Post-Christmas

The end of the week has been a blur, mostly due to a complete inability on my part to separate the activities of the home with that of the office. In short, my brain is worn to a frazzle.

Monday and Tuesday and Wednesday were an exercise in frustration. Trying to finish up the shopping and, at the same time, reviewing documents and emails and graphs and charts for the eager-beaver employees who won't be able to enjoy the holiday due to the fact that they were not really employees anymore but contractors (the haven of security for all those engineers who got laid off back in July) and so don't get any paid holidays; being pounded by bad weather and wondering whether it would even be possible to make the trip down to Aunt Susan's; driving around on the ice and snow and trying to avoid serious accidents.

Thursday and Friday were a wonderful diversion from the cares and worries that had been filling my mind. The roads were relatively clean for our trip. We had an excellent book-on-CD which make the miles pass quickly. Aunt Susan and Uncle Bob were, as always, hospitable and full of conversation. There was plenty of good food and lots of cousins to play with. We had a nice gift exchange, then sat around chatting and swapping stories, even got in a game of Scattergories. Intending to spend the night this time, we didn't have to worry about getting out on the road late at night on icy roads. We slept in Friday morning.

The roads were quite icy Friday, but we weren't in a hurry to leave so spent them morning relaxing, enjoying more food and excellent company. Cousin Cindy brought her girls over so our girls had a chance to play with them again; I helped Uncle Bob with a couple things at the office and in the shed. We finally left around four.

Got home in time to get cleaned up again, then headed out for Cheryl's birthday dinner. Afterward, we went back home to watch her open presents. Then, as we were all quite exhausted by this time, we went to bed.

Today - Saturday - was not as productive as I might've hoped, but the rain was falling rhythmically against the roof all night and that always makes us feel extra drowsy, so we slept in a long time. Then we took it easy all morning. Didn't actually "do" anything until afternoon, and that was not much more than going to the library to swap books, then going to the store to get some milk. Pretty boring.

But I like boring.

The girls were alternating between riding their scooters downstairs in the basement and playing Barbies up in their room; Adam was playing on his DS and plotting more Heroscape strategy; James was playing on his PSP (which he bought with his own money). I worked on the basement a bit, putting up a couple 4x8 walls. Cheryl caught up on her reading and research.

After dinner tonight we played a family game of "Saboteur", a fun little card game which was introduced to us by our game-obsessed friends at a Christmas part last weekend.

Looks like it will be an early bedtime tonight...

Merry Christmas!

Six-thirty in the morning, and Adam is making waffles for breakfast. Mary is "sorting" her presents. And I'm bleary-eyed after being woken by the cats, who were evidently starving to death and couldn't wait for daylight to have their vittles.

We're waiting to hear on the road conditions to decide whether to head south to Aunt Susan's or not. Last night coming out of the Christmas Eve service, it was nothing but ice all over the place. The temperatures aren't expected to get above twenty-five degrees (F) all day, so unless they're laying down some serious tractionary particulates, it'll be one long slide ride!

Merry Christmas to all, and to all a safe and happy day!

Snowstorm

Ten inches of snow on the ground overnight, and nearly everything was shut down. The road budgets were cut this year due to numerous shortfalls, which led to a dearth of sanding trucks and plows, so the roads were uncleared. Only the tracks of the four-wheel drive trucks cut through. The kids didn't mind. School cancelled. I didn't mind. Couldn't make it out of the driveway to get to work. Still had to take part in some telecons. Oh, well.

The downside was, of course, that we couldn't attend the long-awaited potluck at our friends' house, the ones who organize the Game Night once a month. We tried. Took a little gambol downroad (after nearly getting stuck in our own neighborhood due to high snow and low van clearance) and found the primary roads in less-than-adequate condition, and the secondaries a total disaster. Returned home, called to make our apology, and then settled in to a nice little dinner followed by a game of Spiderman Monopoly.

Winter in Michigan. Just lovely.

Got a call from one of our friends back in Washington, bragging that they'd gotten twelve inches (we'd gotten only ten). At least we have lots of plows, even if we can't afford to run them. Out there, everything just shuts down.

We won't see the ground clear until March. All their snow will probably melt away by next weekend.

Snowstorm

We've had a huge of snow dumped on us over the last few days, but it really hasn't added up to much.

The roads are a mess, the ground is white, the kids are having fun with the sledding, and the wind is cold. I'm happy to be inside where it's warm.

We went to the church Christmas Craft Bazaar today. That's where the kids get to go to a whole bunch of different craft stations and make stuff, the parents get to wander around buying espressos or mochas and perusing the bake sale goodies, and a few of us hardy souls get up on the stage and play Christmas carols.

Adam played a pretty piano piece. James and I did a set of guitar songs (he's picked up the guitar fingering like nobody's business, and he'll be way past me in a year or two). Cheryl and Mary played a couple pieces. I was hoping we'd get the whole family doing the von Trapp thing, but Deb has this serious stage fright thing going on, so she bagged out. Eh, whatever. We all had a great time.

Then we ran over to the library, which is a fatal mistake for our family if there is any work to be done. Because the minute we get home, everyone goes off to read their huge stack of books, and the house becomes as silent as the grave. Got a lot of great readers here, with all kinds of various interests (Adam got a Latin book, James got comic books, the girls got Fairy books, I got Star Trek and James Thurber and Dave Barry books, and Cheryl got books-on-DVD from her current favorite series). The only way we got anyone back out of their secret reading places, was to announce it was time to put up the Christmas tree.

And even then, we had to break out the goodies we'd gotten at the bake sale. Fudge, chocolate-chip cookies, etc. So there were a bunch of folks sitting around here reading books and snacking. Probably not good for weight control. But, after all, we gotta fatten up for winter, right?

I'm still feeling pretty fat. Got down to within 5 pounds of my old weight from the summer, then had all those snacks today. Looks like I'll be fasting tomorrow!

Supposed to snow tomorrow, too. It'll be interesting getting to church. Good thing we're only five minutes away. It'd be easier if we lived someplace where the weather has fewer extremes, like Malibu, but we can't afford that kind of lifestyle. And I'd miss having real seasons (but you can bet I'd be at Yosemite nearly all the time!).

Well, back to the old grind. Got some more homework this weekend.

[p.s. Happy Birthday, Lora!]

I'm Thankful to be Here

It still amazes me to sit here in my comfy chair in the year 2008 typing words into a tiny computer surrounded by my wonderful family in a nice house in a nice little town with plenty of food, heat, clothes, and far too many toys.

We enjoyed two Thanksgiving dinners. Yes, we're spoiled rotten.

The first one was just down the road a bit, with friends from church. They have kids, we have kids - hey, it was a natural fit. There was lots of great food, lots of great games to play, a movie to watch (Wall*E), and then we adults played cards and yapped. Then we Meyers drove home while listening to a book-on-DVD. A very fulfilling day!

The second dinner was down at Aunt Susan's, which is only a few chapters - er, miles further down the road. We arrived a bit early, which gave Adam time to catch up on some missing sleep and the rest of us time to sit around and chat.

We had to wait a bit for some of the folks to arrive, those who were working down at the shop (Uncle Bob and cousin Mike) or elsewhere (Eric and Cindy), and all the guests (Mike's girlfriend's family, Andrew's girlfriend); but after awhile, everyone was there, so we "fell to" and tried to make a dent in the incredible amount of food.

It was an epic battle.

After a few hours of eating and chatting, we had to drag the kids from their fun (interacting with all the other little second-cousins or whatever you call 'em) and head home. Susan and Bob had hoped we'd spend the night, but unfortunately, my boss gave me a huge pile of homework to do for Thanksgiving, so we had to get back so the weekend could be spent in misery instead of hanging out with relatives.

Oh, well, perhaps we'll get back down there at Christmastime.

In the meantime, I hear the homework calling me...

Thanksgiving on the Way

I still haven't gotten into the habit of updating the blog every time the laptop is powered up. Writing is not a disciplined, habitual exercise for me; this explains why I don't keep a diary. It generally requires a significant event to inspire my thoughts, and a significant amount of free time in which to put those thoughts together into some semblance of rationality.

And, after all, most of the people who visit this blog are not interested in my pontifications; they're just checking to see if anything interesting has happened to the family, if there are any new pictures to look at, in the same way they browse through the news websites during breakfast to catch up on world events. That's not a bad thing; it's just the way things are these days when all the information in the world is at your fingertips. So if we manage to entertain someone for a few minutes with a new picture of the kids or a cute story of our lame attempts at keeping our house in repair, the blog has served its purpose.

There are many blogs out there which are updated far more frequently, have far more entertaining content, and are far more worth your valuable time. Is this medium of communication effective for our purposes, then? Perhaps, considering the alternatives. The telephone has never been my favorite instrument; my hand cramps at the thought of putting pen to paper; and there would be no point to writing this blog for the people with whom I converse on a daily basis face-to-face because they already know what is going on around here.

And truthfully, most of the time there is nothing of compelling mutual interest to share. We go about our quiet lives day to day, adhering to our routine, getting our homework done, trying to keep the house in good order, looking forward to the weekends so that we can have a little time to relax from the daily grind.

When something out-of-the-ordinary occurs, or a remarkably potent thought strikes me -- one worth an hour or two of devoted concentration -- it might inspire me to sit and write about it. Or if I happen to catch a particularly interesting picture of a family member which might be of general interest. But it's not like I'm discussing philosophy or the latest technology or politics or religion or any of the topics which drive the truly interesting websites.

