Changes

I am sitting here at my desk in my office on my last day of work for the summer. I'm listening to the Giants playing the Braves on my iPad (a rare 9 am game time) and am trying to get a few things wrapped up before heading out on a few weeks break.

Tomorrow we are headed off for a few nights of camping with my wife's niece and her family. Should be a, hopefully, peaceful break with some inner tubing and boating fun mixed in for spice.

We've got a few more camping trips on tap and a bunch of house projects to try and move forward. And some revenue projects that could use a little love and attention.

I'm just looking forward to sleeping in some, going to the beach and trails with my wife and kids and having a little fun before the school year kicks back into gear! And my kids will be starting junior guards next week so they'll be getting all beach ripped!

Looking Forward and Up

The SCMTB Fest is coming!

What do the next ten months of 2012 hold? For myself and my little family, we are stuffing as much good stuff in among the work. I count myself pretty lucky that I work in education and have some summer break time to do more family stuff. I usually end up working over the summer and this one will be no different. But I have a boss who wants me to write up my schedule and give him an idea of what I will do.

What does the rest of the year hold for us? Several group camping trips with friends to Big Sur, Mt. Madonna, Arroyo Seco, the Sea Otter Classic, Spicer up north and New Brighton Beach locally. I've got my first and likely only triathlon of the year scheduled and on the books at the Avia Wildflower, we may camp for it but not in with the other triathletes as it is just too darned pricey to do it right now. Maybe next year when my pay returns to its normal levels (long story but the short of it is my checks are about $350 light right now).

A California Kind of Sunday

There are moments, minutes and hours that, for me, pull together all of the various threads of my life and gather them into one neat bundle. After a busy Saturday with my boys including working on the deck, setting up the tent in the backyard and having a campfire complete with S'mores for the family, Sunday was a bit more low key to start with.

Have Not Fallen Into a Crevasse

Nope, I'm still around. I'm tweeting quite regularly (and knocking some tweets into orbit with their extra special awesomeness, IMHO).

But I've also been on summer break this last week. Technically the week before doesn't count because it was an unpaid furlough week from work but you know what? My ass can't tell the difference between furlough time and summer break time. I'm sure my paycheck can but we'll worry about that one later.

The last few weeks have been much family time fun. Some rough patches with so much time at home with the whole house filled up with all four of us, the dog and the cat too. But it has mostly been a really nice time. I've been putting in a bunch of hours doing computer repair stuff which is nice, it pays well, expands my circle of clients and gets me out of the house.

Greetings from the Gateway to Yosemite

I've been pretty quiet on the blogging front this week which makes sense since I'm not working right now and spending most of my time with my family. We are currently getting ready to head up to Yosemite for a day of fun and play in the wickedly stunning wintery beauty.

I plan on taking a bunch of photos today and will post the best to Flickr later.

For now though, we're on family time and that means getting back to the family.

Be back soon.

Whoa, What?

Things have been busy lately and the new work structure makes me work more and blog less which I suppose is a generally good thing. If you're my boss. Or I should say bosses since I technically now have eight bosses. I work at seven different schools with seven different principals and still have my director. Lots of bosses but it isn't a crappy Office Space situation.

Anyway, I'm working full-time and getting in increasingly long workouts as we've now entered less than two weeks to go time on my next triathlon. I've been training pretty consistently and pretty hard and feel confident in my fitness levels. I still need to work on my ocean swimming and transitions but I'm approaching this triathlon much like the last one. I'm not racing the people around me, I'm racing myself. If I race as well as I can then I truly do not care where I place (well, unless I'm DFL but that's unlikely).

And when I'm not working or training, I'm trying to give my wife a break from being on mom duty almost 24/7 with no school. They do have a bunch of stuff going which helps keep the day's moving but its still alot of work and very, very tiring especially since Sullivan basically does not stop making noise from the minute he wakes up until the minute he goes to sleep. He is an amazing little chatterbox and, when he's not speaking, he's barking, grunting, singing or doing something else to make noise. It is relentless and wearing after several hours. But Sully is a delightful little kid so it is mostly dealable. Not always but that's when the ability to "tag" out is invaluable. I have no idea how single parents possibly cope with young children, especially two rambunctious boys. Without a break I would absolutely without question lose my mind despite the fact that I adore my boys more than anything else in the world.

