (Whole Foods?) and was like "hey!" but she was in a heated discussion with the manager over some rotten cilantro or something like that, so it was one of things where she was caught between arguing with this guy and greeting me. I'm not sure why I remember that, but I do, and one of the main purposes of this blog is to catalog pointless shit I shouldn't remember but do.

Anyway, I hadn't seen LB and BB in person in -- I'm gonna say -- 13 years? Last time I can remember is a party that I think was in 2010, but I'm not positive about this. It was nice to catch up. They have a teenage daughter, which is a trip, and a son who's a bit older than Lil' S1. He ran off with my boys to play Roblox or whatever, which was cool. I don't love how obsessed my kids (especially Big) are with video games, but they really are a bonding tool for him and his peers, so... whatever. They did play outside for about 15 minutes when we first arrived, so that's something, I guess.

Unfortunately, we couldn't stay too long, because we had a lot on the docket. The next stop was Lighthouse Roasters for coffee, even though S wanted to go to a closer coffee shop. (Not wanting to do what I want to do, remember?) I was insistent on Lighthouse, my old stamping grounds, because they have fantastic coffee and because I once knew all the baristas and wanted to see if any of them still work there. Sure, enough this guy I know CW was there, and we exchanged pleasantries while I picked up my order. For some reason, nothing makes me feel cooler than knowing a bunch of people who work places. Also, a couple Lighthouse shots on ice with a touch of cream -- you cannot beat that as coffee drinks go.

After our coffee side trip, we went to my old friend JW's to visit him and his wife Y and their three kids. They have one boy who's a bit younger than Lil' S2 and two toddler twins. I said above it's a trip that LB has a teenage daughter, but it's equally a trip that JW and Y have kids who are still in diapers. I've remarked before that when you have kids, you can't imagine them being any other age, but apparently this applies to other people as well -- you can't imagine anybody having kids any other age. It's so weird to see somebody tote around a diaper bag.

We hung out at JW's and Y's for a little while -- again, some playing outside, a lot of video games -- and then we headed up to visit my friend JY and his wife CC, our final stop. Speaking of having kids of different ages, JY and CC have one son, and he's almost 19! He wasn't there because he's playing baseball in a pre-college wooden bat league. He's a really good pitcher and is going to play Pac-12 ball in the fall.

We hung out there for a while, got some overpriced carryout, and then headed back around 8:00p. You don't normally hit traffic at that time on a Saturday, even in Seattle, but you do if all lanes of I-5 are blocked off -- and all lanes of I-5 were blocked off. Literally, an entire section of the southbound interstate was barricaded for construction, and we didn't notice it until it was too late. We got stuck in a ridiculous back-up from like 65th through I-90. And then we had to follow the procession of traffic through the detour to avoid the barricade. It was terrible. It took about 45 minutes to get through, which was longer than the entire rest of the trip. It sucked, but the beauty of traffic jams is that once you're out of them, you're out of them, and you don't have to think about them anymore. Unless, of course, you have a blog and want to complain about them on it.

I'll be sure to check for this sort of thing next time I head up to Seattle, which will hopefully be soon. I want to go up for a visit sans children. I'd also like to see my friend RW. He was supposed to meet us yesterday, but couldn't make it because his VNS implant was abuzz. That's a good thing in that it's stopping seizures (he has epilepsy), but a bad thing in that it's apparently really taxing on him physically and mentally. So hopefully I will see him next time.

And speaking of next times, until then...

Entry 619: On the UP-and-UP

Blogging to you live from University Place today. We made it here safely and are currently on day two of our five-week summer sojourn. My anxiety levels are still quite high, but dropping, slowly but surely. In three significant ways, I'm not really cut out for this type of thing: 1) I'm a bit of a homebody; 2) I'm especially susceptible to stress from planning and decision fatigue; 3) I'm a chronic second guesser.* So, why do it? Because I don't want these things to control me. When I think back on my life, I'm never like That was such a great experience! I just stayed home and did the same routine I always do! Almost all the cool shit I've done required me to proactively come out of my comfort zone in some way. So, yeah, I've been stressing a bit over the logistics and the finances** and whether or not I parked our new car back home in the optimal spot in the driveway. But none of the shit is going to matter a year, five years, twenty years from now. The only thing I'll remember is that I got to spend a summer with my family, whom I don't really see that much of otherwise.

*Perhaps no habit of mine annoys S more than this. Immediately after I make a decision, I'll question whether or not it was the right thing to do. It's just the way my mind works. I can't flip off that over-analysis switch. I just try my best to keep it contained to my own brain now. Nobody likes getting tractor-beamed into your neurosis.

