The Other Three Bears

Valentines

2011-03-06T21:07:00.000-08:00

Yeah, that was weeks ago, but I'd like to point out that Austin, my favorite kid, went and bought on his own, with his own money, valentine-creating supplies and whipped up some valentines for us. When I was his age I'm pretty sure I didn't give it a thought until maybe the night before and it certainly never occurred to be to go out and get stuff to make my own. He is one cool kid. Here's some of the stuff I got.

Still here!

2010-10-15T22:17:00.000-07:00

OK, the folks are gone so no excuse for eating non-stop. Managed to only gain back a couple of pounds while they were here. Back on the wagon. Sigh.

Urban Life

2010-09-27T22:11:00.000-07:00

The Filipino neighbors - Alex's family - are playing mahjong on their back patio tonight. We joke about them sounding like a bunch of chickens, but really it's a nice kind of sound: exuberant, and perhaps mildly intoxicated. The cook - as we call him - is back again from one of the several-month stints he does on Alaskan fishing boats. Alex lives there with his girlfriend, her parents, and their one year old son Noah. And sometimes the cook. It's an eclectic neighborhood we live in but we know all our neighbors and there really aren't any bad apples. Music from the community center gets a little loud some Saturday nights, and the herd of drunken bikers firing up their choppers when the Queen of Hearts closes can be enervating. Hope, the 92 year old spitfire across the street is out working in her yard most days and likes to chat. Hmmm... I just looked up "spitfire" and the definition is more negative than I intended. She's actually quite nice, just shockingly active and sharp for her age. That's what I meant. Terri, across the other street, asked us what color we'd like her to paint her house since we'd be the ones looking at it. Funny. We seem to run into our friends from the cafe all the time. I almost ran over Nick the other day when he suddenly appeared from a side-street on his skateboard. He was too busy smoking and jamming out to some tunes on his comically huge headphones to notice. He and Sarah have a daughter, Coco, who is Austin's age. Nick still thinks he's 19. Toshi and her sons Cameron and Devin moved in with her parents John and Sylvia (behind us) a while back. I could go on and on, but this is starting to sound like the news from Lake Wobegon. Mostly I'm just rambling in a more or less continuous stream of consciousness as we contemplate maybe moving downtown to the Pearl in a year or two. That would certainly be a higher class neighborhood, and with a pretty great high school for Austin. But then, we know everybody here. This is the first time in my life that I've really felt comfortable with my surroundings. I think we all do. Hmmm...

The House Burned Down Today

2010-09-26T20:01:00.000-07:00

Not really. Just checking to see if anyone's actually reading this. Hellooooooooooo???

Oh yeah, 193 lbs. today. Like watching a glacier melt.

The Drinking Man's Diet

2010-09-23T14:05:00.000-07:00

Anyone ever heard of the Drinking Man's Diet? Looks good to me. Basically Atkin's with cocktails. While Googling how many carbs are in an olive (about 0.5 for green olives, practically 0 for black) I kept getting listings for calories/carbs in various Olive Garden dishes. Um, if you're trying to lose weight, don't eat at Olive Garden. Duh. 193.4 lbs. today.

Visual Aid

2010-09-22T12:21:00.001-07:00

194.2 lbs this morning. I guess as long as there's measurable daily progress I can live with it. My face is noticeably less chipmunky and my jeans fall off without a belt now. Less than 30 lbs to go.

Food Poisoning

2010-09-19T20:26:00.000-07:00

Lost a couple of pounds rather suddenly last night/this morning due to some bad ham. Not recommended.

New Scale

2010-09-15T21:28:00.001-07:00

Pretty exciting, huh? I weighed 198.8 lbs at 5pm. At 6pm I weighed 199.2 because I drank some water. After going pee I was back to 198.8. Finally, an accurate (or at least consistent) scale. We'll see what it says in the morning.
Today I only walked 1.24 miles, but burned 2001 calories against consumption of - ready for this? - 759 calories. No wonder I feel faint. Everyone reading this blog (which means Cari I think) knows how stubborn I am and here's where it pays off.

End of Week 1

2010-09-14T12:35:00.000-07:00

It's been about a week and I'm down about 8 lbs so far, but some of that's probably water. In the past, by eating zero carbs, I've been able to lose about a pound a day up to about 25 lbs and then it gets harder. I'm hoping the added exercise will speed things up. I don't have the patience for prolonged dieting and would rather just tough it out for few weeks. I realize permanent changes must be made as well, but I want to be at my target weight now, not a year from now.

I ordered a new scale from Amazon that will hopefully be more accurate and consistent so I won't have to guesstimate as much. (Is it so hard to make an accurate scale? The last one wasn't cheap and it just sucks.) When I get it, and assuming it lives up to all the gushing reviews, I'll start posting my weight as well.

Thank you Cari for reading my blog! :-)

2.25 Miles

2010-09-13T20:22:00.000-07:00

Not so impressive really. But - 2045 calories burned against 1043 consumed - almost two to one. I have just enough energy to hold my head up and breathe occasionally. I need a new scale so I can see what I really weigh.

3.68 Miles Today

2010-09-11T22:44:00.000-07:00

2.5 or so of these miles were at Silver Falls State Park. Doesn't sound like much, but a mile down into the canyon and another mile back up plus miscellaneous hiking around. Pretty grueling really but at least it was a nice day. Austin was worn ragged as well, so it wasn't just me. :o) Also, I only consumed 839 calories today (against a burn of 2649 calories) if I added right. Am I skinny yet? Not quite. Another month or so to go I think. Ugh. I haven't bothered to weigh myself 'cause the first few days are always all water loss anyway. Maybe tomorrow.

4.54 Miles Today

2010-09-09T21:33:00.000-07:00

...and almost zero carbs. Do you know how hard it is to eat no carbs? Yeah, since if you're reading this you're probably related to me, you probably do. Speaking of which - is anyone reading this? Seems like mostly cobwebs and echoes in here. Spooky.

Improvement, but...

2010-09-08T21:11:00.000-07:00

4.37 miles today - a marked improvement over yesterday. The bad news is that walking only burns about 85 calories per mile. Clearly I'm going to have to diet as well. To illustrate the point, look at the handy little Fitbit graph. Can you see the difference between today when I walked 4.37 miles and yesterday's 1.42 (the two right-most bars)? Not much, is it? The days where I did next to nothing aren't dramatically different from those when I was quite active This supports my theory that while exercise is important for other reasons, you can't walk yourself thin without also drastically reducing caloric intake. I'm consuming about 2500 calories a day and that needs to be more like 1500 to make any significant headway. By the way, did you know a grilled cheese sandwich has 400 to 500 calories? Won't be having another one of those soon. Likewise, our favorite Roundtable pizza runs about 350 calories per slice. Yeah, I usually have four or five of those. Ouch. Widmer Hefeweizen (my favorite beer) has 156 calories per 12 oz bottle. Not as bad as I thought. Could I just have ten of those a day and forgo solid food? Hmmm... Might have other, unintended consequences.