Graydon has his own share of things going on right now. He's pouty, petulant, selective and sometimes just downright difficult. This is, of course, not his norm. He is most of the time a happy, playful, funny and wonderful boy. He's mischievous and has a flair for the dramatic, he'll make up dances, he'll put on magic tricks and then he'll get very, very shy when someone asks him to show them his trick or dance or whatever. Its kind of funny but I sometimes worry that he might be self-doubting and that's preventing him from performing his tricks. He is old enough now that he and I can sit and talk and try to work things out. He will often utter some very surprising observations that remind me of both how clever he is and how he misses almost nothing. And he delights in adding to his resume of skills.

How odd, this post was going to be a post of links of good stuff I've been reading online and turned into an update on my (mostly) happy little family. Yes, I skipped my wife, she doesn't care for me to discuss her too much on the blog. I will say she's been doing a Cross Fit type class at the gym and is really liking it, its also getting her in really good shape which helps everything else. I love having an active family, I love knowing that we've got camping trips and biking trips and kayaking and skiing (or snowboarding) and surfing and everything else ahead of us.

But I need to get some work done before packing it in. So many projects half done that its nearly impossible to know which one to work on at any time. The competing priorities make it hard to get started.

Oh, and one last note, the boys and I have been watching and really enjoying Avatar: The Last Airbender via Netflix to the tv. Great entertaining series. We're just about to finish Book Two and move on to Book Three. We are absolutely loving having Netflix accesible via the tv, its almost made up for the several years of barely used Netflix-ing we did. We'd get a movie in the mail and sit on it for six to eight weeks before eventually sending it back unwatched. Not anymore!

Off to the darkroom for some photo work, I think.

Today Was a Good Day Summary

Well, my brief write up of our day yesterday turned into an epic saga. I thought I'd be a kind blogger and write up a quick version for our attention deficit society.

Here's the day went:
Whole family to gym, kids to cool daycare space, parents to workout.
Rode a super cool high tech stationary bike along a coastal route and worked up a powerful sweat.
Did a circuit of upper body machines to give my body a wake up call that workouts were back on the menu.
Climbed the climbing wall with an auto-belay system outside the gym. Nearly made it to the top on the "hard" course before hands decided to stop playing nice.
Signed up at the gym and made a rough date to play squash with the owner at the gym near Cabrillo College (where I had my first job in Santa Cruz county some 15 years ago).
Everybody got to go swimming at the Simpkins Swim Center down the road. Nice warm shallow pool to play in and I got another workout in the lap pool.
Went to lunch, ran into some friends and their kids out for a bike ride.
Had super tasty sushi at Pink Godzilla, Grady tried a bunch of new foods and loved them (score!).
Then came home to watch a movie.

Good, good stuff. I'm a little sore today, I expect it'll get a bit worse before it gets better but I'm good with that.

If you want to read the full version with background info, history and all the other ephemera then click here and settle in, its a long post!

Today Was a Good Day

Because today was an unusually good and fun family style day, I thought I'd briefly try to capture how it went because I know, maybe years from now, I will want to look back on days like today and remember them.

My wife and I are training for a sprint triathlon at the end of April, a little more than six weeks away. A sprint triathlon, for those that aren't knowing, is a short distance triathlon consisting of a quarter mile swim (in a suck the breath right out of you cold lake), a 9.7 mile bike portion and then a two mile run. It doesn't sound overall challenging on the face of it. I'm already routinely riding 12 - 16 mile mountain bike rides now though the recent non-stop rains have definitely cut into my cardio. Anyway, it is a race, it does have swimming and running as key features of it, two activities of which I've done damned little of in the last ten years or so. I did used to run cross country in high school but gave it up when I realized how much faster and further and less impactful mountain biking was.

But we are now training for all three aspects of the race. Which means getting some pool time when possible. The first possible came earlier this week and I came up against the hard reality that bike fitness and pool fitness ain't got shit to do with one another. I grunted my way through 30 or 35 laps, I stopped counting and then stopped swimming when my calves decided they'd had enough and locked up on me. Let it be known that I've always had a rather large set of calves, probably from so much mountain biking throughout my life. They are a great source of power but they also have a tendency to cramp up and stop working if I go too far too soon.

