Spring Break with Aaron Copland

The kids have been looking forward to this day for a long, long time.  Practically since the day Christmas vacation ended and they headed back to school.

It's Spring Break!

And aren't going anywhere!

Naturally, we'll have lots and lots of chores for the kids to do. Andy maybe if I can get a day off here and there during the week, we'll go out as a family somewhere and do something.

But mostly, the kids are planning on sleeping in, reading books, watching movies, visiting friends, avoiding even the thought of schoolwork.

And we're planning on having them do lots and lots of little chores around the house, like mowing the lawn, weeding the garden, cleaning the house, and making all the meals.

You should've seen their happy faces when we told them of our plans!^[1]

As part of our Spring Break Celebration, Cheryl and I went out tonight on our last Symphony Concert.^[2] For me, this was the one with the greatest anticipation factor because it featured the music of Aaron Copland.  To be exact, it was his Symphony Number Three, which includes the famous passage, Fanfare for the Common Man.

That one always sends chills through me.

Prior to the Copland, though, the Symphony featured a young violinist, Jessica Lee, who played a piece called The Butterfly Lovers, which is a traditional Chinese love story.  It was incredibly moving, light-spirited and fast-paced.  Just watching her play was a treat; she put an incredible amount of emotion into her performance.

As an added bonus, we bumped into some friends of ours from church and were able to stand around afterward and discuss the performance.  That's always lots of fun!

It's a bit disappointing to realize that we've completed all our Symphony visits now.  They've been very enjoyable.

Our next big performance, though, is getting Adam through graduation.

---

^[1]Right.
^[2]As part of her Christmas/Birthday present, we got a package of four Symphony Concerts.  

Out of Warranty

It was about a year ago that something went wrong with my back.  I'm still not sure what it was, but the result was an intensely painful lower-back spasm that left me feeling hobbled and weak.

I put up with it for a long while, thinking that all the pain and discomfort would gradually disappear, and one day I'd wake up and life would be back to normal.

But it didn't.

After about three weeks of constant pain, it became obvious that something more was needed.

So I went to the doctor.  And he looked me over, made a few observations, and then referred me to a Clinic where they do physical therapy.

This therapy consisted of three or four sessions of strengthening exercises: side-to-side rolls, wall lifts, sit-ups.  The kinds of exercises that are supposed to stretch all the muscles which support the back.  And make up for all those years of sitting at a computer desk with bad posture.

It helped a bit.  But it was difficult to tell whether everything felt better due to the passage of time, or because the exercises were really helping.

They were probably helping in the general sense, as any kind of physical therapy which includes exercise is probably good for getting one back into shape.  But when the physical therapy sessions were done, although the major symptoms were gone, I was still experiencing other minor symptoms.

My hip-bones were still arguing with my leg-bones, which was painful enough, and it was practically impossible to find a comfortable position in which to sit for extended periods of time, especially when driving; but now, in addition, my right arm began, at times, to tingle like it was going to sleep, and it became quite uncomfortable to work on the computer, or, worse, to play guitar.

This was very disappointing.  Especially after all that physical therapy.

Over the years, I've become quite cynical about doctors in general.  It seems like a waste of time, mostly, because the doctor has never been able to fix any of my complaints.  Nearly every time I've gone to see him, he has said, effectively, "I don't know what causes that.  Here, try this.  Or try that.  See if it works."

This is not my kind of answer.  That's guessing in the dark.  I'm an engineer.  I want to know exactly what is going on, and exactly what to do in order to fix it.  I want to look through the official manual and figure out which steps to take in order to restore operation to its as-manufactured, as-designed state.

But that's never been my experience with doctors.  Or specialists.  Or physical therapists.  Or gastroenterologists.  Or allergists.  They're all just guessing.  And I've never come away from a visit to a doctor or clinic without feeling like I'm wasting my time.

But, again, it was obvious that something had to be done.  And that meant another visit to the doctor.  Because you always have to visit your Primary Care Physician in order to get referrals to a Specialist.

So I went.  And he listened as I outlined all the symptoms: the pain in my upper thighs, the tingling/numbness in my arm, the inability to sit for long periods of time.  And he checked a few things here and there: heart, lungs, reflexes.  I've got great blood pressure.  My weight is good.  My reflexes seemed OK.

It was obvious, though, that a more detailed inspection was required.  So he made a series of referrals to some specialists in order to investigate my complaints.  And ordered a round of X-rays, which were easily dispatched upstairs in the lab after my appointment.

Now it's just the waiting game.  Waiting to go to all those other appointments, waiting to see if they're going to find anything this time, waiting for the inevitable suggestions of drugs or physical therapy or other inane suggestions that will result in absolutely no resolution.

As you can probably tell, I'm not very hopeful about it.

Robotics Wrap-Up & College Finances

You've probably heard of FIRST Robotics, the annual robotics competition which brings lots of geeky young people together to design, build and test robots.

Oh, you have? Good, because I don't want to try and explain it.

It all started twenty-odd years ago when Someone with Good Intentions decided that geeky kids shouldn't be left to their own devices, building robots in their basement and taking them out to empty parking lots in the middle of abandoned Detroit and having Robot Wars to satisfy an internal need to blow things up. No, no; this Particular Well-Intentioned Busybody was worried that all those geeky kids might become antisocial, and it was high-time that they were brought into the fold of polite society and Organized. So he (and a bunch of other "concerned" adults) came together and created an Organization which took all the fun out of something the kids were already on their own, devising Teams and Logos and Trophies and Saturday Practice Sessions and Cheerleading Squads and other things that are not only incredibly stupid but also Cost Lots of Money.

So instead of kids going through the scrapyards and fix-it shops (and their dad's garage) to find wires and motors and gears and aluminum frames, and building bizarre contraptions which are not only icredibly creative but also mind-stretching in their complexity and artistry, they are forced to do lots of Fundraising so they can come up with enough money to order actual Parts from real Corporations and then put all these expensive parts together into some semblance of a robot that meets the Rules and Specifications of this year's "game"; and then they when they are ready to take their amazing invention to the competition, they must do a bit more FundRaising to come up with the huge Entry Fee so they will be allowed to compete against other Teams at these big Events held at huge Universities where every "sponsor" gets to plaster the robots with stickers denoting their sponsorship.

American capitalism at its best.

The Company sponsors several of these robots at several different schools scattered across the country. I'm a mentor at one of these schools. I go to the planning meetings and the practice sessions and some of the competitions; I help them with their designs and their wiring and their computer programming as they work on the robot; and I cheer on the team when they are out on the field trying to get the robot to do its thing.

But it still doesn't sit right with me.

