Entry 238: Vacation Part II -- University Place

Time was when I'd visit the South Puget Sound region and spend about 50% of the time with my family in University Place and about 50% with my friends in Seattle.  Now that split is about 90-10.  One of the unfortunate side effects of having a family of your own is that time with your friends becomes less practical and, if we're being honest, less important.  It's not that your friends are any less important.  I mean, I still care about all my friends to the same degree as I did before, but I have basically an endless amount of care to give so care isn't the issue.  It's time that I'm always trying to budget.  And all (well, most) my friends are the same way.  Remember when you lived within a ten mile radius of all your friends, and you'd all hang out and just be bored together because you had already gone to all the bars, played all the video games, hit up all the coffee shops, seen all the TV shows a million times?  That part of my life is gone now -- and maybe forever.  I'm not complaining -- I like being a family man -- just saying is all.

[Seattle looking south from the Space Needle.  You can see Mount Rainier if you squint.]

Anyway, on this particular vacation we spent the first few days just bumming around U.P. -- lots of walks around Chambers Bay, a few cookouts, and one elementary school performance.  My nephew B just finished one of those early grades -- first or second -- and his class put on a little end-of-the-year musical about bugs.  It was exactly how every elementary school performance in the history of elementary schools has ever been.  Just remember back to how it was when you were that age, and you've nailed it.  One thing that did look different, however, is the audience.  Parents have a lot more piercings and tattoos than they did when I was kid.  I also saw quite a few Seahawks jerseys in the audience (particularly Richard Sherman).  I can't recall a parent ever wearing a sports jersey of any sort when I was a kid, which is probably a good thing.  They're pretty silly.  I'm a huge sports fan, but I find it hard to take seriously a middle-aged man who wears the uniform of a 25-year old who's good at preventing other 25-year olds from catching a ball.

Friday morning, S and I sloughed the little guy off on the grandparents and went up to Seattle for a little non-kid excursion.  Despite being to Seattle a half dozen times or so, S had never done a lot of the touristy stuff, so we did a bunch of that.  We went to the Seattle Center and up the Space Needle; we took the monorail to Westlake Center and did some shopping (S's idea); we walked down to Pike's Place Market and saw the original Starbucks (such a thrill!); and then we stopped in a souvenir store and I bought a pretty cool SuperSonics hoodie.  It was a good afternoon, even if a large portion of it was spent trying on pants.  I desperately needed new jeans, and so I figured, if I have to be subjected to shopping anyway, I might as well kill two birds with one stone(wash).

[My favorite store that we went in to, only because it reminds me of "Street Fighter II".]

When we were done, S drove back, and I met up with friends.  Since I no longer had a car, I had to foot it from Seattle Center to the west edge of Lake Union where I was supposed to rendezvous with everybody at a pub.  But the pub was closed (it was 3:30 and they open at 4), so we met at a different bar which was another few miles away.  In total, I walked about four miles, which was nice, actually, I got some exercise, and I got a chance to catch up my podcasts.  I met my friend RW, who has Fridays off, at The Nickerson, a bar that is right by Seattle Pacific University, the site of a killing spree the day before.  It was weird how normal everything seemed just a few hundred yards and not even a day removed from a madman's homicidal rollick.  On the one hand, it's a comforting feeling, like "this is our fucking city", and it's good we don't give in to people who terrorize.  On the other, it's like, WTF, these shootings are so commonplace now we just shrug our shoulders and move on.  Anyway, a subject for another time...

RW and I knocked one back and chatted for a while before everybody else showed up later on.  That night we went to our friends' B's & N's house for dinner.  It was fun.  A friend of theirs who was on a massive zigzagging road trip across pretty much the entire US was staying with them.  He was a cool guy, except he wore those shoes with the individual toes.  You know how I feel about those.

[Lake Union]

The next day I rode back to UP with my brother and sister in-law and their adorable son, Lil' Q, who's four months young than Lil' S, but just as tall and about six pounds heavier.  He's not a climber like Lil' S, but he can get into just as much trouble.  He likes pressing buttons, and everything at my parent's house is automated or on a timer or something like that (my dad loves gadgets), so he was constantly messing shit up in a very cute and hilarious way.  He reset the automated lock on the front door causing it make a high-pitched squealing noise nobody had ever heard before, and then he set off the sprinkler, which was on a timer, spraying himself and a few others in the vicinity.  He and Lil' S figured out how to get water from the spigot on the refrigerator, but they weren't able to master the concept of getting it into a cup, so it made a mess in the kitchen.  And we didn't know how to shut it off; the best we could do was change the setting to ice cubes, so that the clean up would be a bit easier.

We also got a chance to see S's cousin K and her husband M who randomly live 20 minutes from my parents.  M is a pretty funny, cool guy.  I like hanging out with him, but I don't think he completely gets me.  Since I have an advanced degree in math and am good with computer algorithms, he doesn't understand why I'm not more ambitious with my career.  In his mind, I should be trying to start the next billion dollar tech company.  But I a) don't think could do that, b) currently have no desire to do that (and these are not independent).  If I had a great idea for a business I might pursue it.  But I don't, so I'd much rather make my comfortable wage and have some time left over for my real passions (like reading and writing and making puzzles) than spend my time and effort trying to get a start-up off the ground.  It was also funny because he wanted to put me in touch with a former colleague of his through LinkedIn.  But then he saw my profile, which is basically nonexistent (I have one, but literally haven't opened it once since I started it) and just let the subject drop.  I felt a bit embarrassed, but whatever...  I don't care much about professional networking.  My wife does enough of it for both of us.

