Entry 476: An Explosion and a Party

Crazy week, this past one; a lot going on, which is why I haven't posted anything in a while.  For one thing, my Krav Maga gym exploded -- literally.  There was a massive gas leak near the gym's building -- apparently you could heard the gas hissing out of a hole in the pavement -- and something sparked it.  Nobody was hurt, thankfully.  It was early Sunday morning, so there were only a few people in the entire retail center.  Somebody smelled gas and called the fire department, and they had the area cordoned off a few hours before it blew.  Last I heard, nobody was sure what caused the spark.  It's across the street from my office building (which is unaffected), so I snapped the pic below from my car as I slowly drove by.  Scary stuff.

That building ain't getting fixed anytime soon -- I doubt it ever does -- so the status of the classes are in flux.  To the gym's management's credit, they were on it immediately.  They posted a video on Facebook saying they would still offer classes in the area one way or another.  The past few days, they've had "pop-up" classes in a soccer center.  It's a space, but they need something better.  People aren't going to shell out $50 a week to do Krav Maga on an indoor soccer field for very long -- and by people I mean me.  They also need to find somewhere close to where the old facility was.  The convenience of being able to leave work at 4:45 and be in class by 5:00 was a huge selling point.  If I have to drive too far I'm out.  We shall see.

In happier news, we had a joint birthday party for the kids on Saturday.  It was madness: about 35 kids, 70 total people.  Although, to be honest, it was less mad than I thought it was going to be.  We rented a bouncy castle, which was one of the greatest ideas we've ever had.  (Actually, S deserves sole credit for it, I think -- pretty sure it was her idea.)  For one thing, it's just cool to have one of those things in your yard -- mega parenting props, right there.  For another thing, it disperses the craziness.  Half the kids can play in it, and then with "just" the other half running around, it doesn't seem quite as frenzied.

I bought way too much food and drink.  I knew I bought too much, but I figured it would just be normal too much, but it was well beyond normal too much.  The leftovers include: three bags of tortilla chips, one bag of potato chips, one bag of popcorn, one entire veggie tray, a fourth of a giant birthday cake, two full large pizzas (and we gave three away), half a box of chardonnay, one case of beer.  Most of this stuff we can save for later -- the chips are unopened and we froze the pizza -- so it's not a completely waste, but still.  We started composting, and I already dumped the cake in the compost bin, and I think the veggies are next.  I've been doing my best, but I'm one man taking on an entire party tray.  The kids won't eat the stuff, and S doesn't really like raw vegetables like that.

I did the shopping for the food, because S always buys the wrong thing, but then I pulled an S and got the wrong thing.  She sent a text asking for wine in a can -- apparently this is the trendy new thing -- but I accidentally bought cans of rosé-flavored beer.  WTF?  Who even brews that?  Yuck.  I'm turning into a crotchety old man when it comes to beer.  I'm sick of all these fancy microbrews.  I usually just want watered-down yellow beer now, especially on a hot day, especially when I'm having more than one.  Give me a PBR or a Modelo, and I'm good.  If I'm feeling classy maybe I'll step it up to a Kronenbourg or a Stella.  I just don't enjoy the craft IPAs like I used to.  Anyway, the guy at the liquor store was really cool and let me exchange the rosé beer for actual bottles of rosé wine (they didn't have it in a can), and it's a good thing he did because nobody would have drunk the beer, but the rosé wine was one of the few items that didn't survive the party.

For his birthday, I bought Lil' S1 a Nintendo Switch.  He's been loving it, needless to say.  I've been having fun with it too.  There was a period in my life when I played a ton of Mario Kart, so I've been getting back into the groove with the latest version.  It's crazy how that muscle memory stays with you.  I haven't played it in 20 years, literally, and I'm still pretty good at it.  It's become our new family activity.  For a half-hour every night, Lil' S1 and I play and Lil' S2 watches us -- I think he has the most fun too.  I always let him pick my character and my vehicle.  He picks Donkey Kong every time.  And then he follows us on map and does running commentary, "Daddy, you got a red shell!  Oh, take that Bowser Jr.!"

I don't think S is that into it.  For one thing, she doesn't play video games much, so I think she feels a bit left out, and then she also thinks video games are bad for kids, which, I dunno, they might be, they certain are in excess, but everything is bad in excess, and I'd much, much rather have my kids play video games than watch TV.  Video games are more interactive, and you can play them with other people, so it's a social thing.  Also, they are fun.

Alright, I think it's time to wrap up this entry.  The kids started school this week and somehow I'm exhausted because of it.

Until next time...

Entry 475: Quality Time Alone

S and the kids return tonight, so my sojourn in a house of my own is coming to an end.  Originally they were going to come back on Monday, but S moved the flight to tonight.  She was getting worn out being with the kids by herself at her parents' new place in Tampa.  It's in a gated retirement community, so there aren't many (any?) other kids around, and if you want to go anywhere to do anything off the premises, you have to drive for like 20 minutes.  There is a pool there, which is great, but pools are exhausting for parents of kids under 10.  Young kids don't want to lay in the shade and relax; they want to go-go-go constantly, and you can't just zone out and let them do their thing, because you have to play the role of lifeguard.  I like going to pools, because the kids have so much fun, but they also stress me out.