Anyway, let's fast forward on to today, which was kind of the original point of the post in the first place and I've already rambled my way halfway down the page without even getting to the good stuff.

The good stuff for today included a trip to the health club/gym whatever you want to call it. This is unusual for me because I stopped going to health clubs a number of years ago after getting pretty well burnt out on them. But my wife has been going to one in Live Oak for a while now and really likes it, my kids also like it because they've got a cool day care space on the premises and everyone can have fun while mom gets a work out in. They even have a climbing wall outside with three auto-belay rope systems built-in for the kids and, as my wife found out today, adults to try out.

So we dropped the two boys off at the day care next to the club, they happily jumped in with their snack bag, they grabbed a table in the marked off area and had a snack. Around the room there were good fun things to play on or in, a small obstacle course crawly thing, a bouncy trampoline and more. It was pretty cool and there were a bunch of kids to play with and three staffers keeping an eye on things inside and another staffer outside helping kids try the climbing wall.

In the club one of the first things I noticed was the lack of blasting music. It was actually kind of peaceful, it wasn't empty, there were a couple of dozen people working out, on the cardio machines and in between. We talked with the desk staff, talked about a day pass for me, talked about possibly signing up, met the co-owner and then met the owner. I'd already met him a number of years ago when I was working at another gym in the area and he was opening the first of the local gyms. I even interviewed with him for a job once upon a time.

The owner took the time to talk with us, get to know me (again) and learn a little bit about us which bodes quite well. He gives a damn, has a great demeanor and personality and obviously loves what he does. He found out I'm a cyclist and a computer geek and took us over to three rather cool bikes near the stretching area. The bikes let you create an account, choose a ride (countryside, coastal, big hills, whatever) with distances, set your pace rider (who can be sped up or slowed down), you steer with the handlebars, you have a shifter to move up or down depending on the incline or decline, you have a heartrate monitor built into the bars, you have real-time data streaming across the screen, you have scenery, you have other cyclists out on the ride. It was, suffice to say, pretty damned cool. I did a 7 mile ride in around 25 minutes, worked up a very good sweat and enjoyed it. It helped that I could see exactly how hard I was working and dial it back a bit if I needed to.

After the bike ride, I did some calf stretching on the crazy stretching cage nearby. It was set up to allow a person to effectively stretch every part of their body. There was a chart of how to use it on the wall and it was pretty easy to get a pretty good stretch in quickly.

I didn't want to get too crazy on weight training since I haven't been lifting regularly for quite some time now but I wanted to do a quick circuit to wake my body up to the fact that slug time was over. I started with some shoulder presses, then to a butterfly machine, went to a bench press machine (with independent grips which was interesting), then some rows, pulldowns, tri-presses and standing barbell curls. Not anything super heavy, pretty minimal weights to get my machine started back up. Plus I knew that there was pooltime coming up and I didn't want to fry myself beforehand.

My wife finished her ride and did her circuit and headed off to the sauna or steam room to sweat some more. I gave a try to the climbing wall, scrambled up most of the way to the top before my hands starting to give out and, truth be told, the height I was off the ground kind of freaked me out a bit. I'd never used an auto-belay system so its hard to just instantly trust it. I climbed down and vowed to return when I hadn't already burned most of my energy up. And I will.

After some more good chatting with the owner including war stories from my old gym and how he'd come to take over the operations, I signed up to join the gym, adding myself to my family's membership. The price is good, the facilities are excellent, the day care is great and its a nice place to get exercise in. Not much like my last gym that wasn't taken care of as well as it should have, was over run with poser gang banger types and almost always had crazy loud crappy music playing.

From there we headed down to the swim center nearby. The gym and the swim center have a deal where we can get swim passes at a discount and they have a shallow warm pool for kids and parents to enjoy together as well as a large lap pool for more working out. We all started in the smaller shallow heated pool, the boys haven't been swimming in a while and had a total blast. There were other kids to play with some but they mostly wanted to swim and play with us, their parents. Which was fine and fun.

