Category Archives: Family

Blah, Blah, Blah Defined

2 Replies

Want a definition of Blah, Blah, Blah?  It's the noise coming out of a Dad's mouth when he continues lecturing one of his kids even though he knows that kid has totally tuned him out.  You know what I mean.  The Dad starts off with expressions of exasperation and bewilderment over something the kid has failed to do, and because this is an ongoing issue he quickly moves into lecture mode which he knows is useless based on the glazed expression in the kid's eyes, but because he's ticked off he can't help himself and keeps yammering on until he ends up saying something like, "You have so much ability, but you only use 10% of it. You have to get it together, you have to decide it's time to apply yourself.  Your Mother and I can't do it for you, you have to make that decision for yourself…."

Another sure sign that Dad's entered BlahBlahBlahLand is that his wife, the Mother of the kid, is giving him the "You're an idiot" look over her shoulder as she walks out of the room because she can't stand the spectacle any longer.  Of course she's right, but at least Dad feels like he's done something.

15? 15!

Leave a reply

Hard as it is to believe our youngest, Justin, turns 15 today.  His 14th year was a wild one, what with entering high school and growing approximately two feet in just 12 short months.  He's still an avid reader, Xbox 360 player, and avid reader. Did I say that he's an avid reader?

Justin may be the quiet one in the house, but that doesn't mean he's a shrinking violet.  His brother and sister can ride him pretty hard, but when he's had enough he'll bow up and stand his ground, and now that he's taller than both of them I think they know that their time of sibling dominance is quickly coming to an end.  That said they don't fight nearly as much as I rumbled with my brother and I'm pleased to say that our household is mostly peaceful, if not always harmonius. Justin is a big part of that and I'm eternally grateful for his quiet, calm manner.  Now if I could just get him to move even slightly faster than the proverbial tortoise!

His mother and I can't imagine what our lives would be like without him and we know without a doubt that he's brought us an infinite amount of joy that we would never have realized without him.  

Happy birthday J.  It's been a fantabulous 15 years and I can't wait to see what the next 15+ bring.
(For those of you not reading this on my blog you can see a photo set of Justin from our Flickr account at http://www.flickr.com/photos/practicalink/sets/72157600537029755/show/) 

Dad is from Mars, Mom is from Venus

Leave a reply

This morning was an anxious one for our family, but I won't get into the details since it involves one of the kids and I'm not into airing the kids' personal stuff (unless of course they tick me off).  Anyhow the morning began with visit to a doctor and while everything isn't perfect the diagnosis ended up being a relief.  What made the rest of the day interesting was the difference between mine and my wife's perceptions of the doctor's words.

Basically what Iheard was that the doctor had run a battery of tests, found a small anomaly that was nothing to worry about and that he also suspected a related issue he was going to refer us to another doctor to check out, but that issue wasn't very serious either.  On the other hand my wife heard that there's an anomaly and our child is headed for a lifetime of appointments with specialists.  

It would probably be easier to explain how we might come to such different perspectives if I did go into details, but that's a no-go so what I will say is that this is a very common occurence in our house.  We joke all the time about what an optimist I am and what a pessimist she is, and we also joke about how she is so detail oriented and how I can forget three items from a four item shopping list.  If we spend ten minutes in a room she can tell you how many pictures are on the wall, the color of the furniture, the color of the carpet, etc. and I could tell you it had four walls and a ceiling.  On the other hand I can tell you which TV show is based on an Elmore Leonard short story (Justified – a show I highly recommend), give you a quick rundown of the day's news and perhaps even tell you what was trending on Twitter, but Celeste couldn't give a tinker's damn about any of that.  

The plain and simple truth is we've been married for over 19 years but I'll be damned if I can figure out how we get anything done.  Actually that's not true; I know that our strengths and weaknesses are complementary and that means we're quite effective at getting stuff done, but I'd be lying if I didn't say it also means that we've had our moments of non-Zen.  I can drive her to distraction with my distraction, and her determination to do things systematically can make my eyes cross. 

What this means for the kids is that they have to deal with a two headed monster made out of Kevlar.  When I'm left to my own devices with them (happens a couple of times a year), things tend to break down around the house.  In laymans terms life becomes a crapfest.  Children subsist on Pop-Tarts, dogs eat cat food and no one sleeps for more than four hours.  On the other hand if I'm out of town the household runs fine, but the kids end up telling tales of the house being invaded by a mad (mad as in pissed off) woman who can't understand why they won't do what they're supposed to do.  Put the two of us together though and we're one well adjusted parent.

