• Arrive in Portland for a fun weekend getaway (up!)
• Oldest daughter immediately gets sick with a stomach virus (down!)
• Daughter recovers so we visit old friends, eat out, and see the sights (up!)
• Return to Seattle and get stuck in mammoth traffic jams (down!)
• A new work week begins (up?)
• Youngest daughter gets sick with a stomach virus at school, vomits twice at home (down!)
• Daughter still sick the next day but wife volunteers to stay home with her. Daughter recovers (up!)
• I get sick with a stomach virus (down!) but I don’t throw up (up!)
• It snows in Seattle over the weekend (way up!)
• But then it melts and a record-breaking rain storm overwhelms our downspout drain and floods Western Washington (way down!)
• Roto-Rooter clears our downspout drain (up!) but can’t do anything about the regional flooding (down!)
• Wife has birthday and we all go out for dinner and cupcakes (up!)
• Later that night oldest daughter vomits entire stomach contents in bed (down!)
• I’m cleaning up vomit in the middle of the night (way down!)
• The next morning she is fine and goes to school (up!)
• Today, youngest daughter gets knocked down in the school yard, hits head on asphalt, school calls to come pick her up (down!)
• The sky does not fall (up!)

So what next?

This is her one month ago…

Amazing. I love that little gal.

1. I was a teenage vibraphonist. OK, first off, you may wonder what the hell a vibraphone is. It’s like a xylophone but made of metal, the keys are all on the same plane, there is a sustain pedal, and a motor that produces vibrato. Need more information? Try Wikipedia. I began playing the vibraphone at age 12 in my junior high school jazz ensemble. I also played piano, trombone, and all manner of percussion instruments, including tympani. It was a lot of fun. I switched full time to vibraphone and percussion at 15. Our high school jazz ensemble was very good and won lots of awards. I had exactly two vibraphone lessons during my abbreviated career, one given by Dave Samuels, at that time with the fusion jazz ensemble Spyro Gyra, and the other given by the illustrious Gary Burton, who taught me how to play with four mallets. My band instructor was well connected and brought in some great professional players to tutor us. In addition to the jazz ensemble I played in the concert and marching bands. Thus, in the rigid high school classification system I was a “bandie”. It all ended after high school when I decided to attend a college that didn’t have a jazz ensemble, concert band, or marching band. In fact, there wasn’t even a football team (the horror). This was a great disappointment to my instructor who was actively trying to convince me to go to a big state university with a full music program and/or play professionally.

2. I flunked Introduction to Pascal in college. I didn’t just take an incomplete, I really flunked. Got a big old F on my transcript to prove it. My only excuse is that I was at my lowest low in life and wasn’t living in a reality-based frame of mind. I suppose making my living now as a systems administrator is my way of making up for my earlier mistakes. No, that’s not true. I just like computers now and back then they were completely alien to me. (Related bonus item: that same semester I also flunked “Civilization in Question” which was a “great books” class, although the F was not entirely my fault. I was railroaded by a femme fatale in my study group who lied to the professor that I was solely responsible for our group’s dismal performance. The professor, a true bigot and unrepentant man-hater, believed her. I had stupidly left the country for a few weeks and was unable to defend myself. Live and learn, my friends.)

3. I had the chicken pox twice. They say it is impossible, or at least very unlikely, but I had them once when I was a baby and then again my senior year in high school. The second time around I was very sick, the sickest I’ve ever been. I had pox everywhere you can think of, including places you’d rather not think of. I missed the last two weeks of high school. I was granted permission to skip my final exams and still graduate. Given the choice between having the pox and taking my exams, I would have chosen the exams.

4. I made several pretty bad short films. After completing my expensive liberal arts college education, I decided to bum around Seattle and see if I could get into the film industry. Guess what? It didn’t happen. Though I did continue along for quite awhile thinking it could happen. I completed a film and video production program at the University of Washington Extension where we made three short films. For one 16mm color short I was the director of photography. After that experience I decided cinematography was for me. I bought a light meter and the American Cinematographer Manual. I got a gig as DP on a 35mm feature, written, directed, and produced by one of my classmates. It didn’t materialize. Meanwhile, I made short animated videos in my apartment using pre-digital technology as well as an 8mm short for a stage play directed by a co-worker. None of it was particularly good and there was no way to make a living doing it. I’m still I true film buff and worship the silver screen, but I harbor no illusions that I will become a filmmaker someday.

5. I sometimes crave the limelight. This will, perhaps, come as a surprise to even those who do know me. I am an introverted person. I like people, but I prefer to be around only a few specifically chosen people. I don’t do well at parties, or I should say I do well for about the first hour or so and then I start to feel tired and desire to slip back into my comfort zone, at home with my family. However, there are occasions, rare moments indeed, where what I want most is to have everyone in the room talking about and listening and looking at me. This goes back to my days playing the vibraphone. I loved performing with a group on stage, and I loved most of all taking a solo in the jazz ensemble. When your confidence is high and the audience responds to what you’re doing on stage, the feeling you get is out of this world. Nowadays, I only perform and play act in front of my kids, and that’s fun enough most of the time. But sometimes I itch to entertain strangers, whether it be with words, music, or what have you.

Apparently, now is the point at which I am to tag five other bloggers to also list 5 things about themselves that we do not likely know, but I’m at pains to come up with that many. How about Heather, Jim, and Scott (if you’re out there buddy). Have at it.