The Rest of the Story

2010-09-07T20:16:00.000-07:00

As Paul Harvey and my sister Cari know, there's always more to the story. My sudden desire to lose heft isn't particularly sudden, and it's not just that I'm too flabulous for my own good. Yeah it's uncomfortable, unhealthy, and I don't like the way I look, but I'm having trouble walking again and that's just unacceptable. It has much more to do with bad knees than being overweight, but I can't help but think the extra pounds are just wearing things out that much faster. Austin seems to be looking forward to me using a cane (like Yoda!), but I'm not so hip (ha ha) on the idea. As it happens, I finally bought a folding cane to put in my backpack in case I get "stuck" someplace, but I'd actually be pretty humiliated to use it. So, there you have it: the carrot of looking and feeling better and the stick of, well, the stick.

Here We Go Again

2010-09-06T20:37:00.000-07:00

According to my company's annual health survey and report, I am overweight. Not just overweight, but at the extreme, extreme end of the overweight scale just before it turns into "obese". Allegedly, the healthy weight for a man of my height should be somewhere between 132 and 167 pounds. I'm going to choose the upper end of that range, thank you, and select 165 as my target weight which means I need to lose about 40 pounds.
I bought a FitBit recently, which is like a pedometer for data geeks. I'll post how far I walked more or less daily and, on the off chance that anyone's actually reading this, you can cheer me on. Or not. Mostly, the point here is that the only thing worse than the humiliation of failure is public humiliation.
Above is a delightful little photo that Rudy snapped a couple weeks ago showing me and the similarly rotund pug doing what we do best: nothing. All I need now is a full length mirror in the bathroom and I'm set.

Darwinism

2010-08-09T21:44:00.000-07:00

Yesterday I was feeling all ambitious and decided we'd lived here long enough without indoor stairs to the basement. I got as far as moving some wiring, relocating a post, and cutting an enormous hole in the floor with the big Milwaukee Sawzall I bought a couple years ago but never used. Sawzalls are handy for this sort of thing, for cutting cars or small houses in half. But you know those old cartoons where the cat/dog/coyote cuts a hole in the floor he's standing on and falls to his doom? Yeah, that's all I'm gonna say about that.

Summer, where art thou?

2010-07-04T11:25:00.000-07:00

Statistics can be misleading, but these seem to tell the story...

Officially sunny days in Portland since April 1?: 4

Last June wetter than this one?: 1888

Current temperature July 4 at noon: 63

It's supposed to get hot in a few days so we can all start whining about the heat soon. :-)

Rain Barrels

2010-05-10T12:09:00.000-07:00

So, I used maybe a thousand gallons of city water to pressure wash two of our 275 gallon rain barrels in the driveway yesterday. I felt like posting a sign that said, "Yes, I do see the irony." Anyway, I've decided to give up on harvesting rain water for more or less the following reasons (look Cari, it's a list!):

1. Our yard is minuscule and these things take up about 100 cubic feet apiece, plus the connecting hoses, manifolds, and other annoying trip hazards.

2. The yard is starting to look halfway decent and it's becoming more challenging to find aesthetically pleasing ways to camouflage four ginormous white industrial containers.

3. Rudy put in a sprinkler/drip watering system that pretty much obviates the need for all that extra rainwater. Or rain, for that matter.

4. There's already a giant white rain storage setup pretty close to us from whence our city water comes. It's called Mt. Hood.

5. I thought it would take a while to collect 1,100 gallons of rainwater. It doesn't. Two or three days usually does it. One if it's really pouring. And seeing as how nothing needs water in the winter when it's raining (duh), what does one do with the water from the remaining seven months of rain between November and June? Generally, we run a garden hose out to the curb where it runs into the street and down the sewer. Kind of like it would have done anyway. Without the barrels. And finally...

6. Nasty things happen to untreated water that sits in a big vat for months and months. Especially if the vat is translucent white plastic, letting enough light through for some amazing photosynthesis. Algae blooms explode into stringy fuzzy phosphorescent, pipe-clogging goo and by spring, the water has more or less solidified into a murky biomass. Interesting I suppose, but not terribly useful. So, then I use maybe a thousand gallons of city water cleaning them out every year...

Hmmm. Maybe I'll look into solar panels...

Terraplane

2010-05-02T12:08:00.000-07:00

I feel like I grew up with this car. Well, not this car, but one just like it. We went to watch motorcycle races yesterday and this was parked, inexplicably, in the middle of everything.

The Girl Effect

2010-04-05T10:04:00.000-07:00

You may have seen this before, but it's still kinda cool...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WIvmE4_KMNw&feature=player_embedded

Let Them Eat Cake

2010-03-26T21:42:00.000-07:00

Austin baked an all-organic chocolate cake today for our anniversary (tomorrow). It was actually pretty good and I'm very proud of him. :-)

Two Fewer Rocks In My Head

2010-03-13T10:27:00.000-08:00

...but two more holes. Since they weren't making me any wiser and were crowding my molars, I had wisdom teeth one and sixteen removed yesterday. I'd forgotten how generally unpleasant the whole anesthesia recovery thing is. Good thing memory loss goes along with it. Blech.

Austin Plays a Beatles Song

2010-03-09T20:31:00.000-08:00

Life is like...

2010-02-12T17:28:00.000-08:00

yep. You never know what you're gonna get.

My Christmas Lego Project

2010-02-02T14:26:00.000-08:00

Not really what I probably should have been working on, but fun...

Cool Old Stuff

2010-02-01T18:25:00.000-08:00

Rudy set up a very nice record player in Austin's room and they went record shopping today. Old stuff can be cool too.

Austin's Indoor Astronomy Project

2010-01-31T11:55:00.000-08:00

Since we don't often see the actual sky around here...

Untitled

2010-01-19T19:46:00.000-08:00

Why yes, it was that kind of day.

Shock and awwwww...

2010-01-07T18:33:00.000-08:00

On the bus tonight (another story), I caught sight of the face of this old guy reflected in the little round mirror that's up front by the driver. He was of European descent, with unremarkable features but with sullen, tired eyes and a drooping head. I was struck by how sad he looked; like something terrible had happened. At the next stop the interior lights came on and I realized I was looking at myself. Ugh.

Dude, where's my car?

