Entry 485: Impeachment and Whatnot

The impeachment trials have started as you've undoubtedly heard.  They're are a good thing, I think.  The only reason they wouldn't be is if they turn public favor toward our scurrilous president, but I don't think they will do that.  They might not do much good in that regard, but I think they're unlikely to do much bad either.  Plus, public opinion aside, somebody has to hold this guy accountable for his misdeeds, and it's certainly not going to be the Republican-held Senate.  They're ride-or-die with Trump, as has been confirmed and reconfirmed many times.  Reps give public rationales about why they still support Trump, but there really is only one rationale: He's their guy and they will defend him no matter what he does -- literally.  That's it; that's the bottom line.  Everything else is just spin.

I'm keeping up on the proceedings, but I'm not absorbed in them.  It's the ongoing struggle of staying informed and staying sane.  The NPR Politics Podcast has gone to a daily format, which is nice because each episode is only about 15 minutes long.  At 1.5 speed (you get used to it), skipping the ads, you can usually knock those suckers out in under 10 minutes.  Supplement that with The Weeds (twice weekly) and The Political Gabfest (weekly), and you've got yourself a pretty solid information base.

I also have a subscription to the Washington Post, but I don't read it all that often.  I mainly have it to support my city's paper -- real journalism is important, y'know.  The subscription was a Christmas gift my dad got me -- or, technically, that I got myself.  We do a not-so-secret-Santa gift exchange each year in my extended family, and last year I drew my mom and my dad drew me.  I asked for the subscription to the Post, and my mom wanted a subscription to Acorn TV, but it got too confusing setting up and paying for an account for the other person, so we just agreed to pay for our own thing and call it good.  Actually, that's not a bad way to do gifts now that I think about it: You make a pact with a friend that you are each going to buy something nice for yourself.  That way you get exactly what you want, and you still have that sense of connection with another person.

In other news, speaking of subscription services, it sounds like Disney+ is the new BMOC.  I doubt we will get it, but maybe...  I would like to check out The Mandalorian, and The Simpsons catalog is quite enticing, but my kids have never been specifically into Disney movies, and we already have Netflix, Hulu, Amazon Plus, and HBO Now.  At some point you have to cry uncle on the streaming services or you will end up paying way more for TV than you did before you cut the cord.

Actually, you can get a package of Disney+, Hulu, and ESPN+ for $12.99, which isn't terrible.  I would do that if ESPN+ actually was ESPN+ -- meaning it has everything ESPN has plus additional content -- but it's not.  For example, you can't get Monday Night Football on ESPN+, and that's the only thing I watch regularly on ESPN.  It's always the NFL, man.  They're going to be the last thing traditional cable has.  Their Sunday Ticket is probably single-handedly keeping DIRECTV in business, and their live games on NFL Network and ESPN are huge money deals.  (ESPN paid in the billions for Monday Night Football.)  So, I doubt the NFL is going to make their non-network games available on a $12.99/month streaming services anytime soon.

The model I would like is a pay-per-game model.  Like, if I could stream a non-network NFL game the same way you can rent a movie -- a $5 one-off -- I would probably spend at least $15 a month doing that.  But I'm just not going to pay $60 a month for a year-round DIRECTV subscription and then pay an additional $100 a month during the football season for Sunday Ticket.  Although, I did do that for two years, and the Seahawks made the Super Bowl both years, so, hmm...

Right now I have a pretty good system going -- I have solid network reception with my HD antenna, and then I have my parents' cable login credentials for everything else.  I still can't watch some Seahawks games, but that's fine -- it motivates me to spend more time with the kids.  I also have my friend JY's cable credentials, but he has Xfinity, and they went to a "two step" authorization, so every time I want to log in, I have to hope he's looking at his phone to send me the temporary pass code.

"Hey, man, can you send me that five digit code you just got?"
"37861"
"It expired -- you didn't reply fast enough.  Hold on, I'll get you a new one."
"Dude, I'm on vacation in Maui."

(Actual conversation.)

