Entry 242: Tiring Times, But At Least I'm Not Under Arrest

These are tiring times in the G & G household.  Transitioning Lil' S from his crib into his toddler bed has been more difficult than anticipated.  He's consistently doing one of two things and sometimes both: (1) waking up a half dozen times throughout the night, usually with a major meltdown around 3:30 in the morning, (2) "only" waking up once or twice during the night, but waking up for good at 5:30 a.m., even though he's still tired and cranky.  We can't seem to get him on a schedule where he sleeps through the night and gets up at a reasonable hour. It's especially frustrating because he was actually sleeping pretty well in his crib, and if it was up to us, he'd still be in it for a few more months.  We didn't decide to move him from his crib; he learned how to climb out.  Our collective hand was forced.  Now we have to struggle through a period in which he's still a bit too young to handle free range nights, but short of cosleeping with him (no) or moving him back to the crib and lining it with barbed wired, it's really our only option.

This is yet another example of how having a child who develops physically faster than average is a mixed blessing.  It's cool to see your kid be able to do things other kids his age can't -- like, say, get to the top of a big toy meant for five-year olds-- but it sucks to deal with the ramifications on a daily basis.  I try to console myself with the fact that it's just temporary, one day he will learn to sleep through the night like a normal human.  But then of course I also have to concede that his fast start is just as temporary, other kids are going to catch up.  The people who are the most physically gifted as kids are never the best athletes as adults -- except for Tiger Woods ... and Lebron James ... and Wayne Gretzky ... and Ken Griffey Jr. ... and ... okay, sometimes they are, but often they're not. (Enjoy the pics.)

On the topic of parenting, one thing I can take solace in is that I have yet to be arrested for being a negligent parent.  This seems to be happening a lot for very innocuous "offenses".  And by a lot, I mean I've recently come across two stories in which it happened.  Here's one and here's the other.

In the first one, the author left her four-year old in the car while she went in to an electronics store to (quickly) purchase a pair of headphones.  She was in a hurry to catch a flight and the headphones were to placate her son on the flight.  I definitely don't think this woman should have been arrested, but I do think it was the wrong decision.  And I'm not completely on board with all her justifications.  For one thing, how bad would it really have been to bring the kid inside.  Even if he throws a fit, it would have been a very temporary annoyance at worst.  Plus, she says he had an iPad, take it and tell him he has to come inside the store to use it.

For another thing -- and this is the bigger thing -- the basic crux of her defense is that what she did wasn't really unsafe, if you actually look at the evidence.  This is true, but it is also very specious.  Yes, it's extremely improbable that anything bad will happen if you leave your four-year old son in a car by himself.  But it's extremely improbable that anything bad will happen to him doing just about any "risky" behavior; this doesn't mean it's okay to engage in them.  For example, if you left your sleeping baby boy alone in a crib at night and then went clubbing out on the town and came back hours later, chances are nothing "bad" would happen to him.  Even if he woke up, he'd probably just cry himself back to sleep, which is often what happens when parents are there anyway (it's called sleep training).  But I think just about everybody would agree that that is unacceptable parenting.  Just because an individual act has a low probability of going badly, it doesn't make it okay to do it.  It also matters how "necessary" that act is (however you want to define necessary), and whether or not that act is part of a bigger network of risky behaviors in which no individual strand has a high probability of going badly, but taken as a whole they constitute something that does.  

Also, although I agree with the general sentiment that we have little reason to live in constant fear for our children's safety, and our society can be completely irrational about what constitutes risky behavior, the "our parents let us do a bunch of way worse thing" and "it's safer today than it was back then" arguments are not particularly convincing.  After all, it could be that the increase in safety is precisely because parents are more protective now.  Nobody argues that seat belts and airbags should be taken out of cars because the rate of serious injury from car crashes has dropped dramatically since 1975.