[Osprey's nest on a structure at Chambers Bay]

We spent the last few days of our vacation how we started it: in U.P., bumming around, hanging out with the family, eating hamburgers, and shooting the breeze on my parents' back porch.  It barely rained the entire time we were there, which was fantastic.  In fact, the weather was very nice.  It was usually cloudy in the morning, but then beautiful in the afternoon and evening after the marine layer had burned off.  I stand by it: Tacoma is seriously underrated as a beautiful city.  The waterfront vistas of Commencement Bay are way better than anything Seattle has to offer.  They honestly remind me of the views I saw while in New Zealand.  But if you ask people what city has better views, Tacoma or Aukland, I doubt many people are taking the former.  But they should.

OK, that's all for now.  Until next time ...

Entry 237: Vacation Part I -- San Francisco

Got back from vacation yesterday.  Today is my "buffer day", and then I go back to work tomorrow.  I work from home on Fridays, and then (of course) I get weekends off, so I get four straight buffer days, if you want to look at it that way.  Although, Lil' S is with me today (S is back at work), so it's not a very good buffer day.  I thought about taking him to daycare, but I feel bad about not spending the day with him if I'm free.  Although he's been such a pill today, I'm now kinda wishing I would have.  But he was excellent on all our flights -- which was pleasantly surprising, to say the least -- so I can't complain too much.  I'd much rather have him act up in our 1,500 square-foot house than in a two square-foot airplane seat we're sharing.

Anyway ... Our vacation was great -- so great I'm bummed out to be back home.  It's a weird feeling.  On the one hand, it always feels comforting to be back in your own house; on the other, it feels like the party is over and now you have to deal with the hangover (in this case the hangover is unpacking, catching up on work, restocking your fridge, getting the kid back on a schedule, etc.).  It began in San Francisco -- and not in stellar fashion, I might add.  On the night of our arrival, I lost my wedding ring somewhere between the airplane and the hotel.  I won't go into the details of how this happened.  But it was a combination of tiredness, distraction, and fluke bad luck.  /When I realized I had lost I thought to myself, "Well, this really sucks, but I can brood over it and ruin my vacation.  Or I can try to forget about it and enjoy myself."  I went with the latter, and it mostly worked.  It's shitty, but my ring was just that -- a ring -- something we bought off the shelf from a chain jewelry store.  It is an easily replaceable material object.  If I lost my wife or child I would be much more bummed out.

[Alcatraz, from Fisherman's Wharf]

We woke up very early the next day -- the day before my cousin's wedding -- and we set out to explore ol' San Fran.  (I've heard locals get irritated when you call it "San Fran", which is a perfect reason to do it ...  Go 'Hawks!)  We were staying near Union Square, and we walked the few miles to Fisherman's Wharf.  It would have been a nice walk but for two things: 1) we had to push a stroller up a few massive, steep hills; 2) it was foggy and nippy.  I was actually okay with the weather -- the fog provided an eerie backdrop to the iconic sights that I thought was cool -- but S was very cold, so when we saw a hop on-hop off tour bus we decided to hop on and stay on.  Although, it was funny; we booked the tickets while looking at this cozy double-decker bus, and then the ticket guy said, "Oh, here comes your bus now", and this old bus pulls up with a tiny roof and 90% of the seats uncovered.  Fortunately, we got one of the few covered seats.  Up front it was just us and some blue-hairs with whom we (mainly S) made small talk.  The driver/guide was cool but way too verbose and loud.  He was constantly "on", which over the course of a two-hour tour started to grate.  One thing I did enjoy is that he made a ton of movie references, which seemingly I was the only one to get ("Help me help you!").  Lil' S slept the whole time, which meant he was fully awake when we got back to the hotel and wanted to take some quick naps ourselves -- just the way we didn't want it.

Almost all my extended family who came to the wedding were staying in the same hotel as us (the St. Francis Westin at Union Square), so we started to see them trickle in throughout the day.  The accommodations were quite plush -- small, but nice, and not too expensive (I think we got reduced rates, as part of the wedding package).  We were on the seventh floor, and you could open the window all the way, and I kept having awful images in my head of Lil' S climbing out and plunging to his demise.  This despite the fact we kept the window closed, and Lil' S couldn't have climbed out the window without moving something underneath it to stand on, which we wouldn't allow him to do, even if he tried, which of course he didn't.  Hey, we all have our irrational fears and mine isn't unprecedented; it's how Eric Clapton's kid died -- kind of.  And if it happened to Lil S', I wouldn't be able to write a hit song about it. So, you know, doubly bad.

Sorry ... a bit of a morbid digression there.