Well, I started out with a political post and somehow veered off into streaming services.  I should probably wrap it up here, as my Lil' S2's Netflix (speak of the devil) show is about to end.  He's really into Power Rangers these days.  He loves fighting and wrestling and playing "football" (i.e., wrestling with a football involved).  It's actually gotten to be a bit much.  He will just walk up to S or I and start kicking and punching us.  The other day he socked me in the ear -- like right on the tip of the ear -- and it legit hurt.  I'm watching him for the day, while S is at an all-day robotics event with Lil' S1.  It started at 8:30am and doesn't end until 4:00pm!  She's been texting how boring it is.  I would feel guilty for getting out of it, but we actually did stop by for a few hours.  Plus, she's leaving for a work trip early tomorrow morning and not returning until Friday.  So, I will be doing more than my fair share of childcare very soon.



Until next time...

Entry 484: Owner of Broken Phone

My phone broke.  It's pretty annoying.  It doesn't get service.  Sometimes I can get it by turning the phone off and on again and taking out the sim chip and putting it back in and praying to Amen-Ra, but then it just goes out again an hour later.  I looked for solutions online, but nothing worked, and I'm loath to spend a year of my life in a help session with a robot or a contractor in Bangalore.  I'm just gonna get a new phone.  It's time for an upgrade anyway -- unfortunately.  I hate upgrading things.  I absolutely despise the pressure to constantly get the "latest and greatest" when I'm perfectly happy with my old thing that was the top of the line, like, four years ago.  But so it goes.  It's Tim Apple's world, and we're forced to live in it.

Well, maybe not "forced," but at least compelled.  I thought about going rogue and just not having cell phone service.  I can still use a lot of the functionality on my phone without service, provided I have a WiFi connection.  All the apps work and I can still receive iPhone-to-iPhone texts and calls.  But there are a few crucial things for which I need service, such as the ability to speak with coworkers when I work from home and the GPS map app.  I use those two things all the time, and it adversely affects my life to not have them.  So, I think a trip to Verizon is on the horizon.  In the meantime, here's Andre Rison.

[Fun fact: Andre Rison is the only player in NFL history to post 1,000 receiving yards and have his house burned down by his girlfriend in the same year.]

In other news, it was a busy week, since I last posted.  We took the boys trick-or-treating, which was a huge success.*  I dressed up like Billy Hoyle from White Men Can't Jump.  It's one of those costumes where 65% of the population will have no idea who you are, but the other 35% will so appreciate it that it makes up for it.  One guy said it was, "the best costume of the night," and this ten-year old boy said, "I know who you are!  You're the guy from White Men Can't Jump!"  I was amazed he'd even seen the movie.  It's almost 20 years older than he is.  It was pretty cool.

*Happy belated birthday to my sister K -- sorry, I forgot to reach out on your actual birthday.

My kids went as transformers and got so much candy we hid three-fourths of it after they went to sleep, and they didn't even notice.  I've been dipping into it a little bit, but I'm not huge on Halloween candy.  Twix are good and Snickers are decent, but I don't like much beyond those two things.  I'm a snob when it comes to candy.  I like the fancy shit -- See's candies and salted dark chocolate and the like.  The typical Halloween stuff -- Skittles, Milky Way, Starbust, etc. -- don't cut it for me anymore.  They aren't worth the calories.

The day after Halloween, we dropped the kids off at school, and then hightailed it to Columbus, Ohio -- a seven hour drive -- for our friend R's wedding.  We should have just flown.  Originally, we were going to bring the boys, and we didn't want to pay $1,500 in airfare, so we didn't buy tickets.  But then S's parents agreed to watch them, and for some reason -- inertia, I suppose -- we never reevaluated our decision to drive.  We could've saved a lot of time.  Oh well.

It's not a terrible drive.  It's pretty in a lot of areas, but it's depressing in others, because you drive through these cities that progress forgot.  Lots of abandoned shopping centers and run-down buildings and dilapidated homes.  When you see swaths of the country like this, you really do understand why so many middle-Americans have so much resentment toward "coastal elites" like myself.  Why this resentment manifests in Trumpism and not, say, Bernie Sanders-style redistribution, however, is something I still don't have a good grasp on (or maybe I do: racism).  Although, I only saw one "Trump, Pence" sign the entire drive, so I'll consider that a win.

S feels especially unwelcome in such parts of the country given her brown skin.  We try to stick to making pit stops in urban (or at least urban-ish) places.  That's one nice thing about this country: Even in the reddest of states there are always pockets of blue in the cities.  And Ohio is a straight-up red state now.  It swapped with Virginia, which, thanks largely to the ever expanding DC suburbs, now has a completely Democrat-majority state government.

