Category: lil’ chino

the coming spawn

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i just didn’t know

Contact low.Friday! Here’s hoping we get on our standby flights tomorrow and get to lil’ brother’s wedding reception on-time. Root for us, K? Thanks.

Blog; let’s go.

It was my turn to put Keaton to bed the other night, the first time in a while since I’ve been out of town. The bedtime ritual involves 1) the brushing of teeth, 2) the using of the potty one last time, 3) the washing of hands and face, and 4) the removal of our daytime clothes (remembering to put them in the hamper) and the donning of pajamas. Past that it’s time to lay down in bed, say a prayer, maybe sing a song or talk for minute about the day, and then it’s kiss-and-a-hug and off to sleep.

We began in the bathroom. Keaton brushed her teeth well, and then sat down to use the potty. Afterward she climbed back up on her stool and put some soap on her hands. Turning on the water, she wet her hands and began rubbing them together, soaping them to a froth. Smiling, she looked up and me and began to sing, “Happy birthday to you! Happy birthday dear Tyler! No… no… wait…,” she started over, “Happy birthday to you. Happy birthday dear Grammy…” I smiled back at her, thinking she was just remembering that we had called Grammy earlier that evening to actually sing to her for her birthday, and she continued with her song.

As she got past the “… dear Grammy” part I began telling her, “OK Keaton, go ahead and rinse now.” At my urging, she became noticeably frustrated, stopping her singing to stammer something like, “No! That’s not the way we do it!” Thinking this just another manifestation of her three year-old OCD, I again asked her to go ahead and rinse. By that time, however, she’d restarted her birthday song all over again. Now I was getting frustrated because she wasn’t listening to me, and I changed my tone a bit. “Keaton,” I said somewhat firmly, “I asked you to rinse please. You’ve been washing long enough.”

With tears in her eyes, and the most pained and frustrated look on her face she once again turned to me and squeaked something like, “That’s not how we do it!! I’m not finished!” Confusingly, she almost seemed torn or conflicted. Once again I figured she was just frustrated that I wasn’t letting here complete what I saw as just another bedtime-delaying tactic – a favorite thing of hers. Standing firm, I repeated myself, noting that I wouldn’t be repeating myself again. “Please rinse Keaton, I’m not going to ask you again and I want you to listen.”

Broken, and now fully in tears, she obliged me, quit singing and rinsed her hands. After drying them, she ran out into the living room where Sharaun was watching TV. “What’s wrong baby?,” asked Sharaun. And that’s when I found out what all the fuss was about. Her head buried in Sharaun’s lap, she said tearfully, “Daddy wouldn’t let me sing ‘happy birthday’ while I washed my hands.” “Oh,” said Sharaun, “He wouldn’t? Maybe daddy doesn’t know about the birthday song while we wash our hands.” I perked up.

“Oh, is that a thing, or something?,” I asked. Sharaun replied, “Yeah; we sing the ‘happy birthday’ song while we wash our hands to be sure we have enough time to get all the germs off.” Keaton looked up at me through puffy eyes and snuffled a satisfied sniff as if to say, “Duh dad.”

I don’t know why, but when I realized that I’d forced her to do the opposite of something Sharaun had schooled her to do, I felt pointedly terrible. Now I understood the conflicted look on her face and the frustrated tears. She wanted to listen to me, but she was doing what mommy taught her to do. How could she do right by the both of us? No wonder she was upset; I’d have been confused too. What’s worse, I’d been stern with her when she was only trying to do what she thought we want her to do. It’s a tiny thing, I know, but it made me feel terrible. No really, I almost wanted to cry for putting her between a rock and a hard place.

I knelt down and held her arms so she was in front of me and I could look at her. “I’m sorry Keaton,” I said. “Daddy didn’t know. I didn’t know you sing the ‘happy birthday’ song while you wash your hands to make sure all the germs are gone. That’s a really good idea, and I’m glad I learned about it. We’ll do it next time OK? I’m sorry I made you stop singing and rinse before you could finish. I won’t do it again. Will you forgive me?”

