Entry 782: Back To Reality, Unfortunately

The Mariners lost on Monday night and got knocked out of the playoffs. They were ahead in both the series (3-2 after five games) and the final game (3-1 after six innings), and they squander away both opportunities. It wasn't an epic meltdown of historic proportions or anything like that, but still it sucks. It means I have to return to reality, and that is unfortunate because reality kinda sucks right now in my neck of the woods. The massive DOGE layoffs, followed by the government shutdown means a lot of people in the DC area are out of work or working and not getting paid. There isn't an end in sight, either. Neither side is eager to negotiate, and neither side has much incentive to do so. Reps think they can pin the shutdown on the Dems, and the Dems want to make it look like they are doing something in opposition to Trump.

Personally, I think the Dems should cave on this one. They don't have to frame it that way, of course, but I think they should pass a continuing resolution and kick the can down the road. Then they could say something to the effect of, "We held out as long as we could, but too many innocent people are losing their livelihoods in this game of chicken. So, we are going to reopen the government, but continue to fight against rising healthcare premiums." Then they crank up the healthcare stuff to 11, and that becomes the main story by itself, with clearly delineated sides. As it is now, when people start feeling the pain of increased premiums, it's going to get lost in the broader shutdown narrative. It's just going to look like a result of political squabbling -- a pox on both your houses. It seems smarter to me politically (and better for the country) to isolate healthcare as a single-issue fight. It's a likely winner for the Dems, and they could use some wins at the moment.

Anyway... in happier news, Halloween is right around the corner, and tonight we are going to not one, but two parties to celebrate the occasion. We've got an Addams Family theme going on. S is Morticia; Lil' S2 is Pugsley; and I'm going as Thing (the disembodied hand). Lil' S1 is doing his own thing, and he's not going to any of the parties with us, anyway. (One is at the house of Lil' S2's classmate, and the other is an adult party.) I was going to go as Gomez, but the ready-made costume was kinda expensive, and I didn't want to spend a bunch of money for something I'd only wear for a few hours. This is when it would be good to be an artsy guy, who could craft his own costume on the cheap, but that's the exact opposite of me, so I'll just settle for being Thing. Even that is proving to be a challenge, however, as I have to figure out how to connect the plastic hand to my shoulder. I guess I'll duck tape it? Seems like the only option. Although, glue might work. I just have to use a shirt I don't care about.

Alright, I'm running out of time, so I'll just mention one more thing and call it a post. I just finished Mark Lanegan's memoir Sing Backwards and Weep. If you are unfamiliar with Mark Lanegan, you are surely not alone. I barely knew who he was until I bought the book. He was the lead singer for Screaming Trees, one of the less commercially successful Seattle grunge bands of the mid-90s, who still managed to score a few hits you might remember, namely "Nearly Lost You" and "All That I Know". I was never particularly into the band, although I'm pretty sure I saw them play live at some shady club once.

The book is a trip. You never know how accurate memoirs actually are, but if even a third of the stuff he says is true, it's crazy. He grew up in Ellensburg, Washington--a place I've visited many times, as it's a convenient stopping point when driving across the state (also my sister went to college there)--and he did not have what you would call a stable childhood. It's weird how the reader's (or at least this reader's) feelings changed throughout the story for the first-person narrator. In the beginning, I feel super sympathetic toward him and root for him to overcome his difficult upbringing and make something of himself. Then, once he gets a little bit of success, he becomes such an insufferable dickhead, egotistical and self-loathing (a toxic combination), that I only want to see him get his comeuppance. Then, after he fucks it all up and descends into unmitigated junkie-dom, I just hope he doesn't die.* Like I said, it's a trip, and if you're into that type of thing, I recommend it.

*Clearly he doesn't die because he wrote the book, but then he did die a few years ago at 57. Not exactly a ripe old age, but much better than 27, like his buddy.

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

Entry 781: Diwali 2025

Tomorrow is Diwali, the festival of lights in Hindu tradition. We had a party at our house last night to celebrate with some of our Indian/mixed family friends. It was a lot of fun--too much fun, perhaps, as I am feeling the effects today. It's not the alcohol--I know better than to overindulge in that department and usually adhere to a two-beer limit--it's the food. We (S) ordered way, way too much of it, and as a result I ate way, way too much of it, and since the moment I woke up this morning, my stomach has felt like a witch's cauldron--a gurgling, vile morass.

It was so good, though. We got massive trays of samosas and pakoras, and those two items are probably my very favorite appetizers across any cuisine. I like to drizzle on both the red and green sauce (which I think are tamarind and mint chutneys, respectively, but I'm not completely sure), so that it adds a little soft texture to the crunch and a bit of sweet and sour to the spice. I probably ate, like, ten total samosas and pakoras, and then I had my actual "meal," a massive plate of biryani and palak paneer with naan. Oh, and somebody brought homemade mango cheesecake, so I had to have two pieces of that, as well. It would have been rude not to.

Part of the problem is that I hate wasting food, so I overeat to reduce the amount of "waste," but I really need to get over that fallacious line of thinking. At some point, pretty early in the night, I reach the amount of food I need to completely satiate my hunger. After that, anything I consume is "wasted" the same way it would be if I threw it in the trash. From a utilitarian standpoint, it is not any better to dump food down my gullet than it is to dump it down the garbage chute. In fact, it's unequivocally worse because it makes my stomach feel bad and makes me fatter than I need to be.

But, like I said, that's only part of the problem. Another major factor is that I love eating (who doesn't?), and I can, at times, exhibit poor impulse control when it comes to delicious food. It's a vice, and it's really my only major vice at this point in my life. Well, that and drinking too much coffee. And as far as vices go, it could be a lot worse. I could be a compulsive (losing) gambler like Pete Rose or a heroin addict like Mark Lanegan. The last two books I read are about these two guys, which is why they come to mind. Actually, I'm not done with the latter book, Sing Backwards and Weep: A Memoir by Mark Lanegan (lead singer of Screaming Trees), but I'm pretty far into it. (I might give a fuller recap on this blog when I'm done.)

Oh, if you are wondering what we did with all the leftovers, I froze as much of it as I could, given our container and freezer space restrictions, and then S gave the rest away to a family we invited last night, but who couldn't make it. It's still way more than they will be able to eat, but if they throw it away I won't care, because I won't know. 

In other news, the Seattle Mariners are one win away from going to the World Series for the first time ever. They can clinch it tonight or, if they lose tonight, tomorrow night. If they lose tonight and tomorrow night, however, then their season is over. It's been an objectively glorious run thus far, but I haven't even been able to enjoy it like I should, so convinced I am that it's still going to end badly. What can I say? 40+ years of letdown can do a number on your sports-fan psyche. I only watched about a third of the last game live. Lil' S2 had a basketball game at the same time, so I went to that, and then S and the kids wanted to watch The Middle as a family, so I did that. When I turned it off, the Ms were losing 2-1 going into the 8th inning. I put my phone in a different room, so that I wouldn't be tempted to check the score or look at my texts from fellow Ms fans. When I finally saw they had come back and won, I wasn't even mad that I missed it. I was just relieved that they pulled it off.

Hopefully, I get that feeling of relief again tonight. It would be especially welcome, given that I have a super busy next three days at work--I have to go into the office everyday--and so I can't be staying up late fretting over baseball too much. If the Ms lose tonight and have to play tomorrow, it could throw a serious monkey wrench into my sleep schedule. So, come on Ms! Win tonight! Win for all the fans who have to get up early on Tuesday.

Until next time... 

 

Entry 780: Marathon Baseball and Schitt's Creek

Very tired today. I was up until 2:00 am watching the Mariners playoff game. In a previous entry, I said that I was just going to enjoy the Ms' playoff run and not stress about it, but the thing about that is that you don't really get to decide about the things you stress about. If you did, nobody would ever be stressed about anything. We would all just choose to not be! As soon as the Mariners started playing, it was like I was a child again, hanging on their every pitch and plate appearance. It's not an enjoyable way to watch to baseball, being so anxious, but I can't help it. Some sort of obsessive fandom got embedded in me when I was little, and I don't know how to get rid it, nor do I really want to, because on the rare (extremely rare, in the case of the Mariners) occasions it works out, it's pretty awesome.

And last night it worked out! On the brink of elimination, facing the best pitcher in baseball, the Seattle baseball nine scrapped their way to a 2-2 tie after nine innings. (It was the unlikely Leo Rivas who delivered the game-tying RBI. He was in the minors for most this season. In fact, I saw him hit a home run in a Rainiers game I attend with some friends and family.) Then, in extra innings, the Mariners proceeded to blow golden opportunity after golden opportunity, as the game dragged on and on and on. Thrice the Mariners had the potential series-winning run on second with no outs and couldn't bring him around. The probability of not scoring a run in one of those instances is 38%, so the probably of not scoring a run in all three is only 5%, and yet that's what happened. Thankfully, for as inept as the Ms' offense was, their pitching and defense was the exact opposite, and they continually hung zeros on the Tigers to get to the 15th inning.