A funny thing about S is that she will chalk up every travel inconvenience to being in a different state.  We stopped at a gas station, and they had a mini-mart, but no public bathroom.
"What?  They don't have a bathroom.  That's weird," I said.
"That's Ohio for you!" S responded.
I started chuckling, "Oh, apparently I didn't know that Ohio was known for it's lack of gas station bathrooms."

Anyway, the wedding and the related wedding activities were all really nice.  So many friends together in one place -- I love that.  The ceremony was one of the best I've ever witnessed.  It told the story of how R and her now husband M met.  I think R wrote it, and the officiant is an actor, so it was very well-written and well-delivered, funny and heartfelt, not too long nor too short.  It was excellent all-around.

The reception was fun also, but the dance floor never really got going until the very end.  R and M built the playlist themselves, and they made a fatal mistake (IMHO) of picking music that's fun to listen to and reminisce to, but not good to dance to.  Take Billy Joel's Only the Good Die Young for example.  That's a perfect song for a bunch of middle-aged, drunk, white people (the primary constituency of this wedding) to sing along with at a bar, but it's a bad song for dancing.  Every time the dance floor really picked up for a moment, one of these mood-killing songs would come on, and everybody would leave to go get a drink or mingle.  There was no consistency.

The thing is, you just gotta stick to the classics, even if that's not normally your preferred style of music.  When I made the playlist for my wedding reception, it was all dance hits people know -- C+C Music Factory, Rob Bass, Madonna, Whitney Houston, Technotronic, Salt-N-Pepa, LMFAO, Black-Eyed Peas, Lady Gaga, etc.  Most of that is stuff I would never listen to on my own, but it's great for weddings because it gets the party going on the dance floor and that's where the party's at.  Toward the end of the reception, another person who was frustrated with the musical selection strong-armed the DJ (who didn't seem to be doing anything at all) into putting on some actual dance music, and everybody got super into it, and it was a fun way to go out.



After the reception, we went to the after party back at the hotel.  Unfortunately, we were staying at a different hotel down the street, so we had to bail "early" (around 12:30 am), because S was tired.  I could've stayed out all night, but it's just as well.  This way I wasn't a slug on the drive home.  In fact, I drove the entire way.  I told S we would switch when I got tired, but I never got tired.  We made it home about as fast as one could make it without risking a reckless driving ticket.  There was almost no traffic, and we stopped only once, briefly for gas -- we didn't even get lunch.  Neither of us were hungry, probably because we ate (and drank) so much the night before.  In fact, other than a small breakfast at the hotel, I didn't eat anything until 8:30 that night.

The boys were safe and happy when we got back, which was great.  I hear they are surprisingly easy to manage when we are not around.  It's a different story when actually are here, but I'll save that for a different post.

Until next time...

Entry 483: Another Weekend Away

S and I are headed to a wedding in Ohio on Friday, sans kids, so it will be my second weekend away from the boys in three weeks.  This trip will be much shorter than my other one.  We drive up Friday afternoon, hit the wedding activities Friday evening and Saturday, and then drive back on Sunday.  It should be fun.  It's our good friend R, so we will be surrounded by familiar faces -- S is actually in the wedding.  We (meaning I) will just have to make sure to not drink too much Saturday night at the reception.  Unlike when taking a flight, we (meaning I) will actually have to operator a massive vehicle Sunday morning.

Actually, I've found I typically don't get very drunk at weddings.  I think it's the dancing that keeps me honest.  It gives me something else to do.  My whole thing is that I'm almost exclusively a social drinker.  I practically never drink in private, but if I'm out with friends at a bar, I will frequently get caught up in the merriment and then realize I've had three beers and the night is only half over.  At weddings, it's easy to avoid this trap.  You just dance -- Lady Gaga style.  Now, if there is an after party, that's a whole other story.  And everybody at this wedding will be middle-age or older.  You might think that this would work against excessive drinking (because, you know, old people are, like, such losers), but I suspect it will go the other way.  Everybody is going to go wild because they are away from their kids for a night.  The people you have to fear the most are the parents who don't get out much.  At the wedding shower a few weeks ago, S went out afterward for the bachelorette party, and in the wee hours of the morning, long after she had come home, she was getting drunken texts from the other ladies saying things like "where you at girl?"

[Although actually this entire song is about how she has to "just dance" *because* she's so fucked up.  Hmm... maybe the not the greatest example.]