S's parents try to help out, especially her mom, but she has trouble physically keeping up with them.  S's dad will hang out with them, but only on his terms.  Once they start getting a little bit rambunctious (i.e., act like normal kids their age), he gets frustrated and gets upset or retreats to another room.  So, it's mostly on us when we visit her parents, and when you're alone, it can be trying, to say the least.  S's cousin was supposed to come with his kids from Jacksonville, but he had to cancel, and when he did, S started looking into changing their flight.

I'm not sure exactly what this portends for our future visits, but it probably means there will be fewer of them and they will be shorter.  It's not like Columbia, South Carolina, where S's parents used to live, is a hub of activity, but there are other kids in the neighborhood, and we easily could take the boys to playgrounds and indoor fun centers, and we could visit friends in Charlotte.  Also, we could drive there.  It's more convenient/better suited for little kids.

I just don't see how we can afford -- time-wise, money-wise, and mental health-wise -- to spend as much time in Tampa as we did in Columbia.  It's too bad for S's parents, but overall I think they will be happier in their new place, so... it is what is.  I hate that saying, but sometimes it's very apt.

My time alone was seriously some time alone.  I mean, I went to work and the gym and stuff.  But I didn't do anything "fun."  I realized that my social life is 95% family activities -- cookouts, birthday parties, play dates, all with other parents with kids.  I play trivia on Sunday nights sometimes, but if that's off (as it was the past two weeks), then I don't really do anything social without kids.  This isn't necessarily a bad thing.  It's a simple matter of resource allocation.  I just don't have the capacity in my life right now for a robust non-kid social life.  If I didn't have a family, then I would build one, but I do have a family, so I don't.  It also doesn't help that my O.G. DC friends, the ones I could always count on for sports watching and beer drinking, have all moved away.  Most recently, my friend R moved to Columbus, Ohio to be with her boyfriend, and I doubt she's ever coming back, since they're getting married in November -- so selfish of her, huh?

Actually, I was in the process of getting a poker game going for tonight, when S changed her ticket, prompting me to cancel it, so that I could pick them up at the airport.  She said that they could take an Uber back, but she'd have to get one with car seats, which is a pain, and it would be expensive (from Dulles), and, I dunno, it just feels weird to make my family, whom I haven't seen in two weeks, take an Uber back from the airport, while I play poker.  I would feel guilty about it, even if it's because S changed her ticket.  Also, some people were being wishy-washy or non-responsive about the game, which was annoying me, and by going to the airport tonight, I will accumulate goodwill, so that I can play trivia with emotional impunity tomorrow night.  So, it's not entirely a selfless act by me -- but it is mostly one.

Come to think of it, I did do one social thing this week.  I went to dinner with a bunch of Krav Maga folks on Thursday.  The wrestling instructor is leaving for college this weekend (he's only 18 years old!), and so some of the longtime students planned a going away dinner for him.  I happened to be around when everybody was leaving, because I took his last class, so I just tagged along.  We went to a barbecue joint, and I got a half-rack of pork ribs and a loaded baked potato.  It definitely beat the scrambled eggs I would have eaten.  (Actually, I make some bomb scrambled eggs.  I put peppers, onions, and sausage in them and top it with cheese.  Add a let little hot sauce, and that's good eatin'.)

It's one of those things that's kinda awkward, where I've seen everybody hundreds of times before, because we've all been taking classes together for the past three years or whatever, but a lot of the people I haven't really ever talked to, and I don't know their names, or if I do, it's only because I've heard other people say it.  Also, there's a sizable age gap.  I think I was the oldest person there by at least ten years, and some of the people, like the instructor, are barely out of high school.  (I think one girl there is still in high school.)  I heard somebody on a podcast say, "We all think of ourselves as being 15 years younger than we actually are," and that is so true.  In my mind, high school wasn't all that long ago.  I feel like I just finished it five or six years ago.  In actuality, it was literally a generation ago.  I'm the same age as the parents of many high school kids -- and not super young parents.  If I had a kid at 27, well within the range of normal, they would be in high school by now.  This is absolutely mind-boggling to me.  My best friend has a kid in high school, and it's still absolutely mind-boggling to me.  I can never not be amazed, and more than slightly freaked out, by how fast time has moved for me since I turned 14.  Before then time went so slowly.  I remember visiting my older teenage cousins when I was 10 -- they looked like behemoths to me, full-grown men, with muscles and facial hair -- and thinking to myself how far out of reach that seemed.  The four years between ten and 14 took longer than the 28 years from 14 to 42.  It's the paradox of aging.