[Union Square from the Seventh Floor of the St. Francis Westin]

That night everybody went to a Middle Eastern restaurant for the "rehearsal" dinner; I use quotes because the rehearsal was actually done in the afternoon, and it was for the wedding party only; the dinner was at night for everybody.  It was basically just a party -- and a good one at that.  I got stuffed to the gills with lamb and chicken and hummus and roasted eggplant and all other sorts of Mideastern fare.  There was belly dancing for entertainment, which was nice.  For one, it's belly dancing; for two, it was funny to see a particular half-drunk attendee (not me) absolutely spellbound by the beautiful, exotic dancer.  Belly dancing is a funny thing; it's supposed to be a cultural, aesthetic thing, not a sexual thing, but it's like, "uh ... tell that to my loins".  You've got a half-naked, usually very attractive young woman rhythmically gyrating her midsection.  You can say it's supposed to be anything you want, but I know where the blood is flowing for most of the men (and some of the women) in attendance.

[This is how the maids made our bed with Lil S's stuffed panda.  I thought it was super cute.]

The next day was the ceremony, and it was a typical Catholic ceremony in that it was long and formal, but it was atypical in that it was Coptic.  The Copts, according to Wikipedia, are the largest Christian group in Egypt, the homeland of the bride's mom.  As best I can tell, Coptic is a word like Jewish in that it describes a religion and an ethnicity together.  It was a fine ceremony, not really my bag -- too much religious nonsense, but I can't really talk given that I had a Hindu wedding full of religious nonsense.  The good thing about my wedding, however, is that it was in a language I didn't understand, so at least I couldn't process the nonsense.  In my cousin's ceremony they had a whole bit about how the bride was now the property of the groom and had to completely "submit" to him.  This caused more than a few smirks and raised eyebrows in the church, and it also provided a funny comment from my dad at the reception that utterly confused the deejay -- but that's another story.

Speaking of the reception, it was spectacular.  The venue was excellent (the top story of the hotel), everybody was really cool, and the food was the best I've ever had at a wedding.  Rumor has it the bride's father laid down a pretty penny for everything (like 100K pretty), but rumor also has it he can afford it, so why not?  The economy needs more spending right now, anyway.  The only bad part was that I had to cut out early because I knew the little man would be waking us up before the crack of dawn (his average wake up time in San Fran was about 4:30 a.m.), and we had to drive to Los Gatos the next day.  Now that I think about it, I had a great time, and I didn't feel like shit in the morning.  Huh.  Maybe leaving early is actually a good thing.

[A very foggy Golden Gate Bridge]

The purpose of going to Los Gatos was to visit my old college friends T & St. (and their adorably five-year-old son O) who live in the mountains outside the city proper.  We got there a bit earlier than we thought, and they weren't there yet, so we killed some time by going to this kinda sketchy convenience store/coffee shop.  The first sign of sketchiness was that it's connected to a marijuana dispensary, and when we pulled up the only other people in the parking lot looked like extras from a scene in Breaking Bad when Jesse turns his house into a hangout for wasteoids.  Then there was nobody actually in the store when we went in -- it was seemingly completely deserted -- which even casual watchers of horror movies know is not a good thing.  But the staff was friendly when they finally did appear, S ate a grilled cheese sandwich that didn't kill her, and I took a piss I had been holding for like an hour, so ... no harm, no foul.

[Something in San Francisco]

T & St. live in the mountains, but it's not like the mountains mountains.  They have a garden and a bunch of animals (including chickens), but they also have Internet and you can drive to a supermarket in like 15 minutes.  It's for people who want some wilderness in the their lives, but don't want to live like Survivorman.  It seems to suit T & St., but it's definitely not for S and I.  We're city folk.  We were driving up the winding roads thinking, "Why would anybody want to live way up here?"  I don't want to own any pets -- not even one outdoor cat -- let alone a mini-farm.  One thing I will say is that it seems like their mountain neighborhood is cool.  T and I had to run an errand at one point, and as we were coming back he stopped his truck twice to talk to his neighbors (one of whom was a New Age-y old woman who told us about her free-spirited, runaway cat that "gave [her] the finger" the final time it went out the door), which is about as much talking to our neighbors as I've done the entire time we've been here.

[Scene from a Trolley Car in San Fran]

And of course visiting was terrific.  Lil' S had a blast with all the animals (although he's still a bit scared of dogs), and St. did up some excellent vegan pizza cooked in their homemade brick oven.  I wish we had more time or could have at least made it over on a weekend night (they had to work the next day), but we were on a tight schedule.  At least we got to see them at all.  We left really early the next morning to make our flight to Sea-Tac.

And you will read all about that leg of the trip in my next entry...

Entry 236: Traveling is the Ultimate "Just Bring the Kids..." Scenario

["Vicki, can I help you with that Kool-Aid ... please?"  Can you name the now big-time (or at least semi-big-time) actress from this classic Vacation scene?]

It's vacation time for the G & G family.  First to San Francisco for the weekend for my cousins wedding; then home to the southern shores of the Puget Sound.  I imagine I will have some time to relax on the latter leg of the journey.  I'm not anticipating much of a "vacation" in the Bay Area -- not with Lil' S in the picture.  Remember that HuffPo article I mentioned a few posts ago that said "'Just bring the kids' is an option. But it is one that sucks."?  Well, traveling is the ultimate example of this.  As everybody with small kids knows, it's just not fun.