2009-12-30T15:58:00.000-08:00

During yesterday's sudden snow storm and subsequent traffic snarl, dubbed "worst traffic ever" by longtime Portlanders and state officials, at least a thousand vehicles were abandoned in Portland and eventually towed. Somewhere. So many cars were towed by so many companies that some people are apparently having difficulty finding out where their car went and how to get it back.
Fortunately I made it home OK, and with the car - though it did take 40 minutes to drive the 3 miles home. Some less fortunate drivers were stuck in traffic for several hours. Think I'll take tomorrow off. :-)

Christmas

2009-12-25T10:20:00.000-08:00

It's Christmas already! Every year we say we're definitely not waiting until the last minute to send out Christmas cards and gifts next year, but it never seems to work out that way. This year we decided to forgo many gifts for the family and spread the wealth (such as it is) to people and families we knew could really use the help. This has been a tough year for just about everyone and we feel very fortunate to have everything we need. Austin has been particularly thoughtful towards others this year and that's about the best Christmas present a dad can get.

Merry Christmas!

Familial Resemblance?

2009-12-06T19:18:00.000-08:00

Strange, but I think Austin's starting to resemble some of his girl cousins...

Someone's Feeling Cranky...

2009-12-02T21:10:00.000-08:00

And it's me. My back went out again on Monday. (What the heck does that mean anyway? Where did it go and when's it coming back? Some say they "threw their back out." I'd like to throw mine out.) But I digress... I can't sleep because I wake up shrieking every 15 minutes when I try to turn over, I can barely walk - assuming I can first stand up, the big painkiller horse pills and muscle relaxants are just useless, and this giant glass of wine is only raising the level of sarcasm. Not that anyone's noticed. Aarghh! OK, I'm done. :-)

Pie!

2009-11-29T20:50:00.000-08:00

Look what our friends from the cafe dropped off! Mmmm...

Happiness is...

2009-11-15T13:14:00.001-08:00

OK, it's probably bad form to make a blog entry that's nothing more than a link to another blog, but...

http://www.happinessprojecttoolbox.com/

We can all use a bit more happiness in our lives. Check it out and see if you don't find one or two things that resonate for you.

Outdoor School

2009-11-02T20:55:00.000-08:00

Oregon has this program/tradition called Outdoor School where sixth-graders go spend a week in the woods and learn about nature. The hand sign means I Love You, not Go Longhorns!

Halloween Pics

2009-10-31T22:50:00.000-07:00

Not much to look at, but a few pics are on our Picasa thingy - http://picasaweb.google.com/pdxbears

Separated at Birth?

2009-10-14T15:56:00.001-07:00

Rudy went to the zoo the other day and found what may be Bugg's long lost brother. You be the judge:

Fall Fun on Two Wheels

2009-10-10T14:59:00.000-07:00

My green motorcycle is still mostly in pieces so Ben let me borrow his green motorcycle for a while. Woo-hoo!

2009-09-06T15:25:00.000-07:00

Went to the Bagdad to see the movie "Up" yesterday. It was a typical Pixar flick - funny, action-packed, and with animation that is somehow always more astounding than in the last movie. For an animated flick with a ridiculous premise, this one really succeeded in pulling every emotional string. By the end of the show several overstimulated children (and a few adults) in the audience were near-hysterical. It was pretty entertaining. Plus, if my Grandpa Johnson had been animated, he would have looked exactly like the main character.

Camp Westwind Photos

2009-08-19T18:24:00.000-07:00

It was just me and Austin this year at Family Camp. Rudy stayed home with Bugg the diabetic pug, watched horror movies and ate cake.

Photos of camp and Bugg's birthday:

http://picasaweb.google.com/pdxbears

Bugg Turns 13

2009-08-18T13:15:00.001-07:00

Austin and the Rain Chains

2009-08-12T22:04:00.000-07:00

Hottest Day Ever

2009-07-29T20:55:00.000-07:00

...well, at least since 1859 or thereabouts. 108 degrees. I'd say more about it if my life force hadn't evaporated. And it's raining in Oklahoma. WTF? (Stands for "Weather's Terribly Fickle", Mom.)

The Week in Review

2009-07-27T19:25:00.000-07:00

Let's see... 100-plus degree heat for days to come, found out Bugg (the pug) is diabetic (two shots a day from now on - yay), major layoffs at work (Why are they still called that? It's not like they'll be calling anyone back. I guess "mass firings" just doesn't sound very good), Duke (our tenant) sliced his hand open last night and came down to bleed all over our kitchen (Brought the health care debate into sharp focus since he lacks health insurance. People in this country shouldn't have to choose between getting a serious laceration stitched up and groceries). Oh, and I can't breathe - at least not easily. Not sure what that's all about.

OK, I guess that was mostly the bad and/or ugly. On the bright side, I'm still employed, which means we can afford things like insulin and air conditioning. And food. And health care. And I have a supportive and caring family. Come to think of it, things are looking up. :-)

Fireworks Fun

2009-07-06T11:51:00.000-07:00

Spent the 4th with our friends Kevin and Kelly and their sons Adam and Jordan. Here are some photos: http://picasaweb.google.com/pdxbears/July42009#

Austin Goes to Camp

2009-06-27T22:08:00.000-07:00

Took Austin to Camp Westwind yesterday and we're childless until next Thursday. This is the first time he's been separated from both of us and it was a little hard to let him go. But, Westwind (see link above) is a phenomenal place to be a camper, the staff is excellent and he's in good hands. I'm not sure he grasps quite yet how fantasticly beautiful the setting is and how lucky he is to be able to go hang out there. He's boarding a ferry in the photo because the camp is only accessible by boat (or helicopter, I suppose). The first day, they give them all a serious talk about how to avoid being attacked by a cougar or bear (never hike alone; stay calm; don't run away; if "buddies" walk too far apart, it's usually the smaller of the two that gets eaten, etc.). I'm not sure how many campers have actually been eaten, but the counselors don't have any problem keeping the kids in their cabins at night. :-)

Anniversary

2009-06-26T18:27:00.000-07:00

Ten years ago today, a certain sneaky friend of mine invited me to go see a movie at the Bagdad Theater. The sneaky part was that he also invited this handsome and charming guy named Rudy. Well, y'all know the rest. :-)

Water Works

2009-06-15T20:02:00.000-07:00

Some photos to go with Austin's blog:

Installing the main water line:

Azalea with Borg-like feeding tube:

Forts and Planes and Growing Pains

2009-06-02T21:28:00.000-07:00

Since Austin didn't post any fort pictures, here's one . He was building airplanes out of scrap lumber on Sunday when he missed a nail and smashed his thumb into a bloody pulp with the hammer. Ugh, it brings back all the pains of childhood - skinned knees and gravel-abraded palms, bruised shins and smashed fingers and toes. It's a wonder we all lived through it.