But who cares, right?  People are people, and it's fun to interact with people of all ages.  I'm never going to be one of those snobs who gets off on denigrating other generations.  I absolutely despise it when people do this.  I hate it when people my age bash millennials, and I hate it just as much when young 'uns make fun of old people for no other reason than being old.  As Sarah Silverman once said, "I'm sorry I haven't died yet."  And not to get all Marianne Williamson on you, but it's an amazing cosmic quirk that we all exist together, right now, on this minuscule speck of rock, orbiting one of hundreds of billions of stars in the known universe.  Why can't we recognize that and live with love, in unity?

And with that I think I will exit now.  I'm going to watch an episode of Stranger Things from season two.  I'm not all that into it,* to be honest, but S wants me to watch season three with her, so I need to catch up.

Until next time...

*My problem with this show, and it's why I'm not a huge fantasy guy in general, is that there's way too much unexplained shit going on.  It's fine to have suspense and mystery, but they need to start bringing it together.  What is the Upside-Down, and how can one get into it?  There's that portal in the lab, but then that kid Will gets sucked into when he doesn't want to -- how does that happen?  And now there's something living in him Zuul-style?  Is that the same type of creature as that gremlin that ate that kid's cat?  And where does Eleven go when she transports to visit people?  Is that the Upside-Down?  If so, why doesn't she go fight that monster and help Will?  Actually, why is Eleven even in this season?  She hasn't done anything but eaten waffles and broken windows in a cabin.  Her story line couldn't be more boring.  They probably should have killed her off last season.  I know she's popular, but great shows recognize when a character, even a beloved character, has run their course, and she's apparently run her course.  Anyway, the last episode left me hopeful that some things will starting getting resolved, so I'll keep watching.  I just hope there is some sort of payoff soon.

Entry 474: Conflicting Feelings

It's a weird time for me right now.  I feel like my personal trajectory and that of society are intersecting, but one is on the way up and one is on the way down.  Things in my life are going pretty well -- I have a great family and friends, a good job, a nice house, and enough time and money to indulge most of my hobbies.  I get to play trivia, make and solve crossword puzzles, listen to great podcasts, and workout regularly.  I get to lie next to my beautiful wife each night and watch my beautiful children grow up.  I get to sit on the porch of the house I own and eat good food and sip cold beer with people whose company I enjoy.

And yet I live my life feeling an underlying anxiety for the state of society.  It's not like I'm constantly sad or angry or anything like that (on the contrary, I'm happy and laid back by nature); it's more like there's always something in the back of my mind nagging me -- a thin but extant pall cloaking my mood at all times.  And it has to do with two things: the resilience of white supremacy and our failure to act on climate change.  Every time I start to feel too good, one of these things rears its ugly head.  Last weekend it was the former, obviously, with two mass shootings, at least one of which was carried out by a wacko white supremacist.  But even before that news broke I was already in a funk because a friend told me climate scientists project that by 2050, which is not all that far away -- my oldest child will be five years younger than I am now in 2050 -- DC will have 40 days a year in which temperatures reach over 100.  That's insane.  Currently we have around seven and that's way up from "normal."  We're cooking the planet, and half the country is either in denial about it or doesn't care.  The steady warming of our climate is not as viscerally jarring as our seemingly biweekly mass shootings, but it's a much grander and less tractable problem to solve -- especially when a lot of powerful people don't want to solve it.

I do this thing a lot where I'm thinking an unhappy thought and then I move on to a normal thought, and then I forget momentarily what the unhappy thought is, but I do remember it was unhappy.  Then when I actually remember it, it's either a relief because it's something trivial -- the Seahawks lost -- or it's a stressor because it's something serious -- my friend told me they have cancer.  These days, I have that going on constantly, but the final remembrance is never a relief.

But, nobody gets to live a stress-free life.  There is no perfect spacetime in history to be alive, and there probably never will be.  We struggle along, subject to the cruelties of our day, and eventually the sun will burn out.  I haven't died of bubonic plague; I haven't been displaced from my homeland; and my teeth haven't rotted out of my mouth.

Here are some more things I have going for me at the moment.

