Entry 755: Fractured Finger

This will be a short entry. The finger injury (right pinky) I mentioned in a previous entry turned out to be a fracture, and so I have to wear a brace that makes it very difficult to type. This is when I wish I was a hunt-and-peck typist. But I'm not. I'm an asdfjkl; guy, and so it's really unnatural and difficult for me to have two fingers (my pinky in "buddy bound" with my ring finger in the brace) taken out of the equation. Plus, I have to cock my right wrist at a weird angle to keep my brace from inadvertently hitting random keys. I can manage, but it's tiring and annoying, and I swear I can feel myself actively developing carpal tunnel syndrome. So, for now I'll probably only type when I'm doing my actual job that somebody pays me to do.

Actually, I just had a thought: I could use my phone. That would probably be easier, but typing out an entire blog entry on a phone doesn't sound that appealing either. Maybe I'll try it next week though. Check back then.

Until next time...

Entry 754: Three-Inning Save

Long weekend, this one. I got back last night from an overnight trip to New Jersey. My good friend JY's son IY plays college baseball, and his team is playing a series in New Jersey this weekend, so I met JY and our other friend DK and his daughter EK out there to watch IY pitch. He's a reliever, so it's unclear if or when or how much he will pitch on any given night. If you want to watch him play specifically, which is what we wanted, then it's a bit of a dice roll.

Luckily, our number came up. In fact, it couldn't have worked out better. Friday night, with us all in attendance, he came into the game in the 7th inning with his team up 3-0, and he threw three innings, giving up just one run, on one hit (a solo homer), striking out six, and walking zero (although he did bean a guy). It was a dominant performance, and it was really cool to watch. Here's a kid I used to play Wiffle Ball with when he was a three foot tall toddler, running around in nothing but a pull-up, and now he's a six foot six behemoth getting the save in a D1 college baseball game. Like I said, it's really cool.

I was worried it wasn't going to happen, because the starting pitcher had a no-hitter going into the sixth inning, but then he gave up a hit and walked a guy, and it looked like he was going to come out soon. (DK and I were half-jokingly imploring the manager to pull him from our seats in the stands -- C'mon, skip, he's looking a little tired; let's get a fresh arm in there -- which cracked up JY, even though he was shushing us, because he knows all the other parents, and didn't want anyone to think we were rooting against their kid.) IY had been warming up in the bullpen, which means he would almost certainly be the next pitcher in, but then it started to rain, kinda hard, and I was worried the umpire would call the game. But he didn't, the rain gradually abated, and we all got to see what we came for.

After the game, we all went out to eat, but it was on the late side (9:30 pm), and a lot of places were closing soon, so it was slim pickings. We went to this Cuban joint, but it was not the vibe we were looking for. The menu was way fancier/pricey than what anybody wanted, and the music was so loud it was giving me a headache. It's difficult to overstate how high the volume was in this place. It was like dining on a dance floor. So, we pulled a move I think I've only pulled one other time in my entire life, we just left after we had already been seated. We had even ordered drinks already, but just soft drinks, so they didn't even charge us (although JY said they seemed offended that we were leaving).

It turned out to be the right move. We went to a place that wasn't Smash Burger, but was just like Smash Burger, and it was much more suitable to us at that moment. I got a double stack, and it was really good. I hadn't eaten a burger like that in long time, and it really hit the spot. DK's car somehow got a flat tire, and he didn't have a spare,* so throughout our dinner adventure, he was dealing with AAA. Thankfully, a tire guy came out relatively quickly and fixed it, so it wasn't that big a setback. Hat's off to EK, by the way, she was a trooper throughout everything, including sitting in the gloom and rain for hours at a baseball game (I don't think she's a fan, being that at one point I overheard DK explaining to her what a walk is) and sitting outside a parking garage with her dads' friends waiting for a tire to get changed. I don't think those are a 14-year-old girl's idea of an ideal Friday night. 

*He did have one of those spray cans that inflate your tire and seal it, but he didn't realize it until after he got it changed. It's probably better to get it changed, anyway. He had to get up at the crack of dawn the next day and drive several hundred miles, and I'm not sure I'd feel comfortable doing that on a jimmy-rigged tire.    

JY took the red-eye in from Seattle that morning, so he was quite tired, and he's always been an asleep-when-the-head-hits-the-pillow type of guy, anyway, so he zonked out as soon as we got back to the hotel and started snoring very loudly. Thankfully, I was prepared. I'm such a fussy sleeper that I always travel with earplugs, and between those and the white noise playlist on Spotify I was able to drown out the sound of logs being sawed and get a bit of shuteye. I didn't get a great night's sleep, mind you, but it was passable. It apparently wasn't as good as JY's, as he was raving about his Fitbit sleep metrics the next morning.

I decided to drive back Saturday afternoon. Originally, I was thinking of staying another night, but since I had already seen IY pitch (and there's no way he would throw two days in a row), I figured I should get back. It would have been fun to hang out with JY another night, for sure, but I knew S was struggling at home (for reasons that will be revealed in a minute), and I also didn't want to get another night of hotel sleep and then drive back in the morning and then coach Lil' S2's football game (which starts in an hour and a half) and take him to his baseball game after that. I knew I'd be anxious about it the entire night, which would make it even harder to sleep. It was the right move, as I was completely wiped by the time I got home last night. I was not in condition to do anything other than sit on the sofa.

S was even more tired than I was because she had to pick up Lil' S2 two from a field trip at 1:15 am. No, that's not a typo. He took a class trip to NYC, and they left at 6:30 am and got back at 1:15 am. S is a morning person who is usually in bed by 9:00 pm, and she was already feeling a little under-the-weather, so this was especially hard on her. She was being cool about me going to New Jersey, because she knows I don't get opportunities to see these friends that much, but I knew she could use some relief. Also, I'm already going to be out of town all of next weekend (my annual crossword puzzle tournament), and I really didn't want to stick her with all the parenting duties for two full weekends in a row. So, I made the call to bail early. There are no solutions in life, only tradeoffs.

Alright, that's all I got for today. Last thing I'll say, however, is that Lil' S1's solo trip to Florida to visit my in-laws worked out very well. I picked him up at the airport for his return flight and got a special gate pass and met him as soon as he stepped off the jetway. He had icing on his face from a doughnut he bought at the airport in Florida, and I'm sure he did nothing but stare at his screens the entire flight, but he made it there and back safely and soundly, and that's by far the most important piece of this whole endeavor.

Until next time...

Entry 753: Solo Flights

The big news this week at the G & G household is that Lil' S1 is taking his first solo flight. He is currently tens of thousands of feet in the air en route to Florida to visit his grandparents for spring break. Somewhat surprisingly, I'm not worried about it at all. I thought I might be, but now it's here, and I'm not. There are a few reasons for this. The main one is that Lil' S1 can handle it. He's good with this sort of thing. He's very much still a little kid in many ways, but when it comes to venturing out into the world on his own and not freaking out about it, he's pretty good. He's been doing errands on his own for years, and he takes the Metro to and from school several times every week. I'm sure it's safer by an order of magnitude to be in an airport and fly than to be in a DC Metro station and take the train. You don't have to pay hundreds of dollars for a ticket and go through security in the latter scenario.

Also, S and her mom are on it. S took him to the airport and escorted him all the way to the jetway, and her mom and her mom's niece and her husband will be waiting for him at the gate on the other end. Plus, he has his cell phone, so we can always track him or call him -- provided he remembers to take his phone off airplane mode, that is. That's actually one of my only worries. That is exactly the type of thing he would forget to do. We might be saved there, however, by the fact that he'll try to watch something on YouTube and will have to turn it off airplane mode to get it to work.