In other news, it's been a good past few days for content consumption for me.  S and I started watching Fleabag, which is good, but not nearly as good as everybody else is saying (it won, like, a thousand Emmys and the critics love it).  I feel like I would enjoy it a lot more if I stumbled into it blind, instead of it coming so highly recommended.  Expectations are a bitch.

As far as heartfelt raunchy comedies with female leads go, Booksmart, which S and I also watched recently is far superior to Fleabag.  I mean, they aren't really comparable because one's a movie and the other is a show.  But judging purely by watching-joy, the former takes the cake easily.  In fact here's a bold claim: Booksmart is the best buddy comedy I've ever seen.  It's cut out of the Superbad mold, but it's just better.  And it transcends the goofy, lewd, teenage comedy genre.  It beats out other buddy comedies I enjoyed like Sideways, Y Tu Mamá También, and Dumb and Dumber.  In fact, I'll take it a step further: It's probably one of my top-20 movies of all time.  I'm not ready to release an official update of my Top 100 list, but I'd tentatively put it somewhere around 17.  I thought it was that good.



Also, it's been an excellent past few days of sports watching.  On Sunday and Monday, I watched the Seahawks win (well, I saw the extended highlights package, at least), and I watched both my fantasy football teams seal victories in the night games to move me to 6-2 in one league and 8-0 (!) in the other.  Then last night I watched DC's own Washington Nationals force a seventh game of the World Series, and I watched the Sounders advance to the MLS finals for the third time in four years, a supremely stunning result given their opponent was the greatest regular season team in league history.  (Championship game is on Sunday.)  If the Nats win tonight, it will round out a truly glorious span of sporting consumption.  I'll have to catch most of it on the radio, as I have to pick up S's parents at Dulles.  They're coming in to watch the kids for the wedding, so it's a worthwhile trade-off.



In fact, I should probably eat and all that, so that I can get there on time.

Until next time...

Entry 482: A Trip of Business and Pleasure

Back from a quick trip to Seattle.  It was ostensibly for work -- I attended a big conference in my industry -- but it was something of a (short) personal vacation as well.  I got to hang out with a bunch of friends and family.  And honestly, that was part of the reason my company sent me out there.  They know I'm from the area and that I would probably appreciate traveling there on the company dime.  They're good about stuff like that.

I flew in on Friday and stayed one night with my friend JY.  I had the Lyft driver take me straight to a pub from the airport, which is always ominous, but it actually wasn't a crazy night at all.  We had a pint or two at an old stamping grounds, and then we watched Deadpool, which was better than I was expecting.  (I'm not into the MCU or superhero blockbusters.)  I did have trouble getting over the fact that the main character's name is Wade Wilson -- the same as the recently-deceased ex-Vikings quarterback -- but I doubt that bothered many people other than me.

[This one drove me crazy until I looked it up: "Oh, right!  Brody's wife!  Of course!"]

The next day, we watched the Oregon-Washington football game with JY's mom and his brother, whom I hadn't seen in, like, 10 years.  It was fun.  It's a big rivalry game.  They're all Ducks fans (even though JY went to UW); I used to be a Huskies fan, back in the day, but I mostly lost the love sometime over the years.  I still root for them, but I don't really care when they lose, so it's actually a perfect sports relationship: Happy when they win; indifferent when they lose.  I wish that's how all my fandom was.  JY and his fam are not like this with the Ducks -- not at all.  Early in the game the Huskies were leading and everybody was getting a bit salty (especially JY).  Ultimately, however, the Ducks came back and pulled it out, so everybody was happy, including me, as I'd rather have UW lose than spend the day with a bunch of mopey people.  Plus, it was JY's birthday.  Plus, I was also watching the Sounders game on my phone (another team with which I have a very healthy sports relationship), and they won.

I got some grief from the peanut gallery for watching soccer, but I don't care.  I don't understand the mockery of certain sports by fans of other sports.  If you just don't care for a sport, the way I don't care for white wine, then that's fine.  But I don't denounce the drinking of white wine.  I just prefer red is all.  I mean, if you're watching 19-year-olds throw a ball and slam into each other on a field, I don't think you have much room to make fun of people for watching pretty much anything.