• I got to visit my family and friends in the PNW a few weeks ago, mainly the former.  Before everybody had kids, I would split my time between UP (family) and Seattle (friends) roughly 50-50.  Now it's like 90-10.  I spend most my time with my boys and their closest (age-wise) cousin Lil' Q.  I'm lucky if I get a night and a day to spend with my pals.  I'm not complaining, just saying.  Overall, it was a great trip.
• I'm still the wrestling champion at my gym (self-proclaimed).  I have yet to be bested in any live drill in the class.  A week ago I got a pretty good challenge from a kid in his late teens or early twenties who said he had been wrestling since he was in grade school, but ultimately I got the better of him too.  I kinda sandbagged him.  I went really easy during warm-ups -- I always do, because I'm old and can't go full-out the entire class anymore -- and then I turned it on when we went live.  He was pretty pissed after class -- at least in my head he was.  In actuality, he might not have cared much at all.
• My oldest son is getting really smart, especially when it comes to animals.  The other day a friend was over, and he pointed out a Pileated Woodpecker in my yard.  I said I didn't know what that was, and he said it was a woodpecker with an identifiable red head.  I told him he should tell Lil' S1 about it, so when he saw him he said, "Hey Lil' S1, I saw woodpecker in your yard.  One with a bright red head."  And Lil' S1 replied, "Oh, that means it's a Pileated Woodpecker."
• On Wednesday, S took the kids to her parents' new place in Florida for almost two weeks.  I miss them already, but it's so nice to not be awoken at 6:00 am every morning.  Before I had kids, I didn't consider just waking up and going to work on my own schedule a privilege, but it so is.
• Atlanta, the only TV show I'm watching regularly right now, has gotten really dark and surreal, and I'm loving every minute of it.  It's kinda like hip-hop David Lynch.  I have a man-crush on the actor Lakeith Stanfield and a crush-crush on the actress Zazie Beetz.  The only problem with it getting so bizarre is that S is losing interest.  It's not real her bag.  In general our weirdness-versus-enjoyability graphs are correlated in opposite directions, and so it's hard to find shows we both like.
• I had a dream last night in which I went on a major bender, and then I woke up with cottonmouth and thought to myself, Shit!  I'm gonna be hungover all day.  But then I remembered that I didn't have a drop of alcohol last night -- I was just thirsty -- and thought, Yes!  I actually won't be sick today.  At least, I have that.  I'm not sick today

Until next time...

Entry 473: Separate Vacations

Busy weekend, this, so I'll bang out as much as I can in the short time I have to blog.  We're preparing to go away for a few weeks -- the boys and I are going to visit my family in Washington (the state), and S is going somewhere, Indonesia, I think, for work.  The way things worked out this summer, with our move and the boys switching school from a year-round school to a non-year-round school, separate vacations were the most practical course of action when it comes to childcare.  This way I can cover two weeks, and S can cover two weeks (she's taking them to her parents' without me, when we get back), and then we get a month of coverage.  It's just for this summer -- once we have an established schedule, and we replenish our household coffers, we will vacation together again.

It's funny, I was listening to the latest episode of The Weeds podcast, and they were talking about finding childcare for the summer when school is out, and it was like they had secret cameras set up in S's and my house -- Tennis camp starts on the 10th and runs through the 24th; then culture camp starts on the 30th; they have Silver Stars on the 28th; so we will just need somebody to cover that Monday and Wednesday.  I can call Brianna for Monday and work a half-day on Wednesday...  You need a scheduling algorithm just to figure it all out.  The thing about The Weeds is that most the hosts live in DC, so their real-world examples are actually real-world to me.

S tends to get stressed out a bit before we travel, and apparently this is true even if we take separate trips.  I'm the opposite.  She's totally laid-back about the actual traveling, because she does it so often, but she's really controlling with the packing and preparation.  I dread the actual flight (actually it's more the to-and-from the airport I find particularly stressful, not the actual flight itself), and I don't even give much thought to the packing.  She has already made several "requests" about things I put in their carry-ons -- snacks and books and the like -- and she wants to pack the suitcase for them herself.  I don't really want her to -- I want to pack things how I like them -- but it gives her peace of mind, so sometimes it's best to just say "thanks" and then rearrange things to my liking when she's not looking.  Of course, I wish S was coming with us, but there are advantages to solo-dadding.  If you are married with kids, think about how many of your little spousal fights have to do with disagreements in parenting tactics.  It's nice to not have to worry about that once in a while.

Things were extra busy this weekend because we had some friends over to our new house.  It was really nice.  I finally feel like we have the perfect hang-out house.  We have a big open upstairs that leads out to the deck and a sizable backyard.  It's not like our old house, which was sectioned off into small rooms, and the deck was downstairs and across the lawn from the actual house.  Also, we have a big basement filled with toys, so we can send the kids downstairs and have actual adult conversations about important things like playlists at early '90s junior high dances (staples: Boyz II Men, Timmy T, Vanessa Williams).

We also have a decent-sized open kitchen, which is an underrated aspect of entertaining.  People always congregate in the kitchen, at least for part of the night, because it's where the refrigerator is (and so it's usually where the alcohol is) and also because the hosts are often finishing up some food preparation, so people come in to talk to them.  If your kitchen isn't open, things almost always split into a kitchen group and a non-kitchen group.

I think a good time was had by all last night.  I had fun.  S messed up a couple of the dishes, but she noticed it with enough time to fix things, so it was much more funny than it was tragic.  She put too much salt in the potato salad, because the recipe called for "2 tablespoons of salt (used while boiling potatoes)," and she didn't notice the last part, so she put in two tablespoons of salt after the potato salad had already been made.  That is a fucking lot of salt.  It straight-up ruined the entire batch.  I tried it, and it wasn't eh, a little salty for my taste; it was oh my god, it tastes like I chugged water straight from the Dead Sea!  We had to chuck it.  (The second batch was delicious, though.)