At this point, about 1:30 am for me, I'm hoping the Ms score in no small part so that I can go bed. It's like 65% I want them to win; 35% I want to sleep. Turning the game off and finding out the result in the morning crosses my mind, but I quickly dismiss it. I wouldn't actually be able to sleep, anyway. I can do that for a low-stakes regular season game, not for a winner-take-all playoff game. So, I stay up, continuing to watch, vacillating between sitting down, standing up like I'm part of the crowd watching in person, swinging a back-scratcher like a baseball bat (as a kid I used to pantomime what I wanted to happen each plate appearance), and stretching -- might as well do something slightly healthful.

I get my wish, and the game ends shortly in spectacular fashion. JP Crawford, one of my favorite players, leads off the bottom of the 15th and flicks a single to center field. Randy Arozarena -- a guy who had one of the greatest postseasons ever a few years ago for the Tampa Bay Rays and has been downright bad this one for the Ms -- gets plunked on the first pitch. Cal "Big Dumper" Raleigh, the Ms best player, in the midst of a historically great season, then flies out, but it's deep enough to move Crawford to third and, after a bad throw from the center fielder, Arozarena to second. This turns out to be a big deal, because it leaves first base open, enticing Tigers manager AJ Hinch to intentionally walk Julio Rodriguez. On paper, it makes some sense, as Julio is the Ms second best hitter, and loading the bases sets up the double play (the Tigers have already turned two of them in extras) and creates a force at every base. However, as somebody who has watched the Mariners play dozens of times over the past few years, I'm not that upset Julio doesn't get to bat. For all his greatness, he frequently chases pitches and strikes out. I actually feel better about Jorge Polanco putting the ball in play than I do Julio. And Polanco does indeed put the ball in play. On a full count, he drills a single between the hole at first and second base, and that's that. Ballgame. Series. Ms win! Ms win! And I go to bed happy.

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In other news of nonsense, I finished Schitt's Creek a few days ago. Great show. I tried to watch it some years ago, when it first came out, and just couldn't get into it. I don't know why. But then a few months ago, S, a big fan of the series, got me to watch the first few episodes again with her, and this time I really took to it, so much so that I convinced her to let me watch the rest of the series on my own, so that I wouldn't have to wait for those relatively rare moments when we are both free to watch something together. I love all the characters on the show--not bad one in the bunch--but below is a list of my ten favorites with a quote from each of them. It's in approximate order from least favorite to most favorite, but ranking your favorite characters is like ranking your favorite songs. If I did this tomorrow instead of today, I would have a markedly different list.

10. Jocelyn Schitt: Once I found a bag of Roland’s ex girlfriends bras... BURNED them... except the ones that were my size. 

9. Tywla Sands: My Uncle Ken only has three fingers now, which is too bad because he's deaf, and he only speaks using sign language. But he made his choices. 

8.  Bob Currie: Hey, Johnny. Keepin' busy, or, uh, hardly workin'?

7. Stevie Budd: I don't think I've ever heard you use the word courage before outside of criticizing people's style choices.  

6. David Rose: I’m starting to feel like I’m trapped in an Avril Lavigne lyric here. 

5. Johnny Rose: Hashtag. Is that two words? 

4. Ted Mullens: I don't know about little, because I'm benching 225 right now, so it's not really something someone little... 

3. Roland Schitt: I'm sorry, taut? (Laughs.) What is that, old English? How 'bout I hold it tight?  

2. Alexis Rose: You try parallel parking in a burka, David. 

1. Moira Rose: Stop acting like a disgruntled pelican.

Until next time...     

 

 

Entry 779: Lousy Situation (With Updates)

Last week, I wrote an entire post, and then today when I hopped on Blogger to write a new one, I realized that I never actually posted the one from last week. So, I guess I'll just do that and call it good. I'll throw in a few updates though.

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I gave Lil' S2 a buzz cut last night, and he's not very happy about it. It doesn't look bad. If you saw him, you probably wouldn't think twice about it. He just looks like a normal little kid with a very short haircut. But compared to what he used to have -- a bountiful, Beatles-esque moptop -- I can understand why he's sad about the change. Unfortunately, however, he contracted a terrible -- like, seriously disgusting -- case of head lice for the second time in six weeks, so it had to be done. Well, it didn't have to be done. We could've stuck with the shampoo treatment, but that can be a huge hassle if you want to do it right, and you want to do it right, because there's not a lot of gray area between right and wrong. Either you kill all the lice and their eggs or you don't, and if you don't, then they multiply and you're are back to where you started. We did two rounds of the shampoo, but during the second S was still combing out a bunch of nits and eggs, probably all dead, but there were so many that we pushed for the clippers. Lil' S2 reluctantly agreed and then was almost in tears when he saw the result. Oh well, he'll get over it, and the wonderful thing about hair is that it always grows back... until one day it doesn't, but he shouldn't have to worry about that for another 20 years or so.

Update: The first day after this happened, Lil' S2 wore a hat the entire day, but now he and everybody else has gotten used to it, so it's not a big deal. Plus, hair grows back pretty fast at that age. In a few weeks, we will probably have to take him to the barber for a clean up. The thing about buzz cuts is that they grow back even everywhere, which looks weird once it gets longer (baby chick look). At some point, you need to get it reshaped by a professional to avoid the goofy stage between short and normal.  

In other news, the distractions in my life are working decently well to keep me sane amidst a world of craziness. It's a tightrope walk to keep yourself informed and stay vigilant without descending into complete doomerism. Sports is my main form of self-medication. I've been able to maintain a steady workout schedule since school is back in session, so that's good. The main thing there is avoiding those nagging injuries that put you on the shelf for a few weeks at a time. I've come up with an ingenious plan to that end: Don't go as hard. That's it--don't run as fast; don't lift as much; don't punch as hard, at least not all the time. I gotta pick my spots now. Because I only go to my gym twice a week (for scheduling reasons), I typically double-up and take back-to-back classes, one martial arts/self-defense class, and one strength and conditioning class. When I first started doing this, nine years ago, it was no big deal. I could pretty much go max effort the entire time and be okay. Now, I just physically cannot do that anymore. I have to scale back during the first class or else I won't be able to survive the second class without pulling, straining, or popping something somewhere in my body. The instructor has noticed too. Sometimes he'll encourage me to be more aggressive and push myself, and I always say okay, but in my head I'm thinking: Nah, I'm not going to do that right now. You'll understand why in 20 years. Hey, if it's good enough for Lebron James, it's good enough for me.

Update: Of course, almost immediately after writing this, I violated my own rule and tweaked my back. We were doing front squats and the RX (recommend weight) looked a little heavy, but I decided to do it anyway, and while I was doing the last set, I felt something strain in my right lat. It's not that bad, thankfully, but still... annoying. Go moderate or go home! That has to be my new motto.

But as the intensity of my own athletic endeavors has ebbed, the ferocity with which I spectate others playing sports has remained steady. And it's a pretty good time to be a Seattle sports fan. The Seahawks are 3-1 through their first four games, having not quite blown it Thursday night against the Cardinals, and the Mariners--the perpetually not-quite-good-enough Emerald City nine--have not only made the playoffs, but they won the AL West for the first time in 24 years. Not only that but they earned a first-round bye, and they somehow have the best odds to win the World Series according to FanGraphs. Now, to be an M's fan is to repeatedly get the rug pulled out from under you, so I'm completely ready for--expecting even--the disappointing collapse, but there is something freeing in that mindset. There's nothing that can hurt me too badly anymore. It's like when I worked as a dishwasher at Pete's Barbecue Steakhouse and the dishes would pile up (because they were too cheap to adequate staff us), and all the servers were mad at me, even though I was going as fast as I could (and they weren't exactly offering to come back and help), and I'd reach a zenlike state where the negativity was just background noise that I could easily drown out (sometimes literally with the Mariners game on the radio, ironically). That's where I am now with the Ms now. They probably won't win the pennant, so I'm just going to enjoy their success now, while I can. If nothing else, they effectively put a stake through the heart of every Astros fan last week with this ridiculous play, and that is some glorious schadenfreude that nobody can take away.

Update: The Mariners play their first postseason game tonight against the Detroit Tigers. M's are heavily favored--they are clearly the better team--but in the baseball playoffs, random variance rules supreme, so the Tigers could easily win three games in a row and that would be that. And of course the games are on FS1, the one major sports channel not offered by my TV package (Sling Orange), so I begrudgingly upgraded (Sling Orange & Blue). It might not be that costly though. I think I can cancel before my next billing cycle, and only get charged about $6 for the prorated upgraded. That's totally worth it for at least three M's games (especially if they win!). Also, I now get NFL Network, so I can also watch the Browns against the Vikings tomorrow morning. It's a terrible game, but it is football.

Alright, until next time... 