This is the first year the kids have different spring breaks, so it's a little different logistically. Lil' S1 is going to Florida by himself, and then in a few weeks, S and her sister will take Lil' S2 there. I don't get to go at all, which is fine. I'm going on enough trips this year, and we go down there so often, it's perfectly acceptable for me to miss a trip every now and again. It's actually a nice time right now in our kids lives. They aren't yet in brooding teenager, too cool for school mode, but they also are past the need-to-be-monitored-at-almost-all-times stage. S is a bit sad today because she caught a glimpse into what it will be like when our kids leave the house (Lil' S2 went to a friend's birthday party and will likely be gone the entire day), but I'm just enjoying the break. Plus, the way things are going in the world today, with the job market and the arrested development of our youth, our kids might not ever leave our house for good -- and I'm only half-kidding about this.

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Alright, lightning round and then let's call it a post.

 

• My injured finger is slowly getting better. It's still bruised and tender, but I have a bit more range of motion. I had to put my Krav Maga gym membership on medical freeze for a few weeks. I can't punch, grip a barbell, or do a pushup, which makes it pretty much impossible to take martial arts or fitness classes.
  
  
• I can still do the stationary bike, though, thankfully. I also might -- just might -- be able to start jogging again. I quit about a year ago due to inflammation in my right knee, but it's been feeling pretty good of late. Once the weather gets a bit nicer, I'll test it out. That would be huge if I could go running again.
  
  
• I've been hitting Queen Bee on NYT Spelling Bee a decent amount of time (about 10%, which might not sound that impressive, but keep in mind, it's not at all an easy thing to do). Here's my daily Spelling Bee routine: I play until I get to Genius level, and then I have to get one more word (it's a game within a game that only exists in my head), and then I'm allowed to look at the number of possible words and the highest possible score. I'm not allowed to look at the solution, mind you, just the highest possible totals. If I'm sufficiently close, I then try for Queen Bee. Yesterday, I finished the job when I remembered that CIVET is a word. I don't know what it is -- I'm thinking a type of bolt, but I know that's wrong, because that's a RIVET -- but I do know it's a word.
  
  
  
• As it turns out, a CIVET is "a slender nocturnal carnivorous mammal with a barred and spotted coat and well-developed anal scent glands, native to Africa and Asia." Huh, how about that? In my Scrabble days I found that words I didn't know almost always fell into one of the Four-F categories: flora, fauna, foreign letters, foreign money. Examples are the Scrabble staples QAT, AI, XI, XU -- a shrub chewed as a stimulant, a three-toed sloth, the fourteenth letter of the Greek alphabet, and a monetary unit of Vietnam, respectively.
• I found out I can watch all the non-CBS March Madness games on Max, which is huge. The March Madness app is one of the few cable streaming services my parents’ defunct cable credentials don’t work for (and it’s not that their specific credentials don’t work; the app doesn’t accept the provider at all), so I’d have no good way to watch them otherwise. And I love watching March Madness games—well, the last few minutes of them, anyway. Even I’m not enough of a sports sicko to watch a random college basketball game, in today’s watered down NCAA, from start to finish.
  
  
• Update: Lil' S1 arrived safely at his destination. See, no need to worry, at all.

 Until next time...

Entry 752: Back In Palm Springs

I didn't post anything last week because I was in Palm Springs, my home away from home, apparently. It was a mix of work and personal. I flew in a week ago, Saturday afternoon, and spent the weekend and Monday with my parents. Then I stuck around for a work conference while my parents continued a two-week tour through the Southwest. All in all it was a good time, but not without its calamities. I accidentally paid double for our lodging; I injured, perhaps broke, my right pinkie finger; and our refrigerator apparently stopped working while I was gone. Also, my parents texted that they had to change their travel plans because roads in Arizona are being closed due to... snow?!

But let's start with the positive: It was great to see my parents. The main event was a trip out to Joshua Tree National Park. The eponymous Joshua tree is an interesting bit of flora. It looks like a tree drawn by Dr. Seuss. It makes for good scenery, though, and the park is quite nice. It was a good place for us to go, because a lot of the hikes are elderly friendly, and you can drive through the park and see the pretty desert imagery.

 

We tried to do a few other nature-y things but got stymied each time. We set out to take an aerial tram up the side of the mountain -- I've done it before and it's pretty cool -- but tickets were sold out online, and there was a line of cars a quarter-mile long just to get into the parking lot to even attempt to buy walk-up tickets. When we saw that, we did a u-ey and left.  Then we went to the trailhead of a hike at Tahquitz Canyon, but it was $15-a-person to do the hike, and it looked more treacherous than my 80-year-old mother could handle. She's still pretty mobile and can walk several miles at a time, but not through rocky, uneven terrain. She is 80, after all. So, we just walked around downtown Palm Springs instead. It's pretty cool -- tons of good restaurants. We ate at a half-decent Mexican joint one night and a pretty good Tuscan place the next.

We also ate at my friends' place in La Quinta. When I said above that the trip to Joshua Tree was the highlight, I had momentarily forgotten about visiting E & M (the couple whose wedding we attended last October).  They had us over for dinner Monday night, and it was terrific. They have a bungalow with an excellent backyard for eating and entertaining outside. Everything was great -- the food, the ambience, and the conversation were all top-notch. Just a wonderful night overall.

My parents stayed one more night at the condo unit I booked us in Palm Spring, and then set out the next morning for the rest of their trip. I went to a hotel for my work conference. I accidentally double-paid for our condo unit, but thankful Expedia and the villa manager were cool about it, and I got it resolved fairly quickly. The hardest part was finding the correct phone number for Expedia. They don't advertise their number on their confirmation emails, or even at their website (at least not that I could find), so I Googled it, and ended up with a couple false leads at first.

I guess the double-booking error was my fault -- I reserved two units instead of one -- but that's because the website I went through is hella confusing. It calls a full condo unit with multiple bedrooms a "room." So, I booked two "rooms" thinking a "room" was actually a room and not a full unit. I mean, would anybody ever say "Yes, I'd like to book a room with two bedrooms, please"? Look at the confirmation notice I received below and tell me if you think it reads as one condo unit, two bedrooms total, or two condo units, four bedrooms total. It's the latter, but I don't blame anybody, including myself three months ago, for thinking it's the former.

Alright, I'm quickly running out of time writing this. So, I'll have to be brief in my description of the other calamities. I played dodgeball on a team with my colleagues at the work conference and badly messed up my finger. They always have a big corporate party thing at the end of the week that features a dodgeball tournament. Usually we don't participate, but this time we did, and it did not go well. Actually, we won our first match, but then we got destroyed in our next one. I was probably our best player, and I kinda suck, because I can't throw hard anymore due to the arthritis in my shoulder. After our second (and last) match, I noticed that my right pinkie finger really hurt and by the next morning it was purple and swollen and I could barely move it. Getting old is a bitch.

Also, our refrigerator seems to be broken. When I got home, I noticed the milk was sour and everything seemed to be warmer than it should be. I put in this little thermometer we have (great gadget, by the way) and left it overnight, and the refrigerator temperature didn't go below 55 degrees, even though it's set at 35. The freezer is okay, but not the fridge. We have another fridge downstairs, so it's not the end of the world. But moving all our food to the basement before it rots is not the activity I had planned for this morning. It did kinda force me to clean out all the old stuff, though, which was long overdo. I felt like the "aunt" from that stupid Geico commercial: expired, expired, expired...