And with a big hug she said, “It’s OK daddy. You just didn’t know.”

Goodnight folks. Talk to you next week from sunny Florida.

Oh, and, I do believe it hit another week wall-t0-wall. Go!

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cisterns, stanchions, & meade

Rivulets.Hey there…  guess what?  I actually had some time today to both do work and write a little bit.  Meetings at work were productive again, just didn’t last all day.  It’s better that way.

Let’s write some blog.

Sitting now in Henry’s Bar, Taipei Taiwan.  Haven’t been here in years but the place hasn’t changed a lick.  Even the same people working here.  It was a cloudy sometimes-rainy day today, but the weather stayed cool enough that walking around outside on the way to and from lunch (which, by the by, was delicious) was pleasant.  Walking around Taipei offers one something of the same kind of “big city” feel that traipsing around Manhattan would – the people, the traffic, the buildings looming on every side – it’s a very metropolitan experience and I enjoy it; makes me feel “grown up” and full of business (nod to Pat’s similar thoughts here).

Over the past few months Sharaun and I have done a fair bit of solo traveling. Her to Florida a couple times for a friend’s wedding, me to Oregon, China, and Taiwan. During these times apart we’ve sort of developed a habit of sending each other pictures via cellphone – well, the one at home with Keaton sends pictures to the traveler, at least. Overseas this week, I’ve really enjoyed getting pictures of Sharaun and Keaton from back home. And, even though they make a bit more pointed my missing my family, I find myself going back and looking at them on my phone at various points during the day. In fact, this week’s volley from Sharaun was good enough that I wanted to share. Here, then, are the pictures Sharaun and Keaton sent along to make my time away feel not so far way. Enjoy.

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Well that’s about it for today methinks.  Not much more time, not much more I haven’t already mentioned.

Goodnight.

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sayanora, trumpet man

Sayanora, trumpet man.Happy Thursday folks.

If you’re viewing the page via your iPhone or Android device today, you’ve likely noticed that I installed a much more mobile-friendly theme that takes over when the page is viewed in a mobile browser.  I like it a lot, and it’s actually what inspired me to change up my current desktop theme (the main look and feel of sounds familiar).  I haven’t done this in a long while… but my current theme was kind of clunky compared to some of the more modern themes.

My goal was to maintain as much of the look and feel of the site as possible while taking advantage of something less hacked-together (I still have to go through and reformat some of the more kludgy CSS remnants, but I’ll get it all modernized soon enough).  I think it’s mostly in-place now, the only drastic change being my decision to drop the years-old header logo… which meant ditching the Bible-times trumpet man image Ben stole for me off the internet way back in 2003.  Sayanora, trumpet man.

OK enough website junk.  Let’s talk about something better.  Maybe something funny… Oh, I know!

Sunday evening this past week my daughter spent nearly five minutes explaining to me the wonder that was her Halloween-acquired Ring Pop.

See Dad, it’s like ring but you can eat it like a lollipop.  It’s candy.  You put it on your finger like a ring and it’s pretty like jewelry but it’s also candy like a lollipop.  See?  See it on my finger like a ring?  But watch, Dad!, look with your eyes!, see… I can… mmmpphh… see, I can lick it like a lollipop.  Isn’t that neat, Dad?  Dad… did you see?  It’s a Ring Pop.  It’s called that because it’s a ring and a lollipop.  Dad.  Dad?

About two explanatory sentences into her rant, I started laughing a little.  By the third or fourth recitation of her stark wonder, I had all but lost it and was cracking up.  Sharaun, sitting opposite me on the other couch, was also laughing.  By the end, I was playing with her (I think she figured it out).  “But wait,” I’d stop her to interject, “Is that thing a ring, or a lollipop?”  Aaaand we’d start all over again.  Good stuff.