Entry 778: On Several Disparate Topics

Whenever a politically divisive story rises to national attention, the one thing you can always count on is people pointing out how this proves the exact things they have been saying all along -- confirming one's priors, as it's often worded. I'm going to do that now, as I think two beliefs I've held (and shared on this blog) have borne out over the past few weeks. The first one is that I said that people on the left should not be cheering on or calling for people to lose their livelihoods for expressing opinions (or sometimes stating literal facts) that weren't 100% in lockstep with the social justice mores of the time. It's terrible politics, as it alienates could-be allies, and it contributes to an anti-free speech climate, which will undoubtedly not redound to your favor when different people, less friendly to your causes, are in power. The other thing I said is that as bad it is on one side, it's way worse on the other. The things "normies" hate about the left are true, but they're much, much more true of the right. Suffice it say, both of these priors have been confirmed recently, yet again, for like the millionth time. And I'll just leave it at that.

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Robert Redford died on Tuesday. I think he's the first "before my time" actor of whom I was cognizant. I knew who he was--he was Roy Hobbes, after all--but I also knew that his best work came before my earliest memories. There were the leading men of my childhood--Harrison Ford, Tom Cruise, Arnold Schwarzenegger--and then there was the generation immediately before them with guys like Redford and James Caan and Burt Reynolds. And I started thinking, is Robert Redford the last of the "before my time" male movie stars? Caan and Reynolds are both dead, and so is just about every other leading man from cinema prior to 1980 -- Steve McQueen, Gene Hackman, Paul Newman, etc. But, still, the answer is no, Redford is not the absolute last "before my time" actor. Clint Eastwood is still alive, after all, so is Jack Nicholson. And then are a few guys like Dustin Hoffman, Al Pacino, and Robert De Niro, who straddle the line between "before my time" and "in my time," so I'm not sure whether I should count them or not. But Redford is certainly among the last, and he might have been the best. In fact, if you consider his myriad excellent acting performances, his work as a director, and the fact that he co-founded the Sundance Film Festival, you could make a strong case that nobody had a better overall career in film than Robert Redford.

[So hokey, so good] 

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The other day some landscapers came over for a cleanup job, and I was watching them through the window lay down some mulch, and I was reminded that "mulch" was a word I didn't learn until surprisingly late in life. For the first 25 or so years of my life I called it "beauty bark." I just thought that was its name. Then one time I was at a friend house, and I walked through her backyard with no shoes on, and then I complained that I had slivers in my feet from the beauty bark.

"What? What's beauty bark?" she responded with a chuckle.

"That stuff," I replied as I pointed to it.

"You mean, mulch?"

"No, that stuff, right there. It's called beauty bark."

"What the hell is beauty bark?" she said now laughing hysterically.

"That stuff! That's what it's called!"

We didn't resolve it then, and we've since lost touch, but eventually I had to concede that she was right. It's mulch. Everybody calls it that, even a company named BeautiBark.

I tried to think of some other things that I used to call one thing and now call a different thing. I came up with a few. 

Pop. As a kid I was firmly in the "pop" camp. I was familiar with the term "soda," and it didn't strike my ear oddly when people called it that, but I always called it pop. Interestingly, the full "soda pop" would have sounded weird to me. That was the old-timey name you'd read in Archie Comics or something like that. This is completely a regional thing. And if this reddit map is to be believed, western Washington state is now a "soda" area, along with most the country. I might have been among the last generation of pop-sayers in the Sea-Tac region. But now I'm a soda guy. I've just lived too long in a place where it sounds weird to say "pop." In fact, Lil' S2 didn't even know what meant until a few days ago. We were watching The Middle, and one of the characters says something about drinking pop, and he was like "What's pop?"

Cream rinse. At my childhood home, when it came to shower time, we had shampoo and "cream rinse." It wasn't until I started spending the night at a certain friend's house that I realized that cream rinse only existed in my house. Everywhere else it was "conditioner." From what I can gather online, cream rinse was a thinner, less emollient precursor to conditioner, and by the 1980s, when I was a child, it was mostly obsolete, both as a product and a term. It never completely died though. You can still find it today, although it's usually branded as "creme rinse," presumably to make it sound more luxurious. Being that when I Google "creme rinse," however, the first hits are for lice treatment, I don't think the rebrand worked.  

It's funny, thinking back to that time at my friend's house when I first learned of conditioner. We used to wash and style our hair together, just for fun. Actually, Lil' S2 does that with his friends sometimes too. They call it "barbershop." It's cute.

Well, that's all for today. Until next time... 

Entry 777: A Mostly Optimistic Post

It was another rough news week. We seem to be having a lot of these over the past, what, five and a half years? As you've probably noticed, I don't really delve into the doom and gloom on this blog. I'm not naive to it, it's just not what I want to write about, and being that this blog really serves no purpose other than giving me an outlet to write about what I want to write about, I'm not going to write about things I don't want to write about. I'm going to write about things I want to write about, and today that's a really interesting episode of the Lost Debate podcast I listened to about AI. Before I get to that, however, I want to link to an episode of a different podcast, The Gist, about renewal energy. It's good, and reasonably optimistic, and probably on a more important topic than the AI one, but I personally find AI stuff more fascinating than climate stuff, so that's what I going with today.

You should listen to the Lost Debate episode yourself, but if you don't, I'll give you the tl;dl (too long; didn't listen) version below. And if you want the tl;dr version of my tl;dl version, it's this: Over the past year or so, the advancements in AI have mostly stalled out, and there's no indication that they will leap forward again anytime soon. This means the promise of a benevolent super-intelligence solving all the world's problems will likely go unfulfilled. But I don't think too many people were banking on that anyway. On the contrary, I think most people were apprehensive about the prospect of machines attempting to destroy humanity Terminator style, or at least of taking all our jobs, replacing all our human relationships, and depriving of us of any sense of purpose whatsoever. It seems that those things probably won't happen either.

Now, before I go any further, I should say that I am not an expert in AI, and I'm largely regurgitating what the guest of the podcast, a computer science professor named Cal Newport, said. But I do have a strong background in applied math and scientific computation, so I understand a lot of the concepts at a high-level (and I feel confident I could learn the nitty-gritty details if I took the time to do so). I have just enough of a comprehension to put my own spin on things, so I'm not just mimicking what the expert says. Also, everything everybody says is just speculation, anyway. Nobody actually knows what will happen. Not all speculation is the same--some people should be listened to over others--but it's still speculation and predictions. There's no reason why I can't add my opining to the mix.

Okay, with all those caveats out of the way, here are my thoughts...

To understand why AI technology has seemingly stalled, it might help to understand how AIs like ChatGPT work. I once heard somebody describe these AIs as an "amazingly good auto-fill." Basically, given a prompt, they decide what the "best" first word is, and then using that first word as addition input, they decide what the best second word is, and then using that, they decide the third word, and then the fourth word, and so, until they get to a point where the best word is no word, and they stop. If they were good at deciding what each word should be along the way, they will have produced an intelligent response.

This begs the question: How do they decided the "best" word along the way? That's where things you probably heard of like "training" and "machine learning" come into play. Basically, before an AI is released to the public, it goes through a long computing period, where it scours a kajillion bytes of available data -- books, blogs, songs, etc. -- and then it remembers certain markers about these things. So, when the user prompts it, it goes, Oh, I've seen something like this before; I should respond as follows...

It might be easier to think about in terms of a game like chess. The best chess engines can now annihilate the best human players. In the past 30 years, we've gone from machines can never beat humans to humans can never beat machines. The way computers are able to win so consistently is by making moves no human could ever think to make. For example, a chess bot might just give up a knight early in the game for seemingly no reason. It has a reason -- it's played against its self millions of times, and it knows from experience that a knight sacrifice in this given situation is a winning move -- but there is no way any human could possibly deduce this. Humans strategize and think a few moves ahead -- if I do this, they'll do this, then I can do this... Machines assess given situations, and then use what they've learned from their extensive training sessions to make the corresponding moves with the highest win percentages. Nobody, not even the machine itself, can explain exactly why a machine made a certain move other than that's just what the numbers developed through training say.

Because games have well-defined rules and state spaces, it's not too surprising that computers can get very good--far better than any human--at games through this type of learning. It's much, much more surprising that AIs can learn this way for life in general. But they can. In fact, this is what jump-started the AI hype a few years ago in the first place. The major AI companies decided to ramp up the training of their chatbots, using more computing power for a longer period of time, and the results were off the charts. Just by increasing training, the chatbots got way better at things -- holding conversations, solving logic problems, writing songs, etc. So, they did it again, and the gains jumped up again. So, they did it again, and again the results jumped.

This is when we really started to hear about AI taking over, as the belief, understandably, was that AI was going to just keep getting better as the training got more intensive. Working under this assumption, the AI companies ramped up again and built massive computing warehouses, and subjected their chatbots to super-powered months-long training sessions. And the needle barely moved. They got better but only marginally so. Apparently, the improvement for Meta's commercial product was so minimal, it wasn't even worth releasing as a new version. Just as weird as it was to see these incredible jumps in the first rounds of training, it was equally weird to see things suddenly stall out.

So, that's where we are now, and according to Professor Newport, the upward scaling of the training was the promise behind AI. That was basically the whole shebang. Without that, AI is just a normal, impressive, maybe-good, maybe-bad new technology, not a humanity altering singularity. And for most people, I think, this is a comforting thought.

Alright, I actually had a few more things to say on this, but I appear to have run out of time -- gotta go get my flag football coach on.

Until next time... 