Until next time...

Entry 751: Our Short National Nightmare

It must be said: Our country is a nightmare right now. I hope things are good for you locally, because they are a disaster at the national level. Thus far, Trump 2.0 has been worse than I was anticipating, and I was already anticipating things would be quite bad. I knew he would be terrible when it comes to things like upholding democratic norms, uniting the country, and maintaining strong international relations with our allies. (The Zelenskyy meeting was an utter embarrassment.) But he's fucking up even the things that he's supposed to be good at, like the stock market. It plummeted earlier this week and didn't rebound much. And even if you don't care about stocks,* you probably care about having a job, and Elon is gleefully, maniacally slashing government jobs and government funds that pay for a lot of NGO jobs. It's all being done in the name of efficiency, and it will be very efficient in leading us to the brink of recession. If Trump actually follows through on his plan to impose high tariffs on pretty much all imported goods, it might just push us over the edge. 

*I don't really care much about them, to be honest. Like most people with a retirement plan, I have some money in the stock market, but it's just a number on a screen until it's time to withdraw, which won't be for many years, and I'm sure conditions will be different by then. But it does matter to some people now and not necessarily just rich people. I'm sure even, like, retired teachers have investment accounts that rely somewhat on stocks.

And we're only in month two. We can't even call it "our long national nightmare" because it hasn't been very long yet. We've got another 3.8 years of this bullshit.... *Sigh*

Alright, enough about that. Let's focus on more positive things for the rest of the post.

White Lotus! I mentioned in my last post that I resubscribed to Max just to watch it, and I was lamenting the fact that I didn't wait until all the episodes were out, so that I could binge watch it and then quit my subscription after only a month. But now I'm actually very glad that I didn't do that. There's something to be said for watching only one episode a week like we used to. I like that feeling of watching something with everybody else around the country. I miss the shared TV experience. Of course, relatively few people are actually watching it with me, compared to the old days, so there's no one really to talk about it with. If I brought up the show to a colleague at lunch (assuming I'm eating lunch with a colleague and they have Max, neither of which is a guarantee) they would probably be like, Oh yeah, is that the one at the resort? Haven't seen it. Everybody is watching their own things on their own schedule.

But that's where podcasts come in. I've really gotten into the White Lotus coverage on The Ringer's The Prestige TV podcast. They point out little things I missed, give background on the actors and writers,* and toss out theories about what will happen next. It's not as good as having an actual conversation that you can participate in, but it's the next best thing. It's the technological solution to a problem technology created in the first place. It's not quite adequate, but given that it's impossible to unring the technology bell, it's better than nothing. 

*Or writer, rather, singular. I believe Mike White writes and directs every episode by himself.

Actually, it kinda reminds me of dating apps. They came along after I was already off the market (although I did very briefly do Match.com, back in the day), but from everything I hear, they're pretty much the only way people meet anymore. But the only reason we need them is because technology has so isolated us that young people, who never experienced the "before times," don't have the opportunities, nor the social skills, to pursue potential romantic partners IRL. Again, dating apps are a technological solution to a problem technology created in the first place. And also from everything I hear, they are not quite adequate. In fact, most people seem to hate the apps. I know a few married couples who met on the apps, but I know an equal number of people who have sworn them off completely. They would rather be alone than play the swipe game. I mean, dating was never easy (not for most of us, anyway). It was a top complaint among twentysomethings when I was a twentysomething, twenty-something years, but I think it's even worse now.

Anyway...

I've mentioned before that Lil' S2 is really good at math, and he's continuing to demonstrate it. Lil' S1 is pretty good too, but he's good in a more conventional way, where he will learn the methods and apply them appropriately and mostly get the problems correct. But Lil' S2 has this spark that I just don't see in many other kids. He's not necessarily a whiz at calculating things -- he's probably better than average for a kid his age, but he makes silly mistakes and messes up basic arithmetic sometimes, like most people -- but he has this uncanny knack for understanding and solving the broader problem. For example, the other day we were eating dinner and finding ways to entertain ourselves without using our phones (much to the kids' chagrin), so I started giving everybody math quizzes, and I posed the following problem: 

You are in a circle with a bunch of people and a bunch of chickens. It goes person, chicken, person, chicken, person, chicken, all the way around. When a bell rings, each chicken turns and randomly pecks the person to its left or its right. What is the probability you don't get pecked at all?

Lil' S2 immediately yelled out "25%", which is the correct answer. He got it before Lil' S1 and S. When I asked him how he got it, he couldn't explain it very well. It seemed like he just kinda intuited it. Thinking that maybe he just got lucky I asked him another question:

I roll a die over and over again. Every time it's 1 or 2, I'll pay you a dollar. Every time it's 3, 4, 5, or 6, you pay me 50 cents. Is this a game you would want to play?

He thought about it for a few seconds and then said, "I think I'd just about break even," which again is correct. I asked him to explain, and again he couldn't really do it -- he gave a 9-year-old-word-salad response (although he did correctly know that the probability of rolling a single number is about 16.7%) -- but somehow he figured it out. It was pretty cool. I hope he keeps it up. I've been trying to get him to take coding classes -- I know he could be a really good programmer -- but he doesn't want to. That's his biggest weakness. He doesn't like to come out of his comfort zone. Well, he's still just a little kid, so hopefully this is something he grows out of, because it's a mindset antithetical to success. As a wise person once said, "Half of life is just showing up."

Alright, that's all. Until next time...

Entry 750: String Delays

I made it to and from Memphis this week without incident. It was a short work trip, just two days total -- leave on Tuesday, return on Thursday. Late Tuesday evening and early Wednesday morning, it snowed in Memphis, just a few inches, but when you don't have the infrastructure in place -- snowplows, deicing vehicles, etc. -- a few inches can be a nuisance. Ultimately, it turned out to be no big deal, though. It made the ride from the hotel to the meeting venue Wednesday morning a bit slower, but that's about it. It actually kinda worked out perfectly because it snowed right in between my flights, so neither of them were delayed by the weather.

They were still delayed, though. Both times it seemed to be because the incoming flight was late. I got the dreaded "Your flight is delayed 20 minutes" text. I hate those so much. On flight days, I have a moment of panic anytime I feel my phone vibrate, even when it's nothing. Oh, whew! It's just my sister-in-law's Wordle score. The thing is, I'm not actually that bothered by a small delay. I'm a get-to-the-airport-early type of guy, so 20 minutes hardly matters. I can work/read/watch at the airport just as easily as I can at home. The problem, however, is that 20 minutes is never 20 minutes. It's always more, sometimes much more. I literally cannot think of a time in which my flight was delayed, and then departed without further delay.

I call it the string delay, and it's a staple of airlines. Often you get strung along with more texts officially declaring additional delays, but sometimes you get strung along without further announcement. Sometimes you're just standing there, looking at the display telling you boarding starts in two minutes, when there is no airplane at the gate and nobody behind the counter. Then boarding starts 30 minutes later, with no explanation as to why that delay wasn't worthy of an announcement like the previous delays. And then there are the additional sit-at-the-gate, taxi-to-the-runway, wait-in-line-for-takeoff string delays. Those can easily add another 45 minutes to your actual departure time.