I gotta go finish packing, so no long entry today -- and no entry next week either.  When you have to bring diapers and wipes and toys and books and snacks and so on in your carry-on, some things don't make the cut.  My computer is one of them. So I'll leave you with a few links to and be back in two weeks.

This link is to a really good article written by that Jeopardy! dude Arthur Chu.  His point about the nerd in Revenge of the Nerds being a rapist is something I thought about a long time ago.  It's always weird to see somebody with an actual audience say something that I thought first.  On the one hand, it's like, "Yes!  That's what I was thinking!"  On the other hand, it's like, "Hey!  That's my material!"

Keeping in line with the gun violence theme, there's this entry from a while back.  Those of us who are sane and rational have to constantly push back against the gun nuts for whom no number of massacres in ever enough to even consider the possibility that our gun-crazed culture and lax gun laws might be part -- even just a modicum -- of the problem.  As is often the case, The Onion nails it.

Until next time ...

Entry 235: Guess Who's Back

If you guessed S, my wife, then you are correct.  She came back Monday.  I was at work at the time, but she told me that Lil' S, far being standoffish as I feared, immediately ran to her and hugged her, which is great; she would've been in a stew for a few days if he had responded with less enthusiasm.  It's nice having S back, obviously, although I think I actually sleep better when she's away (shh ... don't tell her I said this).  There are two reasons for this: 1) People just sleep better by themselves -- studies have show this to be true, and it's something I mentioned on this blog before, 2) If I'm sleeping late Auntie (S's mom) will just let me sleep indefinitely, S is not quite as courteous.  On S's watch, once it gets past 8:30 the little guy will somehow "find" his way into the bedroom, and then it's over.  There is no such thing as even trying to sleep if he's in the room and awake.



He's getting really cute now -- not that he wasn't before, but he's even cuter now.  In fact, he's very close to (if not at) the apex of his cuteness.  In my opinion, kids are at their cutest when they're halfway between baby and little kid -- when they still have their baby chubs and make baby noises but can run around and kinda talk.  The high point of cuteness for most kids is probably between 20 and 25 months, and Lil' S will be 22 months in two days, so he's right there.  After 25 months, there is a slow decline in cuteness up until around age seven, at which point there is a jump down, but not a huge one, and then it continues to decline slowly until puberty when cuteness plummets off a cliff and dies altogether.

A few really cute things he does now is he calls a sheep a "ba-bla sheep" (after the nursery rhyme Baa, Baa, Black Sheep); he calls a rabbit a "ha-ha money" (hop, hop bunny); and when he wants to go "ow-sigh" (outside) he'll bring you your shoes and then try to put them on your feet.  He's loves going outside, which is good.  When he's in the yard he just wants to kick a ball on our deck (it's enclosed with railing, so it makes a perfect sized indoor soccer field for him); when we take him to the park, he spends more time watching other kids play than he does playing himself.  It's weird.  When we first take him out of the stroller, he just stands there for a few minutes in a daze like he's never seen such a sight -- even though it's the same park he's been to dozens of times before.  Eventually he'll toddle up to the top of the slide and then again just stand there and watch all the other little kids run around or watch the "big kids" play basketball.  I'm not sure what's going on in his little head, but I've been known to completely space out from to time to time (just ask S), so maybe he's just a chip off the ol' block.

In other news, S's birthday was a week ago.  Since she wasn't around to celebrate it then, we will probably go out tonight -- nothing too exciting, probably just dinner and/or a drink.  We need to do it tonight because it's the last night her mom is around; she flies back to SC tomorrow.  She'll be missed.  Lil' S really bonded with her after a bit of a slow start, and she's such a big help with the cooking and all that.  Although, my waistline could use a reprieve from her constant barrage of delicious Indian food.  I'm very close to the fattest I've ever been (which still isn't all that fat, mind you).  Because I've been doing yoga, I haven't been running at all (I used to go a few times a week), which would be fine if I was eating sensibly.  But I'm not.  I've been gorging myself on Auntie's cooking, and then on top of that I've been snacking like a stoned sumo wrestler for some reason.  Ritz crackers have been my Achilles' Heel lately.  We got a giant box from Costco, and I've been mowin' 'em down a half sleeve at a time.  I gotta start cutting out the junk food.  I'm going to start tomorrow ...  Wait, we're going on vacation next week; there's no way I have the discipline nor the desire to diet on vacation.  Scratch that.  I'll start when we get back.

So let's see ... anything else going on?  Oh, I made a big discovery the other day.  Well, not so much a discovery as a realization as I've always "known" it, but I just never connect the dots until a few days ago.  Back in the day two cartoons I used to watch were The Real Ghostbusters and Garfield and Friends.  It was easy to tell, even as a kid, that the voice of Peter Venkman was also the voice of Garfield; I've known that for 25 years.  But then the other day I realized that Bill Murray, who, of course, played Peter Venkman in the movie Ghostbusters also did the voice of Garfield in the (presumably) awful movie Garfield.  Two different people portrayed both Peter Venkman and Garfield -- that's amazing!  Well, maybe not amazing, but kinda cool ... right?