The "season" is only six weeks long, from the time the "game" is announced to the time of the first competition. That's barely enough time to get a team to work together, let along enough time to design, build, test and perfect a robot. It puts a lot of pressure on the kids to get a lot of complicated tasks done in a very short amount of time. It tends to lead to a bit of burn-out, especially on those particular students who are prone to go all-out until they have nothing left to give.

One of the kids, a senior, nearly hosed up his GPA because he was spending too much time on the robot and not enough time on his AP classes. Hearing about the trouble he was getting into both at home and at school infuriated me; someone (a mentor, teacher or sponsor) needed to help remind him that it is, after on, only a game. But they were getting wrapped up in the spirit of the competition just as much as he was.

I don't like competition, or confrontation of any kind. If there is any possibility that someone will win and someone will lose, I am uncomfortable. And, inevitably, rather than gaining joy from a successful outcome, I can't help but feel sorry for those who have lost. For me, the greatest joy is in designing something that is really cool, not in making it better than someone else.

This is only the second year for this team. I had tried to help out last year, but never was able to find enough time to do so. This year, there was more time available to help, but it was not very satisfactory an experience. At one point, I asked one of the shop teachers, who was sponsoring the "club", why there were so few students from last year's team. "Burn-out", he replied. Too many late nights. Too much stress and anxiety from trying to put together a complicated mechanism with a minimum number of participants.

And this year?

We had our Wrap-Up meeting tonight, our post-competition What Did We Learn session. The mentors had a lot to say. So did the kids.

Consistency was one of the biggest problems. It was very difficult to get a consistent set of students at each "practice". So it was hard to make assignments and then ensure that things were getting done on schedule.

Organization was another issue. Organization of materials, teams, design, fundraisers, and just about everything else under the sun. There was a constant state of anxiety due to the very short season (six weeks from announcement of this year's game to the first competition) and the ridiculous number of things we had to figure out.

Especially when some things didn't quite work out the way we had expected.

Supposedly, that's part of the fun of this competition, running into issues that cause the team to come up with brilliantly creative fixes. But it really isn't that much fun when it puts people on edge and leads to a lot of delays and late nights and panicky situations during the week before the competition (like when a particularly expensive part suddenly breaks and the team has to scramble to find and order a replacement, only to find that they just aren't available).

It isn't fun, at least not to me. My idea of fun is teaching a group of kids how to build a robot from scraps they've gathered out of their parents' garage, and learning some basic principles of mechanics, electronics, and hydraulics in the process.

(You might notice that I didn't mention "programming". Programming wasn't really critical to to design, and I never really understood the need for such a fancy computer system for the robot. It wasn't necessary. The "robot", in fact, was mostly tele-operated, not really much more complicated than a radio-controlled car you might find in the local toy store. But the big international embedded system sponsor had dictated that everyone had to use their computer, and the FIRST people bought into that vision, and so every team had to come up with thousands of dollars to buy the computer.)

My next goal, insofar is the robotics team is concerned, is to find out how many of the kids are willing to get together over the summer to work on some real robotics training; that is, learning how robots really work, and designing them from the ground up, without the assistance of expensive corporate sponsors.

---

The rest of the evening was spent discussing college finances with Adam.

This is not a comfortable subject with him, nor is it really comfortable for us. The fact remains that we have missed several deadlines for obtaining scholarships, and the possibility of his attending the college of his choice - or any college, for that matter, is rapidly dwindling.

He has already been accepted at one college; unfortunately, it is one of the more expensive colleges in the area. They have offered him a scholarship, but that only manages to bring our overall cost to somewhere in the neighborhood of painful.

If he is to attend that college, there is a quite a bit of money that must be procured; and it cannot be procured merely obtaining gifts from friends and family, and by parents taking out a loan. No, indeed. This is going to require quite a bit of work on his part.

At $7.40 an hour.

Taking a Break to Read

Every once in a while, awash with the sense of being overhwhelmed by technology, it is necessary to indulge oneself in the old-fashioned pastime of reading.

And I don't mean reading blog posts. Or Facebook.

Sometimes, the only thing keeping me sane is the thought of escaping somewhere to read a book. You know, those cardboard-enclosed cubic collections of paper with random bits of ink scattered across the surface like so many Egyptian heiroglyphs. (It always strkes me odd that they don't have hyperlinks in them, so the pages don't automatically update when the words are tapped with a finger.) There are these buildings called "libraries" wherein they are housed. Quite interesting, actually. If you can get past the rows and rows of computer terminals where people come to work on their resumes, they have shelves full of these odd little devices.

I was perfectly happy with the set of books which had been nabbed during my latest sojourn to the Land of Words: a Dave Barry anthology (always good for a gut-buster laugh session); Carrie Fisher's latest memoir; Bob Green's memoir about his dad and Paul Tibbets; and an anthology of newspaper articles from H.L.Mencken.

Dave Barry's book, Boogers Are My Beat, was one I had checked out before, but wanted to check out again so that I could re-read his tribute articles to the people who died on 9-11. While I do enjoy reading his humorous works, his serious essays have a certain tone which reminds me of his real skill as a writer.

Carrie Fisher's book, Wishful Drinking, was hilarious, but definitely not for those wishing to avoid colorful phrases. As in, lots of bad language. The girl has a mouth that just won't quit. And while her story is sad and poignant, the reaction one comes away with after reading it (and wanting to wash one's eyes out with soap and water) is that, although it's a shame she had such a horrid home life as a kid (at least from the standpoint of having no real father in her life) and we all wish she could've had the dream life we always imagined for her (after all, it's Princess Leia!) instead of getting to the point where the only thing she could do to keep sane was to scramble her brains with electro-shock therapy, we do wish she'd find a better way to communicate than by lacing her narrative with expletives. One does feel rather soiled after reading it.

Bob Green's memoir, Duty: A Father, A Son, and the Man Who Won the War, was a bit odd, since it dealt both with his father and Paul Tibbets, who was not his father. Jumping between the story of his relationship with his father and his interviews with Tibbets left one wondering which of the relationships was more important. And some of the questions he asked of Tibbets were badly chosen, considering how much information about the man was already publicly available. One doesn't need to harp on his connection to the bombing of Hiroshima over and over again; it's obvious he's said all that he's going to say about it.

Still, it was interesting to read how Bob developed a relationship with the man late in life, and how it intertwined with the relationship he had with his dying father.

The Mencken, unlike the others, which are far shorter in both length and depth, is the most interesting of the lot. It is a collection of H. L. Mencken's newspaper columns stretching from the beginning of the 20th century to just past its midpoint; from the early years of America's imperial ascendancy to the post-War days of the Cold War. And it covers a lot of ground. Nearly every political gathering of consequence (both Republican and Democratic conventions); the struggles for and against Prohibition; the precursors to the Civil Rights movement; his views on religion, marriage, community, duty, government, and politics; and all of it spiced with his marvelous cynicism, his effortless crafting of phrases, his masterful artistry with words. His prose doesn't just speak, it sings in operatic tones.