PS -- Like last time, I had to hustle off to the game before posting this, and like last week, Lil' S2's team came up victorious. It started out shaky, as Lil' S2 threw a pick-six on the game's opening play from scrimmage, but we persevered, and pulled it out 18-13. I had a moment as coach I'm particularly proud of. Late in the game with us losing, we faced a big 4th-and-long. Defenses are allowed one blitz per four downs (where a kid can just run straight for the QB), and they hadn't use it yet, so I knew they would. The entire drive I had this kid M playing QB, so I put Lil' S2 next to him, seemingly as a running back and then I had M call "go!", but I had the snapper hike it to Lil' S2 instead. The blitzer predictably came for M, giving Lil' S2 enough time to get off a bomb to our star wide out Z, who made a brilliant catch in traffic, converting the first down. Then we scored the go ahead touchdown a few plays later. Bam!

Entry 776: Back To Normal Chaos

Finally! Both kids are in school again, so we are back to our regular schedule, so we are back to normal chaos. When you have a spouse who travels as much as S does, the natural of order of things includes a relatively high degree of disorder. She's here now, but leaving again at the end of next week, then returning for, like, ten hours, and then leaving again for a few days. It's okay. As the kids get older, it gets easier on me. It's the little things. I still have to do most the big things--meals, dishes, laundry, etc.--but the smaller things the kids can often do on their own now, and that takes a lot of the burden off of me. For example, Lil' S2 can walk to and from school now. He also can be home by himself for a few minutes. Just those two things are huge boons when it comes to planning out my day. Also, my sister-in-law just lives up the street and is almost always willing/able to help out when asked. (We have a nice quid pro quo going: She watches our kids; we watch her dog.) Also, also, S's travels earn me a lot of relationship capital. S already goes through spells in which she thinks she's "doing all the work." I, of course, disagree with this assessment, but it would be even worse (in her mind) if not for her work trips.

My take on the "doing all the work" thing is that she often underestimates the amount of total work that is being done, which I think is common for people -- everybody, not just S -- when they get stressed out/overwhelmed. Also, I think there is a prioritization thing going on, where people don't "count" things as much if they personally aren't that invested in them, which can cause a skewed perspective. For example, S isn't into sports, so I don't get as much credit for transporting/equipping/coaching Lil' S2 in his many sporting endeavors, even though it's a huge time and effort commitment on my part. Similarly, there are things S will worry about that don't seem all that important or pressing to me, and so I'm less sympathetic toward her in regards to these stressors. For instance, a few weeks ago, she became fixated on getting a new car, and it ate up a ton of her already limited bandwidth, even though our old car still worked fine. Yes, it was getting old and wearing down, and we were going to have to replace it at some point in the medium-to-near future, but the immediacy of the issue in S's mind seemed completely self-imposed to me. On the plus side, we have a new car now, so that's cool. 

Anyway... the only reason I feel comfortable airing S's and my marriage peccadilloes is because we have a strong foundation underneath it all. That's a welcome realty check I've gotten recently talking with people who have real relationship problems. I mentioned in my previous entry the father of Lil' S1's friend who is going through a contentious divorce, and I had a very strange text exchange with him last weekend. His son spent the night at our house, and he came over to pick him up in the morning. We were making small talk, and so I asked him where he was living now. He answered, and I literally thought nothing of it. Then a few hours later, I got a text from him asking how I knew he was getting a divorce, as if somehow it was supposed to be a secret, even though they separated like six months ago, and his son and my son hang out all the time. I wrote back a very vague, anodyne response, and the exchange went from there. It wasn't bad, necessarily, just weird and more than a little awkward. Apparently, he wrote similar texts to a bunch of his son's friends' parents, which is not the type of thing somebody does when things are going great for them. So, I tried to be human, while not really saying anything of substance and definitely not getting into the middle of things. And next time I see him, I'm sticking to the weather as a conversation topic.

This text exchange made me think of a friend of mine who also got divorced recently. We also met this guy and his ex-wife through our kids' friends, and we became pretty close socially, especially the dad and me, as we've gotten together for drinks quite a few times. He's been handling his divorce the exact opposite way, where it's been super amicable, and he's been very accommodating -- so accommodating that more than once I've thought he's being too accommodating. I thought he was getting walked on a bit and should be more of a hard-ass. However, in light of how this other dad is handling things, I see things in a different light, and I really respect the way my friend is going about things. It makes a lot more sense to me now, and I bet it takes a lot of strength to be civil in a situation like this (especially given he didn't want to break up in the first place). I mean, I can only imagine how terrible getting divorced would be, and that gets multiplied by one thousand when there are kids involved. Getting through it in a way that minimizes the damage--even if it means sacrificing a bit of what you want and putting your ego and hurt feelings and animosity aside--seems like a very worthy goal.

That last thing I will say on this, for the sake of fairness, is that breakups don't just involve one person, and I don't know everybody's full story (and don't need to or want to know), and it might not always be possible to navigate the situation like my friend is doing. It's something I hope I never learn about first hand.

Alright, my time here is up. I have to get ready for Lil' S2's first flag football game of the season.

Until next time... 

Update: I forgot to post this immediately after I wrote it, so the flag football game already happened. We dominated in a 27-0 victory. Lil' S2 threw a couple of touchdown passes in the effort. 

Entry 775: Only Halfway Back To School

We've got one kid back in school this past week, but what I've found is that having one kid back in school isn't that great when you have two kids total. Lil' S1's school doesn't start until after Labor Day because for some reason they can't just follow the public school schedule and make life easier on everybody. I find myself growing more and more resentful towards Lil' S1's school the longer he goes there and the more I learn about it. We pay a lot of money to send him there, and yet we have almost all the same hassles of public school. In some ways we have more because public transportation isn't as easy and because of this staggered schedule with his brother. His school is not even that great academically. I could say plenty more on the subject, but I'll stop there. It's not a great look for a parent to rag on his son's school in a (kinda) public forum. I'll just wrap it up by saying he likes it there and wanted to return this year, so we enrolled him again. It was his choice. That's what I tell myself to not get too irritated. Also, I don't look at our bank account when tuition is due, and every now and then I say a little prayer that he will want to go back to public school for high school.

But Lil' S1's school really needs to start again. He's been off the past week with no camp or anything, and it's been rough. He's not the type to run around with the neighborhood kids like his brother (plus, there aren't any boys in the neighborhood his age; plus, plus, even if there were, they probably would have been in school this past week, anyway), so he just putzes around the house all day, which is distracting when I'm working from home, and it means he gets way too much screen time. S and I have to come up with things for him to do, or else he's just doing to play on his devices, and it's hard for S and I to come up with things for him to do when we have to do our jobs to make money to afford his private school. He does like to bake/cook, which is great, but it's almost never healthy foods, and he always leaves a massive mess in the kitchen when he's finished. He can make a pretty good pizza from scratch, but he can't clean off the hook attachments he uses to mix the dough. Even when we get him to "clean up" after himself, I still have to go in after him and do the job for real. If I didn't, we would continuously have oil drips and flour dustings all over the counters and all our appliances would be caked in gunk.

I just need to get through this weekend, but it's a long weekend, literally, and possibly figuratively -- we will see how it goes. S is out of town on a combination business/social trip, so it's just me for the next few days. Last night went okay (other than the Mariners blowing a big lead and losing). Lil' S2 spent the night at a friend's house up the street, and Lil' S1 had some buddies over to play D & D. It's a regular campaign he does, with the location rotating between the participants' houses. I guess it was our turn because S told me right before she left that she set it up at our house. I didn't mind, but for the fact that one of the dad's was over an hour late getting his kid. Pickup time is 6:00 pm-6:30 pm, and dude arrived at 7:45 pm. I got increasingly annoyed as the lateness waxed because I wanted to shower and eat dinner and relax for the night, and I couldn't get in a relaxing mindset until all the kids (other than mine) were out of the house. Also, I didn't want to start doing those things and then get interrupted. I hate that.

When the dad finally showed up he apologized, but I found his excuse to be quite weak. He said that he had to pick up his daughter at her friend's house, and her friend's mother "put a giant plate of food in [his] face". So, in other words, he hung out and ate dinner with somebody instead of picking up his son. Here's what he could have done instead: not that. He could have said, "thanks, but I don't have time to eat right now, because I have to get my son." That is, in fact, what I would have done. Also, the story doesn't hold water, regardless. For one thing, when picking a kid up at a friend's house, you often don't even go inside and when you do, you rarely get beyond the entryway. I doubt this friend's mom answered the door with a plate of food in her hand and literally foisted it upon her guest without his consent. She almost certainly invited him, and he accepted, despite the fact that it would make him late to pick up his son. Then there is the fact that he was an hour and a half late, and eating a plate of food takes--what?--twenty-five minutes? The math doesn't come close to adding up.