Austin Flies

2009-05-30T22:26:00.000-07:00

There's a national program called Young Eagles where pilots take kids up and fly them around in their own planes for fun and to possibly develop an interest in aviation. One of the Portland chapters of the Experimental Aircraft Association had one such event today at Fort Vancouver's Pearson Air Museum and Airfield and Austin got to fly in a Van's RV-7a. Harrison Ford is the current Young Eagles chairman and has flown over 250 kids in his own plane (one at a time of course). I thought there might be a slight chance of him being there since he's apparently very active in the club and is in town doing a movie. Well, he wasn't there, but we got Dave Salesky (everyone's favorite Portland weatherman) instead - not doing the news, but flying kids in his plane; very nice of all the pilots to give up their time and planes - at some expense - to give kids a chance to get up in the air. Anyhoo, here are some more photos.

Forty

2009-05-28T21:43:00.000-07:00

I've been imagining and somewhat dreading my 40th birthday since I was about 13 - when my parents turned 40. For all the fear and loathing, it turned out to be a pleasant, unremarkable day. As Eckhart Tolle might say, it turns out that no matter how old I am, it's always now.

Anyway, thanks to everyone for all the notes, cards, and phone calls. I feel loved. :-)

Dozer Day

2009-05-17T10:06:00.000-07:00

Took Austin and Gray to Dozer Day yesterday. Dozer Day is an annual benefit at a local quarry where kids (with some assistance) get to drive real bulldozers, backhoes, and other big tractors, plus some food, games and general mayhem. Transportation to/from the festivities is via giant dump truck. It was a lot of fun and a perfect day weather-wise. Here are some pictures.

Tree Day

2009-05-15T11:44:00.000-07:00

We decided to enclose the side-yard so that Austin would have a semi-secure place to goof around outside and to make the yard a little more private. After some debate, we settled on a hedgerow of arborvitae. My Extreme(ish) Gardening sister might be thinking this would be a great opportunity for me to get my hands dirty and enjoy some dirt time outside in the nice weather. Personally, I'm more of an Extreme Makeover kind of gardener. The way I see it, my part is to look out the window occasionally and make sure the guys are putting stuff in the right places while keeping my check-writing hand limber and at the ready. Should be done today. Whew! :-)

Fat Dad Update

2009-05-12T06:34:00.000-07:00

186 lbs - 17 lbs down, 8 to go. Problem is, I can now see that my goal wasn't low enough 'cause I'm still plenty fat. Should I move the target now or wait until I reach the original goal? Hmmm...

Oh - and since our collective diet has been modified, Rudy says he "accidentally" lost 10 lbs. Whatever! :-)

Fat Dad Update

2009-05-07T21:43:00.000-07:00

189lbs. Now we're getting somewhere. 14 pounds gone, 11 to go. Woo-hoo!

Close Shave

2009-05-05T16:35:00.000-07:00

Well, I accidentally shaved off my beard today. As I was finishing my bi-weekly facial hair cleanup, I spotted one last wild hair and, forgetting that I'd already removed the guard from the trimmer, cut a clean swath right across my chin. Not much you can do with that but finish the job. :-)

Fat Dad Update

2009-05-03T08:19:00.000-07:00

OK, it's May 3, I still have 15+ pounds to lose by the 28th, and 'sensible diet plus exercise' isn't going to make that happen. Desperate times call for desperate measures - or at least radical change. Starting yesterday I'm consuming 0 (zero) carbs on the Atkins theory that consuming little or no carbs forces your body to make blood sugar from stored fat. I've used this method a couple of times before with good results and it took years of senseless eating to gain the weight back.

Cons: Ketosis breath - stock up on sugarless breath mints. Heckish few initial days where limbs feel like they're made of lead before the body figures out it's really not going to get any sugar and had better go to plan B. Elevated cholesterol levels, though I already take Lipitor which hopefully offsets some of this and a few weeks of high cholesterol probably isn't going to make much long-term difference to heart health. Slight chance of long term imprisonment if I murder someone for their blueberry scone.

Pros: Quick results - I think you'll see what I mean as I start posting major losses. Loss of appetite - sounds odd to list this as a "pro", but I feel like I'm a slave to food, always having to eat first thing in the morning, last thing at night, and every couple of hours during the day. The whole blood sugar battle goes away and is replaced with an energy level that is a little low but blessedly stable. Fewer headaches - well, there's the "hunger headache" for the first day or two, but after that (based on past experience), I have few actual migraines while on this diet. Tells me that migraines and blood sugar are somehow related - at least for me. And did I mention Quick Results? It's the only way I know of (short of amputation or childbirth) to lose a lot of weight in a hurry without being completely miserable - especially handy if you have a firm short-term goal, or you're trying to win a bet (or a new pair of jeans - Tessa). :-)

Stay tuned.

Fat Dad Update

2009-04-23T19:36:00.000-07:00

And the scale says...

(drumroll...)

195lbs.

WTF?! (Where's The Food?!)

Either not exercising enough or still eating too much or both. Grrr...

Fat Dad Update

2009-04-16T20:47:00.000-07:00

195lbs. Not losing as much as fast as I'd hoped, but still headed in the right direction.

Fat Dad Update

2009-04-10T19:46:00.000-07:00

198lbs this morning. Instead of the five miles I had planned to walk this week, I actually walked thirteen including the seven mile round trip to work and back today. Unfortunately, by the time I got to work I was ravenous and ate three doughnuts. Oh well.

Fat Dad Update

2009-04-06T09:38:00.000-07:00

200lbs this morning. Not a huge decrease, but I'll take it. I'm supposed to be walking a mile a day during lunch. Only walked four miles last week instead of five, but it's better than none, plus we did a ton of work around the house this weekend. So far so good. :-)

Fat Dad

2009-03-31T12:18:00.000-07:00

On Monday nights, Austin is in a group/class where they talk about and practice social skills. You know - look people in the eye, stand up straight, don't mumble, don't talk about yourself the whole time, etc. (If you're thinking yours truly should go to that class, well, you're probably right.) Anyway, it's after dinner and I'm just sitting down to read the last of "The Tao of Pooh" when Austin decides to try out his new mojo on me. "Dad?" he says seriously. "Yes?" I reply with equal coolness. "I don't mean to offend you, but you could stand to lose some weight," he says proudly. I'll give him a B+ for delivery, and mostly overlook the content because I think Things Kids Should Never Say To An Adult (like "Wow, you're really old!" or "What's that smell?" or "You could stand to lose some weight.") isn't until week six, and it's only been a month.