Truthfully, there are many subjects on which I could write a thousand words or more, but they are of little interest to anyone reading this site (unless you really enjoy old geeks talking about "the good old days"). And I don't have time to go to all the forums on all the other websites to become involved in discussions with people who have managed to gather huge numbers of readers.

Every minute spent on this blog is a minute not spent with my family. And if there is one thought that is always lingering in the backwoods of my mind, it is the awareness of the passage of time, the shortness of life, and the rapidity through which my children are passing through this phase of it. They are growing so quickly. Some days I'm afraid to close my eyes because when they reopen, my children will have grown up and moved away.

The funeral down in Indiana only brought this feeling more into focus.

I didn't know Uncle Lee very well. We didn't spend much time in Indiana in my youth, and even if we had, most of my time would've been spent in the company of my cousins rather than my aunts and uncles. Nor was much of my young adulthood spent there, since I chose to move to the west coast right out of the gate (and was promptly sent to the east coast). To the best of my knowledge, though, Uncle Lee was always funny and happy and jolly and content. Certainly his health was never the best, at least during the time I knew him. Yet he was family, one of those icons that aunts and uncles become to their young nieces and nephews, those mysterious adults who sit around the Big Person table at reunions talking about boring adult things that don't make any sense, laughing at jokes that aren't funny, eating things that are yucky and drinking coffee (which was always the Adult Beverage).

Looking around at the people attending the funeral, it wasn't really the death of my Uncle that I mourned so much as it was the aging of all the rest of us; all my cousins grown up with children (and in some cases grandchildren) of their own, some of the faces lined, some of the hair gray, some of the bellies sticking out in a way that revealed far too little playtime and too much sitting. After having lived in the Northwest for nearly twenty years, it was a shock to come back to the Midwest and attend the annual reunion back in 2004. Everyone had changed so much. Many names were forgotten. Many aunts and uncles who had once been in the prime of their lives were now aged and fragile. And that was four years ago. Time marches on. Aging continues to enfeeble us all.

Someone once remarked that youth is the process of looking around to see who's ahead, while old age is the process of looking around to see who's left. We have entered into that phase of our lives where we will start to see more and more of our cherished icons passing through the veil, and the reality of the phrase you can't go home again will be made even more real.

That is, after all, why we go back to visit our relatives and friends again, isn't it? We seek to rekindle those emotions of closeness and friendship which we came to know so many years ago, and we remind one another of our common heritage, our common memories, our shared experiences -- those special times which first bound our hearts together in mutual love and admiration.

Yet we are frustrated time and time again by the fact that we cannot truly go back and relive those days when we had all the time in the world, when afternoons stretched out like eternity before us, when our major concerns were deciding which games to play and which desserts to select, when our parents and grandparents were all out in the other room talking boring adult talk while we were rolling around like idiots on the front lawn. Instead we have those horrid adult thoughts going around in our heads, wondering what our children are up to, checking our internal clock to determine how much time we have left to visit, knowing we'll have to stop soon and pack up our things and get in our cars and head back home, knowing it will be a long time before we are able to get back together again -- and wondering what will have changed by then, wondering who might not be able to attend the next one.

If there is anything that I treasure about Uncle Lee, it is his legacy, his children. They are wonderful, with wonderful families, and they are all blessed with a great sense of humor which is right in line with my own so that we can share and laugh at many of the same outlandish things. Both Jeff and Joyce have always been able to keep me laughing; one of my favorite childhood memories is listening to them recite songs from MAD magazine (which naturally stuck in my head) and laughing so hard my sides ached.

This is the kind of legacy I want to pass down to my own children, the joy of laughter and the willingness to be silly whenever possible. This is why there are lots of silly songs and silly movies in our library; we all have our favorite funny quotes from Monty Python and Bob and Ray and Bill Cosby, our favorite songs from Weird Al, our favorite clips from Bugs Bunny and Buster Keaton. And we have our favorite funny family stories from years gone by, when the kids (or the parents) had done something silly they would never live down, and indeed we bring it out every once in a while and laugh at it all over again.

Which brings me to Brother Kel.

Brother Kel came up with Mom and Dad for the funeral, and then they all decided to come up a little further north to visit for a day with us, and I cannot begin to tell you how pleased we were to have them here, not so much because we enjoyed their company - which we did - but because it gave the children an opportunity to get to know brother Kel a bit more. And brother Kel has been a legend around here for a very long time.

By this, I mean that he has been a name and a face on a website, or a name and a description in a story, but not a real person in the minds of the children. Most of them could not remember the last time they'd seen him. But when they finally did, he was everything they had hoped he would be: funny, silly, happy, playful and very tall. The girls especially took to him almost immediately; they could tell he is someone they could talk to, even at their young age. He treated them with great kindness and respect, willingly went along with their silly games and teasing playfulness, and even let them sit on his lap!

So the legend became reality, and the reality was even better than the legend could ever be; so now they look forward to the next time they get to see him. Of course, they're still intensely curious to see Uncle Craig again, who is another legend around here due to his famous silly videos (which we'd like to see more of). But we might have to wait a bit longer to see him, since we haven't been able to get out to Colorado lately.

Now Thanksgiving is almost upon us again, and we're making plans to spend Thursday with friends from church, and Friday down at Aunt Susan's; and before you know it, Christmas will be upon us, and then the end of one year and the beginning of another.

Where does the time go??

The Long and Winding Road

It's been a rough week in Lake Woebegone.

I don't know why all these things happen all at once, but it seems that the old adage is true: when it rains, it pours.

A couple weeks ago, there was a local news item about a young girl who was out at the gun range with some friends and suddenly turned the gun on herself, committing suicide. We didn't realize it at the time, but the young lady in the news item was the same young girl who had just given her life to Christ in baptism a week or so before. At our church.

Last week, her ex-boyfriend, who had been with her at the gun range, who was also a Christian, stood in the playground at church while counselors tried to talk to him over the phone, and hung himself. He blamed himself for her death because he had broken up with her. Now they are both gone.

Last week, two of the older members of the church died of natural causes. Their loss, while not tragic, was still hard-felt. They were longtime members, very involved in the life of the church.

And again, last week, one of the members was involved in a hit-and-run accident. He hit a pedestrian, and he drove away, and didn't turn himself in until days later. Now he is under arrest, facing prison. He is a former elder, an active member of the church, from one of the core families. He made a very bad decision, and now those consequences have added to the family drama that is unfolding in our midst.

Saturday morning, we got word that Uncle Lee had died. Perhaps the blow was softened by the fact that we were aware of his failing health, and we are all confident of his destination. But it is still adding to the overall gloom of the last few weeks. We will miss him.

Oh, yes, there was also the election. Well, at least all those mud-slinging ads will stop now.

I am so ready for a vacation. Hawaii sounds good.

Fireproof

The book was good, the movie wasn't bad.

The book was loaned to me from a friend at church who has struggled with his second marriage and is trying hard not to mess it up, and his relationship has been very up and down as long as I've known him. It's hard enough to keep a marriage alive when both people are working professionals, but when one is a seasonal worker and doesn't have a college degree and is constantly in and out of jobs, the problems are magnified immensely.

Perhaps that is my main complaint with the book. The two people, Caleb and Catherine Holt, are both professionals working in jobs that they love, and their problems stem from simple selfishness. Other than the wife's invalid mother, there is little else to intrude upon their perfect little world other than what they are willing to allow.

But since the book was taken from the screenplay and not the other way around, it makes sense that it deals with a simplified life, because a movie which included all the myriad distractions of a 'normal' life would be several hours long.

In the earlier years of our marriage, we were surrounded by other young married people without children, for whom this story might have particular appeal. In those marriages, stress was measured by the arguments over who was going to make dinner that night, or where they were going to vacation that year. Inevitably, with few exceptions, by the time year seven rolled around -- the timeline in the story -- children had appeared, and selfishness had either disappeared, or it had already destroyed the relationship.

At this point in our lives, the issues facing the imaginary Holt family mean very little to us. We don't have thousands of dollars saved up in the bank for a boat (or a new computer); we don't have an invalid mother-in-law needing a wheelchair and a bed; we don't live as two strangers residing in the same house. A very nice house. A house filled with very nice things, as yet untouched by childish hands. A house not covered in cat fur.

It would've been nice to read a story about a family facing the same struggles as our own, with whom we could identify. It would be horribly complicated because there are issues and sub-issues and sub-sub-issues, and moods and emotions and temperaments change by the moment, and nothing is every completely resolved to anyone satisfaction (and compromise is a tool to get through the day, not the Happy Ending we all hope for).

Our own story would involve lots of miscommunication and misunderstanding and missed opportunities to connect and lots of sighing and occasional yelling at the children and many dinnertimes ruined by simmering anger and many nights where it's a major accomplishment to say a civil "Good Night".

But it would also involve many nights of camaraderie and laughing and hugging and playing and praying and sharing and falling asleep with a feeling of comfort and contentment.

Probably too much for a movie, or short book.

But it would be nice to read a story about a family like ours, where the problems are not so simple, where the attention must be shared between spouse and children, where the real struggle is simply to find (or make) time to spend with the people in your own house. Where the idea of having a huge stash of money sitting in the bank is a sought-for dream with little hope of ever happening. Where the computer is hated not as a source of pornography but as a ball and chain linking me to the office. Where the spiritual struggle is not to find Jesus, but to give him as much time as he deserves in the face of all the other extremely important people in your life who need time and attention.