The thing is, this guy just went through (is still going through?) a pretty contentious divorce, so I'm inclined to cut him a lot of slack. I don't think life is going great for him at the moment. However, a huge pet peeve of mine is when people behave as if their time and their life are more important than yours. So, in interacting with him, I tried to strike a balance between showing I was mildly annoyed without acting like it was the biggest injustice of the 2025. We actually ended up talking quite a bit (in our entryway), because his son was super slow getting his shoes on and gathering his stuff, and by the end of it, I was mostly over it. The kids were trying to talk us into having an impromptu sleepover at our house, but I said no, because I just didn't want to deal with it anymore. However, in order to placate Lil' S1, I basically said he could do it tonight, and I think he's going to hold me to that. That's okay--if I'm in a sleepover mindset in advance, it's not that bad.

Alright, time to go because I gotta get some lunch. I'm super hungry because I'm back on my 16/8 fasting diet. I listened to this doctor on a podcast talk about the adverse health effects caused by visceral adiposity (inner fat that surrounds your organs), and one possible sign of having too much visceral adiposity for men is having a big belly, and I have a pretty big belly, especially in relation to the rest of my body (I have very little noticeable fat elsewhere). The rule of thumb I found online, from a seemingly reputable source, is a 40-inch threshold. I measured my stomach from middle of the bellybutton to middle of the bellybutton, and it's about 41 inches. So, now my goal is get it below 40 and keep it there. Now, all the usually caveats with this apply -- you can't precisely assess overall health with a single number, the human body is complex, everybody is different, etc., etc. But there is very little downside to me trying to shrink my belly a bit (through hopefully there will be a downsize), and the potential upside, being healthier, living longer, being healthier longer, etc. is huge. It seems like a no-brainer to me. Also, I like the idea of using stomach size instead of weight as a metric, as more muscle mass (which is a good thing) can lead to a higher weight. Plus, when I look at myself in the mirror with my shirt off, I don't think Look at all that excess weight, but I do think, My belly is way too big, given how much I exercise. Might as well deal with the problem directly.

Until next time... 

  

Entry 774: Octogenarian Mom

We went back to the South Puget Sound region a week and a half ago for a relatively short trip to celebrate my mom's 80th birthday, and it was wonderful right up until the very end. The afternoon before we flew out, my 12-year-old nephew broke both of his ankles, and he and his father (my brother) spent the night in the emergency room. He was at one of those trampoline/foam pit/fun-zone places, and he apparently landed awkwardly and hit the ground too hard and got a hairline fracture in each ankle. It sounds like it was pretty fluky. He had already fallen into the pit like a dozen times (it was an American Gladiators style joust setup) before he got hurt. He's a very tall kid for his age, and it sounds like he unluckily found a crevice in the foam and hit the bottom with his feet. He literally slid through the cracks. It was a total bummer to end what was otherwise a fun and festive vacation.

But the good news is that my brother and his wife just bought a van, so they are decently equipped to transport a child in a wheelchair. Also, kids heal quickly. In a few months, my nephew will likely be back on his feet, running around, and it will be a "remember when that happened" topic of conversation. By contrast, if something like that happened to me, I would probably walk with a limp for the next half-decade. I mean, a few years ago my father fell off a small ladder and broke his foot, and he was laid up for many months and needed multiple surgeries just to get back to semi-normal.

Before all this went down, however, it was a good trip of seeing people I hadn't seen in a long time. I saw a handful of family members I hadn't seen since July 2017, a few more I hadn't seen since January 2017, and yet one more I hadn't seen since summer of 2007. I also randomly ran into two friends from high school I had mostly lost touch with. It's funny, when we came out to visit my family for a month a few summers ago, I didn't have a single chance encounter like this with anybody, and then I come back for just a week and have two of them.

Everybody came out for my mom's 80 birthday celebration. It was really a great event -- a lot of fun and the right amount of sentimentality. I feel so fortunate to have such a great family and friends (a few of my best buddies came down from Seattle with their families for the party) and that we are in a position financially/PTO-wise to fully take advantage of it. It really is a blessing, and not everybody is going to be around forever, so it's ultra important to take it all in now while it's still possible.

There were two big surprises for me this trip. One, which is not so great, is that my uncle has Parkinson's disease. He's in his late 60s, I believe, and he's always been quite healthy and spry for his age, so it was a total trip to see him at my parents' house shaking uncontrollably. He's still quite fit -- he says he runs or hikes almost everyday -- but he's much less outgoing and communicative, understandably so. His jaw quivers a lot, which, I can only assume, makes talking much less fun than it used to be. There is a genetic component to Parkinson's, which, being that my uncle and I share a direct ancestor (my great-grandfather, his grandfather also had it), isn't the most comforting thought for me, but I'll cross that bridge if/when I come to it. I'm not the type to go out and search for early warning signs. Yes, I might catch something sooner than I would otherwise, which would help with treatment, but I also might not and think I did, and then I will be living with that undo mental stress. I'll keep it in the back of my head, but that's where it's staying unless circumstances change.

The other surprise is that one of my longtime childhood friends has transitioned (is in the process of transitioning?) into a woman. This definitely threw me for a bit of a loop at first -- I had no idea she had any sort of gender dysphoria or anything like that -- but it's cool. She seems happy, and if that's the case, then I'm happy for her. To each their own, live and let live, and all that. It's trite but true. Also, I think I adapted to my new-old friend pretty quickly. I only misgendered her once (and she was cool about it), and after a little while talking to her it was like, Wow, you're a woman now! ... So, what else is new?

Alright, gotta go. But first, obligatory pic of Chambers Bay.

Until next time...  

Entry 773: Rabbit, Run... Please

I had the rudest of awakenings Friday morning. Well, technically, I was already awake but barely. My alarm had sounded, and I had arisen, but was not yet fully dressed, when S barged into the room in a panic. 

"Lil' S2 left his bike out and a bunny is stuck in the wheel!"

"Wait... what?"

"It's just stuck! It's bleeding! I think it's dead!"

"Uh... okay."

"Just put some pants on and get it out! I don't want to touch it!"

"There's a dead rabbit in Lil' S2's bike wheel? And I have to get it out?"

"Yes... I'm going to a Solid Core class. Bye!"

"Okay, bye... thanks for leaving this for me."

"Sorry!"

Then she was gone.

I peeked out the window, and S's description was accurate. A rabbit had somehow gotten its head stuck in the spokes of Lil' S2's bike* and was lying there bloody and lifeless. Now, just the sight of roadkill squigs me out a little bit, so I was dreading the idea of touching a dead animal and then doing... something with it. But the thought of it just sitting there on our walkway was worse, so I got dressed, grabbed a paper sack, found some old gloves we bought for a ropes course, and went out the door to get this thing over with as quickly as possible.

*It should have been stored in our shed. Lil' S2 forgot to put it away (because he's 9), and neither S nor I noticed it to remind him. When I told him later that a bunny had gotten stuck in it because he left he out, he replied indignantly, "That's the bunny's fault!" which I found morbidly humorous for some reason.

I was pondering what to do with a dead rabbit -- burying it near the creek seemed like the best option -- but as soon as I touched it, I realized it was a moot point. I could feel warmth and life still inside of it. So, then my mind turned to the question of what to do with a badly injured rabbit, but first I had to get it unstuck from the spokes without injuring it further.

And I'm not sure I succeeded in that regard. It's head was really wedged in there, so much so that a spoke had cut into its eye, which was causing the bleeding. I had to really pry to get it free. Once I did, I was hoping it would up and run away, but no such luck. It just laid there, staring at me with its haunting, bloody eye. I picked it up and put it in the paper bag, and it did fight me but very feebly. Once in the sack, it made no attempt to get out. This poor thing was not doing well.

As I saw it, I had four options: 1) Find an animal hospital that will take it (or do the equivalent of dropping it on the porch, ringing the doorbell, and running); 2) build it a habitat in a cardboard box and nurse it back to health, kids'-book-style; 3) go old-school, conk it with a shovel and bury it near the creek, using the justification that I would be "putting it out of its misery"; 4) release it near the creek and walk away, telling myself that that's just nature, but also feeling a bit guilty that I was too lazy and uncaring to do option 1 or 2.

I went with option 4. I'm mostly okay with it. I mean, it could move a little bit, so it's possible that it found a safe place to rest and gather enough strength to survive, and if it didn’t, well, Mother Nature is an evil hag, isn't she? Billions of living things die every second -- that's just way it goes. Also, I had a bunch of work to do and just wanted to get on with my day ASAP.

So, that was that. I'm still trying to figure out how it got stuck in the first place. Obviously, it didn't know any better, but something drastic had to have happened for it to wedge its head into such a tight area, especially since there was seemingly nothing there of interest to a rabbit. It's not like there was a carrot on the other inside it was trying to get to, and even if there was, a rabbit would have good enough instincts to go around, I think. My best guess is that it got spooked and ran full-speed ahead into the bike wheel without even seeing it, hitting it in the perfectly right-wrong way to get its little head stuck. It doesn't seem very likely, but it's the best I got.

The whole ordeal put me in a weird mood for the day. It's not like I was totally bummed out, and I didn't even think about it that much, but every now and then I'd get a tinge of -- I don't even know what to call it -- unease, I guess, and would think to myself, Why am I feeling this?, and then I'd remember, Oh, yeah, that's right: maimed rabbit. It did get me out of an errand at least. We ordered carryout, and S wanted me to go pick it up, but I was in the middle of a workout, so I balked at it a little bit, and so she started into a whole soliloquy, "I have to go to two different places, and I'm tired of driving kids around all day..."