The other guy -- the guy who wasn't Bill Murray -- was named Lorenzo Music (great name), and according to his imdb page, he was one of those old school TV factotums: he did a little writing, a little acting, and tons of voices.  (He died in 2001 at age 64.)  He only did a few seasons of The Real Ghostbusters because, the story goes, Bill Murray asked why his character sounded so much like Garfield.  The producers took this to mean Murray was unhappy, which they didn't like (Ghostbusters 2 was in the works), so they canned Music and replaced him with ... Dave Coulier!  That's right, the nerdy uncle from Full House.  I had no idea he did Venkman until just now.  I also had no idea Arsenio Hall was the first Winston.  Crazy.

Anyway, I would love to go on and on about The Real Ghostbusters, and why the word "real" is the title, but I'm out of time.  I'll save it for a future entry ... or not.

Until next time...

Entry 234: It's Not a Tumor

The ol' trick back is acting up again.  It happens.  I think it's one of those things I'm just going to have to manage for the rest of my life.  I don't think it's ever going to be "better".  I've been to the doctor probably, I dunno, six or seven times total over the last 20 years about it and nobody can do anything for me.  Or I should say, nobody can do anything for me to fix it permanently; they give me tips and activities (and sometimes drugs) for making it bearable, but never a cure.  I started doing DDP Yoga which has helped a lot, and it's been feeling pretty good lately except for one spot.  I have a charley horse-feeling in the lower right part of my back that has been nagging me for over a month.  To make matters worse, every now and again I'll contort the right wrong way, and a sharp pain will emanate from that spot and just shoot up my spine.  It sucks.

[Sitting all day (at a desk, not a piano) is probably a big part of the problem.]

I finally broke down and went to the doctor again, even though I was pretty sure it would be the same old routine.  What made me go was this story on This American Life in which a guy mentioned that his dad had what he thought was a pinched nerve, but it turned out to be cancer.  Then I thought about that movie 50-50, and then I started thinking about what would happen to Lil' S if I died young, and then I decided to get it checked out.  Joseph Gordon-Levitt and my son persuaded me to see a doctor.

And I'm glad they did.  It's very likely not cancer, which is good.  The doctor thought I might have a kidney stone, but my pee said otherwise.  It's probably the same thing it's always been -- a bad back.  It just happens to be manifesting itself right now in a more painful and localized way than usual.  But the reason I'm glad I went is because the doctor gave me some anti-inflammatories that have been helping with the discomfort.  Also, I found this new clinic that's not too much of an inconvenience.  It's just a normal hassle instead of a super-hassle.  I can handle a normal hassle.

The doctor also gave me some muscle relaxers, but I haven't taken any yet and probably won't.  I'm not that into numbing pain meds.  Either they don't really work (I once drove all the way to South Carolina from DC after taking two muscle relaxers) or they make me nauseous.  Unless the pain is excruciating I usually just toss them.  If I ever become a drug addict, it's not going be from popping pills.*

[This is one of those scenes where my recollection of it is different than what actually goes down.  In my head he says "It's not a toomah!" once very emphatically.  In the scene, he says it twice not too emphatically and adds "at all" at the end.  Here's a kinda interesting link about misquoted movie lines.  This line isn't misquoted, but it's said differently than how I remember it.]

In other news, this article on why people with kids go M.I.A. has been making the rounds on Facebook.  Usually I'm not big on the whole "people without kids can't possibly understand" mindset that some parents get into, but I thought this particular article really hit the nail on the head.  There were two points in particular that I didn't fully appreciate until I became a parent: 1) The kid's schedule is more important than one would think, 2) "Just bring the kids" is an option. But it is one that sucks.  On the latter point, a wise man once said, "I realized the real reason parents with toddlers don't go anywhere except to specifically kid-oriented establishments.  It's not fun."  And that wise man was me, five weeks ago in this blog entry.  Maybe I should write for HuffPo.

Reading this also made me realize that you can really help yourself when it comes to having kids by being smart about when you have them.  If you value things like free time, sleep, and less stress you should, if possible, wait until you have a committed partner and a steady income before you start riding bareback.  I don't think these things make you a better parent or make your child develop in a superior manner or anything like that.  It just makes things easier on you.  For instance, S and I outsource a lot of our chores -- we pay to have our house cleaned top to bottom once a month, and twice a year we have landscapers come out to do yard maintenance.  These are huge time savers that I couldn't justify spending money on if, say, I was still a student.  Also, since S and I live in the same house and are both around at night, we can take turns going out after he goes to sleep if there is a social event (assuming we have the energy).  If it's a friend's birthday or something special like that, we usually try to arrange it so that one of us can go.  And very rarely we will get a sitter.  I can only think of two times we've had a non-family member watch him so that we could got out.

There is, however, an obvious downside to having kids late -- you're that much older than you would be otherwise.  The older you have children the fewer number of years you have to spend with them and with their potential offspring.  That's just a fact -- a slightly morbid fact, but a fact nonetheless.  And the years are less likely to be "prime" years.  If everybody has a kid at 25, you're a grandparent by 50.  If you push this back to 35, it's 70.  My energy level has dropped substantially from 25 to 35, and I imagine it will be even worse from 50 to 70.  So, you know, it's all about tradeoffs.  