After everyone had had some fun, I went to the big pool to get some more work in. I'd planned on just a ten lap short session but stretched it out to 20, a quarter mile, before my legs sent up a white flag and requested some other activity. I headed back to the shallow pool to play with the family more. We did submarine rides, I pulled Sully through the water, we splashed, we laughed and we all had lots of fun. It was a good time and it was a really good family time together.

When we did end up heading in, my wife took Grady in to get him ready and Sully and I headed in to get showered up and dressed together. He had fun in the big shower room because all the showers were push button activated and he laughed as the warm water got him.

Once we were all cleaned up and dressed, we loaded into the Escape and headed out to get some food as I was approaching starving from not having eaten in too many hours. We ended up going to Pink Godzilla in Capitola and took over one of comfy eating rooms where you have to take your shoes off and there is a pit under the table and its cozy and fun. And the food was especially great today, the sushi we got was delicious, the salads with the miso dressing were good though I had to ask for more dressing. Grady expanded his normal order from the inari to trying everything on his plate and finding that he really like almost all of it. We were quite proud of his being open to trying the new foods and thrilled that he liked them. He's usually a picky eater but I've been using the Green Eggs & Ham story as a way to remind the boys that sometimes food may not look like something you'd like to eat but you will never know until you try it. And it works!

Oh yeah, before heading into Pink Godzilla, we ran into some friends and their kids who were all out on a bike ride together which made Grady want to get his bike out of the truck so he could show off his non-training wheel riding skills!

We had a great late lunch and headed home to a couple of napping boys, Grady kept napping after we got home, Sully did not but played pretty quietly. My wife went up to Target to do some shopping since she's been dropping weight and losing inches she needed some new bras. When she got back, they put in a kid's movie called Planet 51 which was cute and funny and entertaining. I went up to Target myself and got a pair of training tights that I've been needing for cold rides and some other goodies.

It was, all in all, a wonderful day. The kind I wish we could have everyday. With some luck I'll get some trail time tomorrow and we'll go into next week with more swimming, more gym time, an increasing fitness level and the upcoming triathlon weekend will be a great fun time for all of us. We're going to be camping on site with lots of other racers and I'm really starting to look forward to it.

In the meantime, I need to figure out if I want to try and race at the Sea Otter Classic a couple of weeks before. I'm starting to lean more and more towards a yes on it. Its a longer ride but its a great place to race and the whole Sea Otter experience is really fantastic. I hope to share it with my family this year and next and the next after that.

But, for now, I've got to get to bed. This has turned into a long, long post and I'm not sure I expect too many readers to read it all the way to here. And that's alright really. Sometimes blogging isn't so much about writing it for others but writing it for yourself (and your kids and wife) and if others enjoy it then so much the better!

The Three Most Important People in My Life

The 3 Most Important People in My Life

Anytime I'm feeling like I need a reminder of why I am working and who I am working for, I can look at this photograph of the three most important people in my life. One of the things I really love about this photograph is that it captures not only my family but much of each of their personalities.

Grady is a ham. He's a happy-go-lucky kid who loves having fun, being a goof (I have no idea where he gets that from) and a great big smile.

Sully is more mischievous and it comes through in his smile. He is like an ambush predator in that he'll wait until the right moment to strike and will grab something of his brother's and run away laughing like a hyena the whole time. He's also a very, very sweet kid.

My wife is beautiful but doesn't particularly like having her picture taken. She'd also been working on trying to minimize a dent in the back door of the Escape so she wasn't really thinking about photos.

Grady actually asked me to go and get my camera to take this photo and I'm really quite happy that I did. This is my family, this is why I go to work everyday, this is who I am working for.

A Walk in the Woods

Today has been a really fun and different kind of day. No pressing deadlines, no heavy work to take care of and some autonomy about what we wanted to do. So I suggested we go for a hike in Nisene Marks State Park, the same woods that I go biking in pretty regularly (but not often enough).

It is always good to slow down, look around and really enjoy the pretty spectacular world that we are lucky enough to inhabit.