Lastly, the author fails to underscore what I believe are the two biggest concerns with leaving an unattended four-year old in a car while you shop: 1) the kid could take his seat belt off and do something like take the e-break off* or get out of the car and wander around the parking lot, 2) it freaks people out!  Calling the cops on this woman is very harsh, but it's somewhat understandable.  The "good samaritan" in this story doesn't know the woman or her intention or how long she's going to be gone.  If you see a kid alone in a car who shouldn't be, what are you supposed to do?  Kids do get abandoned in vehicles for long periods of time, sometimes on purpose, sometimes accidentally, and just because it's rare, does that mean you should always assume it's not happening if you see something fishy?  Now, the better course of action for the samaritan probably would have been to talk to the woman (Although what do you say -- "excuse ma'am I couldn't help but notice you might be a bad mother"?) or to wait and see if she's coming back out right away (probably what I would've done), but turning it over to the authorities isn't ­that unreasonable -- is it?

With all that said, I don't want it seem like I'm coming down too hard on this woman because the fact she faced criminal charges for this and that the possibility of her losing her son was even somewhere on the peripherals of the conversation is absolutely outrageous.  A warning from the police, something along the lines of, "Hey, people take it seriously if they see a toddler alone in a car, so don't do it anymore", would have been perfectly sufficient, I'm sure.    

Anyway ...

The second story is of a woman who let her nine-year old play in the park unsupervised while she worked at a nearby McDonald's.  And if all the facts are reported accurately, then this case, unlike the first one, is unmitigated horseshit.  Since when it is wrong to let a nine-year old play in a park unattended?  I don't remember exactly, but I'm pretty sure my parents let me do things like that at that age without supervision -- especially in a public area where I could go "check in" with them periodically.

Also, who sees a nine-year old playing unattended at a playground and calls the police?  (This is so different to me than a four-year old left alone in a car.)  I feel like I see this all the time.  Just a few weeks ago I was at a picnic/birthday party at a park and some little kid about nine came cruising up on his bike and just started chatting with one of the kids at the party.**  It never crossed my mind that the kid had been abandoned, and I should call the police.  I did wonder if his parents were keeping an eye on him, but that was not because he was potentially in danger; it was because he was potentially crashing the party.  (We were joking about how at parties in public parks, you always see a few kids in the mix and think, "Wait a second where did they come from?  Are they with us?  What's going on here?)  That would be my main concern as a parent, not "Is my son safe?", but "Is he bothering those people?".

There is also a racial/class element to this story that I won't go into because I don't have time and because the author of the story to which I linked pretty much nails it.  I don't really have anything to add other than to say it's fucked up, and I'm probably going to contribute some money to her defense.

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

*I did this once in my driveway as a kid, and my mom was just standing outside next to the car with the door open.  It started to roll down the driveway, but my mom was able to open the door and hop in and apply the brake before we got too far.

**He was trying to get the kid to get on his bike pegs and ride with him.  The kid declined, which was good, I would have had to intervene otherwise.

Entry 241: An Irritating Wall of Granola and Other Pics

You know how when you're married to somebody, no matter how much you love them, little things they do really get under your skin and annoy you far beyond what they should?  Well, I'm going to share one these things with you in my marriage.  I only feel comfortable doing this because S and I have such a strong relationship that a silly blog post could never do it any harm.  Also, I know that she almost never reads this thing.

The annoyance is this: S cannot be trusted to get the right thing from the grocery store.  Like many couples, we split the food shopping more or less evenly.  Sometimes she goes; sometimes I go.  The one who doesn't go will give the other one a list, and it's expected that the shopper will get everything on the list as specified.  Of course there are exceptions (the store is out of an item, Lil' S started having a melt down in the store, etc.), but in general this is how it's supposed to go.  But for some reason, a non-trivial percentage of the time S does the shopping, she will come back with at least one wrong item.  For instance, the other week I asked for unsalted, roasted cashews, and she brought back unsalted, raw cashews.  It's not like this is a huge deal -- it's not even worth getting "mad" about it -- but there is a substantial difference in the taste of the two varieties.  Also, I texted my list -- the specifications were very clear and simple -- and raw and roasted cashews are right next to each other in the store.  That's kicker.  It's not like there was anything in it for her to get the wrong cashews.  She just wasn't careful.  And this, I believe, gets to the heart of the issue.  I've been in the grocery store with S before and seen her operate -- it's all about speed, not enough about accuracy.  As I've mentioned before (see the paragraph immediately preceding the picture of bananas), her food forethought isn't always on point, and in her haste she gets the wrong thing.  She likes to make fun of me for doing things (like shopping) so slowly, but I like to make sure I get what we want and don't have to come back again.