Maybe one day I'll write a book like that.

**

Comments about the movie.

The book's Meet-Cute scene between Caleb and Catherine was missing. I was looking forward to seeing it after reading it in the book. It really helps establish them as a couple-of-destiny so that the imminent loss of their marriage is all the more poignant.

Kirk Cameron still looks way too young, even with lines on his face.

Erin Bethea (Catherine Holt) is way too pretty. I have difficulty caring about the problems of people who look like models. Most people don't look like models. I'd prefer someone who looked more "ordinary", who would be more believable responding favorably to another man complimenting her. And for Kirk Cameron to ignore his very pretty wife in favor of pornography, he would have to be a complete idiot, too stupid to know how to clear his history file.

Kirk knows how to act and say his lines in a believable way. Erin wasn't bad. Most everyone else was evidently still working on memorizing the lines when the camera started rolling, so they didn't really "own" the lines, so they came out a bit stilted and artificial.

That house was way too big for just the two of them. And too clean. And fancy. Can you say, "starter home"?

Killing the computer. Destroying it didn't bother me, but had he even considered the problem of glass shards in the yard? Actually, he didn't need to perform an act of physical violence on it. If anything, that would frighten his wife that he had gone off the deep end and become dangerous. Besides which, these days you can't just put the computer in the trash. It's toxic waste, due to lead in the monitor and other chemicals on the motherboard. Instead, he could've just gotten rid of it by donating it to a charity. The lack of a computer on the table would've been just as obvious to Catherine.

Dr. Keller ("Gavin") just didn't work for me. After reading the book, I had a completely different concept of how he would look. And act. And speak his lines. Plus he looked very, very familiar. I think I've met him somewhere before, or his twin brother. Anyway, he was supposed to be a Cary Grant sweep-em-off-their-feet kind of character, and instead he looked like a high school kid playing dress-up. Or someone's big, goofy older brother. Casting problem.

"Are you ready to accept Jesus in your life?" This was a troubling scene because there wasn't enough motivation or background information or insight into Caleb's thought processes to see how he could suddenly change his mind and believe in Jesus (or God, for that matter) so quickly. But that's been my problem with the whole conversion thing in any movie or book. And sometimes in real life. It's been a part of my life for so long that I can't put myself in the shoes of someone who has never believed. So I can't imagine what the thought process is like, how one decides to suddenly believe in Jesus. Do they really decide that quickly? Does the same instant conversion happen in Judaism and Buddhism and Islam? I find that very difficult to accept.

Lazy Bum

After an especially long day at work, full of sound and fury and meetings signifying nothing, I just couldn't stand the thought of doing even more Work work at home. Instead, it was time to do something really relaxing.

Like building a wall.

There's something therapeutic and transformative about the act of physical creation: taking a pile of ordinary items and putting them together in a novel way to make something that is both useful and attractive. It gives a completely different kind of satisfaction compared to that of creating a story or a software program; it is tangible and substantial; it awakens the muscles not only in the fingers but in the entire body.

The little voice in my brain said it was time for some physical activity, time to feel a tangible result from my efforts; so I took a few 2x3 boards from the pile on the basement floor and laid them out in a rectangular pattern and measured and cut them to the appropriate size, drilled the holes and placed the screws; raised them up into the vertical position and placed them along the pencil lines; secured them to the floor and the ceiling joists with yet more screws; then stood back and took a look at the effect.

It always helps to see how things go together in the three-dimensional world.

James came down at one point and looked at the way things were going - it is, after all, his closet that is being put together - and marvelled at the size of it. It's large enough to put his drawing desk in, so now he's imagining that it will be his own private art studio complete with door and light and silence and security (such that the sisters will not disturb him).

To me, it has the added benefit of fitting into the overall unwritten plan of the downstairs layout. It corrects a recessed wall which was a side-effect of the bizarre foundation design, transforming it into a simpler rectangular wall with a short passageway to the back bedroom.

It was also impromptu, a departure from our original plan which called out for a built-in shelf unit embedded in that recess; but that is why I prefer to prototype my designs rather than merely putting them down on paper. I need to see, to feel, to experience the design before it is acceptable. And standing in James' room, it just didn't feel like he was going to have enough closet space if we walled in a rectangular section of the existing room. It made much more sense to take the available space from the adjoining recess.

It was quite enjoyable to take a break from the computer. When working on these kinds of projects, it occurs to me that it would be much more fun to do work like this, creating things with my hands, making useful things instead of putting together charts and graphs and dealing with personality conflicts in the office. But it is not something I could do professionally. I don't have the skills for really fine work, and I don't have the humility to take instruction from other people who would criticize my work, even thought it might be helpful in the end. I've never been one to take criticism or instruction gracefully; I'd rather learn things the hard way myself. This is another reason for prototyping: if it doesn't work the first time, take it all apart and try again.

The only downside to the whole effort was that, while drilling holes in the joists over my head, a bit of sawdust found its way into my eye. Now my eye feels as though it is full of sandpaper. It's not flushing out with the eye drops, or the shower, so it probably means I'll have to lay off for a while.

But I look forward to continuing, and finishing it up.

Election Day 2008

I haven't seen any news to the contrary, so I'll just assume that my candidates have won the election, and now the world will breathe a big sigh of relief and move on with Life.

It was a beautiful, warm day out here in the Midwest, a wonderful day to take a walk with my sweetie through the neighborhood down to the school, stroll into the gymnasium with my voting card in hand, take the proferred ballot and sneak off to a quiet corner of the room and make my little squiggly marks in the little boxes, then stride proudly over to the machine and insert the ballot, stop by the little table with the little old ladies, grab my "I Voted" sticker, and head outside with my sweetie to walk home again.

(We saw Mary on the playground while we were heading in, and then saw Deborah on the playground on the way out, which made it even more fun!)

So we've done our duty, upheld our end of the Constitutional bargain, and will wait and watch through the evening to see the effect. One way or the other, we're extremely blessed to be living in a country where we get to make these choices. I'm especially keen on the local elections, having sat through a lot of local action committee and City/County Council meetings back in Washington (but haven't had much time for it here); and Cheryl is focusing on the national arenas.

It should be an exciting evening!

Election Eve 2008

On the eve of an election, it is customary to launch forth with a lengthy diatribe on the right and duty of all informed citizens to vote for the candidate of their choice, thus ensuring that our representative form of government successfully navigates the shoals of fickle Fate to flourish unto the fourth centennial of our founding Fathers' famous foray into freedom.

Unfortunately, I'm not into custom. So let it suffice to say, Go Vote, and God give you the wisdom to make the right choice, and the courage to face the consequences. Whoever gets elected is going to need all the grace and strength he can get. It's a messy world out there.

Speaking of messy, I'm fat. Fat-ter. Supposed to be around one hundred thirty-five to one hundred forty-eight pounds, sopping wet. The bathroom scale has the audacity to declare that my actual weight is pegging out somewhere around one hundred sixty pounds. The weight itself isn't that big a deal -- it's just a number -- but my insides feel a bit cramped and I'm getting tired of the extra lap for my laptop.

The problem is that there is too much Work work to do and not enough of the kind of work that involves moving muscles other than my fingers. I have nice, skinny, fit'n'trim fingers who love to dance over the keys on the laptop. But due to the amount of work which is done sitting down, and the odd impulse to snack while doing mental calculations, and my pathetic lack of self-control, my midsection is spreading to the four winds.

Would that it were possible to forego all the computational gymnastics and perform a few floor exercises in their stead, that might transform this flabby form into one of fantastic fitfulness! That, however, is unlikely, given the nature of my current position (hierarchical, not physical). Duty calls, and to (mis)quote young Frederick, "Duty before all!" (And he did get the girl in the end, you know, so he must've been doing something right.)

I am the very Model of a Modern Middle Manager.

The only alternative is to cut down on the consumption of complex carbohydrates, such as those yummy cinnamon rolls Cheryl made for breakfast this morning; and the yummy banana bread muffins she's making for tomorrow; and the yummy home-made pizza she makes on Friday nights; and the yummy pasta dishes she makes; and the soothing vanilla milkshakes that are my nightly antidote to the acids inherent in the daily indulgence of Coca-Cola products, which are only imbibed to counter the effects of the daily anthistamines which are taken to dilute the effects of the voluminious amounts of cat dander which are floating around in the ventilation system here at the house.

(No, you're right. It's my own fault if my weight keeps going up. There isn't a self-controlled bone in my entire body!)

I assuage my guilt with the thought that winter is a good time to add a little padding to the old bod, to keep warm when the snow starts falling and the ice piles up on the roads and so much of our time is spent outside. Shovelling.

Service!

Ping Pong Panic

If you're wondering why you haven't heard from us in awhile, it's because we're busy playing on our new Ping Pong table.



We've been wanting one for a very long time, and we got tired of waiting for Rob to build one out of plywood and two-by-fours. And they had one on sale at the sporting goods shop.

The only trouble we had was that it was too big to fit in the van, so we had to rent a truck to get it home!

But it was worth it. The kids are having a blast.

Now if we could only find all the balls that have gone missing...

Sketch Wars

He started it!

James drew a caricature of Dad:



So Dad drew a picture of James!

Forty-Niners

Can it really be forty-nine years already?

Seems like just yesterday it was twenty-five, and we were all gathering back in Virginia to surprise Mom and Dad with a little celebration. Ah, we were so young back then! How the time has flown.