---

After all that, it was, of course, necessary to move along to the next exciting project: The Hunger Games.

Cheryl had purchased the Hunger Games trilogy at Costco a week or so ago, so it was obviously time to read them. Once she and the kids were done.

The kids have known about - and read - the books since they first started getting popular three or four years ago. We adults had been putting off reading the books for awhile, but since someone went to all the trouble of making a movie version of the first one (and I assume the others will be made into movies as well), we figured it was about time to read them.

So far, I've finished the first one. And it was ... OK.

It's difficult to put myself in the mindset of a young adult reading the book for the first time, which is the mindset required in order to understand why the books are so popular. Frankly, I wasn't taken immediately by the writing style or the story. Having read quite a few dystopian novels, there wasn't anything in the first book which had a particular appeal, although there were plenty of sci-fi techno advances thrown in to spice things up a bit (like genetically-engineered animals with special abilities, silent hovercraft, and things of that nature).

Stylistically, Suzanne Collins writes in a straightforward first-person manner with a good, consistent character voice. It is easy to leap into the mind of her narrator and main character, Katniss Everdeen, and see the world through her eyes. But, at the same time, given the limitations of that approach, it is more difficult to become immersed in the universe of the story when one is limited to seeing the world through the eyes of the one character, especially after one has gotten spoiled by certain other authors whose third-person omniscient style lends itself more easily to being pulled heart and soul into the universe of the book(s).

It is easy to see why young girls would be drawn to the character: she is strong, independent-minded, highly-capable, skilled in ways that most young girls are not (at least these days), loyal, devoted and courageous. When put into a dangerous situation, she manages to find a way to survive. And it doesn't hurt that she has two (!) young men vying for her attention.

It is also easy to see why young men would be drawn to the character: she is strong, independently-minded, highly-capable, skilled in ways that most young girls are not (unless they are into archery and self-defense), loyal, devoted and courageous. And pretty. And, on the surface, not interested in young men. Which, oddly enough, makes her desirable. Because there's nothing more challenging to young men than winning the affections of a young girl who says that she is not interested in them. Go figure.

The story is well-told although the language is sometimes a bit advanced for a character born and raised in the Appalachian hinterlands; one wonders if her first birthday gift was a thesaurus. Yet the story moves right along, there is plenty of action to keep things interesting, just enough introspection to make the character somewhat mysterious, and a sufficiently inconclusive conclusion (to the first book) which makes the reader want to find out What Happens Next.

I'm looking forward to reading the next exciting volume. Soon.

Sweeney Todd for Mary, Too!

Mary was hesitant to go with the rest of us to see "Sweeney Todd" at the high school on Thursday, but when she was provided another opportunity^[1] on Saturday, she quickly took advantage of it.

I was a bit jealous, given the number of technical issues which arose on Thursday. It's difficult to fully appreciate the production when there is an announcement just before it begins that the lighting cues have been lost, and they are going to be making them up as they go.

As it turned out, her experience was even more exciting than ours ...

Many of James's friends were planning on attending the Saturday evening show, since it was the last opportunity to see it. Since Mary is familiar with them as well, we decided that it would be OK for her to sit with them during the performance. And then the parents of one of those friends volunteered to drive them all home. Which was very nice.

I drove Mary and James and one of James's friends over to the school. And I went with Mary over to the box office to purchase her ticket (James having gone off to the Pit, and his friend having gone off to find seats). And it was very, very hard not to purchase a ticket for myself as well, although I already had plans to get some things done at home. I couldn't help it; I got more and more excited the closer we got to the auditorium. It's one of those things that happens to people who really enjoy being onstage, or involved in stage productions. Kind of like "the smell of the greasepaint, the roar of the crowd".^[2]

I walked her over to the auditorium, still wishing there wasn't so much work to do at home, thinking to help her find the people with whom she was going to sit, and when we got to the door, who should be gathering tickets but the father of James's friend? Naturally, he let me go in and help Mary find her seat. And I was sorely tempted to stay...

But we must be honest about these things. And, honestly, I just couldn't afford (time-wise) to spend three hours watching something I'd already seen before. And it was probably better for Mary anyway, since she got to hang out with people (roughly) her own age, without the "benefit" of parental oversight.

She's almost all grown up, you know. (Sob!)

So it was back home for me, to slave away on all those home projects which had been ignored for so long; and drama and music and laughter and excitement for those lucky people who got to stay and watch the show.

Afterward, we heard that the musical went very well ... up until about five minutes before the end. When, mysteriously, the smoke alarm went off.

Some people evidently decided to leave the auditorium at that point; others didn't. Perhaps those who didn't leave thought it was part of the show. Oh, well, it was during the last song, there wasn't that much actually "happening", and everyone had already gotten the point of the show.^[3]

There was a rumor that the smoke was caused by a particularly "hot" bass player^[4] down in the Pit. Whose music-stand lamp got overheated for some reason. But no one has been able to substantiate those claims.

Others suspect that the fog machine (which is used during the performance) caused it.

Regardless, Mary thoroughly enjoyed the show, and it is not too far off the mark to say that certain parents still have hopes that they might see their progeny onstage in future high school musical productions.

---

^[1]Since James was in the Pit Orchestra, we had to drive him there anyway, so it was very little trouble to add an extra passenger.
^[2]Not "The Roar of the Greasepaint, The Smell of the Crowd"; that's an Anthony Newley musical from 1962. You probably haven't seen it.
^[3]Which is, of course, don't eat meat pies unless you know what they're made out of.
^[4]By the name of James.

Hungrrrr Games the Movie

The kids had read the books already, but Cheryl purchased the trilogy at Costco anyway so the rest of us could catch up before we went to see the movie.

Naturally, I still didn't get the chance to read the books until after the movie. Because everyone in my household is a voracious reader, and any sign of "new" books, even if they have already been read, is a signal to make a grab for it and run. To their rooms, under their covers, wherever they can hide and remain undisturbed.

It's very weird to come home from work to a silent house. Because everyone is reading. It's even worse when we come back from the library. You might as well cancel all the plans for the rest of the day when there's a fresh stack of books to read at the Meyer household!

The girls had been making plans to see the movie for weeks now; they and their friends were figuring out all the details, and (I think) they were planning on letting us parents in on it eventually. The boys were making plans, too, and it just made sense to us that perhaps we ought to put the plans together and kill two mockinjays^[1] with one stone (as it were); so we made all the arrangements, bought the tickets ahead of time, and headed down to Hastings to the teeny-weeny theater near where our friends lived, to meet up with them and their clan, so that we could all see the movie together.