The most annoying instance of this happened recently when I asked S to get me a bag Michele's cherry chocolate granola.  I've developed something of a dependency on it; I eat a bowl every evening with yogurt.  So the other night I pour myself a bowl and start eating it when I notice the cherries taste funny ... they taste kinda like ... dear lord, no ... are these ... oh-no ... raisins!  It's not cherry chocolate granola at all!  It's cinnamon raisin!  Such a let down.  And it was made even worse the next day when I went to the store to rectify this tragedy and saw this scene.

That is a wall of Michele's granola.  There's what, a hundred bags there?  Not a single one of chocolate cherry.  And they have another display stand right by the yogurt with about 50 more bags on it, and there were none on it either.  WTF?  Well, don't cry for me too hard.  I begrudgingly tried a new kind, lemon pistachio, and although it hurts my point, I must admit, I found it quite scrumptious.

Anyway, since I already started down the annoying picture road, I figured I'd throw up a couple others.

This is at the entrance of Lil' S's daycare which is in a church.  Tell me, does this sign make it any clearer which bell you should use?  Which one is the church bell?  Is it the one with the label, or is the label telling you not to use that one, like when a door says "use other entrance"?  I honestly don't know, so when I need to ring, I just press them both.  Of course, this whole thing could be avoided if the sign said "use this bell" or "use other bell".  The fact that one of the bells is the church bell really isn't relevant to a guest anyway.

I bought some hand weights the other day and they had these stickers wrapped around them.  I figured they would peel right off, but they don't.  I scraped for 15 minutes and didn't even get it all.  Why are they so difficult to get off?  What marketing genius decided, "Hey you know what would be great on our product?  A sticker that will gradually flake off and become sticky and gross over time, but that our customers won't want to remove immediately because it's incredibly annoying."

Speaking of bad products: Here's the attachment guardrail we bought for Lil' S's crib to convert it into a bed.  It sticks up about an inch above the mattress and only extends to cover half of it -- totally worth $50.  Not! (By the way notice the half torn sticker in the top-center of the pic.  What is with putting a sticker on everything that doesn't easily come off?  Are customers demanding this?)

And just so that they're not all complaints, above is a picture on an anoa I saw at the zoo -- not the actual animal itself but the word ANOA.  It's a word I had previously only ever seen in Scrabble and crossword puzzles, so I took this picture as evidence that it is, in fact, used outside of word games.

Along those same lines, a restaurant I went to the other night was serving Belgian Ghentse waterzooi -- a creamy stew.  In Stephan Fatsis's book Word Freak: Heartbreak, Triumph, Genius, and Obsession in the World of Competitive Scrabble (highly recommended, by the way), the author talks about a miracle Scrabble play in which somebody played WATERZOOI with the W and the I already on the board.  Turns out waterzooi, like anoa, is a really thing, not just a crazy word that only exists in word games.  Although, I'm not sure if you could get a crossword puzzle with WATERZOOI in it accepted in a major publication.  Maybe I'll try it someday.  But it'll have to wait -- I have to make one with ZUGZWANG in it first.

Until next time ... 

Entry 240: I Might Have to Outfit My Son with Carabiners

It's all over now.  Lil' S can climb out of his crib.  He's not even two, and he can go right over the top.  So goes our last line of defense against bedtime tantrums.  Now we are not sure what to do.  We are thinking about just taking a side off, so that it's just a normal bed, but he still rolls around a lot at night, and S is worried he's going to roll off and hurt himself.  Also, I don't like the idea of him being able to wander around his room at night.  It's pretty well babyproofed, but short of removing every piece of furniture and padding the walls like an insane asylum, there's still going to something he can (and will) get into that he shouldn't.  He'll climb his dresser or the window sill, or he'll mess with the space heater or the blinds.  He doesn't have enough sense yet to stay away from things that could hurt him, and he's still a bit too young to understand "no" -- punishing him is starting to work a little bit, but it still has a very limited effect.  So I'm thinking we leave the crib intact for now.  It will be, at the very least, a deterrent for getting out of his crib ... hopefully.

