Put Your Whole Self In

I am trying to figure out what sort of serendipity caused me to do the Hokey-Pokey two nights in a row last week. On Thursday I went swimming with John and the teacher had us all splash around to this classic. Then on Saturday I was at the Frog and Princess Dance with my daughters where we "shook it all about." We also limboed, bunny-hopped and did the Macarena. This is the third year I have attended this Dance with Susan and this year Becky came too. This is her first year in the Girl Scout system, but I think she may have been a little young to appreciate things. She does like to dance though. I'll just say she has a style all her own and leave it at that. I did the whole dancing on the feet thing with Susan and I even tried to remember how to 2-Step. The theme this year was a Hoe Down and there was plenty of country music for us to enjoy. The radio is usually set to country in the van so the girls know quite a bit of country music. I think the three of us managed to have fun if each in our own way.

I got another run in on Sunday. It was a short one mile this time because Susan went with me. She and I are talking about running a 5K run together in the fall. Part of me wonders if it is just my idea and she is a willing participant, but I'll take it. It gives me one more good reason to go running.

3 Miles.

My Wife's Sister's Cousin

I guess I need to back track a little and explain about the nepotism. I was lucky enough recently to add a new position at our small company for someone to help me with my growing workload. Not to get too into this right now, but I am usually juggling about 11 different projects at a time. We had been kicking the idea around for this position since early last fall. At Thanksgiving Dinner I made a casual inquiry to my wife’s cousin, “So what are you doing these days?” He proceeded to describe to me the position that I was going to be creating in the coming year. I told him straight out that I was looking for someone to do the same thing at my company and I would let him know if the position ever became real. It did so I did.

I wanted everything to be above board so I interviewed him in February and had my boss interview him and we made an offer. I did interview some other folks too because I wanted it to be fair. He has been there for a little over a month now and I think it is working out very well. I am already noticing that I can get more done. I think I may be pushing him a little, but that could be a good thing. One thing I hadn’t counted on was having someone there to bounce an idea off of that actually understands. We worked on a project the other day and it was the first time in a long while where I felt I was working on a team effort and not just a Mike-will-do-all-of-the-work-while-everyone-else-watches effort.

There is quite a bit of my wife's family out here so there is a little concern that things could end badly, but not a big one. I was asked if it would be awkward at family gatherings if things didn't work out. I told them it would just be a good excuse for me not to go to them any longer. Don't get me wrong I her family is pretty amusing and I get along with most of them, but I am not really a large gathering type of person. I'm more of a one-on-one with a couple of beers kind of guy.

There and Back Again

We finished. For the past few months I have been reading an illustrated version of The Hobbit to the kids. This is the second time we have attempted it so there was much rejoicing at our completion. It has been slow going and there have been periods of weeks where we read nothing. At one point I thought we were not going to finish again, but they kept asking me to read it to them. I have learned that it is best to stop reading before they get restless even if they don't want me to - one chapter at a time seemed to work best. Tonight we pushed it a little so we could get to the end and John was completely not interested. Of course he has fallen asleep several times during earlier readings and missed chunks of the story. Also if you haven't read The Hobbit in a long time you may have forgotten that the end really drags. Smaug is killed about 5 chapters from the end and everything after that is sort of boring if you're under 10. We made it though and while I have lost my patience with the audience a couple times I am happy to have shared this with them. It all started 5 years ago when I took Susan camping. We went for a hike and she asked me to tell her a story. Back then I used to make up short stories for the kids off the cuff. This time I wanted to go for a long hike and I didn't want to think too much so I told her the story of Bilbo Baggins. The next year we started in on the story of Frodo. I don't think we ever did finish my oral rendition of The Lord of the Rings, but we still look for elves whenever we go hiking.

I am thinking of sharing this blog with my sister. She and I are close or at least we used to be. I grew up as a military brat and we moved about every four years. To my parents credit we always moved in the summer between school years. When we would move Julie would often be the only person I would know until school started. I sometimes can't believe she and I grew up in the same house because we are so different, but we do understand each other. I remember that on 9/11 Julie was the person I wrote to about how it effected me because I knew she would understand. We've gone years almost without talking sometimes, but she is my sister. I didn't really mean for this to be a sappy entry about how I love my sister, but the thought of sending her the link for this blog crossed my mind. I am sure I will share this with others eventually despite my intentions. I just can't keep a secret even if it is my own.

Third

John is our third child. I don't know if this is what makes him so even tempered or if it is just his nature. He has two older sisters who love him dearly and at times loathe his very existence. What can they expect he is a little brother after all. He has decided that he is a morning person and is always the first one up. Dawn is the morning person in our marriage and I am the night owl - in case you can't tell by the timestamp on the this blog. Rebecca is also a morning girl, but Susan is with her old man and will sleep in until a decent hour if it is quiet enough. This morning John was the first one up as usual and started to play his xylophone. I was just registering the first few pings when I hear Rebecca's plaintive cry -

"NOT AGAIN!"

You see this was how the household was greeted yesterday morning as well at the fun time of 5:30 in the morning. Dawn was kind enough to save us all from this unwanted concert. At various points in the day I would replay this in my mind and smile.


I went running tonight for the first time this year. 3 Miles.