One wonders, at times, what gems of wisdom we might have gathered in our early years from observing the relational dynamic between our parents. In comparison to the emotional ebbs and flows in other families, most noticeably those of my friends at school, our house was a haven of peace and calm; our parents were not confrontational or argumentative. It was the children who were combative (some of us more than others).

These are a few Lessons Learned from those days which I seek to retain in my adult life.

The family is a team. We work together. We do not argue over who is responsible for this task or that task; in the end, these tasks must be done, and we all must take the initiative when we are given an opportunity so as to benefit the group rather than the self.

And John Denver music goes great with a vacuum cleaner.

Dinner time is a Holy time, when we set apart our differences and our anger and our frustrations, and concentrate on just being together, enjoying the meal and the company, being thankful for all that we have been given, and focusing on our blessings.

Corollary: Do not force children to eat what they do not like. If you don't want to waste food, buy a dog.

Parents may have their differences, and should not be afraid to discuss their differences in front of their children; it is their common goals, however, that set the tone for the family, especially their spiritual goals. At the end of the day, the parents demonstrate that they are committed to one another in fellowship and mutual encouragement, spiritually uplifting one another regardless of trivial differences of opinion on wordly concerns.

If you argue in front of the children, always make up in front of the children.

Each one of us has special gifts, and these gifts should be recognized, encouraged and celebrated regardless of cultural or traditional expectations. Likewise, we all have our limitations, and these limitations should be recognized as well so as to provide opportunity for others to serve. It is no shame to be particularly good at something, nor is it shameful to allow others to help when our own abilities have reached their limit.

It is not a question of who has the gift, but rather how the gift will be used to benefit the whole.

Time is precious. Finding time to spend with one another is the most difficult task, and the most important. This is not only true for time sent with the children, but also for time spent with the spouse. It is better to lose out on a few extra dollars at work than to lose out on a few hours with the family, because money comes and goes, but time simply goes.

No job is so important that it takes precedence over family.

Stories define us but do not limit us. Family history tells us who we are, where we came from, where we have achieved greatness, and where we have fallen. We cannot change the past, but we also cannot hide it. It is important to tell these stories early so that the children understand these legacies and are not afraid of admitting the humanity of their ancestors. We all must learn to tell our own stories so that our collective knowledge can be passed down to future generations.

A story told is a memory shared.

* *

Happy Anniversary, Mom and Dad!

Fall, as in First Day Of

It is the first day of Fall.

Not officially, of course. That's past. But October 1st was the first day that the temperature reflected the season. It was cool, the kind of weather which prompts one to pull out the sweaters from the storage box and have a nice, hot cup of cocoa and look out the window at the turning leaves.

Adam looks out the window at the thermometer every morning now as he is going out the door to school, checking to see if he is wearing the appropriate layers. {The needle range has dropped somewhat, idling between forty and fifty, prompting the use of heavier jackets.} Oddly enough, on that first cold day, he still wore his shorts -- with the jacket.

The rains will be coming soon. Not terribly cold - yet - but signaling that our long dry spell is coming to an end, and the storms of Autumn will be rolling in.

The bicycles may still be useful for getting to school for a while, probably until the end of November; but then the wind and the temperature and the precipitation will conspire to reduce their usefulness, and they'll be put away in the loft of the garage where we won't trip over them, and true Winter will begin.

Meanwhile, we're hoping that the road crews will finish their work so we might be able to take advantage of the new bike paths before the snow comes along and freezes the world into immobility.

Chocolate Bread

It wasn't Cheryl's famous chocolate chocolate-chip banana bread, but it was still a welcome break at work. One of the nice people at the office brought in a loaf of chocolate bread (Amish friendship bread with cocoa and chocolate chips), which sweetened a few meetings - and there were quite a few meetings today.

Funny how the day zips by so quickly when so many hours are spent in meetings. Today it was
* meeting at 9
* meeting at 10
* meeting at 11
* meeting at 1
* meeting at 2
* picking up Adam from Chess Club at 3:30 -- or was it 4?

Most of the day is spent juggling other people's work, actually; talking to them or sending emails, trying to make sure they are properly tasked with work and not running into roadblocks. Trying to keep them from having to attend all the pointless meetings on my schedule. Let them do the real work.

Tomorrow I get to give a group of college students a tour of the factory. That's going to be the highlight of my work-week.

A Long Day

I never went to work today, not in the physical sense. After a day spent assisting my boss with some planning charts, a day in which none of my normal tasks were accomplished, it was my decision to stay home until the work was caught up - and that moment never arrived.

It is discomfiting to sit at a desk all day and review documents and spreadsheets and answer emails, then look up at the clock and suddenly realize that the entire day is gone. There is no sense of 'a job well done' in those circumstances; there is only the sad realization that another day has gone by, and it is impossible to think of a single thing of any import which was finished.

At three o'clock the children started to arrive from school, and by four o'clock they were all home. We opened presents and ate our cake, then it was time for Dad to run off to attend an Engineering Open House while the rest of the family played it cool for awhile.

Afterward, we had dinner at a local restaurant (where the Birthday Girl could have her beloved grilled cheese sandwich); then, for some it was time for a Scout meeting while others went home to watch 'Enchanted'. Always nice to have a Happy Ending kind of fantasy flick for the Birthday Girl.

One hopes we all have happy endings to this week.

Nearly Nine

I watched her prance in this evening after her piano lesson, and had to take a second look to make sure that my eyes were not deceiving me.

She's nearly nine.

Her head bounces as she walks - and she talks - and she prattles on about this and that and all the wonderful things that fill her head with fanciful visions; mostly of faeries, cute little winged creatures of the woods and streams and glades, sketches of whom she fills the pages of her notebooks (and, indeed, any spare scrap of paper she can find). Her hair is cut short so that it bobs up and down as she whirls around the room, dancing to an unheard tune and carrying on a monologue to an unseen audience, often without taking a breath; she has always had the uncanny ability to speak while inhaling, the origin of which is unknown.

She's nearly nine, and her legs have grown long and her feet have outgrown all her shoes and she's taken notice of fashion and color and beauty and all the things that herald the end of the age of innocence and the beginning of the parents' long slide into worry and despair. She has a most winning smile, and when all the work of the orthodontist is done, she will have a perfect set of teeth.

She's funny and silly and giddy and bubbly and far too excitable to ever finalize her plans for the upcoming celebration, with the consequence that we still have no idea what we are going to do with her tomorrow. There is so much going on anyway. Whatever we do, it will doubtless be rushed. But it is her choice to go out somewhere to celebrate, and celebrate we shall! For it isn't every day that a little girl turns nine years old, and her parents still have sufficient sanity to enjoy the occasion.

She's nearly nine!

Rainy Days and Saturdays

It was a dream come true. For three days last week, the boss was gone, and the constant bombardment of requests for pointless metrics had ceased. Finally, it was possible to get work done.

Until he returned early on Friday.

* *

Have you ever had that feeling of total relief? When the long, cross-country trip is over and you walk into the house and drop your bags on the floor and head up to the bedroom and flop down on the bed and close your eyes and you don't even care if your clothes are still on or you haven't shaved or brushed your teeth, you just want to fade into oblivion.

Or the end of the work-week has finally come and the day is over and the kids have all gone to bed and the house is quiet and you don't have anything planned for Saturday and all you want to do is to climb into bed and not get out until after nine in the morning so you close your eyes knowing you won't have to open them again for hours and hours and hours.

That's what it felt like when he (and all the rest of the management team) took off on that airplane and went somewhere else to spend a few days being yelled at by the Customer while we, we lucky few, stayed behind and got real work done, unhindered by the constant plague of whiny requests for statistics and status and meaningless metrics. Relief, total relief. Quiet, peaceful days. Crossing items off our checklists. Talking in normal tones of voice. Focusing. Concentrating. Working through the backlog of emails. Whittling down the stack of documents to review. Ignoring the charts with the pretty lines which were all going in the wrong direction (Progress should go UP! not DOWN!), ignoring the reminder emails of the meetings we didn't want to attend, ignoring the empty offices where we were used to being called in to hear our names being used in vain.

It all came to an end on Friday when they all returned.

"Where are my charts? Where are my metrics? Where is the new schedule? What have you been doing the whole time I've been gone?"

Work, man. Been doing work.

Lean back in my chair, close my eyes, remind myself for the umpteenth time They can't kill you.

Yeah, they can't kill you, but they can crush your soul if you let 'em.

I gotta get a real job.

* *

Got a bit of leftover Ike here, lots of rain coming down, filling the streets, washing away the heat of summer. It's still warm outside, but not as warm as it had been. Not much of a summer, really. Only got up to ninety or so a couple times. Even then, it wasn't humid enough to be a problem. So now we have a nice, warm rain.

It would be nice to stand in the nice, warm rain and let it wash over me like a nice, warm shower. Rinse away all the tiredness, the frustration.

Why does winter look so inviting?

Winter is the time when the snow comes and encases the land in an insulating layer of white, underneath which one can hide away from everything. If the pantry is full and the refrigerator is still humming, we can survive all alone in our little house, reading books and drawing pictures and watching the glow of the fireplace.

Reminds me of those wonderful days spent at Ron and Eileen's house, many, many years ago, sitting in their living room late at night with everyone asleep but me, watching the glow of the woodstove with the wind and the rain and the winter outside, feeling warm and safe and cozy and happy, wishing the night could just go on forever.