It took a while to get everyone ready to go, with the exception of Nande who was ready by the time she'd stood up. We packed a bunch of snacks, drinks and camera gear. Got dressed, hunted for shoes and socks for the boys since they've been in sandals most of the summer. Grady wanted to wear his red rubber rain boots but I talked him out of it as he'd have ended up with nasty blisters and super stinky feet.

We parked at the Safeway as I normally do and held hands across the street leading to the trail head. The boys were excited, Nande was thrilled to be out and it just felt good to be out doing fun stuff with my family. And, oh yeah, the weather had gone from cloudy and overcast to bright, sunny and beautiful which never hurts.

Here's Nande at the end of the hike, still playing, still full of energy and having a great time splashing around in the water. I think she's going to be a perpetual puppy even when she's ten. I actually picked up this rock and heaved it for her, Nande ran under it and glanced off the side of her head. Didn't make her miss a step, I commented that her head is probably harder than the rock.

There weren't too many people out in the forest today but enough so that my boys got to interact with some other kids, Nande got to sniff some dog butt and I had ample time to take some photos and enjoy my wife's company along with my kid's.

It really was a great day and I'm looking forward to more of the same.

The Logistics of 14 Kids and No Husband

A tweet by my friend, Helen, got me to thinking about the new mother of octuplets in addition to the six kids she already had. She separated from her husband last January and is now facing the insanely daunting task of raising 14 children on her own.

Overlooking the scary possibility raised in this article that Nadya Doud may be addicted to having children, there are some pretty scary realities she's going to be facing.

Dressing 14 kids will probably take a couple of hours, feeding them all will take a couple of hours, bathing 14 kids will probably take a couple of hours. Heck, getting them all loaded up into the car, or bus, and secured into their seats will probably take a couple of hours. And I wouldn't even want to think about trying to put 14 children down for bed. One starts crying and you've got a pack of screaming, crying and unhappy kids at once.

I just don't honestly see how it is possible to care for 14 children without substantial assistance.

The fact that all of her kids were conceived via in-vitro fertilization tells me that there are some pretty unscrupulous doctors "caring" for her without regard to the state of her life and already existing kids.

While some are calling the octuplets a miracle, there's a pretty fine line between miracle and 18 year nightmare of screaming and crying.

And then there's also the question of her ability to actually mother each of them. How do you effectively nurture 14 children at once? How do you address and resolve each of their personal issues and problems? The simple answer is that you cannot unless you literally do nothing else and even then you're probably going to miss alot of their problems.

I am often overwhelmed by just my two children, it is beyond my capacity to comprehend having SEVEN TIMES the kids under one roof.

Rough Night

Anybody that has kids will know where I am coming from today. My boys like to sleep in our bed and I usually don't have any issue with it, they fall asleep in our bed, I put them in their bed before I go to bed myself. Sometimes they rejoin us in the big bed and sometimes they do not.

Last night, or more accurately butt-ass early this morning, they both got into our bed and then proceeded to annoy each other which proceeded to wake and annoy both my wife and I.

Once I was awake, my allergies took over and I was pretty well awake and more than a little bit aggravated because I generally don't get enough sleep under the best circumstances. I tend to stay up a little too late because the house is so quiet and I can actually get stuff done without distraction.

After a little while of the boys being annoying to each other and then complaining when the other retaliated, we split them up. I took Sully back to his bed and laid down with him there. And ended up spending the rest of the night in his bed with him rather than try to move back to my bed.

The end result is that I'm a bit weary this morning and the full-on allergy assault isn't helping much at all.

The one good thing about last night is that I had myself a good workout. I'm starting to string them together in bunches again and that bodes well for my overall health. Now I just need to get some more saddle time and I'll be golden.

Unexpected Beach Day

We took advantage of the phenomenal weather today and split up for some fun. I took Grady for a walk in the slough with my new zoom lens to see if I could capture some of the falcons and hawks I've seen around on my bike rides. My wife took Sully and Nande out to the beach for some play in the sun and surf.

Grady and I had a good time talking and taking pictures. He has such a funny sense of humor and is such a sweet kid, sometimes I don't ever want him to grow up. About an hour or so into our walk, my wife called and said the weather really was exceptional and that we should maybe come to the beach.