OK, that's all I got ... Oh wait, I'll give you all a quick update on how things are going with me, my mother in-law, and the little guy.  Well.  They're going well.  S gets back on Monday.  I'm interested to see how Lil' S responds to seeing her in person again.  If it's anything less than total rapture followed by him running into her open arms while screaming "amma!", she's going to be disappointed ... so she's probably going to be disappointed.  I don't think he's forgotten her or anything think that, but kids this young do have out-of-sight-out-of-mind mentalities.  My guess is that he's going to need a little warm-up period before he completely embraces her like he did before she left.  But, I could be wrong.  Like I said, it will interesting.  

Until next time...

*Speaking of which, this The New Yorker article about a clinic in Kansas that essentially became an unchecked drug dispensary is interesting if you've 20 minutes to kill.

Entry 233: Privilege (And Does Newt Gingrich Read My Blog?)

You might recall in my last entry I suggested that the best model for the ownership of sports franchises is for them to be owned by the municipalities in which they play.  That way we wouldn't have this conflicting arrangement of a public good owned by a private entity that we have now.  Well, guess who agrees with me?  None other than The Salamander himself, Mr. Newt Gingrich.

It's an unexpected position from Newt, although maybe not; he was the guy who called out Mitt Romney during the Republican primary with quotes like

"Now you have to ask a question - is that really, is capitalism really about the ability of a handful of rich people to manipulate the lives of thousands of other people and walk off with the money? Or is that in fact somehow a little bit of a flawed system? And so I do draw distinction between looting a company, leaving behind broken families and broken neighborhoods and then leaving a factory that should be there."

that sound more like things Ralph Nader would say than Newt Gingrich.  I think Newt fancies himself some sort of anti-establishment free-thinker, ready to liberate us all with his sterling, unique intellect.  And so he relishes grandiose pronouncements that will grab people's attention.  That would be fine if he was actually a smart guy with good ideas.  But I've seen him debate.  He's not.

Anyway ...

So both the in-laws are in town now.  It's nice.  I still have to do the bulk of work with Lil' S, but it's easier as he gets more familiar with his Ava and Thaatha.  He lets his Ava give him baths now, which is huge.  The only thing is that I'm trying to teach him "no" and grandparents aren't the best at that.  I'm worried he's getting spoiled.  Apparently he's been having some behavioral problems at daycare -- taking toys away from other kids and throwing a fit when he doesn't get exactly what he wants.  We've definitely noticed the latter at home.  If you take away the lotion he's eating, he starts screaming; if you don't give him the cracker he wants, he starts screaming; if you don't carry him when he says "up", he starts screaming; if you try to interrupt his play to change his diaper, he starts screaming; if you zip up his jacket too high, he's start screaming.  Any little thing that doesn't go his way causes him to scream.  If it's just me I'm fine letting him scream, but the more adults around, the harder this is to do (he only needs one to give him what he wants, and he's already learning how to work it).  Also, if I'm trying to get him to daycare because I need to be at a work meeting or something like that, I'm probably going to cave and just do whatever I need to do to placate him.  Sometimes you don't have time to make a stand.

What he really needs is a little sibling to take away some of the attention.  But until that happens, when S gets back we're going to have to come up with some sort of game plan to deal with his tantrums.  I know he's still basically a baby and that's what babies do, but at least we can start planting seeds that bratty behavior is unacceptable.  I really don't want Lil' S to become one of those annoying, spoiled little kids who feels entitled to things just because.  In general, I think the "Participation Trophy Generation" thing is way overblown.  A lot of it, in my opinion, is just old people acting like things were better and harder in their day (i.e., old people acting like old people).  But that doesn't preclude me from wanting to teach my kid work ethic and gratitude.

On a similar note, I came across this article about the notion of "checking your privilege".  It ran in Time, and it's been making the rounds on social media.  If you don't want to read it, I'll give you the gist: It's a fired-up, white, male, 20-year-old Princeton student writing about how's he's fed up with people suggesting he's privileged.  He's not going to apologize for it (who asked him to do so is unclear) because his grandfather was a Jew who endured serious hardship in escaping from the Nazis.  If my recap seems incongruous, it's because so was his article.  Time must really be struggling if they are willing to run such a terribly reasoned polemic just for the sake of getting clicks (any story that stands up for white people against the slightest hints of racism is guaranteed to get passed around by satisfied conservatives and outraged liberals).  The article has no logical flow.  Here is the best takedown of it I've read.  But I have my own analogy; it fits in with my grand view on privilege and life in general.

Basically, we're all in a giant poker game.  We all start out with a different number of chips (chips aren't just money in this metaphor, but any advantage you were born into), and we are all at a different skill level, and this skill level changes -- some people work hard and get better, some people don't and get worse.  As the game progresses, on average, the good players do well, the so-so players do so-so, and the bad players do poorly.  But it's not quite that simple.  Because the chips were unevenly dispersed in the beginning, some mediocre players will always be ahead of some really good players and some bad players will be always be ahead of some mediocre players just because they started out so far ahead.  And it gets even more unfair.  There is an element of total randomness -- the luck of the draw.  You could be the world's greatest poker player and start with a huge mound of chips and lose just because the cards didn't go your way.  It's not very likely, but it's possible.  Conversely, you can succeed just through dumb luck.  But that's not very likely either.  The vast majority of us end up where one would expect, probabilistically, given our starting stack and our skill level.  But there are always outliers -- far extremes in either direction and everything in between.  And that's life.