Wishful thinking again, returning to the times when there were fewer worries, fewer concerns, fewer responsibilities (fewer does not, of course, imply none). It is in my nature, this wistful wandering among the memories of yore. Someday it might be these days that fill my yearning, back in the days when the kids were young and our lives were so simple and the world was a much nicer place.

It is difficult to live in the present when all the past's troubles have been resolved by the passage of time, and the present's are yet to be faced.

Meanwhile the rain keeps falling and the river of water rolls on down the gutter to the drain. If only it would take my troubles with it...

Back to School

The children are back in school again and so happy to be there. The endless boredom of summer has given way to the flurry of activity which is school, every afternoon jam-packed with homework and every evening packed with extracurricular activities.



And during the day, Cheryl has a quiet house at last.



I still can't grasp how quickly they are growing up. In just a few years, they'll be all grown up and we'll be downsizing to a smaller house and it will be just the two of us again. It's a strange thought, looking into the near future and realizing that everything will be changing.

In the meantime, they constantly amaze me with the subtle, incremental changes in behavior and attitude and physical appearance which signal maturity. Even the way they manage to spring out of bed at six in the morning to prepare for school surprises me. How can they be so excited about it? Is it the thought of seeing their friends again? The thrill of new books, new pencils, new ideas? Is it release from the endless, boring fun of summer? Or is it just the joy of change?

Would that I could face each day with such excitement. There is nothing in my day to look forward to with such anticipation - except the people. I truly enjoy being with the people at work, some of whom are clinically insane and others who appear to be refugees from a Marx Brothers film. Most days, I accomplish practically nothing, but have interesting conversations.

Laundry List

Gustav is about to make landfall, and even though it has nothing in the world to do with me, I'm keeping a tab open to watch for it because, in a very morbid way, it fascinates me. We almost lost New Orleans last time, and I'm curious to see if it's finally going to get blown away.

I'd never thought much about New Orleans before Katrina hit, and when it did, my thoughts were shaped by reading the endless on-line arguments over whether the city had a right to exist in the face of natural environmental changes. It seemed pointless (and even offensive) to keep repairing the dikes when it was obviously stupid to build a coastal city below sea-level.

I like to pretend that I'm a logical thinker, intelligent enough to make the correct conclusions given sufficient evidence. But there is also a deep well of reactionary cynicism buried in my soul that boils over when bad decisions are repeated ad nauseum. This is most evident at the office, where the current state of affairs is best summarized by the phrase, "Waiting for the next crisis to occur." It has been a long, stressful road from one disaster to the next, not unlike the situation in Louisiana, with the walls being patched every few weeks to survive the current storm and then a period of frantic effort to prepare for the next. Meanwhile the storm waters are rising ever higher.

At some point, someone has to put down their foot and say, "Enough!" If the evidence points to the fact that the city is built on the wrong site, it's time to abandon the city and go elsewhere. That's just common sense. No amount of lingering historical significance is warrant enough to waste the time and money to attempt a rescue, not in the face of seasonal storms that make kindling of our best efforts to forestall the inevitable.

But cynicism says that these people will never make the intelligent decision, not when their emotions are involved. People are remarkable in their ability to disregard the obvious in their search for the sublime. Our whole political history is evidence of this. People will continue to place their faith in hearsay and gossip and anecdote and wishful-thinking and miracle cures and political pandering so long as it coincides with their dreams and wishes and prejudices.

I wait for the leaders at the office to make the intelligent decisions, and am unsurprised when they do not. When logic dictates that they spend the time and money and resources on one project to get it done, they farm out all the engineers to other projects and outsource all the real work to offshore temps who have neither the training nor the experience for the task. When we are over our heads with too much work and not enough people to do it, they trim the workforce to "cut costs". When we are behind schedule and understaffed, their solution is to harangue the employees to work longer hours rather than admitting that the deadlines can't be met, and make appropriate adjustments.

It's wearying to the bones, and numbing to the mind, making cynics of us all. In this we are made useless for the next (inevitable) project because we have grown so callous through mismanagement and mistreatment that we enter into the unspoiled land with an eye toward finding fault, and thus poison the waters before we have even taken a drink.

* * *

My back is aching and my sinuses are on fire.

A few weeks ago, the door of Cheryl's closet fell apart. It is a mirrored pocket door - with mirrors on both sides - which means that not only is it difficult to gain access to it in order to perform repairs, there is also the added thrill of dealing with the possibility of broken glass regardless of which side the door is gripped. This promised to be one of the more fun home projects (in the "thrill of victory, agony of defeat" vein).

Complicating the joy of working on the home project was the presence of billions upon billions of microscopic elements commonly known as "ragweed" which are currently jabbing my mucusoidal tissues and causing various violent reactions throughout my body, including sneezing, wheezing, dripping, itching, aching, swelling, and the inevitable closing off of the airways. This is, of course, merely icing on the cake, a spice of life, an extra element of fun to add to the mix.

Being unfamiliar with the door mechanism, I did the obvious thing and took the trim apart so I could access the stops and other items which required removal (according to the on-line references). Then it was a simple matter of pressing the appropriate plastic locking mechanism in the proper sequence to disconnect the door from the rollers, thus allowing it to drop to the floor (but not on my foot!) so that it could be swung inward and removed from the slot proper.

The next step was to remove one side of the door (which was entirely mirrored glass, mind you) very, very carefully with a putty knife so that the inner mechanism could be revealed. And what it revealed was quite interesting. The aluminum frame was not joined, as one might think, by screwing the four pieces (top, bottom, left, right) to one another, metal to metal. No, this was a clever design! The corners were all joined together with plastic! That is, behind each corner was a square of plastic, and the screws were inserted through the holes in the aluminum into the plastic. And we all know how well metal screws in plastic work!

As if to buck the trend, though, the immediate cause of failure was determined to be an inability on the part of one of the screws to maintain its hold on the beveled edge of the aluminum. Evidently the plastic hole didn't line up well with the hole in the aluminum so that the screw was inserted at an angle; consequently, over time the head of the screw was able to circumvent the edge of the hole and fall through, thus invalidating any support it was providing. The sudden release of this support, coupled with the weight of the door, broke the plastic, and the door sagged on one side.

It might be possible to replace the plastic piece and thus repair the door, but I'm not thrilled with the idea of searching for the plastic piece on-line and having it shipped from wherever it is manufactured (they don't stock those kind of parts at Home Depot or Lowes) and then trying to put the frame back together and re-glue the glass to the frame, when I can just purchase a new pocket door (with glass on one side only) and re-hang it in an hour or so. I'm basically lazy. Plus I don't have much faith in the design.

So we went to Home Depot and ordered a new door. Can't wait til it gets here. In the meantime, I'm going to pull the other glass panel off the aluminum door frame and hang one of the mirrors in the girls' room, then play around with the door frame to determine the optimum method for securing the pieces to one another.

In my copious spare time.

* * *

Meanwhile, the Toyota was driving me crazy. Those guys that installed the used engine in evidently didn't bother to check out the thermostat; the car is running way too cool. Being too cool is not necessarily a good thing in a car engine because it is designed to run at a specific optimum temperature, and unless this temperature is maintained, the combustion is not as efficient as it is supposed to be. I don't have any specific mileage numbers, but it was obvious from anecdotal evidence that it wasn't getting the 35 - 40 mpg I was expecting.

The needle on the temperature gauge barely hovered above the minimum. My guess was that either they hadn't bothered to install the thermostat, or it was defective. Either way, the engine was never warming up.

So I rigged up a drill-powered pump with some 1/4-inch tubing to speedily drain the radiator into waiting (clean) gallon milk jugs (so I could recycle it easier), pulled apart the casing and removed the old thermostat. Couldn't see anything obviously wrong with it (I'd have to test it at precise temperatures to determine if it was really broken), but I'd already bought a new one, so put the new one in and sealed it up again. Then put the fluid back in and sealed up the system and ...

The gauge now reads nearly normal, just a tad lower than I'd hoped. Took it around the neighborhood for a test spin (no leaks!) and it drove OK. Then drove to the store and back to let it warm up properly. Felt a bit smoother.

Carburetor still needs some adjustment, though. It still races momentarily when letting off the accelerator. I did some on-line searches for that symptom but didn't find anything, so I might just take it down to the Toyota dealer and see if anyone around here remembers how to tune up carburetors.

These days they all seem to rely on the computers to do the work for them.

* * *

By the way, I put some more photos up on Flickr.

Laptop Geekout (and other News)

Happiness is a warm laptop.

Ecstasy is four warm laptops! (One is on my lap, so it isn't pictured, but take my word for it - it's plenty warm!)

There's the official Dell home laptop; the old work laptop (four years in constant use and still running strong); the new used Linux laptop (Red Hat 5.2 being installed); and the new Dell work
laptop (on my lap), currently being loaded with all the software and data which was on the old work laptop.

Never thought those tv trays we got from the Greens would come in quite so handy. But here we are, late at night, running four laptops and watching the Olympics.

Ain't technology wunnerful?

---

James' New Haircut



Erin Sits Around Getting Fat



Kids Play Games Together

Another Very Important Public Announcement!

Brother Craig is now entering his third decade of life, and we wish him all the happiness and joy and fun in the world, although he's probably already guaranteed a large portion of that by living in the beautiful albeit somewhat overpriced state of Colorado. Which we would like to visit. Someday. When travel prices subside a bit.

Happy Birthday, Craig! Keep those pictures and videos and musical interludes coming!