**I keep thinking we're spending too much money, and maybe we are, but S did the math and if you add all the expenses of coming out here -- air fare, car, Airbnb, camps for kids, etc. -- it's actually cheaper than sending our kids to six weeks of the camp in DC they usually go to. That might seem hard to believe, but a) S has a seemingly endless trove of United miles from traveling so much for work, b) summer camps in DC are frickin' expensive.

And we are already doing fun stuff. We woke up super early and went to Chambers Bay, with the plan to walk the three-mile loop, but Lil' S1 started grousing after 100 yards (it's getting harder and harder to get that kid to exercise), so S took them to the playground, and I ran it by myself. I might try to be a morning person while I'm here. I'm on East Coast time, so I have that in my favor, but I'm also convinced that I have a sleep-schedule disorder called N24, so that's working against me. Not sure how those things will cancel out.

Then we went to the library to get the boys some reading material (especially Lil' S1; the kid might complain about physical activity, but get him into a book, and you won't hear a peep out of him until he gets hungry). The library is within walking distance of where we are staying, and it's in the heart of the UP city center, which is actually pretty cool.

After that we met the rest of the family at the Fircrest Fun Fair (or something like that). You know the type of event, a bunch of booths with crafts, a ton of food trucks, and a band of middle-age white guys playing "Life is a Highway." My little nephew and niece sold some stuff they decorated -- boxes and frames and the like. It was cool. The entire event was cool. My favorite part was at the end, when everybody was leaving, my nephew Q wanted my boys to come over to their house, but everybody was tired, and so we said, "No, you'll see each other tomorrow." And he responded, "I want to spend all the time together." So cute. So earnest.

Until next time...

Entry 618: The Mindflayer

My mind has been feeling a bit flayed of late. We are getting ready to go spend much of the remaining summer in the PNW near my family, and I'm excited for it, but it's a lot to handle logistically. We are going for five weeks, so it's like a mini-move, and moving sucks. It would be nice if the kids were a bit more self-sufficient, but that's not going to happen for another, like, seven years, and waiting that long to do this type of thing defeats the purpose of doing it now, while we can. I really want my sons to be close to their cousins, especially my brother's son who's the same age as Lil' S1, and I really want to spend time with my parents before they get too old. I mean, not to get morbid, but not even Jonathan E. lives forever. So, we're headed west.

 

[RIP James Caan]

 
In other news, as you might be able to tell from the title of this post, we've been watching Stranger Things -- just finished Season 4 today, actually. I really enjoyed it. I was a little bummed out by the ending, only because I thought it was the final season and that everything would be wrapped up nicely, but it turns out there is going to be one more season, so, of course, they left it very open-ended. I actually would prefer there not be another season. This one was like a marathon race -- the finale alone was over 2.5 hours -- and thinking about doing that again just isn't very appealing right now. But, of course, the next season won't be out for another few years (Steve will be having a midlife crises), so I might feel differently at that time.

Like I said, I really enjoyed this season, but it was indeed too long. (My ongoing general gripe with everything.) There were plenty of parts that could have been have shortened. S actually wanted to skip the Nina Project sequences they were so slow (although the payoff was good), and the whole Russian subplot was completely superfluous (with no payoff whatsoever). But the thing they did this season really well is they put the characters in the places you want to see them. Give me Steve and Nancy together; let Jonathan be getting stoned in the desert; give me a lot of Robin, and just a little bit of Mike; Henderson and Eddie were a great duo; and although the Russian stuff felt shoehorned in, at least it put Murray and Joyce together whom have some really good comedic chemistry. The show is ultimately about the characters -- the plot got totally explained this season and it still doesn't really make sense -- so as long as they get that right, which they did, then it's going to be good.

One interesting thing about this season of Stranger Things is that it produced the first Billboard Hot 100 #1 TV-resurrected song -- that is, a song that was previous released, and then went to #1 after it appeared on a TV show. There have been other songs that went to #1 that were made for TV, such as Jan Hammer's Miami Vice Theme, but there hadn't been one that was "resurrected" to #1 by TV until Running Up That Hill by Kate Bush. Hat tip to Chris Molanphy of the podcast Hit Parade for this fun fact.

That's all for tonight. Until next time...

Entry 617: I Love the 4th of July

Note: Some years in this post have been approximated.

1987

When I was a child, ages 7-11 (or so), we celebrated the 4th of July at our family friends' house. We would go over there and cook out in their backyard, and then we would light off fireworks once it got dark. My dad and his friend G would do it up, buying a trunkful of minor explosives from the Indian reservations -- stuff that might lead to inquiries from Child Protective Services if it was brought around kids today. But this was the 1980s -- if we could sit in a parked car unattended for 45 minutes while our mothers went grocery shopping, we could let off some Piccolo Petes.