My flight there got hit with a particularly bad string delay, causing me some consternation. There was a dinner I needed to attend starting at 6:30 pm. My original arrival time was 3:45 pm, which even with moderate delay, would get me there with more than enough time to get to the hotel and check-in and all that before needing to leave for the restaurant. However, the string got pulled more and more, and by the time we finally took off the arrival time was now 6:15. The airport is about 35 minutes from the hotel (which is about ten minutes from the restaurant), so I'm thinking there is no way I can get to dinner on time.

Now, I'm doing the calculation on whether or not it's best to go straight to the restaurant with all my bags or go to the hotel first and be even later to dinner. In the former scenario, I figure I'm arriving at 7:00 pm, best case scenario; in the later, it's 7:30, or more likely 7:45, so I figure I'll just go straight there. But then when we land, and I switch my phone off airplane mode, it reads 5:15. I forgot to account for the hour difference in time zones! Huzzah! I don't have any luggage*, and I check-in to the hotel online in the Lyft, so I arrive with time to spare -- not much time, only about ten minutes, but that's certainly better than being late.

*The key to quick traveling, especially if you don't have priority boarding and don't want to pay for it, is to bring a carry-on duffel bag. If you bring a rollaboard suitcase, there might not be room for it by the time you get on, or, as was the case on my flights, the overhead bins might not be big enough to accommodate them at all. Then you have to check your carry-on and either wait for it at baggage claim, which could easily add a half-hour to your trip, or at the gate, where the line still looked quite long. With a duffel bag, you can always squeeze it in somewhere in the bin.  

I watched the first episode of Season 3 of White Lotus on the flight there. It was good, but I botched how I did it. I looked on online to see if it was out yet, and I saw something about Season 3 Episode 4, so I figured there were at least four episodes out already, so I resubscribed to HBO (or Max, rather*), only to find that nothing beyond the first episode has dropped yet. Now, I have to keep the subscription for, like, three months to finish the season. Total newb move -- I should have waited until the entire season dropped and binged watched it in like two weeks and then canceled the subscription. Oh, well. Maybe there is something else worth watching on HBO right now. It's amazing that they used to have almost all the great prestige shows -- The Sopranos, Sex & the City, Six Feet Under, Curb Your Enthusiasm -- and now they have only one that I really want to watch. 

*I heard somebody on a podcast talking about how dumb it was for HBO to call their subscription service Max, when HBO spent decades establishing itself as one of the biggest names in movies and prestige TV. I couldn't agree more.

On the flight home, I watched The Menu, which I also thought was quite good. I got strong Get Out vibes from it. It's one of those movies where you know something is off from the get-go, and you can't help but be intrigued trying to make sense of it all. Also like Get Out, it takes a turn toward being a straight-up horror movie, without actually getting there, and it doesn't really know how to end. I didn't love the ending of either movie, but I also don't know what would have been better, so it's only a minor demerit. Overall, solid watch, very good for a two-hour plane trip.

Alright, speaking of not knowing how to end things... Until next time...     

Entry 749: More Snow, More Snow Days

We got hit with another snowstorm here on Tuesday evening. It didn't stick around long, but it put a nice six-inch blanket over the city and caused school to be canceled Wednesday. There also was no school yesterday nor is there any on Monday, so they got a reverse week -- two days of school, five days off. I asked the boys why there was no school yesterday, and they said "because its Valentine's Day!" and I was like, "No, that's not a day you usually get off," and they insisted that it was. Of course, it isn't, but it was this year, because it happened to be a staff day at each of their schools. Why couldn't it have been flexed into a makeup day for one of the snow days they missed? I have no idea, but I don't want to go down that complaint avenue again.

It's weird, we are getting, like, a real winter this year. I thought global warming had eradicated the real winter in this part of the world, but apparently not completely. It looked like the weather was going to turn for good, as just last week we reached the low 60s, but it snapped back and is quite cold again. This coming week we are supposed to get another snowstorm, and I couldn't be less happy about it, as it could really mess up some travel plans. I'm leaving for a (hopefully) short business trip on Tuesday afternoon. I'm going to a meeting on Wednesday and then returning home Thursday afternoon. That's the plan, anyway. But the show is supposed come here on Wednesday and continue on Thursday, and it could be a lot. As if that's not bad enough, it's also supposed to snow where I'm going on Wednesday. So, I've got to worry about it on both ends. Travel is stressful enough when conditions are good; it's absolutely dreadful when they are not. It's a cavalcade of delays and cancellations. I'm having premonitions of being stuck in an airport or a moderately priced hotel. (And I have a lot going on I need to back for next weekend.) If it was up to me, I would think long and hard about rescheduling this meeting or making it virtual. But, alas, it is not up to me.

One of the things I want to get back for next weekend is Lil' S2's flag football game. They made it to the semifinals, and it's pretty cool. They've been struggling all year to get their best lineup on the field. A bunch of players missed games with the flu (including Suren last week), and they lost a bunch of close games. So, they came into the playoffs as the 8th seed (out of 10) and had to win a play-in game just to make the main tournament. But they won that this morning (by a 32-6 score), and then they beat the number one seed right afterwards. Both teams only had six kids -- the exact number needed to field a team, so neither side had any subs -- but the other team was missing some of their top players, whereas we had our best players, and we won handily (19-0). It's funny how these games are determined by what 9-year-old gets sick when and what families decide to go skiing for the long weekend, but that's the beauty of kids sports. Honestly, it's not that different from the NFL, in which the most important games are often decided by what star players didn't blow out their ACLs and aren't in concussion protocol.

Football is such a brutal sport, man. I mean, flag football is just as safe as any other youth sport, but it is definitely a gateway drug to the real thing. Lil' S2 has already been asking if he can play tackle. We're saying no for now, but in a few more years, who knows? The thing is, I think he might be better at tackle than flag. He probably doesn't have the speed to play the skill positions, but he's pretty tough and sturdy for his age, so I'm thinking offensive line. He actually can catch quite well -- he caught four or five passes today including a touchdown and a conversion -- so maybe even tight end. There's definitely a part of me that wants to see how he does in tackle football. On the other hand, however, football is such a brutal sport, man.

Lil' S1 is also doing a sport right now. He's on the swim team at his school. We basically forced him to do it. I'm not into making my kids do any particular activity, but I am into making them do a particular type of activity. We told Lil' S1 he has to do some sort of physical activity regularly -- participating on a sports team, taking a martial arts class, joining a climbing gym -- something involving physical movement in a recurring, structured setting. (Occasionally walking to the store to buy baking ingredients -- his preferred method of exercise -- doesn't count.) So, he picked swim, and he says he loves it. I went to one of his meets the other day. He did the 50-free and finished eighth out of ten swimmers -- not last! I only watched his heat (it was a tiny venue and there was no place to sit), and he finished in the middle out of three kids, so I went away satisfied. I mean, it wouldn't be that big a deal if he was last -- somebody has to be -- but I must admit, I did feel a bit of a relief that it wasn't him.

The thing is, he's always been a competent swimmer, and he probably could be pretty good if he put some effort into it, but I don't think he wants to. In fact, I don't know for sure, but I get the impression that one of the reasons he likes swimming is because the practices aren't that hard.* Well, whatever, at least it's a few hours after school in which he's not staring staring at a screen. Apparently, he's doing golf in the spring. We'll see how that goes.

*His school has a no-cut policy in sports, and from what I gather, the way they handle this on swim team is to have a "well squad" that does a less strenuous, less serious practice than the other kids in the well of the pool. Lil' S1 is on the well squad and talks about how great it is.

Until next time...