[Conquered]

My sister and brother-in-law, K & F, came to visit for a few days, which was excellent.  They have two kids B & G, whom Lil' S loves to follow around.  We just hung around the neighborhood, which was nice.  Downtown DC gets ca-ray-zee on the 4th and unless you enjoy spending the day being stampeded by droves of drunk, sweaty, red-white-and-blue-clad patriots, you should it avoid it altogether.  I used to go to the National Mall for the fireworks back in my carefree, singles days (it's a fun stampede, at least), but I couldn't image doing it now with a 22-month old.  We actually didn't even see any fireworks.  S applied to get tickets to watch from the rooftop of her office, but she lost the lottery.  It's just as well -- all the kids (and most the adults) were asleep before the big show even started.

We had a cookout here, at our place, which was actually a "cook-in", because we don't own a grill.  That's on me.  I've been meaning to buy one since we moved in two and a half years ago.  I've just been putting it off because I don't know what to buy, and I've been too lazy to do the research on it.  It's a lame excuse, I know.  I should just go to Ace Hardware and buy something.  If it's not the world's greatest grill, who cares; I'm not the world's greatest griller.  But anyway, we don't have one now, so we had to cook everything in the oven, which is fine, it still tastes good, but it's much less satisfying -- less American.

[I snagged this off a Facebook friend's page.  The caption was "Abandon all hope, all ye who enter".]

Our big outing on the 4th was taking the wee ones to the playground.  It's one of those playgrounds that's divided into two -- one for the little kids and one for the big kids.  Lil' S is actually too young for the little kid section -- the posted age range is 2-5 -- but I've seen even littler kids there, and it's perfectly fine.  He definitely shouldn't be in the big kid section, but his cousins were there (they're 8 and 6), so of course he wanted to be there too, so I let him run around.  The problem isn't that he can't climb any of the big-kid toys.  It's that he can climb them, and then he gets stuck and I have to get him, or he doesn't get stuck but I think he's going to get stuck and it makes me nervous.

There is one toy in particular, it's like a 20-foot high turret, and to get up to the very top, you have to go up a ladder that's like a set of monkey bars turned perpendicular to the ground.  It's about five or six rungs high.  He climbed it!  I couldn't believe it.  I was pretty proud, I must admit, but I also felt very uneasy about the whole thing.  It's all enclosed up top, so it's pretty safe, but he started dangling his legs between the safety bars, which even though he couldn't fit through them, just looks bad.  We got him to go down the slide (which are enclosed like water park slides and my sister was on the other end to catch him), which I could tell was kinda scary for him, but he popped right up and ran back for another round.  I let him go one more time, and then that was it.  I was starting to get self-conscious about being judged by the other parents.  If he somehow got hurt, I could imagine them all later saying, "Well, he was too young; he shouldn't have been there in the first place!"  Plus, it really is for bigger kids.  If there is a helicopter dad hovering around to make sure his way underage son doesn't slip through the gaps, it kinda ruins the experience for the other children.  I'd probably raise an eyebrow at me if I was one of the other parents there.  It should be noted, however, that the big toy was basically empty when we were doing this.

[In honor of the 4th]

My worry now is that the next time we go back to that playground, Lil' S is going to just want to go to the big kid section the entire time, and then I'm going to be one of those d-bag parents explaining to all the other parents that my child is "bored" with the all the age appropriate toys, and that he needs to "properly challenged".