I still remember the rules. We had punks* that we had to put in the ground while not in use, and then we had to place the firework in the street with the wick pointed up, come back and get our punk, light the firework, and then flee the "blast zone." I wouldn't say it was safe, necessarily, but I'd probably let Lil' S1 do it now (Lil' S2 is a bit too young), if this was a social acceptable thing where we live today. It's a decent lesson in responsibility, and it's fun. I have fond memories of lighting off all those fireworks -- Jumping Jacks, Mighty Mights, Small Bees, Saturn Balls, Roman Candles...

*I've never heard the word punk used in this way (Entry 3 of 3), except when it comes to lighting fireworks as a child.
 

 1988

In my mind's eye, my whole family was at Cheney Stadium watching the Tacoma Tigers play the Calgary Cannons. But the main reason for going was to see the fireworks show after the game, and I can't imagine my sister or brother sitting through an entire baseball game under any circumstances, so it's possible they weren't there. Whatever the case, Tacoma destroyed Calgary before a packed crowd. They scored so many runs, the scoreboard couldn't display it properly.* They also admitted so many fans they couldn't all fit in the stands, so they let them sit on the warning track. I was apoplectic -- fans are allowed on the field of play during the game! I might have literally cried about it.

It turned out to be okay though. The integrity of all of baseball was not destroyed because some fans sat on the field during a regular season minor league game in Tacoma, Washington. And the fireworks show was cool: And this one is brought to you by Payless Drug Store... *Fffft*... Ooooh... *Boom*... Aaaaah....

*The joke was on us though -- the Cannons were the affiliate for our Mariners and the Tigers for the rival A's. The final score, something like 23-3, was a good indication of how thing were going to go for the two franchises over the next few years. 

1993

Back at Cheney Stadium, this time with my friend JY. His dad had season tickets and sat near the same group of people every game. Two of them were an older Latino couple who dressed like vaqueros. The man had this bit where every time somebody said "hi" to him, he would reply, pointing to his beer, "not yet, this is my first one." I never thought it was particularly funny because I don't equate being "high" with alcohol. If he was smoking a joint, it would have worked better, but they didn't sell those at Cheney Stadium back then. They probably still don't today, but there is a big pot shop very close to it, so you never know.

There was this other guy we would see at games, who can be best described as the really-life Barney Gumble. Once JY commented on his 49ers ball cap and mentioned he wanted to buy his dad one like it for his birthday. So, Mr. Gumble took off his sweat-stained hat and offered it to JY, saying, "I'll sell you this one for $10." JY declined, and we later laughed at the thought of him giving his dad a nasty used hat from the town drunk as a gift. It was hilarious at the time, but like so many things that were funny at that age, the humor wanes as you get older and better understand the context. This dude was a serious alcoholic and needed help he never received. He later froze his cat to death by accidentally locking it in a freezer, and then he committed suicide shortly thereafter. Just a really sad story.

I don't remember what happened in the game that night. I think we left early with JY's brother and didn't even see the firework show. 

1994

I rarely watched David Letterman back in the day. I never really thought he was that funny, and I still don't understand why so many people of my generation treat him like some sort of comedic god. But I did enjoy his show once in a while, and one interview that sticks out in my mind is this one. It's actually a pretty mean trick (and, again, not that funny), but I do like the performance at the end (14:00). I remember watching this in my friend SH's basement. It's one of those things where there's no good reason why I remember it -- it was nearly 30 years ago and not that interesting -- but I still do.

1997

It was my first summer back from college, and I went down to the waterfront in Tacoma to watch the firework show on Commencement Bay. It was an insane crush of people. But I was 19 and not that bothered by such things. I was hanging out with some guys who were more stereotypically jock-like than I typically palled around with. They were all using chewing tobacco, and they gave me some, and it made me nearly wretch, so I yelled "yuck!" and spit it out, and they all laughed at me. But I didn't care. I was like, "That shit is nasty, and you guys are nasty for using it."

That's the thing about peer pressure. It's not direct like you saw in after school specials. When I was coming of age, nobody ever said, like, "Hey, use this if you want to be one of the cool kids." Some people drank/smoked/chewed/what have you; some didn't. We would still all hang out together, and everybody was usually pretty cool with everybody else. The pressure, I think, comes from the fact that if you go to the party sober, you're just sitting there being bored, watching everybody else have fun, and that will tempt even the most iron-willed abstainers. It's more FOMO than peer pressure.