The next day I went down to UP to visit my family for lunch.  It was a brief trip, but it worked out perfectly.  JY let me borrow his car, which was great, but I was now staying at a hotel for the conference in downtown Seattle, and he lives in North Seattle many miles away.  For me to get to his house from the hotel would have added literally 45 minutes to my trip to UP, and it's only about an hour-long trip total.  As luck would have it though, my friend JW has a parking pass for work in a lot right by my hotel, so I was able to take JY's car the night before and park it in the lot overnight, and then just head down to UP the next day straightaway.  That ended up being a huge convenience, as I had to do a bunch of stuff for the conference before I could leave.  You know how in life it often seems as if the world is conspiring in a manner just to irritate you specifically?  Well, this was one of those times that helps balance that out.  I too frequently complain about life's annoyances, so I wanted to call out an instance in which things broke the other way.

I spent all of Monday attending conference activities.  They were fine.  I went to a bunch of talks -- some good, some bad, some in the middle.  I did a bit of networking (not my forte) and met a prospective employee, which were the most important parts of the trip, work-wise.  My company is trying to expand our R&D "presence" in the industry, so my main goal was just to be an ambassador.  I spoke briefly with my advisor and a few other former mentors, but they're bigwigs at this conference, so it was hard to get their ears for longer than 30 seconds.

This type of interaction wears me out.  I'm not bad at it, by any means, I just find it kind of stressful.  So, Monday night I "treated" myself to a $25 Cobb salad and a $8 pint of Modelo.  Really, I just didn't want to leave the hotel, so I went to the (always overpriced) hotel bar for dinner.  Also, I found that I kinda dig hotel bars.  There's something comforting about dining alone in a place where you are supposed to dine alone.  I would have liked it more if the Monday Night Football game was close, but by the time I sat down the Patriots were beating the Jets like 33-0.  Oh well.

The next day, I finished up at the conference by attending a few more talks (some good, some bad, some in the middle), and then I headed back north with JY to get dinner and watch the World Series game (Nats!).  Later in the night JW came and picked me up, and we met BJ and his brother DJ at another old stamping ground.  Once I heard DJ was coming, I knew it was going to be a boozy night.  That dude doesn't miss an opportunity to tie one on, work night or otherwise.  But I was game.  I had an early flight home the next day (I got up at 5:00 am to catch it), but I didn't have any kids to worry about, and flights suck anyway.  Yeah, being hung over would make it even more miserable, but either way it's a wasted day -- might as well have some fun.  And we did.

I made it home the next day without any major incident.  As unluck would have it, I landed at Dulles Airport at 4:30 pm, which if you are familiar with the area you know is literally the very worst time you can possibly land given traffic patterns.  It took an hour and a half to go from the airport to my house, which is double how long it takes not during rush hour.  My Lyft driver made it much more tolerable, however, by talking sports with me the entire time.  Dude knew his shit too.  About 30 seconds into a conversation about sports I can tell whether somebody is a true aficionado or a casual fan.  This guy was definitely the former.  I happily gave him the largest recommended tip.

The trip was great overall.  But I'm happy to be back.  I don't like being away from my kids for that long.  I don't understand how deadbeat dads do it.

Until next time...

Entry 481: The Binder and Other Tales

A lot going on this weekend, but before I get to any of that let's get an update on the ongoing Pokémon saga.  After posting my last entry, I went to pick up Lil' S1 at school, and he was holding a binder in his hands.

"Hey, Daddy!" he exclaimed. "Check this out!  I traded some of my cards for it!"

Somehow he swung a deal in which he swapped a few of his cards for an entire Pokémon binder.  Most of the cards had been taken out, but not all of them, and still it was a big binder with some other kids name on it.  (His "BFF" from the last post.)

"Oh jeez..." I said.  "You can't keep this.  Go give it back."
"Why?!  I traded for it."
"I know but you can't trade for an entire binder from some other kid."
"Why not?  He wanted to."
"Because I don't know if his parents were expecting him to trade his entire binder... I mean, it's got his name on it in permanent marker."
"We can just cross it off and write my name."

You gotta love the naive shamelessness of seven-year-olds.  He wants to make some other kid's Pokémon collection his own.  It reminds me of that scene in The Sopranos when Robert Patrick takes his son's SUV and gives it to Tony to pay off his gambling debt, and then Tony gives it to Meadow, and Meadow is wondering why she now has some other kids car.



The rightful owner of the binder was already gone for the day, and it was Friday afternoon, so we just took the folder home for the weekend.  I made Lil' S1 give it back to him on Monday though.  He was pretty mad about it at first, but then we got him his own folder and that cooled him off.  The rest of the week elapsed without an further Pokémon incident.  Let's hope that that's a trend that continues for a long time.