Entry 748: Wild Week

It was a wild week. Well, it was a wild week by my middle-age family-man standards, at least. The big news is that my company was purchased by a different company, a much larger company, one you've surely heard of, and so I guess I work for them now. It came totally out of the blue to me, but I think it's going to be a good thing. These types of acquisitions can definitely create some consternation, but we're being told all the right things: no job losses or pay cuts or relocations, etc. Of course things could always change for the worse, but they could change for the worse if we didn't get acquired too. Unless you work for yourself, you're always reliant on somebody above you, and if you do work for yourself, you only shift the reliance to your customers, which might not be any better. The only sure way to be set financially is to already have money, and even then you could develop a sports betting addiction and gamble it all away on failed Super Bowl props.* There is no such thing as a sure thing.

*I've only bet on the Super Bowl a few times and never for serious money. Back in 1992, I did a prop pool at a Super Bowl party at my parents' friends' house. Everybody put in a few dollars and picked their favorite props using a fake budget, and then the people with the most fake money at the end, won the real money. I got the top prize, because I hit on Earnest Byner to score the first touchdown at relatively long odds. That's probably my greatest betting moment ever.

The other big thing that happened this week is S left town for a work trip, and Lil' S2 got the flu. It was pretty brutal. He was full-on sick -- like, not wanting to get out of bed, not wanting to eat anything, coughing and wheezing and puking sick. The fact that I was single-daddying it was trying in ways but, if I'm being totally honestly, easier in other ways than it would have been if S was here. One thing I've noticed about parenting is that a large percentage of it is done for the benefit of your partner more so than your child. I'm not saying this is a good thing or a bad thing -- it's just a thing. For example, I sometimes make Lil' S2 take his jacket to school, even when he doesn't want to, and I don't think he needs it, because I know when S picks him up, the thought of him being outside in 50-degree weather without a jacket will cause her consternation. The jacket is for her, not for him.

There are so many things like this, and I'm sure it goes both ways, so I'm not complaining. I'm just saying that when S travels for work, these for-your-spouse parenting obligations lessen a bit, and I don't mind that. When Lil' S2 woke me up at 2 am Tuesday morning because he threw up all over his bed, I didn't have to worry about what towels to use to clean it up or where to move him or anything like that. I just did what I thought was best/easiest in the moment, and I had the entire situation handled lickety-split, Winston Wolf style.*

*Thankfully, our upstairs is all hardwood floors, not carpet, so I didn't have a repeat of last post's clean-up job.

And then when I got back in bed, I didn't have to feel S's mama-bear anxiety emanating off of her. I could just go back to sleep immediately, which was actually the best thing for Lil' S2 -- it's much harder to care for a sick kid when you're exhausted.* S's concern was strong enough over text. I took him to the doctor Tuesday afternoon basically just to put her mind at ease. I'm not anti-doctor, by any means, but I rarely go for this type of sickness, because there's nothing they can really do. They diagnose you and then tell you to do the exact things that you were going to do anyway -- stay hydrated, rest, and take some Tylenol if you're running a fever. Those are the only three things you really need to do, and, lo and behold, they are exactly what the doctor said Lil' S2 should do.

*I turned off my morning alarm Sunday night because neither of the kids were going to school on Monday (Lil' S1 had a random day off), and then I forgot to set it again. I woke up at 8:25 am on Tuesday in a panic, because I had to get Lil' S1 across town to school in five minutes. Then I realized he had already gotten up, gotten ready, and taken the Metro to school. It was very cool and relieving. In many ways, he's mature beyond his years; in others, he's still very much a little kid.  

But, I mean, it's fine that I took him. It was "only" three hours out of my life, and putting S's mind to ease is a kind thing to do. Plus, it was nice to rule out strep throat. I was pretty sure that wasn't it, because he wasn't complaining specifically about his throat, but it has been going around the neighborhood. Also, I got a doctor's note for school. They're sticklers at DCPS about excused absences. I'm like, How about it's excused because I'm his parent and I say it's excused?! But actually truancy is a big problem, so it's probably good that they take it seriously.

One amazing thing is that somehow neither Lil' S1 nor I got sick. (At least, we haven't yet, knock on wood.) This is literally the only time I can remember one of my kids getting sick enough to miss school and not passing it on to me or the other kid. I guess getting those flu shots a few months ago was a good thing. I mean, we all got them, including Lil' S2, but they aren't 100% effective. In our small sample, they were only 67% effective. Still, I'll take that over a household-wide pandemic any day.

Until next time...

Entry 747: Marinara Bomb

2025 has not exactly gotten off to the greatest start in the history of the Gregorian calendar. Thursday was a particular bad day for me. I woke up and put on a news podcast, which was my first mistake. One of the worst things about Trump being president, I now recall in full detail, is the exhaustion you feel trying to keep up with current events. It's especially bad right now, as everybody tries to figure out the meaning, legality, and implications of all his executive orders. I'm tempted to just bury my head in the sand for the next four years, but that's not really practical, especially living in DC. A lot of people I know and love either work for the federal government or work for companies who rely on federal contracts, and all these potential funding freezes to agencies like USAID directly affect their livelihoods.* So, I can't avoid the chaos, even if I want to.

*Thankfully, S got out of the government contracts space about five years ago, so her job won't be directly impacted by any of this stuff.

The thing is, even those EOs that I'm sympathetic towards (there are a few), I have major problems with, because I either don't think the president does (or should) have the authority to unilaterally decree them from on-high, or I think they are worded and/or being implemented in such away as to minimize their benefits and maximize their damage as much as possible. I guess that's the point. The goal isn't actually to make America great again (whatever that even means); it's to help the people this administration likes and punish those it doesn't.* It's the exact opposite of the message of every other president of my lifetime, all of whom Biden was effectively echoing when he said, "I'll work just as hard for those who didn't vote for me, as those who did." We don't even get this lip-service now. 

*The good news, such as it is, it is virtually impossible to carry out this goal. We are too intertwined. A lot of Trump supporters will be hurt by these EOs too, which is probably one of the reasons many of them have gotten walked back to some degree.

Take the return-to-the-office order for federal employees. I understand why you might want to discontinue remote work. It has positives and negatives, and it's not unreasonable to conclude that the latter outweigh the former.* But it's being enforced too abruptly and harshly. A bunch of people I know have to go back almost immediately. As one of my friends put it, "They're giving us two weeks to completely change our lives." Like, if you gave people who live in the area until September to return to work (let it coincide with a new school year, since that often dictates people's schedules) and people who live out of the area an additional six months, it wouldn't that bad. In fact, it could even be a boon for the District, revitalizing downtown and bringing back the Metro ridership that was lost during the COVID shutdown. As it is, however, it's incredibly disruptive and stressful for thousands of people -- and again, this is surely part of the point. Since government work is left-coded ("the Deep State"), the fact that it inflicts hardship on so many is no doubt seen as a plus to this administration. 

*I like going into the office (part-time), for three main reasons: 1) When I get to know people personally, I'm much more likely to solicit their help or offer my help to them, which greatly aids in efficiency; 2) I often get ideas from informal chats that only occur in-person; 3) It's nice to have another space, outside of my house that I go to regularly. The flip side of these, of course, is that it sucks to commute to work everyday, and it sucks to be indefinitely stuck in a geographic location you don't want to be in, just because that's where your company got the best deal on a lease. The best policy, in my opinion, is a flexible hybrid schedule with the option to go full-on remote after one has been with the company for a few years.