Changing subjects…

Recently, I’ve started using the track rating feature on the iPod.  I never really used the functionality before, for a couple main reasons: 1) I pretty much only put music I like on the iPod, so I would hope not to find anything less than “middlin'” were I to do a “rating audit” or somesuch and 2) I don’t use iTunes to manage my music, so the track rating metadata would only live on my iPod and not be transferred permanently back into my collection.  If my iPod ever went south or I had to reload tracks off disk, I’d lose the ratings data anyway, so I’ve always considered it fleeting and useless.

Over time, my mind has changed somewhat on each point.  Yes, everything on my iPod is there because I at least “like” it.  But, as I’ve learned being a manager at the sawmill, even a group of top-performers has a bottom performer – regardless of whether or not that person is generically “good” or not.  Same with a huge batch of “good” tunes, I suppose.  Even if I like it all, there are some tracks that deserve a star or two more than others.  I figured that exploiting the natural strata of my tastes might actually make for some neat ratings-based “smart” playlists.

Furthermore, about a year ago I bought some software that promises it’s able to make a complete, hardware/firmware agnostic, restoreable backup of my iPod.  The idea being that, as long as I keep up with the backups, were my iPod ever upgraded, lost, or ruined, I could restore it to its previous state – including track-by-track metadata.  Still, ratings wouldn’t get sync’d back into my master collection on disk – but I gave up on this a long time ago after a couple failed migration attempts.  But, at least I could carry the ratings metadata through an iPod crash or upgrade… better than nothing.

Anyway… I’m trying it out.  Why not?

Goodnight.

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run over by the wheel

I'll paint rainbows...When I was a kid, I used to hold my poo.

I thought of a bunch of different ways to start this entry… but that one above ended up winning out.  Simple, true, and gets right to the point.  But, to flesh out the statement with a little more info, let me expound.  ‘Round about the age of seven or so, and right through to the age of, oh, I don’t know, maybe as old as ten, I valued my no-pooping activity much more than the time that actually pooping stole from it.  What I mean is, instead of stopping what I was doing and going inside to use the toilet when nature told me to, I’d “hold it.”

This holding it amounted to, and I know, this is going to be funny, stopping what I was doing (yes), sitting down on the ground with my legs tucked underneath me, and physically holding in the bowel movement.  If I remember correctly, physiologically this meant I was going through the biological motions yet just not allowing my efforts to, ahh, bear fruit.  What I mean here, put a bit more coarsely, is that I would be sitting there and bearing down, but using my legs and feet to prevent anything from really happening.

I know this is disgusting, but I promise I’m telling you for a reason (if “setting up a blog” is a “reason” these days).  “Disgusting” would be word enough for just forcibly holding in poo, but I know that, certainly, this practice had to have some additional impact.  I mean, shunting your poo into a clenched and stopped-up bum can’t be a nice tidy way to delay a bowel movement.  I assume my underwear bore the brunt of this practice.  Thinking back, I can remember my mom complaining about my less-than-clean drawers.  To be clear, I wasn’t “having accidents” or anything… I just think I was leaving a bit more… residual… than a normal youngster might.  In the middle school locker room, we used to give guys with “skidmarks” a hard time – I imagine that my drawers during this time may have made good targets (I’d given up the practice long before middle school).

So why am I telling you this?  Well, because… the other day, in the middle of getting frustrated with Keaton for not wanting to go sit on the potty, I caught myself wondering, “What’s the deal with not wanting to go to the bathroom?  Why is this so hard?”  And then… as I was on about my third, “No, it doesn’t matter if you don’t want to, you’re going to try and use the potty before we leave!,” I remembered my old days of poo-holding.  How I never wanted to leave my friends or stop what I was doing to take a potty timeout; how I could get by with just a couple seconds sitting on the ground instead, and it all made sense.  Karma.  I’m being punished by the Wheel.