But the facts remain: Dad is fat, and weak, and vulnerable to injury and weird medical anomalies as happened recently. Dad is turning 40. Dad is depressed. Dad is excessively referring to himself in the third-person.

So what to do? The best weight loss method I've found so far is to tell everyone what I weigh and how much I'm going to lose. So here it is. This morning I weighed 203lbs. I'm going to lose 25lbs - to come in just under 180lbs. That's still on the upper end of where I should be, but it's a start. I'll post my new, improved weight at least weekly so y'all can scoff or applaud, as the case may be. Oh yes, and by my birthday. Stay tuned.

Pretty much sums it up...

2009-03-21T01:42:00.000-07:00

...well, except for the XBox part.

Still My Dream Car

2009-03-14T13:04:00.000-07:00

Lazy Sunday

2009-03-01T16:56:00.000-08:00

It's another gray and drizzly Sunday so Austin and I went to the Bagdad Theater today to see Marley and Me and eat pizza. What a tearjerker that was. Good thing everyone had napkins to blow their noses on. Marley's bad behavior and ultimate demise reminded us a little too much of Simba. Then stopped by Powell's Books on Hawthorne where Austin picked up another Simpson's comic book. Time for a nap.

Creepy Dreams

2009-02-25T21:04:00.000-08:00

When I'm sick I always have the weirdest dreams. Yesterday I dreamt (is that still a word?) that I was very old. Someone was interviewing me - might have been my hundredth birthday. Anyway, I was blind from diabetes and when they asked about my mother I started crying because I could no longer picture her face and though I held her photograph, could not see it.

God Strikes Again

2009-02-19T16:50:00.000-08:00

I was just reading a blog in which my sister referred to a limousine ride we shared in 1989. We also apparently share the memory, though my point of view was from the back seat and hers from the front. Seems simultaneously like last month and a thousand years ago. She also wrote about time. Oh, just go read it. No point in my trying to rephrase what she already put so well. But come back for the God part...

So while I'm reading this, I'm holding one of Eckhart Tolle's books. Not because I'm reading it, but because I need something to set my laptop on since it's becoming uncomfortably hot on my lap and The Power of Now happens to be within my grasp (literally). :-) Austin is playing a song on his guitar that I think is by James Taylor, so I try Google to figure out what it is. The following lyrics pop up and I have one of those little moments of superconsciousness - like a flashbulb going off in my head, illuminating everything for an instant, but leaving me with only the afterimage...

The secret of life is enjoying the passage of time
Any fool can do it
There aint nothing to it
Nobody knows how we got to
The top of the hill
But since we're on our way down
We might as well enjoy the ride

The secret of love is in opening up your heart
Its okay to feel afraid
But dont let that stand in your way
cause anyone knows that love is the only road
And since we're only here for a while
Might as well show some style
Give us a smile

Isnt it a lovely ride
Sliding down
Gliding down
Try not to try too hard
Its just a lovely ride

Now the thing about time is that time
Isnt really real
Its just your point of view
How does it feel for you
Einstein said he could never understand it all
Planets spinning through space
The smile upon your face
Welcome to the human race

Some kind of lovely ride
Ill be sliding down
Ill be gliding down
Try not to try too hard
Its just a lovely ride

Isnt it a lovely ride
Sliding down
Gliding down
Try not to try too hard
Its just a lovely ride

Now the secret of life is enjoying the passage of time

-James Taylor

What's In A Name?

2009-02-09T20:50:00.000-08:00

Old name: Donald Stephen Metz
New Name: Stephen Metz-Lago
Donald is dead. Long live Stephen.

The Master Within

2009-01-24T08:48:00.001-08:00

Another of Malcolm Gladwell's (see post #1) postulates is that the time required for complete mastery of a subject or task is about 10,000 hours. Think about it. Think of a master. Tiger Woods, David Beckham, Michael Jordan. Those are easy. They are celebrities, celebrated for the mastery of their art. Who else? Yo Yo Ma, Louis Armstrong, and any number of "virtuoso" performers, musicians, actors, singers. How did they become masters? According to Malcolm, practice, practice, practice. While it's true that there has to be some degree of inate talent, some basic ability, the thing that sets the masters apart from the rest of us is that they did what they do for thousands upon thousands of hours.

While at the glass factory (see previous post), I observed the workers pulling molten glass from the furnaces, shaping it into a square that was pressed into a sheet, then cutting the sheet into a pane. Each step required the glass to be within a narrow temperature range, so as the glass cooled, timing was everything. I'm not sure whether to describe it as a ballet or a human machine - each component working together perfectly. They had mastered their jobs and it was a beautiful thing. It occurred to me that this is what it once meant to be a master carpenter, for example, or a master mason. Unfortunately, I think mastery of a skill - unless it has entertainment value - isn't celebrated or even recognized as it once was and that's a shame.

On the other hand, if time and practice are the main ingredients in proficiency, then we are all masters of something. What are you a master of?

Ostriches R Us

2009-01-24T08:44:00.001-08:00

For years I sat in an office at work with a street-level view of the back of some industrial-looking business. I always sort of wondered what they did there. The only clues were an enormous propane tank and the occasional sound of breaking glass. Turns out it's this place: http://www.bullseyeglass.com/

The boss invited a few of us to go on a tour. OMG, what a cool place. He (boss guy) is taking glass-fusing classes there and I think I might too. They only do art glass and business is booming. "Where did this come from?" I wondered. "How long have you been here?" I asked. "Since 1974," said our guide. Boy am I a dork.

I guess the moral to this story is... well, I don't know that the moral is. I should just pull my head out occasionally and take a look around. :o)

The Beauty of Democracy

2009-01-20T19:47:00.000-08:00

I don't think anyone will be surprised when I say I didn't care much for George Bush. To me, the primary job of the President is to communicate; to bring Americans together, to uplift us, to persuade us, to remind us of our responsibilities, to tell us what's going on, and to sometimes give us the bad news. In this respect, G.W. was just abysmal. Some say he's a good man who just doesn't speak well, and that may be true. But to me, an inarticulate President is by definition a failure. In this respect, I even think Ronald Reagan was a pretty good president. Though I don't agree with a lot of what he did and said, he was a strong leader and an excellent communicator. I'm an unrepentant (Bill) Clintonite. He was a lot of things, some good and some bad, but damn he gave good speech. Hillary is probably more qualified to be President than Barack Obama, and is certainly more qualified than Bill was in 1992, but she doesn't make me want to stand up and say "Amen!" the way Bill did - or Barack does.