In other news, our downstairs is currently being occupy by our friend RB's sister and her family.  They have 13-year-old twins -- a boy and a girl, but everybody thinks they're two girls.  The boy has long hair, and he looks like his sister facially (they are twins after all), and they have almost identical builds, so it's not an unreasonable assumption.  Lil' S1 thought they were both girls (he still calls them "the girls" even after I corrected him), and I probably would've too if I didn't already know better.  They look so similar I was a bit worried at first that I wouldn't be able to keep them straight, but it's not that hard after you spend some time with them.

The boy doesn't seem to care much that people confuse him for a girl, which is good.  The thing is, if you're not sure of somebody's gender, why even bring it up?  There's no reason to ask if people are sisters or to use a gendered term when referring to somebody whose gender isn't blatantly obvious.  There's a person who goes to my gym whose gender identity I legitimately don't know.  They held the door for me the other day.  Often when somebody does this for me I say "Thank you, sir" or "Thank you, ma'am" with a bit of half-joking formality.  But this time I just said, "Thanks."  It's not that hard.

Lil' S1 seems to really like them, and they like him -- or at least they humor him -- which is great.  I think they had similar interests when they were his age.  The good thing about Lil' S1 is that he's a walking, talking ice-breaker.  I didn't realize what a little chatterbox he can be.  He'll just start going, "Do you like Pokémon? ... Do you like Super Smash Bros.? ... Once we saw bats outside ... That's my favorite book ... Do you wanna see my safe? ... Do you like Minecraft?"  And if you engage him, he will tell you the gory details of whatever the subject is.  He'll explain entire plots of TV episodes and breakdown the power levels of individual Pokémon.  But it's good for our present company because I think they're a bit on shyer side.  I haven't seen him get on with older kids this well before.  It's nice.

They are in town for the weekend for RB's wedding shower.  S is heavily involved in it as well.  Part of the festivities is the DC Army 10-mile run this morning.  I am not doing that.  I have to watch the kids (and I don't willingly wake up that early unless I'm being paid or catching a flight).  The actual shower is this afternoon, and I will go to that, and then there is a bachelorette party at night, which, like the run, I will not go to.  I think men are invited to it, but, again, I have to watch the kids, and I don't really want to go anyway.  I don't have tomorrow off for Columbus Day like many others do, so staying out even moderately late does not sound very appealing.

After RB's family leaves, my parents will come to visit.  Actually, they will come back to visit, as they were here the past few days, and then they went to Connecticut for the weekend.  They're going to visit my cousins (my dad's nephew and niece) whom I've never met.  They will be meeting them for the first time.  Yes, I'm aware it's weird to have adult cousins you've known about pretty much your entire life, but have literally never met, but that's how it is.  S says I'm a robot because I'm so ambivalent about this.  But I try to explain to her the fact that I've never met them is precisely the source of my ambivalence.  There was never a there there.  It's just not something I ever had a chance to develop strong feelings about.

Anyway, it's nice to have people over.  It's fun, and also satisfying.  It's like: That's part of why we got this house, y'know.  To have our family and friends stay with us.  It feels nice.

Alright, I should go get dressed or get the kids dressed or something.  Got a long day ahead of us.

Until next time...

Entry 480: Now They're BFFs Apparently

Update to my last post: Everything got resolved quite nicely with respect to the swirl of Pokémon theft surrounding my oldest son.  I didn't get involved at all, and that proved to be a wise decision.  Kids usually figure shit out on their own, and if they don't, then they learn from it, and as long as the stakes are relatively low, that's a good thing.  Sometimes, I think, the best move is just to butt out, which is nice, as it also means less work on me, the parent.

He got his book back, the Pokémon catalog, which I'm legitimately surprised by.  I thought that thing was gone for good.  A girl at his school "found" it and gave it to him.  This little girl already has a reputation for being "manipulative" (three different sets of parents have independently used this exact adjective to describe her), so it's quite possible she was the one who took it in the first place.  Maybe she started to feel guilty; maybe an adult started to question why she had a book with my son's name written all over it; maybe she really did find it and I shouldn't be so cynical.  Dunno; don't care; glad he got it back.