She wasn't lying by any stretch. It was really perfect out at the beach. Warm sun, almost nobody around save walkers cruising by. We had plenty of space to play and Nande had already gotten one good round of play. She had plenty left in the tank though and I did my best to wear her out by throwing a stick into the surf again and again.

The only downer to the day is just how brutally icy the water is. It literally hurts to walk in because it is so cold. But Sully was having none of that running away stuff. He dragged me out in the breaking surf more times than I might have wanted to. But its hard to say no to the little guy when he's got such a huge grin and is obviously having a truly fantastic time.

The waves were massive and pounding the sand and there was a really severe rip tide a little ways out but we weren't going too far.

By the time it was time to head up, pretty much all of us were beat, ready for a late lunch and then, hopefully, some naps. Sully and I fell asleep for a little bit while my wife and Grady hung out downstairs.

It was a wonderful way to spend this, the last day of the Bush administration and the last day before Barack Obama gets sworn in as the President of the United States of America. A pretty heady concept and one that seems almost like a dream that has finally, finally come to fruition.

Resolutions

Herein are some personal, professional and family resolutions.

Personal:
Continue to battle the middle-aged spread.
Less time on the computer, more time with my family
Try to keep in mind that the internet isn't nearly as important as I think it is
Stop being too sexy for shirt because it hurts
Ride my bike more, drive my car less

Family:
Less tv time, more play time together
More bicycle riding together
More Lego time
Less "don't" and more "do"
Recognize that "me" time is just as important for my wife as for me

Professional:
Expand revenue streams beyond straight work.
Monetize my other blogs to generate some added income.
Keep adding to my tech support repertoire including the unholy hell that is Windows.

This is a good start. I reserve the right to add to these resolutions as they occur to me or life demands it.

Snow Day Wrap Up

Until we started to see the snow on the side of the road, some four plus hours after leaving home, I wasn't convinced we were going to actually get to the snow before we reached the closed off mountain pass at Sonora. But it started with chunks of dirty piled up snow on the side of the road and progressed until the entire hillsides were covered in the beautiful white stuff.

With some trepidation, we decided that the outing would be an all-family outing. That means including Nande, who's not known for being an especially calm or pleasant traveling dog. She has a tendency to breathe heavily, whuffle and whine and occasionally bark for no apparent reason. She can be quite trying on the nerves.

But she'd never been to the snow, nor had Sullivan. And we decided to give it a try. We also decided not to try and subject the cat to the journey and let her have a day at home alone. We hadn't counted on Nande's rather obnoxious flatulence but we dealt with it as best we could. She was surprisingly pretty good in the car aside from when we were on surface streets and she could find things to bark at.

We chose to head up to Sonora because it would give us a chance to stop by my wife's parents to say goodbye to the boys' cousins who were heading back to Colorado shortly.

From Pleasanton we headed east on 580 for several hours making one quick and awesomely delicious stop at an In 'n' Out Burger along the way. Why there is no In 'n' Out in Santa Cruz is a complete mystery to me. They have the best fast food burgers anywhere.

Once we got to the hills, I changed my GPS over to altitude to keep track of our climb. We started out just a few hundred feet above sea level and quickly climbed to about 2000 feet and then kept going up and up and up. We saw snow along the side of the road at around 4500 feet and then the hills were good and covered by about 5000.

Once we'd gotten into the snow country, the next step was finding a good spot to get off the road and into the snow. The first good candidate was a huge open sledding hill but it was also pretty full of people and, we later learned, bottomed out into a creek that got a bunch of sledders soaked. We kept going until we came upon a small turnout with a monster snow removal machine and a couple of cars. It turned out to be the perfect spot for us.

There were some paths already stomped into the snow which made life alot easier for Nande as she got used to this new world. She didn't much care for going off trail for a little while when her first foray ended up with her chest deep in the snow. After she got used to it, she had no problems with going anywhere and really had a ball.

Sully needed a little acclimatization as well to get his snow legs under him but he got used to it as well and had lots of fun sliding face first down small hills, climbing up slippery slopes and, as Grady loved to do too, eating the snow.

Grady was very small when we were last in the snow but he had zero problems getting down with his wintery self. I think we were there for less than five minutes before he started chucking snowballs at me.