Anyway, the beauty part... The beautiful part is that all these people (well, except for Reagan 'cause he's dead, k?) can stand together on the same dais in support of our newly elected President and our country. George H. W. Bush lost to Bill Clinton and they are now good friends. Al Gore lost to... ok, let's skip that one. Biden lost to Clinton, who lost to Obama, but they will both be part of his administration. No one did a last-minute power grab and refused to step down. There was no military coup, no riots (at least not this time), nor shots fired. Partisan hacks mostly held their tongues. Like clockwork, at the appointed time, on the appointed day, power passed peacefully from the President we chose before to the one we chose this time. This is what America is all about - that we can have real and important differences and still live with each other. That we know that what unites us is a lot stronger than what divides us.

The older I get, the more significant this stuff is. Watching the machinery of democracy in action today was awesome and humbling, and gives me hope for humanity.

On a lighter note, I got to thinking about my sister's comments on the commie-propaganda-style Obama posters. That style has been popular lately for all kinds of things, but it's odd that no one seemed to put it together that the wrong message might be sent. Then again, maybe that was the message. Anyway, here are some semi-amusing knockoffs...

New Year Blues

2009-01-14T21:17:00.000-08:00

Seems like this happens every year. After Thanksgiving, things slow down a bit at work as we become more cautious about breaking things during the year's biggest sales period. Then Christmas comes along with a few days off, food, naps, family visits, comfort and joy, etc., culminating in New Year's Eve - the big fireworks finale to close out the year.
All of this makes January 2nd my least favorite day of the year. The day of the post-holiday hangover. The day reality hits the fan. The day all hell breaks loose. The day life suddenly lurches back into gear. In this part of the country the weather is at its most dismal - dark, wet, and cold going to work; dark, wet, and cold going home. No real light - just various stages of twilight that pass for morning, noon, and night. The fog might burn off by mid-afternoon; just in time for it to start getting dark(er). And all the work we put off over the holidays is suddenly past due and top priority, meaning super-long days and sleep deprivation. And there's not a holiday in sight until Memorial Day. Ugh..

LEGO Meditation

2008-12-29T21:23:00.000-08:00

Wear non-binding clothing. Sit in a comfortable but erect position. Focus on a single thing. As thoughts arise, distractions, let them pass, always returning your attention to the here and now. Suspend judgment. Have faith. Concentrate on the quality of the process, not on the outcome. Naturally, I'm talking about assembling LEGO kits.

Last week, while building the Star Wars LEGO "walker" shown in the previous post, I suddenly realized how meditative the process is. The big LEGO kits (thousands of pieces) require a certain state of mind to assemble successfully. One can neither be jittery nor tired, over-excited or bored. What it takes is a sort of meditative state where the builder is acutely aware and alert, but extremely relaxed and with a certain clarity of mind.

The instructions contain not a single word, freeing the mind from the vagaries of language, and allowing the process to flow from a part of the brain that is non-verbal. For me, the process is so enjoyable and relaxing, the end product is just a bonus.

Bugg vs. the LEGO AT-AT Walker

2008-12-27T22:42:00.001-08:00

Bugg is pretty non-plussed by the whole thing...

Yet more snow...

2008-12-22T11:03:00.000-08:00

Well, we got like another foot of snow over night. We're officially snowed-in and our trip to California is canceled. Bummer. We came to the conclusion that we'd rather be stranded at home than somewhere in the Siskiyous - especially with Austin and the pug aboard. We had baked about 500 cookies to take with us. Hope the neighbors like gingerbread.

It's interesting how a relatively little thing like bad weather makes the world suddenly much smaller. We'll make the rounds later today to deliver cookies and check on our neighbors - particularly the older ones who have a hard time getting out on a good day. We're fortunate to live in a neighborhood that was built before cars were common - where it's easy to know one's neighbors and have a sense of community.
For now, at least we have all of life's necessities: coffee, baked goods, Internet access... coffee...

The photo is of the BBQ grill. Hmmm... maybe we'll have a luau. Leis might be hard to come by, but we're pretty resourceful. To any of you living in places like, say, Boulder or Denver: yes, we are snow wimps. But then, this kind of snow doesn't happen very often here - not since the winter of 1949/50 anyway. If it keeps up, the snowfall record before that was in 1870-something.

Dammit - just as I went to publish this, a big branch broke off one of the (very) big trees and hit the house. Guess I had better go look...

Update: Some advice - If branches start breaking off a tree, don't go stand under the tree and look up like an idiot. Almost got smooshed by a second, much larger branch. Heard a loud CRACK! and ran for the porch. Boom/Crash/Cloud of snow, etc. Some Russian guy trudging by, pulling a sled with groceries on it, laughed and said, "Heh heh! You move just in time, no?" Um, yes, actually, but whatever. Thanks for your concern. Enough excitement for today. Back to hibernating.

More snow...

2008-12-20T21:21:00.000-08:00

On second thought, shopping can wait until tomorrow.
Or the next day.

Goofing around in the snow...

2008-12-20T17:24:00.000-08:00

Snow

2008-12-20T11:51:00.000-08:00

We've been getting an unusual amount of snow for the past week or so. Now that I'm officially on vacation and don't have to drive in it, I'm much more enthusiastic about it. It has been pretty blizzardy all day today; not that much actual precipitation, but blowing around like crazy with dark skies and poor visibility. Our poor Christmas yard animals have experienced blowing snow, freezing rain and high winds, and probably wish they could go back to the store where it was nice and warm and dry. The moose has stood his ground admirably against the wind, but all three reindeer have embarked on brief flights immediately followed by rather graceless crash landings. Fortunately they're pretty easy to bend back into shape.
We're planning to drive to California in a couple of days. Hopefully some of this mess clears up by then. I'm not so concerned about us driving - it's all those other people that worry me. We shall see.

Holiday Arts and Crafts

2008-12-18T21:44:00.000-08:00

We bought these cute "ABC" gingerbread man cookie cutters from Amazon that have teethmarks and a leg, arm, or head missing. They're so fun we can't stop making them. There's something awfully entertaining about gingerbread men in various states of shock and horror. ABC stands for Already Been Chewed. They're pretty popular at the office now that people have figured out they're supposed to be that way.

Rudy made a rule somehow that if we don't make a Christmas stocking every year, we don't get anything. Here are ours this year. As usual, "Pa" wins the decorating prize.

Austin and Rudy made the mini-stockings and gift tags for our extended family. Cute, huh?