"Sorry to cut you off, babe, but I had to pull a half-dead rabbit out of our kid's bike spokes this morning, doesn't that buy me anything?"

"Actually, it does. I'll get the food."

Nice.

In general, I feel like these types of things I do go underappreciated. Whenever there is something gross or physically taxing or technical that needs to be done, it's just assumed that I'm the one who has to do it. S will sometimes feel put out that she's doing "all the work" with the kids because she does most of the registration and appointments and stuff like that (although now that Lil' S2 does so many sports leagues and camps, which I almost always sign him up for, it's not that lopsided), but my response is always that that's not the only work that needs to be done. I mean, I could give a whole list of things that I do fairly regularly that S has never done -- clean the gutters, sweep debris off the roof and pick up the yard after a storm, clean the maggots out of the compost bin, put air in the tires, unclog a toilet or clear a drain, change a lock, carry bulk trash to the curb, reset the router, resync the controllers with the PlayStation -- but I won't because that would be petty of me.

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

Entry 772: Work Trip

I mentioned in my previous entry that I had a work trip on the horizon that I wasn't exactly jumping for joy over. Well, said trip has come and gone now, and other than some bullshit delays on my return flight (or deplaning, rather), it went well. When it comes to travel, I'm usually glad I did it in retrospect. I don't really like traveling, particularly when it comes to flight, but I'm very tolerant of it because I like going places, and you can't go places without traveling there. Transporter/wormhole technology still seems millennia away (if it's possible at all), and despite advances in AI and bioengineering, Total Recall-style memory implants are not a thing yet either (and even if they were, I'm not sure I'd be up for conspiring with a creature living in a man's stomach to save the martian race). We are still just using big old jet airliners like it's 1977. And somehow air travel has actually gotten worse over the years--at least in terms of comfort. It's much cheaper now than it used be, and the inverse relationship of price to comfort is not just incidental.

The purpose of the trip was to attend a big industry summit hosted by my new parent company. My team was invited to present something, so a colleague and I gave a talk. As far as I can tell it was successful. We got a lot of engagement during Q & A, which is usually a good thing. Also, my colleagues in the audience told me it went well, and it didn't seem like perfunctory politeness. I don't mind public speaking, except for this thing that has started happening to me relatively recently, where immediately before I open my mouth, I feel like I'm not going to be able to get the words out. It's like that can't-move, stuck-in-mud bad-dream feeling. Thankfully, the words do come out, but it's like I'm speaking with a knot in my throat for the first half of the talk. I don't think it's super noticeable, and I'm able to power through it, but it's pretty annoying. I guess it's nerves, but it's weird because I don't feel anxious in any other way. Maybe it's a good thing, as my martial arts instructor said once before a test to level-up: "If you are nervous, good. That means you care."

I was also hopped up on acetaminophen, dextromethorphan, and phenylephrine, although I don't know if that mattered or not to the quality of the presentation. I caught a cold last weekend and by the day of the talk (Tuesday), I was in the snotting uncontrollably stage of my ailment. I typically do not take cold medicine. It's expensive and doesn't actually do anything to cure your ailment. But I do think it can help to temporarily suppress some of your symptoms -- even if it's just through the placebo effect -- and when you are blowing your nose and sneezing every ten seconds and have to speak to an auditorium of a hundred people, you take all the relief you can get.

It sucked at the time, but in retrospect it wasn't the worst time to be ill. I mean, it's never good to be sick, but I'd rather be sick away from home at a conference than be sick when I get back. I fought through it, and now I'm better, and I get to sit here in good health and blog, while I look outside at a beautiful day in the neighborhood. I'd much rather have it this way than have been healthy a few days ago and sick now.

Anyway, the fact that it's a beautiful day is notable, as we've been short on those in DC this summer. It's either been insanely hot or storming or both. Heavy rains and thunderstorms are in the forecast seemingly every other day. I get so many flood warnings on my phone, they've become meaningless (which is a legitimate problem; it's part of why so many people in Texas were caught off guard). The t-storms came on Thursday during my return flight, but we got in at the perfect time... almost. We landed safely -- there wasn't even much turbulence -- but they wouldn't let us out of the plane for three hours. Yes, that's right, we sat on the tarmac after landing for thee hours. That's an hour longer than the actual flight time.

The issue, as kinda explained to us and kinda inferred by me, was that due to lightning in the area, it was unsafe for the airport staff to set up the ramp needed for deplaning. (We were on one of those smaller commuter jets that don't pull right to the jetway.) So, we had to wait for the storm to subside. The problem with this is that the storm had already mostly subsided by the time we arrived and was only forecast to get worse again later. I kept looking outside at the concrete, watching it get dryer, because the rain had stopped, and thinking to myself If it's not safe enough to deplane now, when will it be? My phone app said a storm warning was in effect until 10 pm. We arrived around 2 pm. Are they going to keep us here for eight hours?

No, they were not, thankfully. Around 5 pm, they taxied us to different part of the airport, and we all just walked down the stairs and off the plane and that was that. Why we could not have done that when we first arrived, I have no idea. I also do not understand why they could not have set up the ramp. Yes, I'm sure it's less than ideal to wield around a giant metal object when lightning is nearby, but sometimes people have to do (slightly) unsafe jobs. That's what hazard pay is for. Give workers a big enough bump, and you will have a line of candidates. You could even charge the passengers for it. Put a $10.00 hazard pay deposit on the tab. If you have a normal flight, you get it back. If workers have to work in hazardous conditions, you use this money to pay them extra. I would gladly go for that.

I mean, when we deplaned, they brought the fire department out to help us down the stairs -- the fire department! How is that a better use of resources than finding somebody to set up a ramp? It's utter silliness. I'm sure it's part CYA, but it's also part "zero COVID" mentally, where decision-makers become overly focused on preventing one bad thing (in this case lightning hitting somebody) and create a more hazardous situation in the process. Is taking first responders away from their other duties to help some airline passengers down some stairs actually a net safety plus for society? Also, by waiting so long to let us off, I, and presumably many other passengers, had to travel from the airport while the storm was particularly bad. That's more cars on the road; more people not in their homes. Not to mention the physical and mental stress passengers are under, sitting in the plane, not knowing when they will be let off, feeling kidnapped. Like I said, it's completely baffling, and I have half a mind to write a sternly worded letter to somebody about it. But I have another half to not do that. They've already taken three hours of my life -- three and a half if you count the time it's taken me to write this screed -- they don't need anymore.

Until next time...   

 

Entry 771: Luray Caverns

S has been on this kick of thinking we don't spend enough time together as a family, and since last weekend's trip to the fancy movie theater didn't quite go as planned, she upped the ante and booked a two-day excursion to Luray Caverns and Shenandoah National Park. We actually met our friends there, so it wasn't just the four of us the entire weekend, but it was enough of just the four of us to qualify as quality time together (and then some).

It was a mostly successful endeavor. The kids fought a bit, which led to Lil' S1 embracing the role of martyr and sleeping on the floor, but kids will do that. Them sharing a bed, we've come to learn, is just not tenable. We're not at the point of booking two rooms (yet), but we definitely need a room with an extra sleeper sofa or a roll-away cot or something like that. They've never been good with sharing a bed, and we used to get around it by having S and I split up and each co-sleep with one of them, but I put the kibosh on that one a while ago. S doesn't mind, but it's a hard no from me. Lil' S1 is like 5' 5", 130 lbs now, and it's weird to spoon with your son when he's that big. Lil' S2 isn't quite that size yet, but he moves constantly in his sleep. It's annoying just listening to him jostle, let alone being right next to him.

We drove up Saturday morning and spent the afternoon at some sort of street fair that wasn't actually on a street but rather in a big field in the middle of nowhere. It was seemingly 1000 degrees outside, and there was no air conditioning to be found. We couldn't even sit in the car and cool off that way because we were precariously low on gas, not taking into account that there isn't a gas station on every corner once you get outside the city. Also, we didn't have any cell service, which has nothing to do with the temperature, but did make it much more difficult to navigate. It's ridiculous how reliant we are on smartphones with an internet connection now.

The kids had fun though. There was a nice creek nearby, so they all just hopped in that. I waded in as well, but the jagged rocks hurt my feet, and the ones that were smooth were even worse to walk on because they were hella slippery. I foresaw myself eating it in a very embarrassing manner, so I came back to the safety of dry land after only a few minutes. Lo and behold, not too long after my return, a dad about my age tried to fetch a toy his daughter dropped that was being washed away, and he completely wiped out, hard, soaking (and possibly injuring) himself in the process. I felt for the poor sap, but I also felt good about my own sagacity: Wise move getting out DG, wise move, indeed.   