We got there right on time for an early matinee show (at 1 p.m.) with hardly anyone else in the theater. Feeling somewhat generous due to the fact that we had spent so little^[2] on the tickets, we splurged and bought popcorn and sodas as well. Hey, we're supporting the local economy! And then we walked through the doorway into utter darkness and found our seats, and were treated to several trailers^[3] before the main event began.

The Hunger Games was a bit slow in the beginning, action-wise, but there was a lot of implied backstory. The girls were a bit disappointed that so much had to be left out of the movie, but they understand that it is quite difficult to cram so much book into the span of a two-and-a-half hour movie. I thought it rather well done; it was easy to figure out what was implied just from the scenery. Some things had been done before, so that a passing acquaintance with stories of this genre was sufficient to clue one in. Overall, it was easy to get into the story and into the minds of the characters so that it all made sense. Mostly.

I was a bit puzzled by some of the actions and dialogue of the boy character, Peeta; but since most of them were resolved by the end of the movie, it didn't bother me too much. The lead actress played her part well, although for some reason she kept reminding me of the Susan character in the C. S. Lewis series. I really enjoyed the part played by Woody Harrelson; his story arc interested me from the moment he appeared on-screen as the drunken Haymitch.

Some of the action scenes were confusing due to the use of the ShakyCam style of shooting; some of the fight scenes really didn't reqire it, and a couple of them so blurred my vision that even after they were done, I couldn't tell what had happened. And the hallucinatory scene was, in my judgement, too long and could've been cut a bit.

But overall, was a very good, thought-provoking opening for the trilogy. The ending was intentionally open-ended, as there is much left to be resolved, and I look forward to seeing the rest when the appear in time.

Meanwhile, I have to find who's got the first book and pry it from their fingers so I can read it, too. What happened to the rule where parents get to read the books first, to make sure they're OK for children??

---

^[1]A mutant bird which figures heavily in the first book.
^[2]If $39 for 6 people is considered "little"...
^[3]The best one was Dark Shadows with Johnny Depp

Sweeney Todd

Every night for the last two or three weeks, James has been going to school at six o'clock in the evening and staying until ten.

Why?

Because he's playing bass in the Orchestra for Sweeney Todd, of course! (And they've been rehearsing for the past three weeks.)

I didn't know Sweeney Todd was a high-school level musical. Did you? I thought it was more on the level of Les Miserables or Phantom of the Opera, not Oklahoma! or Bye Bye Birdie or The Music Man. You know. Extremely difficult scores, ridiculously operatic singing, computer-controlled megawatt-range lighting, complicated sets requiring hundreds of stage crew to manage. That kind of thing.

Apparently, I was wrong.

We went to the opening night performance, and it was everything we could've hoped for. Extremely difficult scores, ridiculously operatic singing, computer-controlled not-quite-megawatt-range lighting, complicated sets ...

Wait a minute. Scratch that lighting thing. Change it to "computer crashed an hour before the show and lost all the programmed lighting sequences". Yep. If you an imagine that. The director got up on stage right before the show was supposed to start and announced that they had been scrambling to recover some of the lighting cues, and asked us to be patient because the show was going to have some glitches.

Some glitches. Yeah, right.

Actually, there were quite a few glitches, but we didn't really care. We were there to see our children in the show, and they could've lost the music, their voices, and all their memories, and we would've been happy to see them regardless. They are our children! They are perfect!

If you've ever seen the show on Broadway, or the movie version with Johnny Depp, you know how difficult of a show it is. The syncopation of the music is definitely not trivial. The actors really have to keep track of the beats and the counts and everything, all the while staying in character - complete with accents! Oh, and there's also stairs to contend with, since Sweeney's barber shop is above Mrs. Lovett's pie shop.

The cast did an amazing job, even if an occasional lighting cue went awry. They didn't let the opening night disaster freak them out. And the audience was completely blown away by how wonderful it was.

And Cheryl resisted the urge to shout, "There's my Jimmy!" when James was kickin' on bass.^[1]

---

^[1]That's a line from The Music Man, of course!

Running On Borrowed Air!

Well, that was a fun time. Running with Deb yesterday, I mean.

We did it! We ran! And I almost survived. Oh, sure, my body is daily giving evidence of falling apart. My back hurts, my hips are a disaster, my shins and thighs are like tight iron bands (totally rusted).

But Deb, though she was having similar difficulties with a sore foot and too-tight muscles, did wonderfully. Even handicapped by non-running shoes, she did fantastic!

We didn't stretch like I'd planned. (short version - we were in a hurry.) Instead, we just started walking. Then, at a convenient corner, I said, "Let's run to the next intersection." Which we did. Not a full-out run, of course; I'm not a complete idiot (though some would beg to differ). Just a nice, leisurely jog. Then we walked again. Then, at another intersection, we jogged again ... a little faster this time. Then, back to walking. At this one curvy section of road, we sprinted. And I got to see her long, lean legs kicking strong. It was awesome. (And, of course, she beat the old man.)

We repeated the same thing through the whole course til we got home. The final sprint wasn't long, but it was tough. Uphill to the house. I was completely winded, but happy. Deb was glowing. I mean, really red-faced and glowing with a grin that just wouldn't stop. I'm hoping she was half as proud as I was of her. That girl can go!

Now I'm looking forward to doing it again this afternoon!

Running On

Deb is joining the track team, but hasn't had her physical yet so won't be starting on the same day that the rest of the team starts. Apparently, her coach is OK with that. But it was mentioned that, in order to be ready, she needs to be running at least 30 minutes a day.

Above and beyond gym class.

So, guess what Dad and Deb are going to do today?

That's right! We're going to run!

Actually, we're going to warm up, which is a mixture of stretching and jogging and running and sprinting, just to see where we are with all this exercise stuff. If you remember from last summer, we had gone to the track and done some running (which is where we discovered that there were actually some good runners in the family), so this isn't totally a foreign concept to us. We know the drill.

So we will start out with some stretching; then we'll do a bit of walking. As soon as our limbs feel limbered up, we'll start jogging a bit, til we feel a bit "in the groove". Then we'll slow down to a walk again, stretch out our legs a bit, rinse, repeat.

I can't wait to see how it all turns out. It's kind of exciting to have someone in the family who is interested in running. I just wish my Dad was here to help her!

The Premature Return of Spring

The weather forecast indicates that we will have temperatures in the mid-seventies all week. This is rather unusual for Michigan in March.

Last year, as I recall, we were still knee-deep in snow at this point.

What happened?