Very Important Public Service Announcement

Happy Birthday, Judy!

Exhausted Again

Thursday was an exhausting day. My body was giving me signs of distress (aches, pains, etc.) that could not be alleviated by the normal doses of analgesics and antihistamines; the folks at work were stressing me out with their whining and complaining and demanding that things be accomplished; Cheryl and I were in charge of the Junior High class at VBS, which consisted of a community service project; and by the end of the day, collapse was imminent.

Friday was not any improvement. The body was still not feeling up to par, people at work were still freaking out about the amount of work that still wasn't done, and because it was the final night of VBS it was impossible to just go home and fall into bed. {After all, how could I possibly miss out on the community cook-out and water-balloon battle?? It isn't every day you get to chase the preacher around the building with a loaded water-balloon!}

Today is the Company picnic. Downtown. Free food. Free museum passes.

I woke up this morning with no trace of a headache or body ache or anything that might distract from a wonderful day. The family is sleeping in, so the house is quiet. {We were up late last night watching Part 3 of John Adams, which is a remarkable and quite interesting HBO series which prompted us to jump on the Internet while it was going on, to verify the information it was presenting so that our children would be sure to have the full story.} The cats are fed, the news is read, and in a few moments I'll start up the coffee pot to lure Cheryl downstairs so we can all have some breakfast.

Where Have You Gone, Oh Month O' Mine?

It's almost August, and I'm still not breathing, just holding my breath below the surface of the water and waiting for the inevitable loss of consciousness. Getting up at six, working from home until eight, having breakfast with the family, heading to the office at nine, meetings, meetings, meetings, interruptions following more interruptions, fleeing the office in the early afternoon to try and get something done by working from home again, staying up til midnight working on the things that didn't get done during the day.

Not worth it, not worth it, not worth it.

Dreaming of other things.

Got out my old Bill Cosby tapes, intending on converting them to MP3 before the ferromagnetics degrade, and got lost listening to the old jokes and remembering the many, many times they were played in the old van as I drove around Richmond with the boys in their carseats on those weekends home from New York. Remembering the good times with my little brothers and how much it hurt to have to leave, heading back to that weird semi-nomadic life.

Nowadays things are so domestic, but there aren't enough hours in the day to share between the family and the workplace, although I cheat somewhat and take things home so that my body is present if not really my mind. This is why the work goes on until midnight, as my brain tries to multitask between family tasks and work tasks and gets totally scrambled in the process.

Vacation Bible School goes on this week without as much participation from us as in years past. The younger children attend, and we are helping out with the junior high group on Thursday, but that is the limit of our commitment. It aches to stand in the back and watch the kids having so much fun and not be an integral part of it - there is nothing worse than not being involved - but other pressing duties (and a spectacular youth minister who is able to handle both junior and senior high events simultaneously) obviate our desires.

Never enough time in the day.

It's midnight far too soon.

And I'm ... so ... tired.

Back on the Farm

The vacation is over at the end of today, and here's what I have to show for it.

Project Number 1: Ceiling Fan

The Michigan summers get pretty hot, and it's nice to have something in the room to blow the air around, something a bit bigger than the little heater/air-conditioner vent which sits on the floor and spits dust into the sky. We've been in this house four years now; it was the second summer, I think, when we installed ceiling fans in the kids' rooms, so now on the fourth, it's high-time to get something in the master bedroom so the parents can cool off a bit as well.


We looked through the ads and the circulars, and spent some time looking through the lighting sections at Lowes and Home Depot and other hardware-type stores, and finally found something we liked. It is big and white and self-balancing and easy to install (well, that's what the box says, anyway!). We actually bought it a few weeks ago, but weren't motivated to put it in until two things happened.

One, I got a bit of a vacation. And two, it got really hot outside.

Unfortunately, since it's in the master bedroom, and the master bedroom has one of those specially-shaped ceilings, it wasn't an easy thing to hang. I had to go up in the attic (early in the morning, before it got roasting hot up there!) and find the joists underneath two feet of blown-in insulation; then figure out where the middle of the specially-shaped ceiling was; then fit the mid-joist electrical appliance outlet box in between a couple joists; then find some circuit to tap into (again, with wires buried under two feet of blow-in); then actually hang the fan without doing serious damage to the textured ceiling.

I got the mechanical portion of it done the first day, but then it got too hot to breathe up in the attic, so I put off the wiring and finishing until today. That took a couple hours. But it was sure worth it when the fan started turning and the cool air starting flowing across my sweat-stained shirt!

Ahhh....

Project 2: Sprinkler Head Replacement

Seems like every year since we bought the house, I've had to perform some kind of maintenance on the sprinkler / irrigation system. Gotta blow the lines out before the first frost, then unseal everything at the beginning of summer so the grass can get watered - all that just so the lawn stays green! Not really worth it, if you ask me. Michigan grasses have been just fine, thank you, long before we came along. They brown up in the summer a bit, but fall, winter and spring sure don't do 'em any harm. And we're just pouring out water like it was free.

But that's just my whining.


First thing that had to be fixed was one of the sprinkler heads out by the bushes. Seems the head got ripped off by the snow-blower last winter, so it had to be replaced. Couldn't replace it with an exact duplicate because that particular brand of irrigation system isn't available in the States (must've been one of those contractor specials), so we had to make do with whatever we could find at Home Depot.

T'other problem was that the boys were a bit reluctant to dig the old one out, being as it was muddy (they're not lazy, just lost their affinity for playing in the mud when they turned pre-teen). Ol' Dad don't mind playing in the mud, though, so after the boys had dug out a pit using the garden tools, I got down on my hands and knees and showed 'em how it's done, pulling out gobs and gobs of wet, muddy clay (it's all clay around here) and piling it up on the side til the pipe was clear. Had to be careful, though, since this particular spigot was in a narrow spot between a very nice bush and the sidewalk, which means that the root system was all over the place. Which is why I was using my hands and not a trowel.

Finally got the pipe excavated, then popped the new one into place and set 'er back down and let the water go. Looks like she'll work out fine. Of course, the old one was one of those fancy-dancy "pop-up" kind (and it popped up to the tune of ten or twelve inches!), and the new one is just a stationary bush sprayer (sitting pretty at fifteen inches altitude) so the watering will be slightly different; but, hey, it's off my list now!

Project 3: Irrigation System Control Setup

The irrigation system controls were originally set down inside this plastic box with a green cover, dug down into the ground about eight or ten inches, all hidden (mostly) from view. Woulda worked great, too, if it hadn't been for the fact that the noobs who planted it, planted it right next to a big fir tree. Idiots didn't understand the concept of growing root systems and earth movement. Come the second summer, the box was warping and the mud from the pile of dirt around the tree was coming in through the not-fitting-anymore cover, and then - can you believe it? - the controls stopped working. Hard to work when covered in mud.


Last summer I pulled the box out and left the controls sitting above the ground, mostly hanging in mid-air. But the mud kept coming in and filling in the hole where the box had been, so that wasn't a really good solution. With work taking up most of my time, though, I didn't have a better fix; and then suddenly it was fall and then winter, and I had to wait on it.

This year I re-mounted the controls onto a pipe that sticks right out of the relief valve (about three feet off the ground) and attached the water lines right on to the controls, and don't have to worry about mud or growing trees or anything. Sure, it looks ridiculous, but since it's behind the tree which faces the street, it's not visible from anywhere but my own backyard, and I don't care what it looks like so long as it works.

I used the opportunity to teach the boys how to use plumber's tape, too. Showed them what it was like with no tape on the pipe threads (i.e. water leaking all over the place), then had them put the tape on each set of threads and tighten down the caps and voila! No more leaks!

It's always fun to turn these little house projects into educational opportunities.

(I decided not to turn the ceiling fan into an educational opportunity because they would've had way too much fun exploring the attic, and I might never have found 'em again under all that insulation...)

Why Am I Always So Tired?

Today was supposed to be the start of my three-day working-on-the-house vacation, and it was supposed to conclude with being tired from a long day of great accomplishments.

But it actually began with being tired, and it wasn't the tired that comes from getting back from a long road trip; it was the tired that comes from not wanting to get up and face the world.

This is what happens when the world takes away from you the joy of doing what you want to do.

I really like living here in this part of the country. I enjoy the short commute, the nice neighborhoods, the ease in getting from the suburbs to the city, the laid-back style of life. I do not wish to return to the long commutes, the road-rage stress, the constant fear of layoffs.

But I am not entrepreneurial. I do not want to "sell myself". It is not in my nature. My nature is to sit and contemplate, to write, to create, to ponder for long periods of time about little things that might or might not mean anything to anyone, to scratch it all out because it doesn't sound right, and then do it all over again - only a little bit different, until the form and rhythm are correct.

I can't do that anymore, not here, not as an engineer.

The Company, in its infinite wisdom, has decided that Americans are too expensive to utilize as engineers (creators, designers, testers) because those "assembly-line" tasks can be performed at far less cost by people in Third World countries. So they have declared - and acted upon - their intentions to rid their American workforce of those occupations by instituting layoffs. My escape from this first round was purely by coincidence; I had accepted a leadership position as a favor to a friend, and thus became the lowest rung on the ladder which was not cut off.

This is not to say that my turn will not come. As soon as the current project is completed, in six or seven or eight months, perhaps it will be my turn, and (assuming they do things the same way it was done this time) I will receive a phone call to let me know that my services are no longer required.

(In this industry, it hasn't been the first time; and unfortunately, in all probability it will not be the last.)