Knowledge is Power

It amazes me how many people are out there. We are so close to the images of the information age painted not by the newcomers like Neal Stephenson or William Gibson, but by the old-timers like Asimov and Clarke. This clean idea that everything you need to know or would want to know is accessible just by asking your computer. Communities are forming, but there are no false avatars only real people telling real stories. Even being in the IT industry I have to say I am a little surprised at how long this collective consciousness has been growing. Pretty soon HAL will be wondering what we are doing.

Today Susan won a city wide essay contest. She is mortified by this accolade and only the winning prize of a pizza party for her class is enough to make her willing to tell her friends. Of course Susan doesn't like pizza, but a party means no real school for an afternoon. I am of course bursting with pride. The grandparents have been informed and I am hoping they send her some congrats to further her embarrassment.

In case it isn't obvious I have not told anyone I know in three dimensions about the existence of this blog. When I began I thought it would be a good exercise in writing and I wanted to be able to just pour my thoughts onto the screen and not worry about what I said. The fear of discovery has still limited this, but I like my pseudo-anonymity. If I continue writing this long enough for someone to discover it then I will be pleased. If I continue writing this long enough to figure out how people do all of those fancy blogging things I will be amazed.

Six of One, Half Dozen of Another

Currently there are six kids in the back yard making enough noise to raise a Dad on a Sunday morning. Dawn is off peddling some craft or another and I am home with the kids. I will concede now that it is a double standard for me to feel like I am babysitting, but I do. We've managed to have a good day so far. After lunch when I was abandoned I pulled out the coupons from the Sunday morning paper and invented the "Coupon Game." Each person picks a coupon and then we go to the store to buy it. We came home with Vanilla Burst Ice Cream, chocolate Lucky Charms cereal, and Ultimate Fudge Brownie mix. We had to go to two stores to find everything, but it killed an hour of my day and we spent less than $5. As much as a trip to Starbucks would have been which is my usual diversion. We got back, had a bowl of ice cream, and two hours later everyone is still outside playing. I turned my life into a commercial a little bit ago and took out cups of kool-aid for everyone. It was supposed to rain today so I was prepared for a long afternoon indoors, but at this rate it will be dinner time before I know it. Of course we are averaging a melt down every hours or so, but nothing that has brought a halt to the playing. If it does break up I still have my ace in the hole - we'll make brownies.

Go Fly a Kite

Today was a lazy day. I slept in until around 10:30 and managed to avoid doing anything of note all day. I read a little bit while the little kids played outside and in the afternoon Susan and I walked over to the park and flew our kite. I bought this kite about 4-5 years ago and have probably managed to put it in the air about as many times. When I went to go buy it I remember asking the guy which was the easiest kite in the store to get airborne. He did not steer me wrong. You could tie this kite to a stake in the ground and as long there is some breeze it will take off. Susan kept the kite airborne for about a half an hour before she got bored watching the chimera-like tail dance in the wind. We pulled the kite in and started back to the house. About half way back the van passed us with the rest of the family on its way to meet us. Susan got in and John and Becky got out. They only lasted about ten minutes with the kite and John let go of the string twice. Luckily there was a playground on the walk back so they managed to have some fun on this outing.

I am fairly certain that the couple people reading this have given up on me by now, but I did promise to write about my car and about nepotism. I'll save the nepotism as a teaser on the off chance any one is reading this. Shortly before we left on vacation I got in my car to go to work. I drove about three blocks and noticed I was slowing down. I finally slowed down so much I could have walked faster. I managed to pull over to the curb and park the car before it died. I really had meant to get an oil change all that week. Dawn drives the company car because when we got offered a car form the company I work for the van needed to be replaced more than my commuter car. She gave me a ride to work and during the day arranged to have the car towed to the dealership. They put some oil in the car and were able to get things running again, but recommended about $1000 worth of work. We decided to drive the car home that night and postpone the decision until we got back from our vacation. "This will give us two weeks to think about it," says I. Flash forward two weeks, it is Friday and we are on the drive home. No thought has been given to this whatsoever.

~insert boring decision making process~

On Monday I drove off the lot in my newly leased 2005 Honda Civic. Mine is the value package and it is black. I won't get into the reasons right now, but this car is perfect for me because it is reliable and doesn't have any unnecessary bells and whistles.

It's a good thing

For at least a year now our family has been following a tradition at dinner of sharing something good that happened to you today. I like it. I am a big fan of tradition and I love the fact that my kids will remember this when they are older. Of course John doesn't really get it. About 95% of the time he is my good thing because his answer will be "A good thing that happened to me today is that . . . Daddy came home!" Of course time can be a little nebulous for a three year old so "today" isn't strictly enforced for him. Usually I am the worst one because the good things that happened to me are usually the “ah ha!” moment at work when I solve a problem. Most of my answers tend to involve food. “We got donuts today at work.” “Laura brought in Bagels.” “George bought me lunch at McDonald’s.” Sometimes I will try and explain something I figured out at work, but it just sounds like technobabble to the kids. When someone is absent from dinner we will pretend to answer for them. When I am not there I hear the answers are quite amusing.

Susan answering for me : “I fixed the program on the server so the program worked and everyone could use the computer again.”

Rebecca answering for me: “I got candy at work today.”

John answering for me: “John came home!”