The kid who wrote the terrible article for Time seems like a pretty good "life player" (logic isn't his strong suit, but he got into Princeton so he must have something going for him).  He also -- just by virtue of being white and male in a society that (at the very least) still has residues of racism and patriarchalism -- started with more chips than, say, a black female, all other things equal.  That's just a fact.  And now when people point this out to him, he's saying, "Yeah, well, my grandfather survived the Nazis, and he passed a bunch of chips down to me."  Great.  Irrelevant, but great. This kid still started with more chips than most people of color and women in no small part because he's white and male.  That's really all the Privilege Police is saying.  I don't really get what the issue is.

This is yet another reason why I could never be a conservative.  I just don't understand why it's so difficult for conservative white men to say "Yeah, I had and will continue to have advantages in life because of my skin color and sex."*  Conservatives always want to be the victims -- the war on Christianity, the assault on traditional marriage, redistribution, reverse racism, class warfare, the liberal media, etc., etc. -- even though, by and large, they're old, rich, white, American men -- one of the least victimized group in the history of modern civilization.**  It's a very weird pathology; one that I cannot comprehend.  Many conservative mindsets I disagree with, but I understand.  This is one I can't even understand.

Well, I'm not going to try to figure it out tonight.  It's late, and there is still a crossword puzzle I want to do.

Until next time ...

*I can think of a number of instances in which I've likely been given the benefit of the doubt because I was white.  Once I was with some people who went on a vandalism tear.  I was just a spectator, but I was there.  The cops caught us, but they let me go with little hassle.  Actually we all got off relatively easy.  If the circumstances were the exact same, but we looked like NWA circa 1987, are things so easy for us?  I seriously doubt it.

**Even Ann Romney on the campaign trail tried to claim she and Mitt were once poor because their dining table was an old door (an old door, I tell ya!), omitting the fact that Mitt's father George was an incredibly wealthy GM exec and former governor of Michigan.  There might have been a time when Mitt and Ann didn't have a ton of spending cash, but how far were they really going to fall with the Romney safety net under them?

Entry 232: Did You Know there's a Second Verse to "Jack and Jill"

Did you know "Jack and Jill" has a second verse?  I had no idea.  We got a book of nursery rhymes for Lil' S from the library, and "Jack & Jill" is one of them.  It goes:

Jack and Jill went up the hill,
To fetch a pail of water;
Jack fell down and broke his crown,
And Jill came tumbling after.

That part I knew, and I thought that was it.  But there's more.

Jack got up, and home did trot,
As fast as he could caper;
To old Dame Dob who patched his nob,
With vinegar and brown paper.

Why is this last part usually omitted?  It's terrific.  Old Dame Dob?  His nob?  Vinegar and brown paper?  Genius.

[I want it to be known that I was done with Adam Sandler in like 1999, WAY before it was cool.]

Anyway ...

The "experiment" I mentioned in my last entry in which S goes to Africa for work for three weeks and leaves Lil' S with her mom and I is not off to great start.  It's manageable, but it's hard.  He's much moodier than usual; he's constantly throwing tantrums over nothing; and he's waking up in the middle of the night inconsolably crying for his "amma".  It sucks.  I feel for him, but I'm much more a "cry it out" type of person than S's mom.  She can't really stomach that.  So what happens is she wants to get him, but he's still not completely comfortable with her, so he cries more, and then I have to get him, not only to placate him but to placate her, as well.  The flip side is that she gets him in the morning when he wakes up so I can sleep in -- by which I mean I can wake up at 7:30 instead of 6:00.  Overall, I'm very grateful that S's mom is here; she's been a HUGE help.

In other news, a bird built a nest on our hanging porch light.  It was absurd.  She (I'm assuming this bird is a female.  Do males build nests?) couldn't have picked a worse place to build -- right in front of our main door -- and she must have put that sucker up fast.  Yesterday morning the nest was just there -- seemingly appearing from thin air.  Thankfully, she hadn't laid eggs, so, according to the internet, I could destroy it legally and with a clear conscience -- which I did.  (She came back and was looking around like WTF?)  But then she built another one!  I looked out my window late last night and three-fourths of a new one was there.  So I had to destroy that as well.  And since it was night and nests skeeve me out, in general, I kept having visions of this bird flying out of the darkness and attacking me.  Luckily that didn't happen.  The internet told me to hang something shiny at the nesting site to keep the bird from coming back yet again.  So I tied an old CD to the light fixture -- so far so good!  It's a bit like the scene from the Simpson's below, but whatever.

Homer: Not a bear in sight.  The Bear Patrol must be working like a charm. 
Lisa: That's spacious reasoning, Dad.
Homer: Thank you, dear.
Lisa: By your logic I could claim that this rock keeps tigers away.
Homer: Oh, how does it work?
Lisa: It doesn't work.
Homer: Uh-huh.
Lisa: It's just a stupid rock.
Homer: Uh-huh.
Lisa: But I don't see any tigers around, do you?
[Homer thinks of this, then pulls out some money.]
Homer: Lisa, I want to buy your rock.
    