God - Part 3

2008-12-17T21:35:00.000-08:00

I have wanted to believe in God my whole life. The universe is just too vast, too dark and too cold for me to be comfortable as an atheist. Sooner or later the sun will burn out or explode. Long before that, the Earth will become uninhabitable. Even if humans take to the stars, escaping the eventual demise of our solar system, the galaxy and the universe itself appear finite in nature. The inescapable conclusion is that all man's endeavors, hopes, dreams, fears, sins and triumphs are ultimately futile. Vanity of vanities, all is vanity. (See Mom, I did read my bible - especially Ecclesiastes.) When I was seven or eight, I asked Grandma Metz about this - about how people go on knowing it's all kind of, you know, pointless. It was an honest question but she seemed pretty irritated that I should ask such a thing. Come to think of it, we grandchildren probably asked a lot of annoying questions, like when Cari and Shari asked her what the definition of "renege" was. If you're curious, I'll tell you sometime. Suffice it to say that Grandma was not amused.

God - Part Two

2008-12-14T20:30:00.000-08:00

When I was a kid, we went to College Church of the Nazarene in Olathe, Kansas. The pastor, Paul Cunningham, was a good speaker in a Garrison Keillor kind of way - pleasant, amusing, and entertaining, if a bit somnambulant. I think he gave the congregation a sense of well-being, orating in inoffensive metaphor and ministerial hyperbole. The services went like clockwork. Folks gathered in the foyer, shaking hands and chatting amicably before taking their seats. The program started exactly on time (and exactly five minutes prior to the arrival of the young Metz family), and a schedule was rigidly observed. In Sunday School we memorized John 3:16 and listened to bible stories. Jesus was a blue-eyed white guy, and God was sort of a cross between father time and Jor-El - not an actual person or being, but a nice idea anyway. No one at College Church spoke in tongues or fainted in the aisles. Or stood up or sat down when they weren't supposed to. Or said, "Hallelujiah" or "Amen" out of turn. Coughing was frowned upon. Breathing was okay as long as it wasn't too loud. At least that's how I remember it.

God - Part One

2008-12-13T23:00:00.000-08:00

This time it started Thursday night when Rudy brought home a CD from Starbucks, of all places. It has mostly classic Christmas songs by people like Frank Sinatra, Lena Horn, Dean Martin, and others and a couple of newer recordings by Diana Krall and Portland's Pink Martini. Anyway, I was enjoying the light and jolly music until I was, um, seized by the last song, Silent Night, sung by Mahalia Jackson. I'd heard of Mahalia Jackson, and had probably heard her sing, but this time I was really paying attention and, well, wow.
Mahalia Jackson is the one singing How I Got Over in the YouTube video in my previous post. Find a time when you can give it your full attention. Listen to what she's saying. See if you're not moved somehow. It's a bad recording of a poor transmission, but light shines through her like a beacon, like she's standing in a shaft of sunlight on a dark day, holding a big mirror aimed at your soul. It is startling and powerful.

Rain Barrels

2008-12-13T16:14:00.000-08:00

The neighbors probably think I'm nuts, watering the heck out of the azaleas and rhododendrons in the semi-solid rain, with sub-freezing temperatures and probable snow on the way. What I'm really doing is emptying 1,000+ gallons of rainwater from our four rain barrels before it gets cold enough to freeze and break something.
We put in a new lawn and a bunch of ornamental plants this summer and thought it was silly to pay to water everything in a place where it rains all winter. So, we bought four 275 gallon rain barrels (well, they're not really barrels, they're actually food-grade industrial containers for storing large quantities of things like vegetable oil or detergent) and daisy-chained them together thinking we'd store up some water for summer. Barrel number one can be seen to the right of the house in the picture above. The only problem was a slight underestimation of how much rain actually comes down the downspouts. After two days, they were full. Wow. Also, while I did consider the effect of sub-freezing temperatures on the hoses and valves, it doesn't get that cold here very often or for very long, so I figured no big deal. Naturally, the forecast calls for the coldest cold snap in a decade with the possibility of sub-freezing temperatures for several days in a row. It's hard not to view water as a commodity. Dumping so much water seems wasteful even if it did just fall from the sky. Oh well, there will be plenty more where that came from.

Wish we'd gone to this church...

2008-12-12T20:23:00.001-08:00

Rube Goldberg meets Mythbusters at Christmas

2008-12-10T19:50:00.000-08:00

In case you somehow missed this...

Merry Christmas!

Austin's Blog

2008-12-08T21:44:00.000-08:00

There's not much there yet, but Austin is starting a blog at http://auzyboy.blogspot.com/

Scrooged

2008-12-06T10:46:00.000-08:00

"Don't put that there, you'll scratch the table!" I cringe for the umpteenth time as I hear the words come out of my mouth. It's all wrong, you see. The ornaments are in all the wrong places; unbalanced, too far out on the branches, too close together, too far apart. The LEGO train is assembled incorrectly, not that the casual observer could tell - even upon close inspection. But I know it's wrong and it's driving me crazy. The whole tree is crooked, for God's sake! We may as well cancel Christmas right now.

"I'm sorry Austin. Put it wherever you want," I say weakly. "Are you sure?" "Yes, I'm sure. Look, I don't really care if the table gets scratched and the LEGO choir looks fine there. I'll be back in a minute." Upon returning to the front room with a glass of wine, I realize that everything actually looks great. I mean, really great. Austin and Rudy (Pa) are decorating and the whole scene is just joyous and beautiful. Rudy loves the holidays and Austin is just giddy, singing and twirling in circles. And here I am in the midst of it with nothing better to offer than criticism and complaints. What kind of jerk shoots down a kid in Christmas' thrall? Bah! Humbug!

Well, that was last week and hopefully today I've redeemed myself somewhat by arranging a small herd of animated, lighted animals in the yard, plus a few extra points for the skiing polar bear on the roof. I am making a sincere effort to be cheerful, or at least less glum, but it takes tremendous energy - for me anyway - so I can only manage it a bit at a time.

It's important to me that Austin have some happy holiday memories. I (rather arrogantly) thought that by adopting Austin I might be able to erase or at least ameliorate some past trauma. What I didn't foresee was the extent to which he would change me. To paraphrase a Christmas cliche, it's not what you get from a person or situation, it's what you give. I guess in that respect, Austin has taught me more about Christmas than I'll ever teach him. So maybe I'm not really Scrooged after all.