What is most upsetting, is that they are taking away from us engineers that which gives us meaning in our professional lives. Writing code and creating electronics circuits is why we got into the business in the first place. We did not begin our careers so that we could sit in meetings all day long and generate status charts and handle charge accounts and give presentations to customers.

We want to create things. Good things. Things that other people will find valuable, of course, but mostly things that we find valuable because we designed them, we created them. To take all that away is to cheapen our lives, despoil our achievements, reduce our significance to less than nothing.

This is not to say that there will be no job; there will always be jobs available, so long as there are things that need to be done. But there will be far less joy and satisfaction in those jobs, far less fulfillment, far less creativity.

And there will be more tired mornings.

Reunion 2008

We wish you were here, but you're not, so you'll have to just read about it instead of experiencing it in full 3-D.

First of all, we slept in. What can I say? We're tired. Or just lazy. The girls slept in Grandma and Grandpa's room, so they were up early to get breakfast; but the rest of us didn't bother getting out of bed til 7 or 8 or something. Even then, Cheryl and the boys headed down for breakfast before I even got out of bed, so I get the Laziness Award for the day.

After breakfast, some folks headed out to the stores to get more food (as if we were ever going to run short!!) while we went back to our room - all six of us this time - and watched cartoons and cruised the web until it was time to head out to the park. Which we did, finally, around 11:30 or so.

Saw Doc and Beverly on the way out of town. They had a car-ful!

Got to the park around noon, unloaded the car, sent the kids off to play, wandered around saying hello to everyone, met some people we didn't know, met a lot of people we did know and hadn't seen in a long time.

Absences of note: Lee Albertson is non-ambulatory. We all missed him and his silly jokes. Joe and Betty were dealing with the loss of power out at their farm, so they were scrambling to get something put together for the ice cream feast later on tonight.

Lateness of note: Bob and Joyce et al were MIA for awhile, but showed up after we'd started eating (finally!) so they didn't miss out. Got to see Robby and Ricky and Rachel (Rachel is the one wearing the batman outfit).

Unexpected arrivals: Nancy. Didn't realize she had moved back to Indiana, but she has. Good to see her and her family.

The girl cousins - Deb and Mary and Braelyn and Rebekah and Braelyn's cyberFriend (whose name escapes me) ran off to play. The boy cousins - Adam and James and Brason and Caleb - were last seen watching Bob's chess demo.

The food was wonderful, as expected. Doc's bratwurst was superb, as usual. I had only a small pile this year, as there isn't much room in my tummy these days and I was saving room for that yummy home-made ice cream later on.

We had our traditional afternoon at the pool with the kids, which normally takes place while the adults are taking their traditional hike to the falls; then James and Mary and I took a hike to the falls after we were done at the pool; and then we all finished the clean-up of the site and got back in our cars and drove to Joe and Betty's for dinner leftovers and ice cream.

Many hours of visiting later, we departed for the motel where it was time to settle down, clean up, watch some TV (History Channel, of course!), surf the web (looking for DS skins), and hit the sack.

All in all, a very fulfilling day.

Hoosiers by Hairline

We have arrived. Finally.

It was a hectic day, starting with the break-up of our campsite in the wee hours of the morning, followed by a last-minute round of rifle shooting, after which James and I scooted on home to do a bit of laundry and cram the family into the van and head south for the Reunion.

Didn't get out of GR til nearly five; finally got down to Bloomington near midnight. Had to stop for dinner, after all.

Mom and Dad and Clyde and Judy were waiting for us at the motel, so we had hugs all around before heading off to bed. Tomorrow will be a busy, busy day.

Independence

The day didn't turn out quite like I'd expected.

The objective for today was to install the belt kit for the Caravan. It had arrived on Wednesday, but there was no time to do anything with it that night or the next. It was left for today.

It wasn't my intent to spend the entire day doing it, but then again, it never is. These projects just tend to take over sometimes, especially the ones where I'm wading into deep and unknown waters.

There's also the prep work that ends up taking far longer than I'd planned. It's important to have proper lighting in the engine compartment for things like this, so the plan was to use the halogen worklights on their tripods. But since they were cheap models, one of the extender poles wasn't working properly: the nylon tightener, which was somehow supposed to not slip when placed inside the metal tube, slipped. Wonder of wonders. Not sure how they figured that was ever going to work. I drilled some holes in it and stuck some copper pins in place, then roughed up the nylon in an attempt to create more friction, and it worked. Mostly.

Let there be light.

First order of business was reading the instructions. Then reading them again. Then laying out the pieces so they could be identified. Then reading the directions again. Then figuring out which tools were needed. Then reading the directions again. Then looking at my watch to see how long it had taken to get this far.

Too long!

Then it occurred to me that it would be nice to have a bit of room to work in, so the van was moved half-way out of the garage to give me lots of floor space to scatter tools and things; then because it might be necessary to crawl under the car to reach things that weren't accessible from the top, and there isn't much space between the bottom of the car and the floor, the jack was set up and the car was lifted up a bit and then it was time to ... disconnect the battery.

Note to self: always disconnect the battery. Sticking one's hands inside the engine compartment into dark areas where one cannot see where one's hands are going, is a sure formula for disaster when there is electricity around. Or rotating parts.

Next, set up the halogen next to the engine compartment (with the hood up!) so it is possible to actually see what is going on.

Then re-read the directions. Again. What was the first step again? All these distractions have gotten me confused.

Oh, yes. Locate the tensioner pulley. Turn the tensioner pulley bolt to loosen the belt, then take it off. Check. Then remove the tensioner mounting nut to remove the tensioner. Um ... I can't even see that bolt. It's hidden behind the exhaust manifold, below and to the rear of the engine.

Could I see it if I remove the black mounting plate that's holding the alternator? Perhaps. Let's give it a try. OK, the mounting plate is actually two mounting plates, one supporting the other. Need to unbolt the first one, then unmount the alternator, then unmount the second mounting plate, then ...

Hmmm. It's not moving. Must be more bolts holding it on. Oh, wait. The tensioner bolt is holding it on! OK, scrap that idea. Gotta get the tensioner off from down below.

Time to crawl underneath.

Oooh. Still can't see anything. There's a splash guard in the way, as well as the power steering pump. Trying to reach my arm up and around things to find the nut - nope, can't reach it.

Might be able to reach it if I move the power steering pump out of the way. So it gets unbolted. One, two, three, four, five bolts later, it finally comes off. OK, now I can see the tensioner nut. Gonna be hard to reach way up into their. And the exhaust manifold is too close to use the socket wrench. Going to need the universal joint. And the extender. Still difficult, though, because the ratchet can't turn very much without hitting something. Millimeter by millimeter, it finally turns. It finally comes off! And promptly drops into the nether regions of the engine compartment above my head, into a gap between two metal pieces. It takes a bit of blind feeling with my fingers to locate it.

But - Success! The old tensioner is off!

The old idler pulley is much easier to get off. One bolt loosened, and there it is.

I take the two pulleys over to the workbench to place them next to the new ones, just to compare them. The new ones look really cool - grooved and black and shiny. The old ones look ... old. And shiny. Not shiny-new but shiny-smooth, like How on earth did the belt ever stay on those pulleys?

Now to put the new ones on!

Again, the new idler is simple. One bolt tightened down, and it's done.

And the tensioner shouldn't be too hard, now that I know how it goes on. Just another trip underneath the car to get the nut placed properly, and it's on. Oops! Forgot to put the alternator mounting plate back on. Took the tensioner back off again, put the mounting plate in place, then remounted the tensioner. OK, that was easy; now for the power steering pump. One, two, three, four, five bolts in place, tightened. Done.

Back up top to put the alternator back where it belongs. Put the second mounting plate back on. Then the alternator. Done.

Now for the belt!

Weaving the belt through the myriad of pulleys isn't easy, especially since there are also lots of wires and tubes and hoses in the way. Took me nearly half an hour. Then it was time to check the directions again because it's important to know how to get the belt on now that it won't slide over the slick, smooth metal of the old pulleys. There's gotta be some serious slack here or it won't work.

OK, the directions say to leave the belt off the idler pulley and then rotate the tensioner pulley down to make some slack so the belt can be slid over the idler pulley, then let up on the tensioner and it'll be set.

Right.

Took the 15mm end wrench (there's no room for the socket) and put it on the tensioner pulley bolt and pulled on it to rotate the pulley assembly and ...

Ow! That's hard! The spring in the tensioner is really tight! I can't hold the wrench for more than a few seconds before it becomes too painful. And I can't just let go, either, or it snaps my hand back against the alternator mounting bracket. I try it several more times, but eventually decide that this just won't work. More leverage is needed.

But there are no breaker bars (or pipes) for leverage.

Time for a trip to Home Depot!

---

One hour later, armed with a 12-inch long piece of 1-inch steel pipe, I'm ready to try again. This time, the wrench (with its pretty steel pipe slipcover) is much easier to move, and the pulley assembly rotates all the way to the stop-point; but it just isn't quite enough. The belt still won't slide over the idler, no matter how hard I try. And I do try.

Arg!

Now what?

---

The only possibility that comes to mind is loosening the alternator; it has a little bit of rotary play, so if I disconnect the top bolt from the mounting plate, it might rotate enough to allow a little slack. So pull the bolt, shift the alternator a smidgen, and now the belt slides. Right. On. To. The. Idler.

Yay!