My wife only wished she'd had some boots but otherwise had a ball riding down the hill on our shiny new hippy sled (it looked like a plastic tie-dye) and playing with Sully.

I enjoyed the heck out of myself doing some sledding, tossing snowballs at Nande and the boys and taking lots of pictures.

We had prepared for some hard core winter action with extra layers, changes of clothes, waterproofed gear and the like but we really didn't need much of it at all. The spot where we'd stopped was sunny and, maybe not quite warm, but it wasn't cold at all. I found myself peeled down to just my long sleeved shirt in no time.

We literally could not have chosen a better spot with better weather. The snow had a crust on it which made it fun to walk on, sometimes you sank in, other times you didn't. Both Grady and Sully got stuck a couple of times but they took it in stride and really just had a ball. Nande must have run miles and miles in the snow, she had as much fun as anyone else even when she'd step off the trail and find herself deep in the snow. She figured out how to jump like a jack rabbit to get herself free and to continue her off-trail forays.

Major kudos to my wife for suggesting the trip and putting together much of the gear, food and clothes we would need. Kudos to me for driving up and back, thinking to fill up our big thermos with delicious coffee that was so, so, so awesome when we were packing back up to leave. Kudos to the boys for being patient on the drive there and back and major kudos to Nande for going many miles to dispel the myth that she's not a good traveling dog.

Here's a taste of what we saw at the top of the hill. The full sized version is freakin' huge and awesome!

Christmas Scorecard

Yesterday ended up being a long one, as expected, and it was filled with lots of fun interspersed with a few tot meltdowns from lack of naps, too much sugar and the occasional cousin smackdown.

We went to an aunt's house first, as is tradition now, to partake in snacks, conversation and to let as many of the little monkeys play together as possible. One of the presents that had been opened was an elephant toy that blows butterflies out of its air-filled nose so that the kids could catch them in nets. There were a whole bunch of little ones playing with great excitement and Grady jumped right in and basically jumped up and down for as long as the game was going. Sully, who'd just woken up from a nap, needed a slow warmup to the party and glommed onto me with his face buried in my neck for a good twenty minutes after we got there. But he eventually did warm up and was running around like a little howling demon with the rest of them in pretty short order.

We got to visit with relatives that my wife hadn't seen in ten or fifteen years (one of the downsides to having a far-flung family) but it was fun to meet them myself for the first time.

After a couple of hours of visiting with relatives there, we packed up and went to my wife's parent's house for some Christmas dinner and more presents. The boys got a very cool Smart Cycle from their grandma and grandpa. My wife got some doodads and knick knacks that are pretty nice. And I got some socks. Which is fine by me since I always need socks and I'd already gotten some cool stuff from my wife. Oh yes, I also got a Lightning Lab which isn't as cool as it sounds and has no volume control.

By the time we got home, it had been a non-stop nine hours of holiday fun and we were all pretty wiped out. I ended up being up later than expected because of my addiction to Skyrates. And then, this morning, was pressed into assembling the aforementioned Smart Cycle for Grady. Upon completion we realized that we had no D-cell batteries for it. Which sent me to the store when it was still icy cold outside, I had to use the butt end up of a tube of moisturizer to scrape the windows off with until the heater kicked in and cleared the rest.

It was a fun holiday and we've had a pretty mellow follow-up day for the most part. Right now we're trying to get the boys down for naps and failing. I think I'll go and help out the effort.

Update: Forgot that I wanted to note favorite gifts.
Favorite gift to my wife: Two hand carved and painted Tiki masks for her shop.
Favorite gift from my wife: A totally geeky measuring cup with crazy units of measure (6.8 billions grains of flour, one T-Rex brain, 100 penne noodles, etc.).
Favorite gift to Grady: The junior lacrosse stick set.
Favorite gift to Sully: The mini Nerf Vortex football that he can throw a spiral with and that he left at his Auntie's house.

Most annoying moment of the day: Trying to get both Grady and Sully to stand together in front of the tree, look at the camera and both smile. It was very aggravating and I was not successful.

Happy Holidays to you all!