Rube Goldberg

2008-12-02T21:48:00.001-08:00

Rube is one of my heroes. Born over a hundred years ago, he had the foresight to see how technological complexity tends to increase to ridiculous and sometimes self-defeating proportions, and he had the artistic talent and good humor to allow us to poke fun at ourselves through his drawings. This picture is of a typical Rube Goldbergian "labor-saving" device: an automatic toothpaste dispenser.
As it happens, my day job is all about dreaming up ways to automate things in ways that are ideally both highly labor-saving and also reasonably reliable. But, at least once or twice a day someone comes to tell me that the toothpaste isn't coming out and I then spend painstaking hours figuring out that the weight isn't falling on the teeter-totter because the cuckoo isn't popping the balloon any more, or that the egg flew through the air as expected, but missed the frying pan. Or that the cat, finally realizing the mouse is fake, got bored and wandered off instead of pouncing on the lever that releases the trebuchet that hurls a banana at the trained monkey who slides two abacus beads to the left which debits your credit card and sends you an acknowledging email. It's like that, except that the reality is far more complex (though equally bizarre). For your amusement, h ere's a good one from someone with way too much time on his/her hands.

Robots-R-Us

2008-11-29T15:54:00.000-08:00

I hadn't realized how many "robots" we have around here until I started counting. There's the mini Lost In Space robot (left), the LEGO Mindstorms robot, the Dirt Dog in the garage, I suppose the iDog counts (marginally), assorted R2D2s, many Star Wars LEGO bots, and the one I just tried out for the first time today and which prompted me to write about robots, the Looj gutter-cleaning robot.
The Looj has some issues. First, it's not really a robot. Unlike iRobot's other products, the Looj is merely a remote control toy, having no internal logic whatsoever. It's kind of a long, skinny tank (the Sherman kind, not the gas kind) with a big rotating auger/flapper at one end that's supposed to flip all the gutter debris out of the gutter and onto the ground where it can be safely ignored. The videos on the website are pretty convincing. It did emit one giant rooster-tail of pitch and pine needles - for about two seconds; just long enough to give me a nice gutter-crud shower before flipping on its side and refusing to go forward or back. I climbed the ladder and righted it, getting another brief muck bath, at which point it ejected one of its treads and leaped from the roof, falling to its death on the rocks below. As this was our first robot suicide, I'm not sure how to react. (Our other iRobot robot, the Dirt Dog, has gone about its business faithfully. Well, there was that one time that it inexplicably darted in front of the car...) What Looji didn't realize is that it will be resurrected tomorrow. We can rebuild him. We have the technology. Better. Stronger. Faster...

Pessimism

2008-11-27T12:21:00.000-08:00

It's Thanksgiving, so I thought I'd write a few words about how bad everything sucks. Just kidding!
OK, here's the thing: In the past year or two, I've come to realize that I have a talent, if you can call it that, for finding flaws in things. I have had this since childhood - maybe since birth. I'm great at those tests where you have to figure out what's different in picture B, or what's wrong with X. This ability/habit/curse is so dominant and pervasive that my world view is, and has always been, a sort of negative image of reality, like how a photographic negative shows you where the light isn't. This comes in handy at work for things like debugging code, or figuring out where some internal (computer) process ran amuck and crashed. It's not so handy for things like making friends or maintaining personal relationships. It seems that some people don't like having their flaws pointed out regularly, even when I'm just trying to be helpful. Weird. In elementary school, I was on a first name basis with every principal I had (and there were many). This was mostly because my teachers had low self-esteem and couldn't deal with a 7-year-old pointing out things that were probably obvious to everyone, but which, for some reason, no one else actually said. Things like, "I don't think it's fair to be held accountable for missing words on our spelling test that you can't even pronounce correctly due to your speech impediment." Or - I remember this one clearly - when my teacher said, "You got a smart mouth!" I replied, matter of factly, "The word is sarcasm." (Then rolled my eyes slightly as if to silently add, "Duh!") I swear I could actually see steam rise from her forehead in the brief moment before being whisked off to the office. Unfortunately, in the intervening 30-plus years, I have not grown significantly more emotionally intelligent. If I had a dollar, well maybe a hundred dollars, for every person I've royally pissed off in my life so far due to my big mouth and chronic lack of empathy, I'd probably never have to work again. (Hmmm... could being a jerk be lucrative somehow? I could get a radio show where people call in and I tell them how stupid they are. Oh wait, that's been done.)
OK, now that I've had this revelation, what to do? I figure that if I can somehow turn this ship around and be hopelessly optimistic for the second 40 years of my life, then by the time I'm dead I'll be basically even. Is such a thing even possible? Comments? Suggestions?
Oh yeah, Happy Thanksgiving!

Charter School Conundrum

2008-11-25T21:41:00.000-08:00

I went to Austin's school today for the fall parent-teacher conference. His teacher is nice enough and the school isn't terrible, but I can't help but wonder if he might be better served somewhere else. We live in a typical (if there is such a thing) urban neighborhood and the student population reflects this demographic diversity. Hypothetically, cultural diversity in a school is a good thing, exposing kids to other cultures, languages, and points of view. In reality, finite resources are expended disproportionately on bringing everyone up to a common but low standard and there's not much left for those who would excel.
Before I became a parent, the idea of charter schools enraged me. That some group would siphon money from the public school system to set up their own flavor of school, following whatever agenda they may have, seemed outrageous. I thought those people should put their efforts into making public schools better rather than withdrawing what little support they have, effectively sending public school into a downward spiral of reducing revenue and diminishing value.
Now that I'm a parent, I realize that good parents will do whatever they need to do to provide the best possible education and experiences for their kids. If this means starting or joining a charter school, homeschooling, or moving to a better public school district, then so be it. Plus, charter schools are public schools, and what could be more democratic than communities organizing into groups where their children's needs can be best served. Interesting what a little perspective does for one, huh? Friends of ours put their son in a charter school this year and are quite happy with the results. I would not have believed it, but I must say we're leaning in that direction too.

Outliers

2008-11-24T20:12:00.000-08:00

So, I'm reading Malcolm Gladwell's new book Outliers about why successful people are successful. (I could write a book about how to be unsuccessful, but that's another story.) The premise is that while we all grow up believing that with a little intelligence, perseverance, and lots of hard work, any among us can pull ourselves up by our own bootstraps and rise to super-stardom, the reality is that by far the prime ingredient in success is just dumb luck. Depending on how you look at it, this news can either be seriously depressing or wonderfully liberating; explaining both why some people work themselves to death and just can't seem to catch a break, and also how George W. could be president of the United States - twice! (thought I'd just get the political thing over with in my first blog!) Anyway, I'm only halfway through the book but I'm not sure I quite buy it. Cynic that I am, I think Mr. Gladwell's primary intent is to make money by selling a lot of books, and not many people would be interested in pure facts if they were not sensationalized somehow. Hmmm... somehow this turned into a book review. Oh well.
Tune in tomorrow when Uncle Wiggily gets cream cheese on his ear and Skeezicks goes in search of fresh bagels...