Then, I learned there was an aircraft crash that killed around 70 people about five miles from our house. These types of disasters are obviously so sad and scary no matter where they happen, but they get amped up just a little more when they happen so close to home. You probably already heard that the plane collided with a military helicopter during its descent into National Airport. It sounds like the accident was completely on the helicopter. An air traffic controller was in contact with the helicopter's pilot and made him confirm that he could see the plane and would let it land before he went through the plane's airspace. It's unclear why the pilot didn't do this, but it's speculated that he was looking at something else he thought was the plane (possibly a different plane in the distance) and not the actual plane he was about to crash into. Tragic.

My question: Why was this helicopter there in the first place? Like why was it flying through this area at all? Reagan National is one of the most congested airports in the world. Why does a military training mission need to fly anywhere near its runways, especially at night in extremely windy weather? Couldn't it have gone around? A few miles in either direction and it would never have even been in any conceivable line of flight. It makes no sense to me. Again, tragic.

To top it all off, short on the heels of learning about this, I was carrying a box full of groceries from Costco downstairs, when I noticed a flap on the box was sticking out in a weird way. Uh-oh, that doesn't look sturdy, I thought immediately before the box's bottom gave out and all its contents tumbled down the steps. Unfortunately, one of the items was a three pack of pasta sauce, and one of the glass jars burst when it hit the bottom (the middle jar, somewhat weirdly). I mean, it just absolutely exploded -- like one of those ink bombs you see in bank robbery scenes in movies -- sending flecks of marinara and glass everywhere and leaving a puddle of dark redness on our light gray carpet.

Although things like this aren't even comparable to the true horrors and tragedies of the world, there is something about seeing your domicile in disarray that can push you over the edge. There's a passage in an Irvine Welsh book -- one of the Trainspotting followups; I don't remember which one -- in which a character name Spud ends up at this woman June's apartment. The place is a wreck, and June is having a meltdown because she's broke and depressed and her boyfriend is an abusive psychopath (Francis Begbie), and Spud just kinda walked in on the situation and doesn't really know what to do. So, he starts washing her dishes. She joins him, and they clean up her entire kitchen. By the time they're done, she has walked back from the figurative ledge, and he leaves feeling relatively good about the whole encounter ("chuffed," as the Scots say) .

There's something about this passage I really love, and on Thursday looking at the mess of marinara before me, it resonated with me first-hand. I was June, only I had no Spud to come to help me.* I had to clean it up all myself, which I did... kinda. There's still a faint stain, but given the state it was in, I think that was inevitable. It certainly isn't due to a lack of effort on my part. After I picked out all the glass and scooped up the top layer of sauce, I scrubbed and scrubbed and scrubbed some more. I spent literally an hour scouring the carpet. I went through about ten beach towels, dozens of buckets of water, and almost a full bottle of cleanser. I thought I had it licked completely, but today I can still see a reddish tinge. It's too early to say exactly how bad it's going to be (it hasn't totally dried out yet), but I know it's going to annoy me, at least a little bit, every time I look at it -- a lovely little reminder of a truly dreadful day.    

*Which is actually probably a good thing. Although Spud has the kindest of hearts, he's an addict and a thief and gets into (and causes) trouble wherever he goes.

Until next time...

Entry 746: The Good And The Bad: A Week In Review

Well, if the first week of this new-old presidency is any indication, it's going to be a long four years. I'm a daily listener to Mike Pesca's podcast The Gist, and he was saying that he's not going to cover things Donald Trump says, rather only things that he does. I think this is the right the move, as the former outnumbers the latter by at least an order of magnitude, and this fire hose of logorrhea often distracts and confuses everybody as to the actual policy changes that will actually affect their lives. The thing is, though, even at a say-to-do ratio of 10-to-1, the number of things Trump actually does is still pretty high, and a whole lot of it is terrible -- and not just terrible in the sense that I might not like it -- I mean morally repugnant -- things that not even most Trump voters can easily stomach, such as pardoning January 6 rioters who are on video assaulting police officers with pepper spray and blunt objects. Among Trump's litany of executive orders, this, in my opinion, is his worst... so far. If he follows through with his stated plans to raid and deport communities of well-established, nonviolent, tax-paying immigrants, whose only crime is not leaving the country they love, then I might rethink this.

It's so frustrating too because this past presidential election -- the so-called most important of our lives (and it might have been!) -- was so egregiously botched by the Democrats. Because the election was close and Kamala Harris ran a half-decent campaign (all things considered), not enough is made of how badly Biden and his coterie screwed everybody by staying in the race long after it was clear he couldn't hang. Given Harris's performance in the 2020 primaries, it seems probable that she would not have been the candidate in 2024 had there been a real primary, and if instead it could have been somebody who resonated with swing state voters just a few percentage points better... like I said, frustrating.

And then there's the fact that after we all coalesced and ousted Trump from office four years ago, the hardcore Left has seemingly been doing their damnedest to make allying oneself with them as unattractive as possible to centrist normies (aka, most the country), and the Democratic party has been unable and/or unwilling to distance themselves from their unpopular positions. Jeffrey Mauer has a great Substack piece* about how dismaying it is to see Trump score political points by taking about things like free speech, color blindness, and merit -- things that are widely supported by the general public (across identity groups) and used to be championed by Democrats -- especially given that he clearly doesn't give a damn about any of them. He's just savvy enough to step into the void created by lefties' abandonment of these issues.

*He also has one about how the Left antagonizes guys like Mark Zuckerberg and then act indignant when they move rightward. The article is too over-the-top for me, but I take his point. People go where they feel love. As it turns out, constantly telling people how problematic they are is not a great way to build a coalition and advance your agenda. And it's not like I'm a Zuck fan. I've always found him very unimpressive, and I was an early Facebook canceller. I just think it's a major self-own by liberals to lose support, almost gleefully, from so many of the tech-bro types who used to support them.

The good news, such as it is, is that the Republicans aren't that much more popular, and there is a decent chance people quickly remember why they rejected Trump the first time around. "Look how nuts the Democrats are -- come join our cult instead!" isn't actually that appealing a proposition. And so swings the pendulum...

Alright, hopefully I got my quota of politics out of the way for a bit, so I can go back to talking about what I really care about: The mundanities of present-day life and pointless anecdotes from my childhood. Both the kids had school dances yesterday, and it was super cute. Lil' S2 wore his Cowboys jersey and hung with this bros because he's only 9. Lil' S1, however, wore a shirt and tie and invited one of his female friends to attend with him (strictly platonically). I had to help him put his outfit together a little bit, but that's understandable. Initially, his shirt was half tucked-in and half out, and he was wearing his collar popped with his tie around his bare neck (not under the collar). I had to do my fatherly duties and show him how it was actually supposed to be worn. He said he had a great time at the dance, which is music to my ears. It hasn't been super easy for him to integrate socially at his new school, so it's great to hear about little wins. 

In other news, Ichiro got elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame this week. He's one of my favorite players of all time, which is saying something being that I was 23 when he joined the Mariners. There is a critical age of sports fandom, right around 15 or so, after which it is difficult to truly become a fan of a team or a player. If you were a fan before that, you will likely be a die-hard fan for life, for better or worse. It's why I will probably always love the Mariners and my favorite players will probably always be Ken Griffey Jr. and Edgar Martinez. They were my favorites when I was 11. 

After this critical age, you can still become a new fan of someone or some team, but it's hard to be a fan fan of them. It's like how I'm a fan of the Sounders or the Storm or the Kraken. I root for them, and I try to watch their big games, but I'm not living and dying by them. I'm not devastated when they lose -- I often forget to even check how they did. But, every now and then, somebody comes along who is so amazing to watch and brings so much joy to your life, that it's impossible not to feel that unbridled little-kid fandom once again. That was Ichiro. He was like nothing I'd ever seen before and haven't seen since. He would turn routine ground balls into singles; he would fire frozen ropes to third base from the right field warning track; and every now and then he'd turn on one and hit it into the Safeco bleachers, just to keep everybody on their toes. He was pure awesomeness, man.