According to the weather pundits and the satellites, it's all due to that weird jet stream which has decided to go on a spelling spree right down through the middle of North America, drawing a great big "U" from the Canadian border right down to the middle of Texas. With the resultant vacuum of air which brings cold northern climes down to Lubbock, and pushes all that delicious sun-baked southern warmth up the Mississipi to Michigan.

Thanks, y'all!

While we appreciate the gracious gesture, the fact remains that we hadn't planned for it, and weren't ready for it, and were still hoping for a few more weeks of the white stuff to supplement the winter incomes of the local ski resorts. They had to shut down a bit ahead of schedule this year, so there will be some dire financial straits to deal with very soon. And the local hardware stores had to hurriedly shift the shelves around to get the seeds and fertilizers in places where the snowblowers and shovels and salt had been proudly sitting.

The worst part, though, was the effect on the children. Think of the poor children, faced with weeks and weeks of school left to go, yet knowing that just outside those walls was a springtime wonderland, just waiting to be experienced! At least when there is cold and snow and ice to contend with, their minds are better able to focus on the homework and projects and examinations on which their futures depend. But this! There is no more potent way to distract them than to provide fresh, warm breezes and bright sunlight throughout the day, and the promise of more warmth to come.

Come to think of it, the effect on the adults isn't much better. It's been rather difficult to focus at work, too.

Maybe I should just give up and take a walk outside to think it over...

7th Grade Choir Festival

I never actually was in the "Choir" at school, not if you take the meaning of the word to be the large, general-purpose collection of vocal music students who can fill a stage's worth of risers to blast your eardrums with a rousing rendition of The Hallelujah Chorus.

Rather, I was in a group which was kind of a "special" choir, a smaller, more select group of people with particular aptitude for harmony and syncopation. We had four people per part, mostly; no more than twelve to sixteen in the entire group, as I recall.

My admittance into the group was entirely Jan's fault; she convinced me it would be fun. Somehow. And she was right. There's nothing better than being in a select group of people who are particularly passionate about music.

Cheryl was in several choirs, both general and select. She started a lot earlier than I did. (Of course, she also played piano since she was knee-high to a grasshopper, so had a lot of musical background.) So there is vocal music in our blood. I had always hoped it would show up in our children as well.

Adam loves to sing in church, but he never pursued anything beyond that. He's a pretty good piano player, very creative, writes his own scores, that kind of thing. Which makes us both proud. But he wasn't interested (so far as I know) in choir.

James is the type of person who can pick up any instrument and figure out how to play it, mostly by ear. He has certain instruments which he pursues - clarinet, guitar, bass - but seems comfortable with just about anything. But he does not sing.

Deb used to sing quite a bit around the house. But I don't think I've ever heard her sing anywhere else (except maybe in the car). She plays piano, too, but gave up lessons years ago so that she could focus on flute instead. And she's been first chair flute for a long time. Somehow, that instrument seems to suit her. But she would not be in choir.

Mary plays piano and sings. She sings at home, she sings in the car, she sings at church, she sings a lot. She still takes piano lessons, but she also opted to be in choir at school. She enjoys it. She took part in the "Beauty and the Beast" musical at the middle school.

So when the Middle School Choir Festival came along, Cheryl and I couldn't resist signing up as chaparones so we could finally see one of our children perform in the traditional choir style. On a set of risers with a bunch of other kids, all of them singing those (in)famous choir songs in various languages. With a director out front waving her hands, just like we'd known in our own youth.

It was magical.

Since it is a Middle School choir, there are many children who aren't passionate about singing or music; some of them are taking the class because it's the only option they can stand, or they think it will be an easy class. You can tell which ones those are. They are always getting in trouble for attitude, talking, absenteeism, and a host of other disciplinary issues, including knock-down, drag-out fighting. It frustrates Mary that some of the kids aren't there for the joy of singing.

We tell her, it will get better.

Year by year, the chaff filters out, leaving only the true lovers of music. And that's when the choirs really get moving. I'm hoping she'll have a good experience with it. I'm hoping we'll be able to get her back into voice lessons. I'm hoping she'll eventually get into one of those special choirs where she'll be stretched and challenged and trained to the point where both she and her audience recognize her voice as a gift from God, and glorify Him through it.

And her parents will remain, as they are now, proud of what she has accomplished.

Her choir, despite a few disciplinary issues here and there, did very well in the evaluations. In fact, they were given a very special compliment by the sight-reading examiner, who said they were the best she had seen that day. It helps that they have a very good teacher who had given them some excellent tools for decomposing scores, and they hunkered down and worked very hard on a rather difficult piece in a very short amount of time, and I was amazed at how well they handled it. That compliment meant a great deal to me, and to them. I'm hoping it was enough to spur them on to further achievement.

We've been so blessed by our children's musical gifts and talents.

"Use the Force, Luka!"

Those of you who are serious Star Wars geeks may already know this, but there was a time back in the early days of Star Wars when George Lucas was considering the idea of a girl as the protaganist of the story.

That's right. Luke as Luka.

Being one of those people whose mind is always filled with exciting story ideas (when not filled with huge lists of tasks which are not being accomplished because I'm too busy thinking about story ideas), I couldn't help but wonder how that would've turned out.

There are many repurcussions to the idea, obviously. For one thing, it places a second female in a primary character role, now equalizing the male-female ratios: Obi-Wan/Leia + Han/Luka. That's nearly balanced, so far as gender is concerned. But the relative ages are a bit of a problem. Unless we adjust the Leia character to be older - say a Queen instead of a Princess - in which case we now have an older couple (Obi-Wan/Leia) and a younger couple (Han/Luka).

Now we have achieved True Balance in the Force!

That would also take care of another wrinkle in the story - the whole "twins" thing. I never liked the idea of Luke and Leia as twins. That's too much like one of those Dickensian coincidences. If Leia is an older, mature woman, no relation to Luka, then Luka can be her own person, and is free to pursue the "rogue", Han. Which makes for a more interesting romance, at least in my mind. Do you remember your first impression of the romantic triangle at the end of the original movie? Yeah, we were all wondering who was going to end up with the Princess, either Luke or Han. Now we can skip right past that and just let the Han/Luka relationship develop.

And resolve that irritating little issue with the biological connection between the main villain and the main protagonist (i.e. Darth and Luke).

Like, forget it.

Sure, the concept of having them related, father-to-offspring, is an interesting one, but it raises far too many problems from my point of view. First, I am against the "inherited Force aptitude" thing, where Luke was strong with the Force (apparently) due to his being the offspring of someone who was also strong with the Force (aka Darth Vader aka Anakin Skywalker). It may be that genetics plays a role in one's abilities in this area, but, as an American, I'd rather believe that with enough hard work and dedication, one can achieve anything, even aptitude with supernatural powers. One doesn't need "superior breeding" in order to achieve greatness. Having super-powers due to some blood relationship is too close to the "royalty" idea for my taste. And I believe we gave that up years go, didn't we?