After that we went horseback riding, which is something the boys had never done, and something I hadn't done in probably 29 years. I remember going with my cousins once when I was an older teenager, and we visited them in 1996,* so I'm guessing that was the last time. It was cool. If you don't spend a lot of time around horses (which I don't), you forget how massive and impressive they can be. But also, they never went faster than a walk (by design), so after a while, it's kinda like, All right, this is getting pretty repetitive, and I'm getting a little sore. The trip got cut short by a few minutes because it started to rain, and I can't say I was all that disappointed. The scenery was definitely interesting, though, including the people. As we were riding, we went past a couple who was driving through the trails in some sort of flatbed mini truck, and both driver (man) and passenger (woman) had a diaper-clad baby on their lap, and they had a half-rack of Busch on the flatbed.

*I remember the year because we watched Michael Johnson and his gold shoes win a bunch of races at the Atlanta Olympics.  

We stayed the night at a lodge in Shenandoah National Park, and then we went to Luray Caverns the next day (this afternoon). I'll have to cut this post short and end with some pics because I have to get ready for a work trip. I fly out tomorrow and return Thursday. Between you and me, I'm not exactly super excited about it, but so it goes.

Until next time... 

 

                                        

Entry 770: Wet Hot DC Summer

We had another huge storm here in DC a few nights ago. This one was not as destructive as last month's because it wasn't very windy. It was mostly just rain, but it was a lot of rain. The weird thing is that precipitation was not even in the forecast until much later in the evening according to my iPhone. I came upstairs around 4:30p and decided to go for a walk (the kids were both out of the house with friends, and S and I got into an argument earlier and weren't ready to make up yet, so I was on my own for the afternoon), touch grass, as they say, and it started raining. I looked at my weather app again, confirmed that it was supposed to be dry for another four hours or so, and waited, figuring it was just a little flurry. But I figured incorrectly, majorly so.

Far from petering out, the heavens opened up and unleashed a torrent the likes of which I do not remember. This probably wasn't literally the most voluminous rainstorm we've had since I've lived hear, but nothing heavier comes to mind. It was the type of rainfall where if you stepped outside for ten seconds, you might as well have jumped into a lake.* And it was the length of it that separated it from most other storms. Usually when the spigot turns on full-blast, it runs dry after twenty minutes or so. This time it went on for hours. Several times it lightened up only to then rage even harder than before. 

 *I've done that once in my life. When I was 15, we were visiting family at Chautauqua Lake, and I wasn't paying attention to where I was on the pier, and I stepped right into the lake, fully clothed. Few things are as disorienting as being suddenly, unexpectedly submerged in water.

Thankfully, the damage seems to be minimal. Some roads had to close temporarily because they amassed pools of water too large for vehicles to safely traverse, and surely a lot of foot trails around Rock Creek will be out of commission for a few days, but I think (hope) that's the worst of it. It was more than a bit scary for me, though. My mind went back to those girls' camps that got washed away in Texas. Lil' S1 was at a friend's house not too far from us, so I knew he would be fine. But Lil' S2 was at the movies with his friend and his friend's grandma, and the thought of a seventy-something-year-old woman driving through flood conditions with two kids is not the most reassuring thing one can imagine.

It also didn't help that Lil' S2's Apple Watch died, so I couldn't tell exactly where he was. If I could have tracked him getting home safely, it would have put my mind at ease. That's one big problem with using technology to keep tabs on your kid, when it goes out -- and it's going to go out because it's being operated by a child -- it makes you more worried than you would be if you just weren't tracking them at all.

In other news, we went to see Superman today. I wanted to see F1, but I got outvoted. In fact, the entire idea to even go to a movie got into people's head because I said I was going to take Lil' S2 to see F1 with me. I figured Lil' S1 and S wouldn't want to come because it's not their type of movie, and I was right, but then they said they would come, so we were all going to go to that, but then somebody suggested we see Superman instead, and then all three of them liked that idea better.

To make matters even worse (for me), they all wanted to go to a fancy theater where you get dinner while you watch, even though it's a half-hour drive from our house instead of five minutes like the regular theater, and I find the dining-while-you-watch experience vastly overrated. Not only do I not want to drive further and pay extra for it, I don't want to do it at all. It's distracting and annoying. I don't even like sitting next to S on the sofa when we're watching something if she's eating a snack. It's one of our ongoing sticking points. She saves food so that she can eat while she watches, and I'm like just eat it and then watch.

I kinda got my way on the theater inadvertently, as S bought tickets for the normal theater on accident. I say "kinda" because we had already driven to the other theater and paid $10 for parking before we noticed it. So, at that point, I would have just preferred to stay. Then we had to rush back to the other theater, and it is on the complete opposite end of the city, so there was no actual rushing involved -- just a steady plod through DC traffic. We got there about 35 minutes after the stated start time, and I would have preferred to just go in and watch -- we probably would have only missed five minutes or so of the movie, given how long the previews are -- but everybody was hungry (because we thought we were getting food while we watch), so we changed the tickets to a later showing. It cost $11, and then the kids still wanted shitty movie theater food, even though we were within walking distance of dozens of decent quick restaurants and had plenty of time to spare. So, we got them each a pizza meal deal, and I got a bag of popcorn, and our total was damn near $75 with the ticket switch. No wonder people don't go to the movies much anymore.

But the movie itself: enjoyable! I liked it. I had a good time watching it. Nothing earth-shattering (although the earth did shatter many times in the film), but it was fun, and Nick Hoult was really good as Lex Luthor. He's really come a long way since I discovered him in About a Boy.

Alright, it's late. I gotta go. Until next time... 

Entry 769: Broader "Vacation"

Last week we went on vacation, but it was a smaller vacation within a broader "vacation." I use quotes because it wasn't a real vacation. It just felt like one. The kids were still at camp this past week (S is getting them now as I type this), so, we were on our own, free to go about our schedules -- work, gym, errands, etc. -- at our own accord, and, I must say, it was pretty awesome. I love my boys and have literally zero regrets about becoming a father -- I don't even have the occasional kid-free daydream -- but a week off from having to plan everything I want to do around the schedules of two other people who can't drive and can't be home alone for extended periods of time? Yeah, I'll take that without compunction.

Actually, Lil' S1 can be home by himself, but we typically try to avoid the all-day nothing-planned summer days for him. For one thing, if I'm working home then he's just around, and it's distracting for me, even though he's not doing anything that has to do with me directly.* Like, when he pours himself some cereal for breakfast, I can I hear the bowls and silverware clanging, and I can tell he spilled some on the floor and didn't clean it up, and then he chews so noisily, because he's 12, and it makes it hard to concentrate on whatever it is I need to concentrate on at the moment. For another thing, he's not a great home-all-day-with-nothing-to-do kid, in the sense that he will just stare at his screens for hours on end. If we prod him to do other things -- call a friend, walk to the store, read a book -- he usually will, but we often can't/don't want to be on him to do things. That's the whole deal of it. 

*S is sequestered in the basement, so she doesn't hear it. During the COVID lockdowns, I tried to work down there too, but she takes so many meetings that it's worse than being upstairs and possibly dealing with the kids. 

On Tuesday, we went out for dinner and drinks with a group of other parents whose kids were also at camp (really fun, by the way), and we were talking about a common subject among Gen-X parents: How different parenting was when we were growing up. Particularly, we were lamenting the fact that we have to spend so much time, money, and energy finding summer camps for our children -- not overnight camp, which is it's own special thing, but the need-something-to-occupy-our-kids day camps they do the rest of the summer. When we were kids, we'd often just be home during the summer, and we had to figure it out ourselves. We might have a few activities here and there (I took drama and swim lessons every summer), but these all-day summer camps weren't the norm like they are today.

It's part of a bigger trend of parents becoming more involved in their children's lives. It's not really acceptable to let your child run free in "the wild" like it was forty years ago. Our neighbor won't let his son, who's going into sixth grade, leave our street on his bike without adult supervision, and he's a responsible kid, and we live in a decent neighborhood. I do think parents on the whole are overprotective now, and society would be better served if we all loosened up a bit, but there definitely are confounding factors. The aforementioned screens is a big one. If running free in the wild actually means watching YouTube shorts on your iPad, while you play on your iPhone all day, then it's not exactly preferable to the overly-structured alternative. It was a blessing in disguise that video games and other screens (basically just TV) weren't that good yet when I was a kid. Playing a season of Baseball Stars on Nintendo for the 100th time or watching another rerun of The Brady Bunch got old fast. We had to go outside and find other kids and be social due to sheer lack of alternatives. But there is no such thing as a lack of alternatives anymore, in this regard, and it seems as if that isn't a great thing.

Speaking of old video games, Lil' S1 has a Nintendo 3DS, and it has Punch-Out!! on it, and I've been playing it again. It's somewhat remarkable that the first time I played it in, like, 30 years, I was able to get all the way to Soda Popinski without being beaten. I still remember most the hacks and still have the muscle memory to implement them. Since then, I've beaten Soda Popinski (and the second Bald Bull and Don Flamenco), and I just beat Mr. Sandman last night, after many attempts, which means Super Macho Man is the only thing that stands between me and Mike Tyson (or "Mr. Dream" as he's called on this version). I've made it a goal to beat the game again. And I was thinking: playing video games like this as a child might actually have been greatly beneficial to me. The reason I say this is that the method that I use to advance in Punch-Out!! is the same one I've used to get good at everything I'm good at: Keep doing it over and over and over, even though you will fail and fail and fail. Don't get frustrated, and chances are eventually you will succeed. It's easy in theory, but it can be hard in practice because it sucks to fail repeatedly, and it takes time, and there is always something else you could be doing with that time (which is why, somewhat contradictorily, I'm a huge fan of quitting -- learning when to bail on something so that you can take up something else that might suit you better is a super valuable, underrated life skill). Maybe, instead of just playing a pointless video game, I was training myself to train, and this would help me immensely when pursuing more "important" things like mathematics.