(Of course, now the alternator will be impossible to put back into position, right?)

Oddly enough, the alternator slips right back into place, and the bolt slides in. I tighten it down. And it's done.

The new belt is on.

No more worrying about belts sliding off in the rain.

And I'm exhausted.

(Pictures are here.)

Not Singing in the Rain

It's been a bad week.

Thursday was a very bad day, owing to the layoff situation. Friday was far too exciting (in a bad way). Saturday was tiring. And Sunday is nerve-wracking.

I already wrote about Thursday. 'Nuff said.

But let's talk about Friday.

Friday was a good day to spend with the family. I only went into work for a couple hours (most of the workday hours were spent remotely) for meetings which added absolutely nothing to my knowledge-base. Friday evening was our monthly scheduled Game Night.

It was a dark and stormy night, and we arrived at the place (the house of the friends who host the Game Night) right after the rain started. We didn't get too wet, though.

Mostly, Game Night is a way for Adam to get in some quality game time. I'm not into games at all (probably lost too many of them as a kid), and most of the other kids are blasé about the whole thing; but there's a group at the office who get together once a month to play some serious board games, and Adam fits right in. So we all go as a family to support his gaming habit!

On this particular night, the games went well, but right around ten o'clock, Dad and the girls were getting tired, so we decided to leave the boys -- who were right in the middle of a hot game -- and take the girls home, and Dad would stay with them.

So Cheryl and the girls and I got in the van and drove home. In the rain.

We only got a few miles down the road.

When suddenly ...

The power steering stopped working.

And the water temperature shot up.

We pulled over when the temperature 'idiot' light went on. No fools are we! Not sure what to do, since it had come on so suddenly with no big noise to warn of something broken, we sat by the side of the road (in the rain) trying to figure out what to do.

Finally we just started up the car again and drove for a few additional minutes to see what would happen. When the water temperature started to rise again, Cheryl (who was driving) found a well-lit parking lot and stopped, and I got out to look at the engine - as if I could figure out what was going on!

(Stop laughing. Miracles do happen, y'know...)

Took me a few seconds to spot the problem, but when I did, I couldn't believe it. The belt had fallen off.

The car is nearly ten years old, with well over a hundred thousand miles on it. This kind of thing has never happened before. And the only thing that could've caused this problem was that we had the car in for service about a month ago and they replaced the belt because the old one had started to get noisy.

Looking at the pulleys and tensioner and everything else associated with the belt, I couldn't figure out how the belt stayed on. The tensioner did not have a rim around it; in fact, it was curved inward, as if it didn't care whether the belt stayed on or not. This fact probably helped when I put the belt back on, because I basically pulled it up and over the edge of the tensioner pulley until it popped back on.

With the belt back on, we drove very carefully and cautiously back home. And then Cheryl (the Researcher) got onto the web and started searching.

And found a treasure trove of information about the serpentine belts on Dodge Caravan / Plymouth Voyager minivans. All bad.

First, two of the pulleys are not rimmed, which means that any slight misalignment of the belt/pulley system will cause the belt to slide off one of those pulleys. Second, any amount of moisture (rain, snow, spillage from somewhere in the engine) will cause the belt to slide off one of those pulleys. Third, there is no warning light to indicate that the belt has failed - which means there is no warning to the driver that critical systems (steering, electrical supply, and cooling) have failed.

And even though the car continues to run, the engine will experience permanent damage within a matter of minutes. If the driver survives the sudden loss of steering control.

Apparently it is one of those very bad design errors that the manufacturer refuses to acknowledge or fix. That is, there was never a recall, and you can't go to the dealer and demand that it be repaired. The only serious fix, in fact, is an after-market kit which replaces the smooth pulleys with ribbed/rimmed pulleys so the belt absolutely cannot come off.

It's a serious safety problem. And this problem has been known for several years.

Except by us.

I find it difficult to believe that a flaw of this nature with a standard American car - doesn't every family own a minivan?? - hasn't become common knowledge. We've owned this car for nearly ten years, and this is the first time we've heard of it.

And we've driven this car for ten years with no problem, until a recent belt change coupled with a recent rainstorm combined to form the perfect set of events to cause the failure.

Is it really a problem with the pulley design? Or is it simply a badly-manufactured belt?

We don't know. We ordered the kit, and I'm going to put it on. I don't trust the pulley design. And I don't want to go through the same experience all those other people on the web forums did, putting the belt back on in the middle of a rainstorm (or merely when the roads are wet).

I want a car that's safe to drive my family around in.

Just Another Day at the Office

I had gotten up early in the morning, as is my custom, to begin my day in the silence of the sleeping house. The cats had been fed, the windows were open to bring in the fresh dew-laden air, one laptop stood on its tray with the morning news while the other was set up downstairs as my remote office.

It was just another ordinary day, working from home.

After the regularly-scheduled telecon to India at nine, I drove up to the real office to check in with a few folks on the team. I took along the laptop, plugging it in at my desk and checking email again out of habit (and a deep-seated fear of being disconnected to the mothership).

There was one bizarre email from my team lead which was so wacky that I took it for a joke.

Rob
I have been let go. My last day will be July 28.


Had to be a joke, right? We hadn't heard any rumors about layoffs or anything. We have six more months to finish up this project! Ridiculous.

Then the phone rang.

It was the line manager.

The layoff was real.

My entire staff of full-time employees had been laid off. All three of them. Leaving me with six contractors. To finish the verification testing for a huge software project by the end of December. Without my lead engineer.

To say I was angry would be an understatement. I was furious. Especially when it was revealed to me the selection methodology which was used to determine eligibility for said layoff.

GE is laying off engineers who want to do engineering. Coders. Developers. Testers. People who like to get their hands dirty by playing with the hardware, people who exercise their creativity by exploring the world of software development. People who are doing the things they trained to do in college.

All those things can be done much cheaper in India or Malaysia or the Philippines, by kids just out of Technical School who are content to sit in cubes and pound out line after line of code, or sit in cramped labs running test after test on hardware which is built by the lowest bidder from a sweatshop factory.

GE is keeping engineers who want to be "leaders" - that is, those who are content to juggle schedules and budgets and "resources" (the euphemism for "people"). They are getting rid of engineers who just want to be engineers in an effort to reduce cost. Streamline. Fulfill the expectations of the stockholders, who just want to see their stocks go up and up and up.

Because GE wants to be a Tier 1 supplier. That is, they want to design complete avionics systems on paper, and subcontract out all the real work. So all the engineers who like to put hardware together and make it work, and all the engineers who like to write code, are going the way of the dodo.

For a short time, the local contractors will be swamped with work as they struggle to catch up to the sudden influx of demand for their services due to the shift of duties from full-time employees to temporaries. Indeed, we are recommending that our laid-off engineers immediately transition to contractors so that we can re-hire them (at twice the pay) to get the work done.

But inevitably all the work will shift out-of-country because American workers cannot compete with the salary disparity. It's nearly a ten-to-one ratio. Even though the level of experience is far less, it always comes down to the money.

Disregarding the fact that those remaining full-time employees in the States will be asked to take on even more work as they attempt to take on their new management duties as well as providing training and expertise and knowledge to their new, inexperienced teams.

It's a stupid plan.

--

One thing in particular infuriated me as I was on the telephone with the line manager. Practically the first words out of her mouth were, "Don't worry. You're safe." As if my only concern was my job, my position. As if I was a shuddering ball of worry terrified that I might get the axe. I almost lost control.

I hate it when people assume self-centeredness on my part.

Jobs come and jobs go, that's just part of the way life works. What's important is that the people doing the work understand the reasons and the seasons for these changes. When they know there is work to be done, and they know when the work is scheduled for completion, they can plan their lives accordingly. When they know that they are valued for their skills, and they have an understanding of the needs of the company, and they are made aware of the direction the company is going, they are empowered to make the choices which are right for them.

When the company comes out of left field and lays them off before projects are completed, without prior warning, for reasons that make no sense - "We need to cut costs, let's roll the dice to figure out which day to do it" - the company has lost sight of its real mission.

The company is not in business merely to make money for shareholders. The company is in business to meet the needs of people - and those needs include not only the products or services they provide, but the need for men and women to have gainful employment, to have a means to provide for their families, to have a future. After all, why do we build airplanes? To move people from place to place. To bring material from place to place, for people. Everything we do is for the benefit and convenience of people.

A business has a place in the community - in the country, in the world - to provide a benefit to people. When the leaders of the company puts their financial interests above that of the people who are the company, they have reneged on their responsibility to fully take into account all the aspects of leadership.

Of course, they will claim that they are making these decisions in order to remain competitive in the global marketplace. Hard to believe that excuse when you see the salaries those bigwigs are pulling down. And the bonuses. If they wanted to remain competitive, they would work hard to make sure that their people were successful, were being provided the tools they need to get their jobs done quickly and efficiently, were convinced that the company was looking out for them as well as the bottom line.

There have been so many stupid decisions lately. It will be difficult to convince anyone that the people at the top have any brains at all.

--

Nearly a hundred people. Eighty-three engineers. Hopefully some of them will be able to find positions with the contracting agencies. But some will not. Some will move on. In this economy, it will not be easy. It will impact the local economy, if the local economy can handle it. There will be fewer people shopping, few people paying taxes, which will roll right through the local economy and result in other companies laying off their people. There will be houses up for sale which will not sell, resulting in foreclosures. There will be disruption of families, neighborhoods, churches, organizations.

We can only wait and see what will happen.