In other other news: racism!  Wow, there's been a lot of it in the news recently, hasn't there?  First was Cliven Bundy that insane "libertarian" rancher who thinks that using the federal government's resources and not paying for them is "patriotic".  (This is actually a reasonable interpretation of the word patriotic when you consider he also thinks it's patriotic to not recognize the federal government of the United States ... the very country of which he's claiming to be a patriot.  At least the first interpretation of patriotism isn't an inherent self-contradiction.)  Ol' Cliven was a rallying point for Rand Paul conservatives because they don't really believe in the federal government either (they'd prefer we be governed by the invisible hand of capitalism -- because, if the last ten years have taught us anything, it's that the free market is pretty much infallible).  But everybody has had to back away from him now because in an interview he mused that black people -- or "the Negro", as he calls them -- were perhaps better off as slaves.  He also said, “They abort their young children, they put their young men in jail, because they never learned how to pick cotton."  Well, okay, then.

The best response to the this whole foofaraw was by Jonathan Chait who in this article avers that it's no surprise that Bundy turns out to be a gigantic racist because “America’s unique brand of ideological anti-statism is historically inseparable … from the legacy of slavery.”  To further Chait's point, I'm no expert on this type of history, but wasn't the Emancipation Proclamation the ultimate act of Big Government?  Anyway, the last paragraph in the article -- with the last line being a reference to an Onion article -- is brilliant.

Amazingly, Cliven Bundy was eclipsed in the racism department earlier this week; he has the Notorious B.I.G.O.T., Donald Sterling, to "thank" for that.  I'm sure you know the story (how could you not?) so I won't rehash it.  But I will direct you to this article by Kareem Abdul-Jabbar who nails it like he nailed those two foul shots in Game 6 of the 1988 NBA Finals.  I'm totally with Kareem on this one.  I'm glad Donald Sterling was banned and is being compelled to sell the Clippers.  (Seattle SuperSonics 2.0?  One can dream.)  But I find the fact that it is what he said and not what he did that ultimately ruined him to be very disconcerting.  Why is Sterling saying racist things to his girlfriend in a private (so he thought) conversation worthy of a lifetime ban, but systematically discriminating against minorities -- as he has a long documented history of doing -- isn't?  One creates hurt feelings and embarrassment, the other, prevents black people from having access to the same housing opportunities as white people (among other injustices).  Which is worse?

It's something that Ralph Nader observed many years ago: The collective outrage we exhibit over what people say compared to what they do is way, way, way out of whack.  If Politician A votes repeatedly in favor of legislation that hurts a certain group of people, but doesn't talk about it, the outcry is a murmur at best (even from that group).  If Politician B votes against this legislation, but is caught on TMZ using a slur against this group, he or she is ruined.  It's very weird to me.

Something else on the Sterling fiasco that I haven't heard anybody else broach: It's another example of why private ownership of a public good can be extremely problematic.  Sports teams are quasi-public goods.  They're public goods when it behooves the powers-that-be for them to be so, like, say, when they want the taxpayer to foot the bill for a new stadium, or when they want to market their product ("now batting for your Washington Nationals...")  But when it comes time to collect the money, they're strictly private.  So you have this asymmetrical situation where basically one person (almost always an old white dude) almost completely controls this irreplaceable thing that is meant to be enjoyed by the entire community.  It works out OK if that one person is a good steward of this public good (say, Mark Cuban, from what I can tell).  It doesn't work out so well if this one person is a racist sleaze bag who bought a basketball team because it's the closest thing he can get to a slave plantation in modern society.*

[Donald Sterling]

The way things would be if I was in charge is that the municipalities in which the teams play would own them.  That way a public good would actually be public.  But I'm not in charge.  And this will never happen for the same reason many good ideas will never happen: rich and powerful people make money off them not happening.  Joan Kroc, Ray Kroc's widow, tried to donate the Padres to the city of San Diego after her husband died, and Major League Baseball forbade it.  Rudy Giuliani once described the notion of a publicly-owned franchise as "a great idea for Communist Cuba".** (Meanwhile he's a staunch advocate of taxpayer-funded stadiums; that is, public investment for private profit.  What's that analogous to?  Some corrupt banana republic?)  So sports teams are going to stay privately run, and fans like me will continue to be conflicted about investing so much time into such an one-sided relationship.  

Being an ardent sports fan is like dating a selfish, manipulative narcissist who's dynamite between the sheets.  You get ignored and embarrassed a lot, and you constantly feel like a huge chump.  But every so often you get your world rocked like you wouldn't believe (Seahawks!  Super Bowl champs!), and you think to yourself, "Totally worth it."     

Until next time... 

*Yes, NBA players are freemen who are extremely well compensated -- hardly comparable to slaves in this regard.  But that doesn't change the fact that Donald Sterling apparently got off on imaging himself as the white overseer of a group of physically powerful young black men.  (It's as creepy as it sounds.)  His girlfriend being part black fits perfectly into this twisted fantasy.

**I can't source this quote online, and I'm not even sure it was Giuliani who said it, so I could be way off the mark.  If I am, Rudy, feel free to sue me for libel.