As for the situation in which he "found" another kid's card, last night we had the following conversation:

Him: Hey, Daddy, you know that Pokémon card you wanted me to give back to Shawn (pseudonym)?  I gave it back to him today.
Me: That's good.  Did you tell him you took it in the first place?
Him: No...  I told him I found it in the cafeteria.
Me: Okay... better than nothing, I guess.  Did he punch you, like you said he would?
Him: No.
Me: What did he say?
Him: He said, "Aw, thanks, bro.  I was looking for this." ...  Actually, he can't get mad at me.
Me: Why not?
Him: Because we're BFFs now!
S (overhearing, chuckling): Do you even know what BFF stands for?
Him: Yeah -- Best Friends Forever!

So, apparently they're BFFs.  Although, my guess is they're actually BFFTTBPAFW: Best Friends For The Time Being, Probably A Few Weeks.  Still, that's a positive result, all things considered.

Unfortunately, once one issue resolves itself another one pops up.  We got two notes sent home to us from Lil' S1's teacher about misbehavior.  The first one was for peeing in the bathroom sink (seriously); the second one was for reading a book during math lesson.  The thing about Lil' S1, and maybe this is true of most kids, is that he will form a defense of himself when he gets in trouble and then stick to it like glue.  In this case, he claims he had to go so badly, and all the stalls and urinals were occupied, that he had to go in the sink.  This is plausible, kinda, sorta, but I'm not buying it.  Kids take like 20 seconds to pee, something would've opened up, and this kid can hold his pee seemingly forever when he's doing something he enjoys and doesn't want to take a break (watching a movie, playing video games, etc.).  When I pointed this out to him, he still said he couldn't hold it and had to go in the sink.  Whatever.

With the reading during math lesson, he said he didn't feel well, because he got in trouble, and reading books makes him feel better.  I'm much more sympathetic to this defense.  It seems reasonable that a kid would be upset after being "busted" by the teacher and would need a cool-off period before resuming normal activities.  Plus, he was reading a book.  It's not like he was disrupting class or playing with contraband or something like that.  When it comes to bad things to do during math lesson, reading is pretty close to the bottom of the list.

But, of course, he should pay attention, and he shouldn't pee in the sink (so uncouth!), and if we get any more notices from his teacher, we will have to hit him where it hurts: screen time.  We will cut him off for a while -- no video games, no iPad, no TV.  It will be harder on us than it will be on him, but it's definitely something that will get his attention.

Speaking of children behaving badly: Impeachment!  It looks like our man-child president has finally crossed the moderate Democrats line.  I'm personally in favor of it.  It's the right thing to do, and politically I don't think it moves the needle much one way or the other.  My hunch is that, if anything, it will hurt his reelection bid, but that's just that: a guess -- and a biased one at that.  Anyway, I'm sure I will have more to say about that at a future date.

In other news, I won my fantasy baseball league for the third year in a row (and made the finals for the fourth straight season).  This is a truly remarkable feat.  The thing about fantasy sports is that there is so much randomness involved that nobody can be that good.  It's a bit like poker that way.  You can do everything right and still lose because your opponent just gets the cards.  On the flip side, you can not even pay attention and win by total fluke.   So, being champion of a legitimate league once is really lucky, let alone three times.  But, it also takes some skill.  I drafted exquisitely this year, somehow getting Mike Trout (aka the Neckless Baseball God), Alex Bregman, and Ronald Acuña Jr. with my first three picks.  Then I hit on a bunch of late-round sleepers/waiver-wire pickups like Josh Bell, Ketel Marte, Joey Gallo, Charlie Morton, and Lance Lynn.  I lost about half my team to season-ending injury throughout the playoffs but still managed to claim victory.  Ex-Mariner James Paxton really came through for me.

[Yes, Mike!  Celebrate that championship!  Just fantasy, of course.  The Angels don't make the playoffs in real life... Hey, neither do the Mariners -- it's cool.]

I joined a second league this year and made the playoffs in it, as well.  But, I lost in the first round to my buddy RW.  It was ridiculously close.  In the final game of the week, I had a single player left, J.T. Realmuto, and he had nobody left.  I was losing the deciding category, OPS, by like .005 points.  Realmuto struck out in his first at bat which dropped me down even lower, but then he doubled in his second at bat, which put me up by a few hundredths of a point.  In his third at bat, he made another out, which dropped me exactly .001 points in behind.  Realmuto was on pace to come up twice more, and our match hinged on what he did in those final plate appearances -- a hit or a walk in either and I would win, two outs and RW would win.  I was following the game online; RW was watching it at a bar; and we were texting back and forth.  Realmuto's spot came up in the order and... pinch-hitter.  What?!  No!!!  He was out of the game.  Our match was over.  I lost by .001 OPS points.  Oh, well.  I shook it off pretty easily.  I was still feeling good from winning my other league, and RW seemed happier about it than I would have been.  Bully for him.