Second, we don't need to know Darth Vader's backstory. He's a villain. He's an archetype. He should be left as he was at the end of the first movie - a dark, mysterious, malevolent half-human creature bent on maintaining the status quo through terror and cruelty (with the Emperor pulling the puppet strings). That raises the bar for the hero, who must overcome seemingly insurmountable odds against a powerful (and mysterious) opponent.^[1]

So why muddle up the story with pointless information about a character who serves mainly to accentuate the growth of the protagonist? And why force in all those familial relationships? That will only increase the probability that some weak-minded writer will start putting in all sorts of "cutesy" tie-ins between the past and the present, like ... oh, I don't know ... father and son matching artificial hands? Protocol droids built by the father which miraculously meet up with the son years later? Hiding the son on the very planet from which the father came? ("Oh, he'll never look there!")

Then there's the issue of the sacrificial mentor.

Having Obi-Wan as a tragic hero is an interesting idea, yet his death was strangely unsatisfying in the original story. Yes, he sacrifices himself for the good of the others; but that line about being "more powerful than you can even imagine" during the duel with Darth was over the top. We, the audience, never see what a wonderful Jedi he is during his lifetime, and we never get to see him "more powerful than you can even imagine" after he dies. In fact, we never really get to see him in action at all (unless you count the wimpy Kenobi-Vader duel). We need to see a real fight, a real high-energy lightsaber duel in which Obi-Wan successfully distracts Darth so that the others can escape.

And we don't need to see Obi-Wan die. Not just yet, anyway. After all, Luke still needs guidance and mentoring, doesn't he? And from someone with whom he can identify and empathize, I mean, not from an other-wordly mutant Muppet.^[2]

Besides, I'd kinda like to see ol' Obi-Wan and the queen get into some witty bantering, a la Cary Grant and Rosalind Russell in "His Girl Friday".

So ... let's re-imagine the story as it might have been ...

A young farm girl, stuck on a dead-end planet and yearning for adventure. A cynical young star pilot, yearning for a love to restore his faith in mankind. A tired old warrior longing for the far-off days of strength and vigor. And a beleaguered queen who longs for her once-and-future-king.

Picture this.

Luka Skywalker, the legitimate niece of a moisture farmer on some backwater planet, comes across the hidden recording of the queen's plea for help while cleaning the droids her father purchased from some local merchants. Meanwhile, Obi-Wan is traveling under the radar, hot on the trail of the Queen who has been captured by the Empire. He tracks down the droids at the farm and attempts to persuade them to hand them over to him. Owen smells money and tries to make a deal, but the Stormtroopers bust in and break up the negotiations. Obi-Wan grabs the droids and flees the scene, unaware that Luka has stowed aboard his tiny ship. But his ship is damaged in the escape, and only makes it as far as Mos Eisley. He discovers the stowaway. They go to the bar to find a ship.

{No, we really can't toss out the whole bar scene. It was way too much fun!}

They hire Han, and bust out of Mos Eisley just in the nick of time. Then they head to Alderaan to deliver the plans, but Alderaan is gone. The Death Star grabs them with the tractor beam and pulls them in. They sneak out of the bay, intending to locate the source of the tractor beam so they can disable it. They discover that the Queen is imprisoned. This time, Obi-Wan goes to rescue the Queen while Han and Luka attempt to disable the tractor beam. Lots of stuff gets blown up, Obi-Wan gets to do some fancy light-saber dueling with some bad guys, including Darth Vader, but manages to make good his escape; then they all meet up back at the Falcon and blast out of the bay like a bat out of a very dark cave.

So the good guys warp off to the secret base; the Death Star follows the hidden beacon; the big, final battle commences. As before, Han is in a hurry to leave with his payoff (for helping rescue the Queen), but this time, Obi-Wan is in the X-wing ("Red 5 standing by"), and Luka goes with Han.

{Why? Because someone needs to talk some sense into that big lug-headed half-hero. Someone who can come up with some witty banter.}

We run into a bit of a problem at this point. Here's the rub: we all know there is no way the Empire would be stupid enough to have such an obvious, gaping hole in their defenses like a straight-line exhaust port which leads right to the central reactor. So there has to be a more clever method for destroying it. I'm not really sure what that might be.

But it would need to involve Han and Luka. Something that they see which is unseen by everyone else. Something that would draw them back to the fight, turning them both into unlikely heroes.^[3]

I haven't got it all figured out, and neither did George. He eventually gave up the idea, and inevitably kept Luke as a boy. And then tossed in a whole lot of interesting but ultimately annoying plot ideas (e.g. Darth being Anakin).

It would be fun to try and take the story in a different direction, just for fun. And I might eventually find the time to do it. If I can come up with anything interesting, I'll put it up on my other website, The Writer (Blocked).

But for now, my brain is tired and I must rest. Tomorrow is another busy day!

---

^[1]This isn't to say that some kind of redemption isn't possible, even with an incredibly powerful (and non-related) antagonist; it is perfectly credible to imagine in some later movie that the "man behind the mask" is pulled back from the Dark Side through some altruistic gesture by the protagonist (although we still need to see the Emperor utterly destroyed). But, frankly, it doesn't add that much to the story.

^[2]Yoda brings the movie into such a bizarre realm. Yes, I get the whole concept that body size is not indicative of power; but, frankly, I'd rather see a deeper relationship developed between Obi-Wan and Luke. When you put in all the "real" time they had together, they still barely knew each other. So why was Luke so heartbroken about his loss?

^[3]One idea is to have Darth Vader wound Obi-Wan to the point where he would be unable to fly the X-wing, which provides an opportunity for Luka to jump in and fly it; but that doesn't solve the problem of the exhaust port issue.

Feats of Strength and Courage

It was a thoroughly exciting weekend as Adam and I went on the Men's Retreat.

First off, it was raining cats and dogs when we drove up Friday night. Big cats and dogs. Huge cats and dogs. So many cats and dogs that it was impossible to see anything in front of us. I had to hold a stick out my window and tap along the road to make sure we didn't run in to anything. And dark, too! What with the grey, overhanging clouds and the fact that it is, technically, still winter, there wasn't much in the way of light going on. And the headlights just couldn't compete.

Nevertheless, we got there, finally. My eyes were all kinds of tired by the time we rolled into the parking lot at the camp. The parking lot which was, oddly enough, a mud-pit. Six to eight inches deep. It made for some interesting driving. Or sliding. Whichever.