Alright, that's all for this post. Until next time...

Entry 745: And The Cold Continues

And The cold continues here. It's currently 38 degrees (feels like 29), and S and I are like, Finally! A reprieve from the bitter cold! The snow is slowly melting, but a fresh coat is in the forecast for later this afternoon, and if it comes, it will stick around a while, as tomorrow we are supposedly getting hit with an "arctic blast." It'll be lows in the single digits, highs in the low 20s for a few days. It won't be comfortable, but it is perfectly timed. It's a holiday, so we can stay inside, and it's Inauguration Day. All the "festivities" (I use quotes because for the vast majority of DC residents the mood will be much more somber -- or perhaps absurdist -- than festive) will be moved inside, which is great, because it means I won't have to look at it. Actually, I wouldn't have to look at it, anyway, because we're far enough north that downtown often feels like an entirely different city. But, nevertheless, I like the thought of MAGA not overtaking our National Mall and neighboring streets like it did before. Actually, If I recall correctly, it poured rain on Inauguration Day eight years ago, so maybe God is trying to tell us something. Although, four years ago, Biden didn't even have a proper inauguration, due to that whole pandemic thing. So, I think God's message is that he wants Obama back -- don't we all?

Another reason I don't mind the cold right now (or so I'm telling myself) is that it's supposed to be cold right now. It's winter in DC. It gets cold here. I'm simultaneously dismayed by and spoiled by climate change. I hate the fact that we frequently have temperatures here in the high-60s in early December, but I love being able to go for a walk then through the trails of Rock Creek without my face turning bright red and my toes going numb. And I've gotten used to it. So, now when I'm resentful that my weather app basically just has a middle finger emoji on it all the time, I have to remind myself It's good that it's cold here! It means we haven't completely cooked the earth... yet. (If, by some chance, you are reading this in LA right now, I completely understand how you might have a different take.)

Being out in this weather for a few hours yesterday at Lil' S2's flag football game got me remembering times in my life when I was really cold, and there are two in particular that came to mind. The first happened in 1999. The evening before spring trimester at Western Washington University, the city of Bellingham got hit with a fluke storm, blanketing the city with a horrendous wintery mix. It wasn't quite cold enough to snow, but it was too cold to rain, so we woke up to like a foot of Slurpee slush. At the time, I only had one pair of shoes because I saved money by maintaining a spartan lifestyle. They were running shoes, which I had Scotchgarded to make them practical in the rain. It worked quite well for the usual mist and drizzle of the shores of Puget Sound, but it completely failed for wading through an ankle-deep Icee. Just walking across campus from the bus stop to my first class completely drenched my feet with ice-cold wetness, and they didn't warm up the entire day. By the time I got home, many hours later, and had a chance to take off my shoes and socks, my feet were bright purple and completely numb.

That night I slept with my space heater on, which I didn't normally do (spartan lifestyle, remember), placing it on a box near the foot of my bed, so that it would be directly on my feet the entire night. Even when I woke up the next morning my feet still felt kinda cold, so I packed a bunch of extra pairs of thick socks to change into throughout the day, and eventually they felt normal again. Thinking back on this, I wonder if I was closer to serious repercussions than I realized at the time. You think of frostbite as something that happens to mountain climbers or cross-country skiers who get lost in the words (at least that's how I think of it), but there are stories of people losing fingers and toes just sitting in the stands at a sporting event. That's the crazy thing about being young: You do so main stupid things without even realizing how stupid they are, and then you think back on it like, How did I not cause myself serious bodily harm? Somehow you survive it -- well, most of us do, anyway.

The second time I remember being unbearably cold came during a trip to New York with my friend DK and his friend A (who became my friend for the trip also). It was probably the most uncomfortable weekend I've ever experienced. It was December of 2002. I was in the middle of my one year of grad school at The George Washington University in DC. DK and A had drove from Atlanta to visit, and then we took the bus to NYC. We stayed with one of A's friends in her tiny, shared apartment in Queens. All three of us slept on the wooden floor of this girl's room, while she slept on the bed (futon). It was that type of we're-all-broke-in-an-expensive-city trip. She also had a cat that crawled on and meowed at us all night. We joked that at no point throughout either of our two nights there were all three of us asleep at the same time. It was funny because it was true.

Needless to say, we didn't want to spend a lot of time hanging out there, so we would leave in the early morning and not come back until the late evening. New York is a great city for that, but it's a much less great city for that if: a) you have little money to spend; b) it's five degrees outside. We had to walk a lot, and for some reason the only pants I had were these thin hiking pants (the kind that can unzip into shorts), and the cold just cut through them like Aaron Donald through the Bengals' offensive line in Super LVI.* Other than doing an ice bath plunge at a spa in Iceland, it was the coldest I've even been. We would plan out our trip from tourist site A to tourist site B, and then we would inevitably stop in a dive bar along the way, because we couldn't stand the cold and needed to take a few minutes to warm up with some rail whiskey. (This is a tell we were all in our twenties. These days it would be a coffee at a cafe. Also, there would surely be warmer pants, a lot more Lyfts, and a hotel room.)

*Can you tell I've been watching the NFL playoffs? The Washington Commanders pulled off a huge upset last night, beating the one-seed Lions, and I have mixed feelings about it. On the one hand, I'm conditioned to always root against the Washington football team; on the other, Dan Snyder is gone, and how glorious would it be to have the Commanders win the Super Bowl the year after he sells the team?

The big difference between my cold NYC experience and my cold campus experience, however, is that I didn't almost get frostbite in NYC (as cold as it was, no part of me was ever submerged in ice slush), and I actually remember it very fondly. In fact, the worst part came on the bus ride back when I made the ill-fated decision to sit right by the heater. It was too hot, and I had to do a bunch of complex analysis homework that was due the next morning. The combination of the direct heat, a weekend of whiskeys and little sleep, and reading a textbook, solving integrals while in a moving (bumpy) vehicle gave me motion sickness that was worse than the cold. Still, it didn't ruin the overall trip, and it's something DK and I still reminisce about from time-to-time whenever we see each other. 

Alright, I think I've gone sufficiently far down Memory Lane today. Until next time...

Entry 744: A Song Of Ice And Fire

Snowy weather here in DC, which is in stark contrast to what's happening on the opposite coast. These LA fires are brutal and sad and terrifying. They sound very much like the Lahaina fires, but more widespread, if less threatening to human life. (It's easier to evacuate an area when there is more than one road going into and out of it.) It's certainly much less scary, personally, to experience such a disaster from the other side of a 3,000-mile-wide country than from the other side of a 25-mile-wide island.

The snow here caused some problems but nothing major -- inconveniences, mainly. The kids didn't have school Monday or Tuesday, so due to the nonsensical way DCPS schedules snow days that means Lil' S1* will have to come back to school a week after school ends. It snows here and shuts down school for a day or two almost every year. Why they don't build in snow days through the latter half of the school year is beyond me. I mean, there are four professional development days between now and the end of the school year. Why couldn't two of those be swapped with the current snow days? The teachers have to come in regardless, so it wouldn't be any more or less work for them either way. Or if that can't be done, for whatever reason, then build in snow days anyway and adjust the beginning or the end of the schedule, so that the entire thing makes more sense in the (probable) event that there is snow. As it is now, the last day of school is June 17, and then the makeup snow days are July 20 and July 23. Yes, they have to come back for one day of school on Monday July 23. That's an abomination.