Before that she made a peanut butter, pretzel, and chocolate pie for dessert. But some of the kids are allergic to nuts, so she used sunflower seed butter (SunButter) instead of peanut butter.  I sampled it, and it tasted funky, like, really funky.  I chalked it up to the SunButter, but the taste lingered and a familiar flavor started to distinguish itself:

"For some reason, I'm tasting garlic," I said to S.  "It's really weird."
"Oh," S replied, "that's because I accidentally used garlic-flavored pretzels."

Needless to say, that went in the trash too.  We bought ice cream sandwiches instead.

50% of me felt bad for my wife, because she was legit disappointed, at least a little bit; 45% of me just thought it was funny; and 5% of me was annoyed because this is a common problem for S.  She doesn't read things like labels or directions carefully, so she makes more mistakes than she should.  It's a speed thing.  I see how she does things, and she just charges though, without double-checking or verifying anything.  It's the exact opposite of how I do things.  I'm as slow as a Bob Rafelson movie (there's a deep cut), but I almost never make mistakes like this.

The flip-side, however, is that maybe with all the time she saves on a regularly basis, she still comes out ahead in the end, despite the occasional big mistake.  Maybe it's more efficient to race through everything, and then pay a sizable lump-sum price every once in a while.  It's kinda like solving crossword puzzles in a tournament setting.  If you race through as fast you can, you're more likely to make mistakes. But if you solve carefully, then you're more likely to be beaten by faster solvers.  You can't be cautious and solve at your top speed.  You always have to comprise one or the other (or a little bit of both).  And different great solvers do it differently.  There's no right or wrong way.

In conclusion, S gets to make fun of me a little bit each day when I take 15 minutes to load three dishes in the dishwasher (I like it done right), and I get to make fun of her a lot every once in a while, when she puts garlic in the dessert.

Until next time...

Entry 472: Surviving the 4th

My parents and sister and her family are all in Europe at the moment, and I am very jealous of the pictures they are sending.  In part, it's because it just looks like fun; in part, it's because they could easily escape the 4th of July festivities.  It's not a particularly enjoyable holiday these days -- especially not when our Grinch president is doing his best to spoil it for the residents of my current city.  The only good thing is that it rained almost the entire night of the 4th.  Rain always ruins outdoor events like these.  Attendees can say they still had fun, but it's not the same, and they know it.  That's why idioms like "don't rain on my parade" and "cast a dark cloud over" exist.  It makes it not so fun.  But if you don't want the event to be fun, because you are politically and morally opposed to it, then it's good.

I also like it when the festivities get tampered down a bit, because it's not so loud late into the night, so it's easier to put the kids to bed and to go to sleep myself.  I actually like big firework shows, and I could kinda see one through my window (not on the National Mall; it was in Silver Spring, MD, I think), but the kids aren't old enough to stay up that late yet, especially not when they still have to wake up and go to daycare the next day.  So, the past few years, my 4th of July evenings have consisted of me sitting inside while my wife and kids sleep, doing crossword puzzles and listening to podcasts -- pretty much like every other night except with background explosions.  That reminds me of another good thing about rain: Fire safety.

On that point, it's funny to think back on my 4ths as a kid, and how lax things were back then.  We used to go to our family friends' house, and the whole neighborhood would be lighting off fireworks.  I distinctly remember adults doing things like lighting Jumping Jacks from cigarette cherries and throwing them before they popped.  The only safety precaution I remember was a garden hose that could barely reach the street.

I look back on those days fondly, because nostalgia is a powerful emotion, but I'm not one of those things-were-so-much-better-in-my-day, kids-are-soft-and-coddled-now type of person.  It was just different, and it was a lot less safe.  A spark from a firework once burned a hole in my jeans, and another time one singed my eye socket, not enough to do any lasting damage, but enough to put me in agony for a few days, and if it would have hit a half inch over, I might have lost an eye.  I really don't think my kids are missing out on anything major by not being inundate with fireworks on the 4th.

And I think they had a pretty good day.  The weather was actually decent through the early afternoon, so we had some friends over for some grilling of tube meats and some kiddie pool fun.  Then, once the rain started to fall, we went inside and had a huge wrestling battle, and at night we watched Jeopardy!, which has become a new family activity.  Lil' S1 will actually get some of the answers (questions) right.  It's pretty cute.  He got one the other day that I didn't know.  It was Teen Titans, which apparently is a cartoon he's watched, but I haven't.

In other news, I did a number on my left shin something awful.  It started a few months ago when I slipped doing a box jump and scraped it on the edge of the box.  It seemed like a little nick, but it turned out to go pretty deep, and it took a long time to heel.  Then, as it was finally starting to get better, somebody kicked me right on the button, and even though I had on a pad, it cut through and stung me to the bone.  After that, I slipped doing a box jump again and added a couple of new cuts and bruises.  It hurts pretty bad, truth be told.

[It's the bruises that really smart.]