Wait, did I just make the case for letting my kids play video games all summer? Actually, the truth is, I don't mind so much when the boys just play video games -- like, if they are just doing that one thing, playing one video game on the PS5, I kinda take that as a win. It's all the other garbage they do on screens -- the constantly being plugged in to a stream of bullshit, unhealthy stimuli -- that bothers me.

Alright, I gotta go, S is not that far away with the kids, and it won't be a good look if I'm blogging when they get home, given that she got up early by herself to get them, and I did nothing. Although, to be fair, I do things that she doesn't do. For example, cleaning out a grub-infested compost bin. We had a neighborhood kid bring in our trash bins from the curb while we were on vacation, and I think he moved our compost bin as well, but it hadn't been emptied yet (it gets picked up a few days after trash). So, it sat in the hot sun on our porch for over two weeks and was absolutely putrid when I opened it the other day for the first time since we got back. Despite being sealed, little worms and creepy-crawlies got in somehow (life finds a way!), and laid eggs, and it was like a biology experiment on decomposition when I opened it up -- pure nastiness.

And of course it was just assumed that I would be the one to handle it. The worst part is that they had laid eggs or something in the notches of the lid, and they were stuck on and wouldn't come off even after being blasted with a hose. I had to use an old toothbrush to scrub them off, but even that didn't completely work, so I had to use my fingernail and basically scrape these eggs -- or whatever they were -- out of the notches one by one. It was not the most pleasant activity I've even partaken in. Does this put me even with S? Maybe not, but if you ask people would you rather spend the morning picking up your kids from camp or cleaning up crusted maggot eggs with your bare hands, I suspect many would say the former.

Until next time... 

Entry 768: Four Days In Paradise

It was a weird juxtaposition of a week -- so much terrible news coming out my home country, while I'm off vacationing in a tropical paradise. But I suppose it was only ever thus. There's never been a time in the history of people in which everything was all good, not by a long shot. That's how the human experience works. It's misery and ugliness and death laid right on top of joy and beauty and life. Navigating this conflict is kinda the whole game. It's a game you play as best as you can but never win, or maybe never lose. I guess it depends on your perspective.

S and I went to Turks & Caicos on Monday and returned last night. We had two traveling companions but not our usual ones. We went not with our kids but with our friends FB and SM. And unless I'm forgetting something, it was our first real vacation without children since we've had children. It was nice. It went exactly how you might image it went. We spent a lot of time at the beach, a lot of time at the pool, and a little bit of time doing other things. We ate some good food, had a few sugary cocktails,* and spent too much money. 

*Literally just a few. Our partying days are long gone and none of us are huge drinkers. 

We arrived latish on Monday evening and didn't have much time to do anything other than eat dinner at a restaurant at our resort. When we arrived they asked us if we had a reservation, and we said no, and they said that's okay, but you should make one in the future, and I thought that was strange because it wasn't close to being full, and there were open tables every time I walked by the entire week. In general, I was pleasantly surprised at how not crowded everything was. I've been to resorts before where it's next to impossible to get a decent seat by the pool or at the beach, and that sucks because not only do you not have a good seat, but you're resentful about it because you're usually paying a lot of money to not have a good seat. S asked somebody about it and was told that it was a down period. It was during the week (not the busier weekend), and it was near the 4th of July, which isn't a big international travel time for Americans (by far the most represented guest, if my ear for accents is accurate). We didn't plan it that way. We were just lucky it worked out for us.

The big event the next day was massages all around. Actually, S didn't get one because there was some sort of error, and they only had three booked, but she didn't really want one anyway (or, more accurately, she didn't really want to pay for one -- they were pricey), so it worked out okay. I love a good deep tissue massage. It's a once-every-three-to-five-years guilty pleasure of mine. Although, I don't know if "pleasure" is the correct word here. She was burrowing into my leg muscles in a way that I could barely handle. More than once I had to stifle a yowl. I left with my calves feeling like iron rods had been inserted next to the bones. It was definitely not relaxing. But I'll damned if I didn't wake up the next morning feeling as loose and ache-free as I've felt in years.

On Wednesday, we rented bikes and rode them into town. SM didn't join us because she can't ride a bike very well, and it's probably a good thing she didn't, as the road was bumpy and narrow and the bikes were shot to hell. S, FB, and I made it there and back safely, but it was much more adventurous than a leisurely ride a mile down the road, on a completely flat surface, should be. When we got back, S took a nap, and the rest of us drank the local lite beer at the pool bar. I don't think I've ever sat at a bar stool that is actually in a pool before. It was quite nice. Afterward we at dinner at a place called Hemingway's. It's unclear to me if that's just a name or if Hemingway used to come there or something like that. He did spend a lot of time in the Caribbean. I had the curry shrimp, and it was the best thing I ate while I was there.

The next day, we went on a kayaking excursion. A little motorboat towed us out to some small islands, and then a guide had us paddle around to see the local flora and fauna. It was pretty cool. We saw baby sharks, giant turtles, barracuda, and even an octopus. The latter, we were told, was especially rare. The guide said, he'd never seen one up-close -- it was just chilling in clear, shallow water right by the shore -- in his five years of doing tours. The only thing I didn't love about the excursion is that it was quite long (three hours), and it was hard for me to sit in the kayak for that long. Also, they were two-people kayaks, so S was my partner, and she's not exactly the world's strongest rower. When I needed to take a break for a few seconds we would lag behind the rest of the group. Still, it was fun, and I got a good workout in -- my shoulders were sore the next morning.

Speaking of the next morning, it was our last one on the islands. We had an evening flight, which put us in that awkward limbo of not having enough time to do anything substantial but having too much time to do nothing. We went to the pool for a bit in the morning, and then showered (and tried to dry our wet suits in the sun) just before checkout. Then, after much deliberation, we took a cab into town to a burger joint called Big Al's because we were told it had AC (which it did). We ate there (great burger -- second best thing I had during the trip), and then we went to the airport and flew back home. S and I got to see a bunch of random fireworks from the beltway as we drove back from the airport. It was a nice little impromptu way to celebrate the 4th, honestly. And as I always say: The best part of any trip, no matter how fun, is returning home.

A few other things.

• FB and I both work out regularly, and we were joking that the only people who check out middle-aged men at the beach are other middle-aged men to see how they stack up.
  
  
• I also was keeping tabs on the types of bikinis women were wearing -- not in a lascivious way, but in a more anthropological way. I noticed four basic types of bikini bottoms -- the "full-on Brazilian thong" where all you can see is butt-cheek (only saw one of those); the "flared thong", which is quite skimpy, but does cover a small portion of the booty; the "normal" bikini bottom that covers pretty much the entire butt; and the "hot-pants" bottom, for women who want full-ass coverage, but still want to wear a two-piece -- and it's interesting to see what type of woman wears what type of suit. I saw a lady wearing a very skimpy "flared thong" with her child, which I thought was a bit strange, but then she spoke a language other than English, and it made more sense. Most other western cultures are less prudish about nudity than Americans are.
  
  
• The resort had a complementary breakfast buffet, which was a huge plus. Sure, you just pay for it as part of the overall expense instead of individually, but psychologically it's nice to eat as much as you want "for free". Also, you can work it. You can eat a massive breakfast, and then basically ride that until dinner, so that you are only paying the exorbitant island prices for one meal. That's what I did. Every morning I'd get an omelet with the works and a side of potatoes, all topped with a huge scoop of salsa, and then I'd eat whatever sweet thing they had (waffles, pancakes, or French toast), followed by a mound of fruit. And lots of coffee, of course. One nitpick is that they didn't have iced coffee. That would have really hit the spot in the warm weather. Oh well, it wasn't too hot in the morning, and the breakfast area was in the shade.
  
  
• The drinking water situation was a ecological disaster at the resort. Basically, they just gave out an endless supply of bottled water, so that in order to stay properly hydrated you had to created a load of plastic trash. They should have set up drinking water stations and let people fill up their own water bottles or put out paper cups. They could even sell water bottles or reusable cups, and I'm sure people would buy them. It makes no sense to do it how they do it.
  
  
• As we were waiting in the lobby for our friends to checkout, we were chatting with a couple from San Francisco, and the woman was looking at her phone, and she said, "Oh my gosh, they had a giant flood in Texas, and a bunch of girls at a camp are missing!" That is a truly horrific story. It makes me especially uneasy given that my kids are at sleep-away for the next week, and it's supposed to rain where they are pretty much everyday. There are no flood warnings, but still...   

So as not to end on that grim note, I'll post some pics.

Until next time...