I admit to being mechanically disinclined, but even so my hydronic heating system, that normally does its job perfectly and without complaint, is a complex beast. The last heating engineering who inspected the thing told me so. I’m completely baffled by it’s workings, so when I see water gushing from a pipe above and slightly to the side of the boiler I panic and run upstairs to turn the thermostat down. Hey, smart guy, turning down the thermostat will not stop a leak! After a couple of head-scratching minutes I remember the electric switch that shuts the whole thing off. Brilliant. So it’s off now but there’s still water spewing out of a pipe. I quickly take inventory of all the little red and yellow levers, valve controls, but the labels on each lever are meaningless to me. Some read “Made in Italy”. I curse and choose the biggest lever closest to where the water seems to be leaking. No effect. More curses. Then I decide to call the heating company, hoping they’ve got someone ready to answer the phone at 6:20am on the coldest day of the year. They do, but she’s not terribly helpful, just tells me that an technician will call me soon. Meanwhile, I think I’ve isolated where the leak is coming from. It appears the bleeder valve at the top of the expansion tank is the source. (I know it’s the expansion tank because it is labeled “expansion tank”.) I grab some pliers and tighten the bleeder valve. The leak stops. Hooray!

But I now I have an even bigger problem. The boiler is off and it is very cold outside. I can’t start the boiler again with the bleeder valve closed or all the air that’s been introduced into the system will clog up the radiators. I’m also not confident that the bleeder valve will stay closed if I rev up the boiler again. I have to wait for the heating technician to arrive and fix it.

By 9am it’s 64 degrees in the house. Luckily, the sun comes out and warms the south facing rooms. I feel grateful to have good insulation. As it turns out, the sun and insulation keep the house from dropping below 64 degrees until 12:30pm, at which point, the technician arrives and saves the day. The culprit was a failed rubber O-ring in the weird device that is supposed to vent air out of the water circulation system. By 2pm the heat is on again and slowly bringing up room temperature.

There’s much sloshing of water to be heard now as little by little air is vented out of circulation, and I’m told that the air should be fully vented within a couple of days. I sure hope that’s the case. Each time the boiler kicks in it sounds as if I’m in the belly of a whale as she gulps in a thousand gallons of seawater. But at least it’s warm in here.

Me: Because it’s faster to type this way once you learn where the keys are.

Lily: Oh great. How will I ever learn that?

Me: In typing class.

Lily: Oh great. You mean I have to go to first grade, do my homework, go to soccer practice, go to piano lessons, and go to typing lessons?

Me: Well, I learned to type in eighth grade.

Lily: Eighth grade? I can’t wait that long. I’ve got some typing to do right now. Here, you sit here [points to the computer] and type what I tell you…

Using “party” as a verb means to revel or carouse, and back in college this typically involved drinking, drugs, and dancing. I’ll tell you which one of those activities was my favorite: none of them. “Partying” to me was synonymous with “having a rotten time with drunk stoned people who can’t dance”. Times have changed, thankfully, and so has “partying” (notice I keep putting that intransitive verb in quotation marks). I’ve made progress developing my “partying” skills, but it’s a struggle, and I still cannot use “party” as a verb. I think it’s really holding me back.

And then today I came across another word, a verb, that was used in such an earnest way that I again realized why I am still uncool and always will be. The word was “clubbing”, as in to go to a series of nightclubs and, presumably, “party” while there. The first thing that came to my mind when reading that word “clubbing” was a white baby seal being clubbed on the head by an evil hunter. So not cool.

I’ll never be one of the cool kids, but at this point I’m too old to care. To the kids out there who are reading this and who also have trouble using “party” and “clubbing” as verbs, I give you these simple words of encouragement, “Rock on! You are totally awesome!”

Me: Oh really, how’s that?

Lily: Cause when you do this (gives me the finger) is means you don’t like someone.

Me: (Smiling) Yeah, pretty much.

Lily: (Gives me and everyone else at the dinner table the finger, big grin on her face as she does it.)

I wonder what happened to my old 2c?

So the year began with a shave and a haircut. There were ups and downs, the kids grew like weeds on a hot summer day and started new schools (the older one kindergarten, the younger one preschool), we traveled a bit (Delaware, Oregon, California), I turned 36 and started wearing reading glasses, we’re still working the same jobs, we’re still living in the same house, we’re still happily married, we’re all in good health, and no one close to us has died.

I know that you’re bored by how my life has turned out so far. What could be more boring to a seventeen-year-old than domestic bliss? I must say that I envy your certainty. You’ve got it all figured out with your physics and your philosophy and your self-awareness. Pretty soon you’ll be far from home proving that “life is elsewhere” and that you’ve got a lot of living to do. You’re smart and some people will recognize that, and those that don’t won’t matter to you. You’ll make a difference in people’s lives, but that isn’t your motivation, is it? Making a difference is simply the by-product of your aptitude.

Damn, that’s cool. You are one cool dude. You’re like this invisible force in the world. No one can see you but they can feel your effect. Rock on!

I’m not going to tell you what you think is wrong. And even though you mostly deny your feelings, I’m not going to tell you what you feel is wrong. I am going to tell you that you’re totally missing the point of living. It’s about connecting with other people. The thing that’s going to keep you going day after day is the bond you make with your family and friends. It’s that simple. Your mind will be a poor companion over the long haul. Make an effort to bring people in close and keep them there. This will provide you with more satisfaction than you could ever imagine. And another thing: be a good father. You’ll know when you’re being good and when you’re not, so just go with your instincts on this one. There’s a learning curve, but you’ll figure it out, because you’re smart.

Merry Christmas, Happy New Year, etc.