Obviously, I have to be more cautious with the box jumps.  This last one was just me overdoing it.  The exercise was to do a bunch of dead-lifts followed by a bunch of box jumps.  Toward the end of the set, I could feel my legs starting to go, and I should have either gone more slowly or scaled the exercises by using less weight and/or a smaller box.  But I didn't, and this is the result.  That's the downside of "pushing it" that seldom gets mention.  Everything is always "rah-rah," "you can do it," "don't give up."  But this is where it's totally counterproductive.  I'm going to be very limited for a few weeks, and I won't be able to work out nearly as hard as I would if I was completely healthy.  So, because I wanted ten minutes of "pushing it," I've subtracted hours of good, healthy workout time.  That's a terribly inefficient trade-off.

The flip-side, of course, is that you don't know where the line is, and if you don't go hard, you deprive yourself of a lot of the satisfaction (and probably some of the health benefits) that come with vigorous exercise.  When you are actually in it, it's hard to know when and by how much to scale.  That's why when I spar, I don't like training with people who are much smaller than me.  It's hard for me to gauge what the appropriate level is for me to go to make it "fair."

I especially don't like sparring with smaller women.  I feel worse punching them than I do punching similarly sized dudes.  Maybe this is sexist, but so it goes.  (And if the main way I'm sexist is that I prefer not to beat on small women, well, that doesn't sound like the worst thing in the world.)  The other day I had to spar this woman who is really petite, like, close to 100 pounds.  She's an excellent fighter; she's actually an instructor.  Her hands are so fast, and she's technically precise.  She would come in and deliver a flurry that felt like a swarm of bees attacking my head.  So, I had to fight back, but I'm not fast, and I'm not technically sound, so I had to use my advantages, which is really a singular advantage: brute force.  But that's often the trump card.  I kicked the inside of her calf once when she came in, not my hardest, but pretty hard, and after that she didn't come in anymore.  Afterward, she told me that was a good move on my part, but, I dunno, it kinda felt like cheating.

Another time, I hit a woman with a straight left jab and dazed her a bit.  She actually said to me, "Uh... can you not hit so hard?"  It kinda made me feel like shit, honestly.  (Part of me still does, but another part of me is like -- Why are you taking this class then?  There are dozens of other non-contact classes.  This one is literally called "Fight."  What do you expect?)  And I definitely would not have felt that way if it was a guy who said this to me.  I would have been proud, because in this case I thought I was hitting softly.  It would have made me think -- Damn, maybe I don't even know my own strength!

As you can probably tell, I've become overly obsessed with my "training."  I've even been having fantasies of actually fighting somebody in a real MMA-style match.  I mean, I hold my own in sparring, and I've literally never been bested in a single wrestling drill.  An actual match is super unlikely, though.  I'm probably not good enough, and I'm solidly on the downside of my physical peak.  So, I can learn more, sure, but I'm getting older and slower as I do.  I often wish I had started this when I was 19, not 39, but it's possible that would not have been a good thing.  Against hobbyists who aren't really trying to hurt each other, I'm fine; against actual fighters, who actually want to fight, I would surely get bludgeoned.  And getting bludgeoned is not that good for your brain.  So, it's probably good I didn't discover my passion for fighting as a young man.  It's better to be able to think straight long into old age than it is to have once been a mediocre amateur fighter.  But still, a guy can dream.

Until next time...

Entry 471: The "I Guess I Should Talk About Politics" Post

Some political news to discuss this week.  There were two impactful Supreme Court cases decided recently.  Liberals went 1-1 in these decisions, with some caveats to their "win."  In the loss, the court decided a ruling on state-level political gerrymandering was outside their purview, effectively allowing it to continue.  In theory, this doesn't privilege any political party over the other.  In practice, it is a huge boon to Republicans who are advantaged by gerrymandering much more so than Democrats.  In fact, I think that's precisely why the court came down this way.  If the situation was flipped, I guarantee you at least one conservative justice would have changed his vote.  That's not cynicism; that's reality.  It's not an insurmountable obstacle -- and it could have a boomerang effect on Republicans in that it will prompt Democrats to actually show up in state and local elections (they matter) -- but without question it's a blow to our representative democracy.

In the win, the court ruled, for the time being, that the Trump administration cannot include a citizenship question on the 2020 census.  The reason this matters is because such a question will undercount undocumented folks, who will (understandably) not want to share their immigration status with an administration who thinks concentration camps are good policy.  The census is used to determine the distribution of political weight in our country, and by constitutional directive it is supposed to count all residents of the United States, regardless of immigration status.  Leaving out undocumented people would unlawfully disadvantage those areas where they mostly live.  These areas are, of course, also where Democrats mostly live.