The Subaru, being an all-wheel drive, handled it fine, of course. Some of the other cars, not so much. Luckily, though, we didn't have to pull out ropes and winches. Everyone managed to find a spot to stop. And change into boots. And slog through the mud to carry in all our stuff.

Got to the door of the dining hall and we were all instructed to "take off your shoes!" In very loud voices. By the guys who had gotten there early only to discover that mud and carpet don't mix.

Those of us who had managed to get all our stuff in one load did as instructed; those of us who still had stuff out in the car had to toss our bags into the room as far as possible and then head back to get more.

And those of us who had a son attending, as I did, were able to have him take off his shoes and carry our stuff into the sleeping area and claim our bunks while we went back out to the car to get the rest of the stuff.

After we got everything in, we spent Friday evening just hanging out, playing games, eating snacks - typical guy stuff. Adam and I found a group of guys willing to play Bang! so we had some fun with that. Then Adam went over to the Risk table while I played a few games of euchre with some native Michiganders.

For those of you who might not know, euchre is kind of the state card game of Michigan. Everyone here receives their first euchre deck when they are born, and are proficient by the time they are a year old. It's also part of the elementary school entrance exam. They tried for years to make it part of the driver's test as well, so anyone moving to the state would be required to learn it, but that didn't pass because they couldn't figure out how to play the game while driving (although many Michigan drivers must be trying, as evidenced by the swerving on the highway).

As a non-native, and a non-competitive person, it was a joy to be with fellow Christians who tolerated my inability to play a simple game of cards. They handled it very well, even my partner, who kept mumbling something under his breath and cracking his knuckles while trying hard not to tear the cards in half out of sheer frustration.

Unfortunately, my eyes were very tired and my brain was still reeling from the strain of driving through blinding rain, so I had to quit after only a couple rounds and go to bed. The guys gave me a little cheer as I went; not sure if that was to congratulate me for having played the game with them, or for having left.

There wasn't much sleep to be had that night, sad to say. Some people, in their haste to pack for the retreat, had forgotten their BreatheFree nose strips, and so were unable to restrain themselves from snoring. And I'm not talking 'light' snoring here. I'm talking serious grizzly-bear, deep-winter, full-throated shake-the-walls-and-rattle-the-windows snoring. The kind that can lift a man from his bed at a distance of fifteen feet.

Needless to say, coffee was a very popular beverage the next morning.

Our Saturday activities were nearly a dream come true for Adam. Lots of games. In fact, most of the day was taken up by the games. Or, The Games, as it were. There was euchre (of course!), basketball, bean-bag toss, Wii bowling, and one other one which escapes me. We were organized into Teams, and each team had to appoint representatives for each type of game. Naturally, I was appointed as one of the euchre players. (Strange but true: my partner and I were the only ones who had any exposure at all to euchre on our team. Our team was all non-natives, obviously!) Adam was on the Wii bowling team.

So we spent the day playing games, winning some, losing some. Well, my partner and I didn't actually win any, but Adam did. He seemed to enjoy himself. As for myself, a completely non-competitive, non-confrontational person, it wasn't the most enjoyable experience ever, but it was a lot of fun to be with friends and enjoy them enjoying it.

We also had lessons interspersed throughout the day, focusing on the duty of men to lead at home and in the community, to protect and to serve, to love our wives, to train up children in the way they should go, to serve as examples, to be strong and courageous, and to remain, above all, devoted to God.

The speaker for the afternoon/evening was a guy from this Feats of Strength group who spoke to us about his experience growing up in a bad home and going to jail for armed robbery and finding Jesus in jail and turning his life around and becoming an evangelist and going around the world performing these stunts (tearing phone books in half, bending steel rods into pretzels with his teeth, breaking baseball bats over his back, that kind of thing) to show people that God wants his followers to be strong and courageous, and wants them to make a difference in the world.

It was all very impressive. By the time he was done, sometime after dinner, we were all excited and pumped up and cheering and ready to go out and take on the world.

Then we looked outside and noticed that it had been snowing all day long and there was a bit of a blanket of snow on the ground.

And then we noticed that the sidewalks were not covered with snow, but covered with a nice little layer of ice.

And then we noticed, as we were packing up our stuff and taking it out to our cars (after cleaning up the dining hall and the sleeping areas), that the roads looked a bit slick. And there was lots of fog out there.

And we packed up the cars and slogged through the muddy parking lot to get to the road which was covered with fog and ice and joined the long caravan of cars which was slowly inching its way across the rolling farmlands towards the highway at a rate which would guarantee our arrival no earlier than Sunday morning (!).

And then the fog lifted a bit and we were able to drive just a little bit faster so that it appeared we might make it home by midnight.

But still we drove very carefully, because there were numerous accidents, slide-offs and fender-benders all along the way, and our hands were white-knuckled across the steering wheel, which was so very nearly like the drive out (except trading ice for blinding rain) that all the joy and excitement of the weekend was nearly drained out of our minds by the time we arrived (safely) at home.

But we still had enough left to tell the family what a wonderful time we'd had, and how amazing the feats of strength and courage had been, and how completely and utterly exhausted we were.

It is so nice to be home again. For my next feat of strength and courage, I'm going to crawl into bed and see how much sleeping I can catch up on, sans snoring.

Old School

I met yesterday morning with the Executive Director of Alumni and Development Programs from my old school, Washington University in St. Louis^[1], for a bit of breakfast and conversation on the subject of ...

Well, I'm still not quite sure what the purpose of the meeting was, but we covered a lot of interesting ground in regards to getting ready to send kids off to college, figuring out which school they ought to attend, how to fill out applications, how much financial aid they are going to need, and what to do with them once they're out of the house.

It was quite fun, made even more so by the venue we had chosen for our little discussion: Panera Bread Company. The smell of fresh-roasted coffee, the cinnamon and apple spices of the pastries, the delicious breads, all just out of the oven and melt-in-your-mouth soft. It was hard to pick only one item from the menu, but since he was buying my breakfast, it didn't seem proper to bankrupt him on the first round.^[2]

Jim is a very nice man with a good conversational style, which means that he asks good questions and listens carefully and makes nice remarks about the family and the job, and doesn't interrupt when I'm on a roll, spouting my usual brand of nonsense.^[3] He did answer a few of my questions about the school. I was particularly keen on the news about the College of Engineering.

We visited there a couple of summers ago on our trip back from Yosemite; I was able to drive around the school and show the kids where I lived and where I had my classes and how much of it has changed in the last thirty years. Hard to believe that I started college back in '81, until I look around at the campus and see how much of it has changed ... and how much of that change looks like it's been there quite a while. New buildings, missing buildings, the light rail system^[4], trees which were once young now bent with age. Jim showed me the layout for the new Engineering building which will be built behind the "old" Engineering building I knew and loved -- which was brand-spanking new back in '81, but is now ancient and out-of-date.