In other news of the past few days, my nephew B has an iPhone that doesn't have phone service, but can still send texts to other iPhones.  So we were goofing off and text each other silly messages while he was here.  And then a few hours after they left this afternoon, I get a message from him "What r u doing?" followed 10 seconds later by "Hello?" and then "Helllllllllo?", and that's when I thought--oh, right, giving a 8-year old my phone number might not be the greatest idea in the world.  But I don't really mind.  It's cute.  (He's asked me a few times if he's "interrupting" me, which I found really sweet.)  I just have to be careful what I say.  I wouldn't say anything inappropriate, but I like to joke with him, and jokes don't translate well via texts to adults, let alone to prepubescent kids.  I'll just have to be sure to be nice and use lots of LOLs when I make jokes.

Alright that'll do 'er this week.  Until next time ...

Entry 239: Cable Freedom and Password Woes

Something strange happened upon our return from vacation: Our DirecTV no longer worked.  It just wasn't getting a signal anymore.  I was unable to fix it (by which I mean unplugging it and plugging it back in didn't work), so I had a technician come out to diagnosis the situation.  He went to the satellite, pointed a receptor to the sky, and then we had the following conversation.

Him: It's that tree.  It's blocking the signal.
Me: Really?  That tree has been here since we started our service two years ago.
Him: Maybe it grew.
Me: Nothing noticeable ... I mean, it could have filled out, I suppose.
Him: Trees grow more leaves in the spring.
Me: [?] ... Uh ... Yeah ... I know ... But we had reception last spring, and we've had it up until now.
Him: I dunno, man.  It's the tree.
Me: Okay, can we point the satellite a different way?
Him: No.
Me: Okay, so what can we do?
Him: You can cut down down the tree.
Me: I don't want to cut down the tree.  Is there anything else?
Him: No.
Me: So ... should I cancel my service?
Him: Yes.

[This is not the tree that is blocking my satellite dish.  In fact, it's pretty meager, which is understandable being that it's Old Tjikko, the oldest tree in the world.  It sprouted up nearly 10,000 years ago!  It was the first tree God created, and He gave it all the markings to make it look like it was already 4,000 years old.]   

And that was that.  Obviously he doesn't work on commission.  I'm not 100% sure the problem really was the tree, and the rep I talked to when I canceled really pushed for a second opinion and a free "satellite dish relocation test" (obviously he does work on commission), but honestly I feel like DirecTV is a ripoff and was looking for motivation to cancel anyway.

Cable TV in general is a very consumer-unfriendly model in that you have to buy hundreds of channels you don't want for the five you do want.  And with DirecTV the only thing I wanted was to watch the Seahawks, and because the NFL relishes bleeding their fans for every last nickel, they only offer their NFL Sunday Ticket through DirecTV, and of course DirecTV only offers Sunday Ticket if you buy an entire package.  So basically I was paying $110 a month to watch 16 games -- and even that isn't quite right because some of the games are nationally televised and aren't available on Sunday Ticket.  If you do the math, I was basically paying $130 a game to watch the Seahawks.  Like I said -- rip off.  I mean, for that price I could go to all the games!*

So no more cable, and that's not a bad thing.  We will manage somehow, someway.  (In fact, the most annoying thing is that we now have a giant DirecTV satellite dish in our backyard that we aren't using.  They don't collect them.  Once you get one, it's yours for good.  Gee, thanks.  A nice little f-you by DirecTV on your way out the door.)  I'm looking into getting a decent digital antenna; S has all her shows on Hulu; and we have Netflix and iTunes for most everything else.  Plus if we really want to watch something not available through these channels we'll just get creative.  For instance, I've been streaming the World Cup games through Univision and through a friend's cable account (thanks M!).  Then I've already arranged with a friend who has DirecTV to pay for his upgrade to Sunday Ticket in exchange for his online log-in info for this upcoming football season.  This will still cost me about $20 a game to watch the Seahawks, but so be it.  That's not unreasonable for access to the Super Bowl champs (hell, yeah!).