It's a straight-up power grab by a Republican party who is doing its best to stay in power despite moving further away from the average voter -- democracy be damned.  Fortunately, they were too transparent in this gambit.  John Roberts, the Bush-appointed chief justice, who is now the closest thing the court has to a swing vote, somewhat surprisingly sided with the liberal justices, saying the administration failed to provide adequate justification for why a citizenship question was warranted.  That's heartening, but it still leaves the door open for a future challenge.  I think Roberts really, really wanted to side with the Trump administration, but the premise of their case (that it was to support voting rights or something like that) was so obviously bullshit that he just couldn't do it.  It's like if you're a bouncer at a bar, and a kid shows up with a piece of notebook paper with a stick figure drawing on it, and says it's his ID.  C'mon, kid, at least show me your older brother's ID or something.  I think that's what Roberts was saying, and it's slightly nerve-racking, because the Trump administration could come back with a slightly more plausible fake ID -- and then what?  Probably they don't have time.  Maybe Trump will just distract his base with something more exciting and let this one slip away (as he does sometimes).  Maybe this won't even get back to the Supreme Court again.  But still, it might not be over.

In other political news, I watched some of the Democratic debates.  I liked them more than I thought I would.  I don't like the candidates so much, but the debates were fine.  My dream candidate is clearly not in this field, but I (obviously) will enthusiastically support any of them in a general election against Trump.  Here's my ranking of all 20 debate-qualifying candidates thus far.

1.  Kamala Harris: She was lower on my list last night when she said she wanted to abolish private health insurance, but today she said she misunderstood the question.  I don't think advocating for the elimination of private health insurance is a practical or smart political move for Democrats.  Universal coverage is a good message; protecting existing coverage is a good message; abolishing private health insurance (which a lot of people like) is not.  Even if it's what you want (and it might be for Harris, she's very wishy-washy on this issue), I think you need to be more realistic in how you go about it.  Slow, incremental change is sometimes the least-worst course of action.

In general, Harris has been less than consistent on several major topics (health care, reparations, voting rights of incarcerated felons), and she needs to get that sorted if she's going to stay at the top of my list.  I think she's spending too much effort trying to game out her answers in a way that is maximally politically beneficial, and that's the exact wrong thing to do, in my opinion.  It's totally counterproductive because it makes you look phony.  She should do and say what she thinks is right and work to make that the politically popular position.  People usually respect that even if they disagree with you.

Another big knock against Harris is her aggressiveness, illiberal behavior as a prosecutor.  But my feeling on this is if black people -- those most affected by overzealous prosecution -- are willing to support her despite her track record in this area, then so am I.  Also, her time as a prosecutor honed her razor-sharp mind and tongue (assets), and if we want to be really cynical, it's possible her problematic past will actually play well with people who are very liberal on most things (gay-rights, abortion, etc.), but more conservative on crime than they are willing to admit.  My hunch is that is not an insignificant number of voters.

Lastly, women and people of color, especially women of color, are the base of the Democratic party.  So, it makes sense to nominate one.  Again, I'm not in love with Harris by any stretch, but she's my number one, right now, if only by default.

2.  Joe Biden: Now, for the complete opposite.  Yes, I know, he's a gaffe-prone old white guy, drawn to the siren-song of "the good old days" and bipartisanship.  He over-the-hill, has little of substance to say, and his only asset is being associated with Obama.  But I'm buying into the "he can beat Trump in the Midwest" narrative.  Maybe this is foolish, I don't know.  But I do know he has as good a chance as anyone to be the nominee, and if he is, all the sane people in this country have to come together and support him.  Period.

3.  Elizabeth Warren: I like almost all her policies, with a big exception being the aforementioned abolition of private health insurance.

4.  Pete Buttigieg: I love how he challenges the right on their religious hypocrisy.  I'd rather see him run for a Senate seat than the White House though.  I mean, he's younger than me.  Why the rush?

5.  Julian Castro: I thought he came off the best on immigration in the first debate.  This is an issue Dems should go toe-to-toe with Trump on.  "Treat human beings like human beings" and "don't criminalize desperation" are winning (and moral) ideas, in my opinion.

6.  Andrew Yang: If the only thing the next president does is pass a universal basic income bill (and not be Donald Trump) it won't be a terrible presidency.

7.  Jay Inslee: Somebody needs to make climate change their main priority.

8.  Corey Booker: I don't really like or dislike anything about him.  He's the epitome of generic Democratic candidate.

9.  Amy Klobuchar: Moderate Midwestern purple-staters are a big reason the Democrats retook the house last year, and I'm super grateful for that, but they still don't inspire me much.  Sorry.

10.  Bernie Sanders: A Bernie Bro, I am not.  I do like how unapologetic he is on his ideas, however.  As I said before, I wish Kamala Harris had more of this in her.  In retrospect, I really think Bernie would have beaten Trump in 2016.  I don't think he would in 2020.  He narrowly missed his lightning-in-a-bottle moment.

11.  Kirsten Gillibrand:  She's the female Corey Booker, only doing a little bit worse in the polls.

12.  Marianne Williamson: Beating Trump with love is a great message at your secular, new age-y church or whatever.  It's probably not the best message for a sure-to-be-nasty presidential race.  Although... who knows?  And she does seem to have a laudable humanitarian track record.