*Lil' S2's school has a different schedule, and I haven't looked at what they do about snow days yet.

My conspiracy theory is that teachers like these two fake days at the end because they know that the year will effectively already be over and a lot of kids won't be there (camps and vacations and such will have already started), and so they will have an excuse to show the kids movies in class and whatnot and not do any real work. I don't necessarily believe this, but I don't necessarily not believe it either. The teachers' union's fight with the mayor about returning to the classroom after they had been given early access to the COVID vaccine and after the early effects of learning loss had become apparent has made me unhealthily skeptical of their motives. Sorry not sorry.

So, we had a few days of no school, but, of course, S and I still had to work. That's one of the tradeoffs of remote work. You don't have to commute everyday, but you also don't get a day off when the outside world shuts down. If you've got an internet connection, you have no excuse. Normally, it's not too bad -- with the kids being a bit older now, we don't have to watch/entertain them as much as we used to -- but it just so happened that I had an abnormally large workload earlier this week. It wasn't the funnest thing in the world, but I managed. I even found time to shovel the walk and dig out our cars, which is something that I (oddly?) enjoy. It's super satisfying to make a path of gray through the sea of white, and it's a pretty good workout. Also, it gives us access to our cars, which is nice. They city is actually every good about plowing the roads, so if you can get your car out, you won't be trapped on your property for long. Although, I've come to find that the Tesla is not at its best in the snow. It handles fine, but the battery runs down way faster, and it takes much longer to charge.

In other news, I finished Squid Game season two. The first few episodes, I give an enthusiastic thumbs-up.* The next few episodes, I give a disappointing thumbs-down. The final few episodes I give a reserving-my-judgement thumbs-sideways. Apparently, the scriptwriter wrote seasons two and three as one big story, so the second season ends on something of a cliffhanger. There is no resolution to any of the outstanding plot points, so its hard to judge things. I have to see the finished product first. If the last few episodes of season two are building to something awesome in season three, then I will turn the thumb from sideways to up; if season three is bad, then I will turn it down; if it's so-so then I will keep it sideways. My final verdict will come perhaps this summer. 

*Why is it thumbs-up instead of thumb-up, even when you are only using one hand?

Alright, time for some football, a quick workout, and then dinner -- a bang-up evening. Until next time...

Entry 743: Back To The Grind

Vacation is over and now it's back to the grind. I worked three days this past week -- it was weird having New Year's Eve and New Year's Day in the middle of the work week -- but that's not what I consider "the grind." My grind is my kids' grind, which I typically find more burdensome and stressful than my own. And that started up again in full force today with Lil' S2's flag football. He's doing this thing called Winter Elite, which means he has a game Saturday morning, a division-wide training session Sunday afternoon, and an individual team practice Monday evening. It's a lot of football, and it's a lot of football outdoors in the dead of winter. My weather app said "24 degrees, Feels like 11", as we left the house at 8:30 this morning.* That is not how I wanted to kick off (no pun intended) my Saturday, but as a parent, I've found my weekends are no longer something to look forward to. When your kids are really little, a weekend is basically two 14-hour chunks of playing the entertainer because there is no school or daycare; when they get a little bit older, it's a series of chauffeuring and chaperoning various activities. A typical day at work is legitimately more relaxing.

*Lil' S2's outdoor football game was still on, but Lil' S1's indoor coding class was canceled. WTF? Why on Earth would you cancel a coding class because it's cold outside? The roads are totally clear and the building is heated. Are you worried people are going freeze to death on their 15-second walk from the parking lot to the door?

At least Lil' S2's game went well. They mercy-ruled the other team, winning 28-0 without playing the final five minutes of the game. Lil' S2 played decently. He quarterbacked two scoring drives, threw a touchdown and two extra points, and didn't throw any interceptions. He also played pretty well on defense. He's not fast, but he's smart about where to go on the field. Several times he read the opposing QB and stepped in front of the primary receiver, forcing an incompletion or a sack (if the ref counts to five before the QB has thrown the ball, it counts as a sack). It was cool. What was even cooler is that they didn't have any subs, so he got to play the entire game. On a day like today, you do not want to be standing on the sidelines. I'm sure I got in a couple thousand steps just pacing around, trying to stay warm.

The thing is, I really don't care how good Lil' S2 is at football (or any other sport). I just want him to have good experiences. It's hard to do that, however, if you are really bad or on a terrible team, so I guess I do want him to at least be good enough to have fun and contribute to a reasonably successful team. So far he's meeting that baseline. I mean, it's highly unlikely, for anybody, that any material success will come from athletic achievement, so it's all about the intangibles -- teamwork, character, exercise, fun. Those are the important things for everybody but the top 1% who might actually earn scholarships and make money playing sports.

Along those lines, I really try not to push Lil' S2 too hard or over-coach him or anything like that.* Growing up, I definitely saw kids who were miserable playing youth sports because their parents (dads, let's be honest, it's pretty much always dads) were way too overbearing. Often these kids weren't even that good, and were never going to be that good, which makes the entire thing even sadder and more ridiculous. There are numerous examples of star athletes whose parents toed the line between aggressive support and mild abuse -- Tiger Woods, Andre Agassi, and the Williams sisters to name a few -- but at least these people really were that good at their respective sports. Their parents might have been too strict, but they weren't delusional, and what they did actually "worked".** For the vast majority of tyrannical sports dad, though, it's like, even if you succeed, then what? So, your kid is now the third best player on their rec team instead of the seventh best -- congratulations.

*I think I'm succeeding, being that he's usually nagging me to play with him, not vice-versa.

**I use quotes here because it's unknowable if these athletes would have had the same success without their fathers being so demanding.  

Also, being a domineering sports dad would be way too much work. As a youngster, I would here stories of the "Robo QB," and think Geez, that sounds terrible for the child. Now, I hear them and think about how bad it sounds for the parent. Waking up at 4:00 am to drive behind your kid as they run? Preparing them sugar-free snacks to bring to birthday parties with them to eat instead of cake and ice cream? Holding them back a grade, so that they can have a "red shirt" year in high school? No thank you, no thank you, and no thank you.

______________________________

In other news, I finished the first season of Squid Game. I really liked it -- so much so that I almost don't want to watch Season 2 for fear that it will be bad and taint my overall enjoyment of the series. It has a bit of a twist ending -- or maybe it's just more of an interesting reveal than a true twist -- and I had the same experience with it as I did with Fight Club and Get Out. I wasn't quite sure what to think of it while I was watching it, but then I had trouble shaking it from my head even days after I finished it, so I had little choice but to conclude that it's awesome. It's not a show I would recommend to everybody (S for instance probably wouldn't enjoy it) because it's so graphically violent, perhaps even gratuitously so (although I would argue the gore is crucial to the motif), but if you can handle that type of thing, and you haven't seen it yet, I would strongly consider giving it a whirl. I also suggest watching it in Korean with the subtitles on. I tried the dubbed version once, because I was watching on an iPad without my glasses on (I was on the exercise bike), and found it to be far inferior. Halfway through I put it back to subtitles and squinted through it.

*But I already watched the first episode, and enjoyed it, so hopefully I'm safe on this front. Also, the Mr. Beast real-life version on YouTube is quite good.

Alright, that's plenty for now.

Until next time...