See, I'm not one of those people who believes everything should be free just because we have the Internet now.  I think you should pay for what you use.**  So if there is a legit way to get something, I will.  The exception is when I feel like I'm being ripped off, or a provider is exploiting the market unfairly or something like that.  In those cases, I look for "creative" ways to bypass the unfair system and still get what I want.  This does occasionally put me into murky moral grounds -- like is it okay to watch an illegal stream of Game of Thrones because it's the only thing I want to see on HBO (thankfully, this one resolved itself, when that show become utterly unwatchable for me) -- but generally I don't have any compunction about it.  In fact, I think everybody should do it because then companies will have to change their models in ways that are more friendly to the consumer (like a la carte service).  This might already be happening.  My perception is that more and more people are getting rid of cable, so perhaps cable TV will be like land lines in 20 years.  Or perhaps not -- nobody really knows anything when it comes to the landscape of technological commercialism in the future.

Speaking of technology and not knowing anything, I had one of those "forgot my password" moments the other day, where I had to do the retreaded dance of trying to guess my user ID and password before being "locked out".  That never goes well.  I have about five standard user IDs and about five standard passwords, so with only three guesses, chances are I'm not hitting the combination (12% if you're wondering).

To make matters worse, I couldn't answer my security question, which isn't surprising because they rarely give you the option of a good security question.  This time it was "What is your favorite sports team?", which perfectly illustrates what I'm talking about.  The answer, I assumed, was "Seahawks" or "Mariners", but neither of them worked -- because maybe it's "Seattle Seahawks" or "Seattle Mariners" or "The Seattle Seahawks" or "The Seattle Mariners".  Who knows?  It's so frustrating.  They need to come with security questions that for the vast majority of people could only have ONE possible answer.  What were the last four digits of your phone number as a kid?  What's your mom's maiden name?  At what age did you first have sexual intercourse (note: blowjobs don't count)?  Stuff like that.  Sometimes you get questions like this, but most the time it's ambiguous crap: Who was your most influential teacher?  What was your favorite pet as a kid?  What word or phrase do you most associate with the art of Gustav Klimt?

And, as my "favorite team" example above illustrates, even when you get something that has a pretty straightforward answer, it's still a bad question if there are different ways to express the answer.  For instance, one time, when trying to log into my bank, I got a security question, "What was the name of the first school you attended?"  And I put "Narrows View" -- where I went to kindergarten -- but it was wrong.  Then I tried my preschool which was also wrong, so then I tried where I went to first grade -- again wrong.  Then I got locked out.  I had to physically go into a branch and show my ID before they would let me reset my password, and in doing so, I saw the original answer to my security question: "Narrows View Elementary".  Doh!

Now, of course, I could write this all down, but if I had the wherewithal to write it all down, I would've just written down my user ID and password in the first place, so I wouldn't need the security questions.  Security questions are supposed to be backup for precisely the situation when you don't write things down.  Also, isn't it weird that we now have so many security measures that we have to write down all our secret information somewhere?  (If you can remember all your user IDs and passwords for all your accounts, you are a better person than me ... and Eric Schmidt of Google who said during an interview that he kept all his secret info on a piece of notebook paper hidden in his house).  It's kinda strange and counter-intuitive.  And it's a situation where the old-school method of pen and paper is safer than storing everything on your computer because somebody is much more likely to steal (or hack) your computer than they are to steal a piece of paper from your house they don't know exists.  Actually, what I do is I keep them on my computer, but I use a code that only I know.  I mean, if you can crack "yahoo, usual no.1", you can go ahead and rent a movie on my iTunes account.

Well, I think that'll do 'er.  Until next time ...

*Actually I couldn't because I don't live near Seattle.  Also the not-so-secret secret about football is that it's actually more enjoyable to watch on TV than to go to the games.  But you get my point. 

**My preferred model is the This American Life podcast model, where they give you the show for free, but ask for a donation from time to time.  I always give money to shows I listen to that do this.  I also like the Savage Love model, where you can have a limited product for free, but you have to pay for the "deluxe" version (which I usually do).  And if you have a big enough audience, you can also get by just by selling ads or by charging a very reasonable amount -- like Louis CK who put his comedy special online for $5 or Radiohead who charged whatever you wanted to pay for their album In Rainbows.  

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 ...