13. Beto O'Rourke: I liked him when he was running against Ted Cruz for a Senate seat, but as a presidential candidate, I feel about him the same way Josh in Big feels about the toy building.

14. -- 18. Tim Ryan, Tulsi Gabbard, John Delaney, Michael Bennett, Eric Swalwell: In no particular order, because I still don't know enough about these people to rank them.

19.  John Hickenlooper: A brewer by trade and yet he opposed the legalization of marijuana as governor of Colorado.  Then he tried to reference it as an accomplishment on the debate stage.  Bruh.

20.  Bill de Blasio: Everybody's favorite punching bag, so I'll join the fray.  Why is he there?

Sorry not sorry to Steve Bullock, Seth Moulton, and Wayne Messam.  You can make my list when you make the debates.

Until next time...

Entry 470: Just Turn Off the Power and You'll Be Fine... Right?

Slow days at work this week.  We have an important "live run" with a prospective client early next week -- it could be a lot of business -- which means I have to be ready at any moment to help fix something if it breaks.  But thus far we've been all good (for my team, at least), so I spent the past week tying up loose ends and stretching 10-minute tasks into half-hour ones.  This is when it's good to work from home a few days a week, as I can at least be productive at home -- and by productive at home I mean, I can do the New York Times crossword puzzle, the New Yorker crossword puzzle, the NYT spelling bee (my new favorite game), and answer my daily trivia questions. (I'm super annoyed, by the way.  There was a question about a 1970s rock album, and I knew it was by Pink Floyd, but I put The Wall and it was The Dark Side of the Moon.  My opponent forfeited, however, so it didn't really matter.)

I also got something legitimately productive done on Friday.  I switched the ceiling fan in our bedroom with the one in the living room.  They're the same model, but the one in our room makes this ticking noise that gradually revs up into an unbearable clacking cacophony -- tick, tick, tick, TICK, TICK, CLANK!, CLANK!, CLANK!  Usually I find the whirring of a fan soothing while I fall asleep, but not this one.  It's perfect fan weather here in DC too.  It's hot enough that you need something, but not so hot that you feel justified in running your AC all night.  So, what happens each night is S goes to bed before me and turns on the noisy fan (because she's one of those blessed people who can sleep through almost any noise), and then I come in and turn it off when I go to bed (because I'm not one of those blessed people), and then she doesn't like being hot, so she goes to sleep with Lil' S2 (Lil' S1 also doesn't like turning on the ceiling fan, because he's afraid it will fall on him while he sleeps), and then I wake up in the middle of the night alone sweating through my tee.  I don't even get much of an advantage in having the bed to myself, because we got a king-size bed when we moved, so there's more than enough room for two people.  (That thing is a game-changer, by the way.  I love it.)

Something had to be done.  After unsuccessfully trying to figure out how to stop the clacking of the fan, I made the bold decision to try to switch it with the one in our living room, which notably did not clack.  My first impulse was to call an electrician, but then I thought: Just look at it yourself.  You really want to wait for an electrician to come out here and pay him a couple hundred dollars for this?  At least try.  I mean, as long as you turn off the power, you'll be fine, right?

So, I tried, and I think I actually did it.  Both fans were taken down and reattached to the ceiling, and at least they don't look or sound like they are going to crash and/or burn.  I have two basic strategies for going about things like this: 1) Take pictures in every phase of the process; never assume you will remember how it fit together; 2) YouTube it, even simple things.  I watched a video of how to twist wires together with pliers and use a "wire nut."  This is probably electrician 101*, but I never would have known what to do if not for YouTube.  I mean, my dad has probably offered to show me this a dozen times, like when he installed a light fixture in our last house, but I never actually took him up on it.  (C'mon, Pops, when am I gonna need to know THAT?)

*What do you call the field of work electricians are in?  Electricing?

This morning I noticed another issue: Our freezer is dripping water.  The problem is that it's not cold enough for some reason, and so the ice in the automatic ice maker is melting and finding its way onto our floor -- so annoying.  I'm hoping that the door was left slightly ajar last night and that's the cause of it, but initial testing doesn't support this hypothesis.  I'm running one more experiment: I put a cup of water in the freezer, and I'm waiting to see if it will freeze or not.  If it doesn't (which is what I expect) then I'm going to have to clean out all the filters and unplug it and defrost everything completely and then try again tomorrow.  Then if that doesn't work, I'll have to call a repairperson.  Actually, S will probably do that.  That's our de facto arrangement: I try to fix it; she makes the appointment if it doesn't work.

A little added annoyance is that the refrigerator doesn't display the current temperature, only the one to which it is set.  (Our old fridge displayed both.)  I don't have an ambient thermometer, so I'm just kinda guessing at the temperature.  I can't even tell if it's the freezer and the fridge or just the freezer.  We do have a second freezer and fridge in our basement, so I can't complain too much.  At least we have a backup, so all our foodstuff won't go bad.

Alright, I better get to it.  Until next time...