Alright, that's probably more fantasy baseball talk then anybody wanted to read, so I'll stop now.

Until next time...

Entry 479: No Honor Among (Child) Thieves

Had some parental challenges this week having to do with thievery.  Lil' S1 is really into Pokémon, and he likes to bring his cards and books to school.  I'm not in favor of this, for reasons that will become obvious (and probably already are), but I let it go, because it's not a fight I want to have every morning, because it's a chance for him to learn how to take care of stuff, and because after-care is the only time he sees some of the kids who are also into Pokémon.  So, the other day, he came home in tears, because one of the kids "stole" his Pokémon guide book -- this thick catalog of Pokémon profiles.  He said it was Andy (not his real name), some kid I didn't know.  So, I get annoyed, because I didn't really want him to take that book to school in the first place, and also because I was torn between whether or not I should intervene.  Should I talk to the after-care supervisor and maybe Andy's parents (whomever they are), and try to sort it out, or let him figure it out on his own and maybe learn a lesson the hard way?

I decide to initially take a hands-off approach.  I told him to try to get Andy to give him the book back by himself.  So, the next day he comes home and says Andy told him he didn't take it, and he believes him.  I ask him why he thought Andy took it in the first place, and he gives me a byzantine story with myriad unimportant details and a half dozen pointless digressions.  But I do my best to sort through the web, and when I do, it starts to sound more like he lost the book -- or most likely he forgot about the book, left it somewhere, and when he came back for it later, it was gone.  Probably some kid did take it, maybe even Andy, but that's just a guess.  Lil' S1's name is written all over the book, so there's an outside chance a good Samaritan found it and will return it to him, but that's unlikely.  I think this is a case of "finders keepers, losers weepers," literally.

The thing is I don't feel much sympathy for Lil' S1, because he later told me that he did almost the exact same thing to a different kid.  This other kid left one of his Pokémon cards behind, and Lil' S1 pocketed it and took it home instead of giving it back to him.  I was extremely disappointed when I heard this, and I told him he had to give it back.  He said that the kid would punch him.  We went back and forth for while, but he insisted that this kid would hit him if he found out he took it.  I'm extremely skeptical of this, but part of growing up is self-preservation, so that's something else he has to navigate on his own.  (Although, it's strange that he has enough sense to not want to get beat up for returning the card, but not enough sense to not take it in the first place.)  I mean, it seems incredibly unlikely to me, but what if this kid is super aggressive, and he does beat him up, because I made him give the card back.  Is that good parenting?



Again, I was in a dilemma about what to do.  Ultimately, I punted.  I put the card in his backpack, and I told him that I think he should give it back, but that it was up to him.  I haven't checked yet, but I guarantee you that card is still where I put it.  No seven-year-old has that type of rectitude.  Fine.  He can have a "pass" for this one.  (It's a single Pokémon card, not exactly grand larceny.)  But, I'm going to be bothering him everyday for a while to make sure he doesn't do it again.  He's going to get sick of me talking about it -- nuisance parenting, that's my strategy.

To add to the story, a few nights ago Lil' S1 woke up in the middle of the night crying for S.  I went in to see what was wrong, and he just kept on saying, "I don't know."  I wonder if it's related to all this Pokémon stuff.  I think he knows what he did was wrong.  I think that's why he told me about it.  It might have been a confession, or at least he wanted to gauge my reaction.  Maybe this has been weighing on him.  He will also say things to S sometimes about what a bad kid he is.  When I was his age I had a super guilty conscience.  I still do, to some degree, but not like when I was a kid.  I wonder if he's the same way.

Unfortunately, a lot of this is stuff he's just going to have to figure out on his own.  As a parent, you always want to help your kid, but you can't think their thoughts for them.  (And would you want to, even if you could?)  You can give them food, shelter, and love, but other than that I think they have to pretty much do the rest.  Maybe you can give them a bit of advice here or there, but that's about it.  On that front, my current goal is to convey to Lil' S1 two things: 1) Don't take valuable stuff to school; 2) Don't steal.  If he learns that from these incidents, it will be a huge success.

Until next time...