The campus itself was built on the site of the 1904 World's Fair^[5], so it's been there just over a hundred years. But it was actually founded back in 1854^[6], so it's been in existence for quite a long time.

People still find it amusing when I mention that my main reason for choosing WashU was due to the food choices they provided; but, honestly, that's all I remember from the visit with the recruiter way back in '81. They showed me the layout of the cafeteria, which was split out into about a dozen different eateries, all of them offering a different style of food: traditional, Italian, Mediterranean, Asian, deli, and so on. It was a novel concept at the time. And quite enticing to someone whose high school breakfast consisted of Pop Tarts and a glass of milk. Little did I suspect that all that wonderful food was coming from the same kitchen, which meant that it was all equally bad. And that it would all be covered with pimentoes.^[7]

WashU wasn't my first choice. I had CalTech at the top of the list, and some other school (I think it was MIT) as second. But they didn't want me. Something about only wanting someone from the Top 5 of the Class^[8]. I was number 6 in my class (out of four hundred something). And I had scored very well on the pSAT, which almost got me a National Merit Scholarship. Almost. WashU saw my transcripts and offered to make good on that National Merit Scholarship, which sealed the deal.

If I had to do it all over again, of course, I don't think I would've gone so far away. As a young teen guy, my main motivation was to get away from home, be my own person, make my own life. And getting out of town, out of state, was exciting and glamorous. But that meant missing out on my brothers' early years, which is my biggest regret. Perhaps it would've been better to stay in town, attend a local community college while working at Sears, and stay close to the family.

Quite frankly, I wasn't ready for college right out of high school, and my grades showed it. I hadn't learned good study habits, and certainly there was no comprehension of the financial impact of a college education. That didn't occur until years afterward.

Cheryl and I try to make sure that our children are ready, and that they know these things: that college requires focus and dedication and ambition and good study habits; that there are financial consequences and responsibilities inherent in the choice; and that, while a college education increases the possibility of a prosperous adulthood, it by no means guarantees it, and certainly doesn't guarantee vocational satisfaction. Only someone who knows what they want to do and pursues that goal to its successful conclusion with all their strength will achieve that kind of satisfaction.

Adam thinks he knows what he wants to do - sort of - which is a good thing to know with only three months left to go before graduation, and he's already picked out a school. This particular school, I discovered, costs approximately the same as WashU (although it offers quite a different curriculum). That surprised me. I knew the school he had chosen was expensive, but hadn't realized it was that expensive! It kind of puts things in a different light. And resonates sharply in my head, this strange, parallel kind of coincidence. It makes me wonder if he is really ready for college. It makes me wonder if we're ready for him to go to college.

We're trying to encourage him to apply to lots of different places and apply for lots of scholarships so that he has lots of alternatives; we don't want him to be in the situation where he's accepted at an expensive college but then can't go due to finances; but perhaps worse would be the situation where he starts attending an expensive college and then discovers that he's really not ready for it from a self-discipline point of view.

I just want to make sure that none of us have any regrets later about his choices today.

---

^[1]Affectionaly known as "WashU"
^[2]He had several other alums to visit, and had decided that Panera was good enough for breakfast and lunch, which meant he'd be there awhile.
^[3]I do tend to go on a bit
^[4]A light rail system back in '81 would've been really, really handy
^[5]Actually, they started building on that site prior to the World's Fair, but stopped while it was going on so that it could be used for the Fair; then resumed building afterward
^[6]According to Wikipedia, one of the purposes in creating the thing in the first place was to help "unify" the politically-split midwest, especially Missouri. Not sure if that worked or not.
^[7]Seriously. Someone had cornered the market in pimentos in the fall of '81 and so nearly every meal for the next two years had an excess of pimentos served as garnish.
^[8]Not Top 5 percent, mind you, but Top 5!

Too Much is Never Enough

Am I spending too much time on the computer?

This thought occurred to me when I realized how much of my day revolves around the laptop. I begin my day eating breakfast at the table and use my laptop to check email, check Facebook, and read a few news sites. Then I go to work, where I sit in front of a laptop all day. After work, I go downstairs to my little office to my little laptop to check email, check Facebook, and catch up with Rhett & Link before all the evening activities begin. After all the evening activities are concluded, I'm back on my laptop to check work email (since I'm working with folks from India) and doing a bit of writing before bedtime.

So all day long I'm going from bed to breakfast [laptop] to work [laptop] to home [laptop] to evening activities [not laptop] to pre-bed [laptop] and then to bed again.

What kind of life is that?

It must be said that a lot of my "home" work needs to be done on the computer. There is email and banking and writing and electronics design and all sorts of other tasks/hobbies which require the use of a computer / laptop these days; but at what point does it become such an inseperable part of life? At what point do we become incapable of "un-plugging"?

Then there's the effect on the children.

How effective is it to say to the children, "You've spent too much time on the computer, playing those games and/or watching those vidoes" when their perception of us is centered around our apparent dependency on our own electronic devices?

Notwithstanding the fact that we, as adults, generally have more discernment and discipline to limit the amount of time we spend on frivolous activities - that is, our time on the computer or Internet is productive^[1] - what is a child to think? In naive terms, we tell them to keep their own computer time to a minimum while we get to spend all the time we want.

It comes across as extremely unfair, even hypocritical.

Would that be tolerated in other circumstances?

Say, for example, that you are always harping on your children to keep their rooms clean, yet yours is a mess.

Or telling the children that they shouldn't be snacking between meals - especially on junk food! - yet they always see you popping a candy in your mouth.

Or telling them that they should always get their chores and homework done before playtime, yet you haven't managed to get around to changing the oil in the car like you promised your spouse.

Consider how much influence you would have on your children were they to perceive your actions as hypocritical.

Can you say "none"?

I don't have a solution yet. It occurred to me that we could perhaps set aside a small window of time during the weekdays for Internet activities, say a couple of hours each evening after dinner. Or perhaps a couple of hours before dinner. With no access allowed at any other time. For anyone. Including me.

But that causes all sorts of problems. I'd have to make so many exceptions for the times when we need to go online to research information, or when the kids are working on projects that require on-line access. The Internet is meant to be ubiquitous, always there, like a reference book on a library shelf, not turned on and off like a switch.

So much of life is now tied to the Internet. And it's kind of scary. I don't want to become Luddites, but neither do want to be so locked-and-linked that I'm unable to function without it when the power goes out.

What do you think? Is it possible to shake this addiction? Can I survive for a week without checking out CNN? Or Slashdot? Or Facebook? Can I even make it through an entire evening without turning on my laptop?

---

^[1]Mostly.