2000

I went to my friend DK's lake house, which was the worst place to go on the 4th if you cared about things like your skin. His sister's ex-husband used to toss packets of fireworks into the fire while you were sitting next to it. It was pure insanity. Once a Small Bee burnt a hole through my jeans and singed my leg hair. After that I went up and hung out on the deck away from open flame. 

There was this guy who was always around the lake house, a neighbor, who did a bunch of stupid shit, and once he bought one of those big fireworks you see at shows, but he was too cheap to spring for the mortar to launch it properly. He tried to build his own by nailing four pieces of wood together, but there's a certain saying about a round peg and a square hole. After he lit it, it didn't come out of the "tube" cleanly, and only went about twenty feet in the air before plummeting into the lake. It then exploded like somebody was fishing with dynamite -- *BOOM* -- and all these sparks shot up out of the water. 

The spectators were all a pretty safe distance away back on shore. But dude was out on the edge of a dock quite close to the explosion. If the firework had somehow landed back on the dock, he might have blown his leg off (or worse). As it was, the blast totally rattled his cage. It was perhaps the dumbest thing I've ever witnessed somebody do in person.  

2003  

I went to a party at a friend's house on Alki Beach, and it had a really strange vibe to it. I later found out my friend got really into cocaine for a little while and half the people there were coked out of their minds. It was basically two parties on top of each other, and I was in the less drug-addled one. Although, at one point, I was talking to this very attractive woman, actually making some progress, and my friend JW tackled me from behind for no reason and made me spill my beer all over myself and the woman (she didn't think it was cute), so it's not like either party was all that sober.

The highlight of the night was when this guy CK put some fireworks and matches in a waterproof bag, put on a wetsuit and swam out to a pontoon in the bay to put on a little show. This water is not warm or smooth, and it was super dark out, so a bunch of people were like, "Dude, don't go out there. It's not worth it." But I was cheering him on -- literally chanting his name. Perhaps not my best judgement, but he was fine, and the fireworks were cool. Kinda a badass move, to be honest.

2004

The next year, while en route to driving cross-country to go to grad school. I stopped by West Chester, PA to visit friends. My old roommate and dear friend from undergrad TB was moving out their with his fiancee SL (also my friend), but he wasn't there yet, so it was just me and SL and our other friend BH who had come out for a visit. BH also had a seriously boyfriend (now husband) who wasn't there, so it was me, a recently single man looking for a nice rebound, and two spoken-for ladies. It was a fun night though. At least I think it was. I don't really remember what we did. I think we drove around looking for a place that would sell us alcohol because Pennsylvania had (has?) very strange liquor laws.

Incidentally, BH later went on to become an MMA champion. She even had a few fights in UFC, but she was well past her prime at that point. I wonder how she's doing. I lost touch with her and her husband. I really liked them, but I was mainly friends with them through SL and another friend MM, the ex-wife of JW (the tackler from the previous year), and then after MM and JW got divorced, SL and TB also got divorced, and the whole shit changed. If you've ever had divorced friends, you know how it goes. I used to kinda keep up with everybody on Facebook, but then I quit Facebook because Facebook sucks. It was the right move, but now I just don't know what anybody is up to.

2005

I went to the firework show at the National Mall, and it was super fun. I was dating this woman in the English department, so we got together a little math crew and a little lit crew, and we all went out for drinks and dinner in DC and then the show on the Mall. I just remember feeling cool. It was kinda ironic, being that most the people there were huge nerds, but still...

I remember talking to this guy whose prize possession was some sort of limited edition copy of Richard Linklater's movie Slacker. He also was how I learned of the existence of Karl Pilinkgton, so I thank him for that. I can't remember his name. He kinda looked like the drawing on the cover of A Confederacy of Dunces, and he didn't actually go to UMD. His weirdo roommate was in the lit department. The roommate had the "nice guy" shtick going. He acted like super-progressive-feminist-man, but then he would obsess over women who were way out his league and cop an attitude when they inevitably rebuffed his creepy advances. He's the inspiration of an Onion-esque headline I thought up: "Self-Proclaimed 'Nice Guy' Actually a Total Asshole." Well, the girl I was dating at the time thought it was funny.

2011

This was the only 4th I've spent abroad. I was doing my postdoc in Australia. Unsurprisingly, there isn't much festivities over there to honor another country's independence day. It's all about Anzac Day over there.

2012-2018

Was there a 4th of July these years? When you have at least one child under the age of three, all the days just kinda blend together.

2019

I was lamenting the state of the union and recovering from slipping while doing box jumps -- sounds familiar.

Until next time...