Back to this morning. After the fun trip to the doctor was over we both updated our Facebook statuses (yeah, I know). Mine basically said, "The kid's all right and now we just have to see another doctor and we'll be good to go."  After reading that my wife wrote, "I wish I could be as positive as my husband. My glass is empty – not even half full."  I read that and called her so we could compare notes and make sure I hadn't "misremembered" what the doctor said.  I hadn't, and neither had she, but our interpretations were polar opposite and that's just how we roll.  What that means for our son is that he'll have one parent keeping an eagle eye on him to make sure nothing goes squirrely and the other telling him to relax and eat a Pop-Tart. I think that's a good thing.

The Oil Spill You Probably Haven’t Heard About

Leave a reply

Let's file this in the "it's a huge small world category."  I have family member that's on a National Geographic cruise that departed from South America and is making stops at a variety of remote locations including the Tristan Da Cunha island group.  Yesterday I receieved an email from her with an update on the trip, and in it she mentioned an oil spill on Nightingale Island that they were seeing first hand and that I'd not heard about at all. Here's part of her update and a picture she sent with it:

OilOnPenguins
 
Not sure how much news has been generated in the US, but the wreck of the cargo ship that dumped diesel fuel (not crude, as reported by the NY Times) and a shipful of soybeans into the ocean was at Nightingale Island, which is where we spent the day.  It is more than a little unsettling to see penguins and baby seals black and shiny with oil.  The penguins are rock hoppers, which are the ones who look under normal circumstances as if they have a perpetual bad hair day, with bright orange topknots and slanty eyes.  There is a photo of some of them trying to get rid of the oil attached.  Nightingale is uninhabited, but full of birds – buntings, albatross, petrels, etc.  We had a zodiac tour around the base, and then headed toward Inaccessible Island, where the seas were simply too rough even for that.  We then headed back to Tristan de Cunha, the island we visited yesterday, to drop off some of the conservation staff we’d picked up and to refuel.  As I write this, the refueling is going on.  It was delayed because the ship from which the fuel is coming had been pressed into service to bring 750 penguins here so that the Tristaners can go about cleaning them up.  The little orange boat you see in one of the photos is the fishing boat from Tristan that brought these people out, so that they could round up the penguins.

Today I came across this post at the National Geographic Travel & Cultures site.  Kind of wild that I have family traveling with the author of the post, but also kind of scary what a "minor" oil spill can do:

A week ago today, (March 16), the MV Oliva (Valetta) crashed on the rocks of Nightingale Island, spilling its cargo of soybeans and some 800 tons of fuel oil onto the coast. The ship was crossing the Atlantic from Brazil to Singapore when for reasons still unknown, it hit the island’s coast at a speed of 14 knots.

The captain and all crew escaped the vessel, but by last Saturday the ship had begun to break up in the heavy surf. The oil slick had spread around the island and then out to sea in the direction of Inaccessible Island.

Our ship, the MV National Geographic Explorer arrived at Tristan Da Cunha yesterday and sailed to Nightingale Island this morning, as intended on our original itinerary with Lindblad Expeditions. Instead of mere bird watching, we were met with the disturbing sight of penguins and seals coated in sticky black oil.

Nightingale Island is home to some 20,000 of the endangered sub-species of Northern Rockhopper Penguin. Sadly, these are the birds that were hit the hardest—thousands are expected to die from the effects of the oil spill. While this spill is relatively minor in comparison to so many in the world today, it represents a major calamity for the fragile birdlife on pristine Nightingale Island and a heavy blow to the small group of islanders of nearby Tristan da Cunha…

A crisis response team had arrived by tugboat from South Africa—a four-day journey by sea. Commercial divers were on the scene to help dismantle the shipwreck and attempt to prevent further fuel from spilling out into the sea.

Another fear is the introduction of rats from the ship to the island, which could decimate the local bird population, including several endemics to the Tristan Island group. Three different types of rat traps had been laid on the island, and according to Tristan’s conservation officer Trevor Glass, no rats have been seen or trapped so far.