A Familiar Chaos

This photo does a reasonably good job of capturing the generalized chaos inherent in raising two rambunctious and semi-wild little boys. They were having no part of standing still for a photo. You'll note that my wife is holding Grady back and I had to scoop up Sully on the way to get him in the picture.

Not that I'm really complaining (too much). They are usually a tremendous source of fun. I say usually because they can swing the pendulum the other way and can be really, really trying. From the slapping to the high pitched sonic screaming to repeating the same thing eight or ten times to random and non-specific whining.

On the balance though, they are delightful and fun kids.

Grady's latest linguistic foray is into the area of joke telling. We trade knock-knock jokes and he makes up jokes that he finds hilarious but don't make a whole lot of sense yet. They seem to mostly focus on babies that don't have shoes.

Sully seems really far ahead of the game in many areas. From his nearly complete potty training (the power of jellybeans compels him!) to his ability to speak in nearly complete sentences. The kid is about 2 1/2 years old and I don't remember Grady being anywhere near this far along. I guess having a big brother role model has paid off very well for him.

Why Is This Man Smiling?

I have plenty of reasons to smile today.

First and foremost, its election day in America. We are looking at electing this nation's first black president. The election should not be close at all, it should send a very clear signal to Washington that America is tired of the status quo, that America is tired of the divisiveness, that America is tired of watching our economy tank, that America is ready to start the hard work to resume our place as a world superpower.

Second, I won my auction last night (well, early this morning really). I have been in the market for a motorcycle jacket to use for commuting to work because my full on Aerostich riding suit is bulky and hard to deal with once I've gotten to school. My new jacket was a wicked bargain (which is good because I wouldn't have been able to afford it otherwise). I'm rather excited to have an alternative to my heavy suit.

Third, I have a wonderful family in good health. My two little boys are delightfully wonderful guys. Grady has started singing songs he learns in pre-school and Sully is a little chatterbox machine (he's 2 and can string together pretty complex sentences). My wife and I are weathering some bumps along the way but are committed to each other and to our children.

Fourth, this upcoming weekend is a four day weekend with Monday AND Tuesday off. And that's something both Republicans and Democrats can agree on, days off ROCK!

Fifth, Skyrates is currently down but the game is set to start up again next week with lots of improvements. If you wanted to play, the reset is the best time to get in. Everyone is at ground level. Come and join up. And make sure to join the Red Faction and let them know Colonel Fenriq sent you, you'll be welcomed with open arms.

Sixth, did I mention that today is Election Day? Hell yeah!

Because Blogs are about People

I know that I'm one of the first to abuse whatever meager soapbox Intellectual Poison has become over the years since we started up back in 2002. Yes, Virginia, this next May will mark 7 years of blogging. No, I have not solved all the problems in the world but that's mostly because the right people aren't paying attention yet.

Pay attention, right people! Damn! Do you want me to repeat myself? Again?

Anyway, this post isn't about me.

This post is specifically to wish my big sister a Happy Birthday! I won't say how old she is but she's my big sis and I don't know when the last time I took a moment to recognize truly what an awesome, inspiring, strong and cool woman she is.

Skootchy Su, I hope you are having an epically (spell check says that's right but it doesn't look right or sound right to me) fun day with your studly stud boys. We out here on the left coast will raise a glass and toast to you this evening!

Delightful Weekend

We had a cold and windy (some might even say blustery) weekend but we also had a good portion of my family visiting from New England. And anytime I get to see my family is a good time. Even more so when Grady and Sully get some family time with their cousins, aunt and uncle and grandparents.

Add in a trip to a windy beach with four little boys, a stop at a playground on the way out and then a totally kickass sushi dinner and you've got the makings for a pretty excellent, if short, visit.

I do wish we lived closer to my side of the family because I really do enjoy their company, they are interesting people with interesting lives and, of course, I love them. But its just that 15 month long New England winter I COULD hack, I just choose not to. I like my two wheeled toys far too much to stare at them for most of the year.

And now its back to work, back to trying to suss out whether I'm on the shortlist to get pink slipped (i.e. notified about my contract not getting renewed for next school year) and back to helping keep the technology of the educational system running as smoothly as it can given the obstacles put in our way by the Governator and Shrubya.