 

 

Life Without Baggage

3 Replies

Yesterday I finished my most recent junk-food-for-the-brain courtesy of the Forsyth County Public Library (Lewisville Branch) and once again fantasized about leading a life of no possessions. The eponymous hero of the Jack Reacher series lives a life traveling around the world free of possessions besides his ID, a debit card and the clothes on his back and I often envy him his spartan lifestyle. (He also ends up killing lots of people, but that's really a superfluous part of the plot as far as I'm concerned). Don't get me wrong, I love my family and I love our household, but yesterday also featured the latest in a long series of trips to the local dump to drop off yet another load of stuff we no longer need, so I was in that mode of Spartan-envy familiar to at least a few suburbanites. I'm also a gainfully employed, married, middle-aged father of three teenagers who's freedom of movement is roughly equivalent to that of someone doing time at a halfway house.

So yes, I have a kind of "grass-is-greener" envy whenever I read anything about people galavanting around the globe with nary a bag to check, and there are people doing just that:

I've done it. Traveling with no bags is gloriously liberating. You move fast, close to the ground, spontenously.  You feel unleashed, undefined by your possessions. It is just you and the world. I am convinced that with less stuff to manage you think different. You learn lots, fast.

I've done a few very short trips this way, and once I took a month-long journey in Sri Lanka without baggage. I would not want to travel this way all the time, but once you go with none, it is much easier to go with very little. It's one of the oldest truism in the world: the less you travel with, the more you take back.

There are four modes of no-baggage travel these days:

1) Total Nada

2) Just Pockets

3) Day Baggers

4) Minimalist Borrowers

Personally I dislike body odor enough that I seriously doubt I'd succeed at totally bagless travel, but it's fun to think about it. 

 

Proud Parents

Leave a reply

MichaelFinanceAcademyRecognition
Our oldest is hitting the home stretch of his high school career and last night featured one of what I think will be many landmark events for him over the next few months. In the picture to the left he's receiving a certificate and handshake from the WSFCS Board of Education chair Donny Lambeth.  The occassion was the recogntion of Michael and his classmates who participated in the Finance Academy at West Forsyth and East Forsyth High Schools.  

At the end of his freshman year Michael attended an orientation session about the Finance Academy and he decided then to commit to a three year program that integrates the principles of finance and business with the students' core curriculum.  It also provides the students an opportunity to intern at local businesses the summer after their junior year, and last summer Michael was able to intern downtown with the city government. 

As Chairman Lambeth said last night, the news is full of kids doing the wrong thing, so it's nice to see kids being recognized for doing the right thing. It was definitely a proud moment for Michael's parents.

Becoming a DJ of Thought

Leave a reply

You ever wake up and realize that you're the dim bulb in a chandelier of very bright lights?  Well, that's me.  I consider it one of the great gifts in my life that I'm surrounded by people who are far brighter, funnier, talented, etc. than I am.  It's not false modesty; it's truly a blessing that I'm very grateful for, because it's fantastic to constantly be challenged and stimulated by those around me.  A perfect case in point is this Ignite presentation by my cousin Adam Good where he talks about applying the remixing practices of DJs to knowledge.  If you're like me you'll think, "Man that's a cool concept, but I'll be damned if I can explain it."  That's okay, because Adam does a great job explaining it himself.  Enjoy.

 

Losing Steps

1 Reply

I've played basketball my whole life, and like anyone else over the age of 30 I've lost a step.  To be honest now that I'm midway through my 40s I've lost more than one step, but that doesn't stop me from dragging my old carcass out of bed a couple of times a week to play pre-dawn hoops – something I swore I'd never do before I aged into bladder-induced early morning awakenings.  Of course my mother is aware of this, and like my wife she finds my love of a young man's game rather foolish, which is why she emailed me this poem from Stephen Dunn:

Losing Steps

It's probably a Sunday morning
in a pickup game, and it's clear
you've begun to leave
fewer people behind.

Your fakes are as good as ever,
but when you move
you're like the Southern Pacific
the first time a car kept up with it,

your opponent at your hip,
with you all the way
to the rim. Five years earlier
he'd have been part of the air

that stayed behind you
in your ascendance.
On the sidelines they're saying,
He's lost a step.

You can read the rest here. Truth be told I didn't have much of a step to begin with; one of the advantages of being naturally slow of foot and without the ability to jump over a phone book is that my game has always been predicated on overcoming my lack of athleticism.  Still, getting even slower is no fun.