I still made her use the potty before we left, though.  She went, too.  Go figure.

Goodnight.

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aw hecky naw

No harm meant.Happy Wednesday folks.

Night’s nearly over now; at leas the part I’m typically awake for.  And Thursday’s coming… right around the corner from now.  After that, Thursday will beget Friday and Friday Saturday.  Then, we’ll pile into one of those flighted metal cigars and zoom-swish! away to Mexico.  While there, I will try and do my typical vacation-style writing, which consists chiefly of pictures and short sentences about the awesomeness of our stay.  Look for it; it’ll be a happening.  A-list.

For a few months now, Keaton’s expressed interest in picking up and holding our cat, Keeper.  Until recently, however, she’s been unable to find a way to 1) do this without the cat running away from her, and 2) muster enough strength to physically lift her.  This all changed in the past couple weeks when she figured out that she could reliably lift Keeper via an under-arm bearhug style hoist, and also that she’s now strong enough to ferry her around in this position.

It makes for some hilarious moments, because, despite being incredibly docile about the whole thing, the cat clearly dislikes being carried around this way.  Out of the back of the house somewhere Keaton’ll come, her arms encircling the poor cat’s body just under her front legs, squeezing her tight to keep her grip. This makes the cat’s head look all squanched up into her body… as both try to succumb to gravity.

She lets out these little half-meows (probably can’t get enough volume of oxygen to make anything appreciable) and we’ve told Keaton that this is her way of saying, “OK, I’m done now; please let me down.”  We’ve told her she has to listen to kitty when she “talks,” or else she might get scratched or bitten.  But, in the end, I don’t think the cat has the balls to do anything.  At this point, I think she’s been bested by the three year old… and she’s submissive.

As an aside… I’ve decided I don’t want our cat anymore.  I think I’ve evolved into a “no animals” kinda guy.  Not that I don’t like them, but I’m done with all that.  When we wear this one out, it’s over.  Is that heartless?  Whatever.

Oh yeah, just before I go… I wanted to mention how much I enjoyed Pitchfork’s “Top 500 Albums of the 2000s” feature (not to be confused with the”Top 500 Tracks of the 2000s” feature I wrote about a ways back).  Particularly, and I’ll try not to ruin it here by telling you where this review lands just in case you want to read it in order, I loved the review of the Arcade Fire’s incredible album Funeral. I’ve written about Funeral myself more than a few times, professing my profound love for the record, but the reviewer on P4K captures my hindsight thinking perfectly:

Will there ever be another album like Funeral? …

… besides being a turning point for indie rock, Funeral was one for the indie community as well. Whether it’s due to increasingly fractious listening habits or the increased ability for dissenters to be heard, Funeral keeps on feeling like the last of its kind, an indie record that sounded capable of conquering the universe and then going on to do just that. The consensus hyperbole that met Funeral resulted in any record that threatened to reach that level becoming met with severe scrutiny or even outright derision. And still, we wonder if there will ever be anything quite like Funeral — something tells me that as music becomes even more readily available to us in the next decade, we’ll still go through it all in the hopes we can find something with the unifying force and astounding emotional payload that only albums like Funeral can provide.

Yeah.  Really.  When do we get the next Funeral?  I think a record that good ruined me for everything else.  C’mon someone, do it again.

Goodnight.

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sunset on her breath

Tesnus.Busy nights Monday and Sunday, no time to write. Or, more accurately, writing eschewed in favor of other things.

I’m busily working to get two weeks of work done this week, in eager anticipation of our coming week getaway in Mexico, which begins Saturday. We’ll be jetting off with friends for a stay in an all-inclusive beachside joint, where our week is sure to be filled with early morning poolside chair-claiming, umbrella drinks, tacos, and lots of time spent doing nothing. Well, something… reading, dozing, playing with Keaton, swimming, lounging… but really a lot of nothing. It’s not been a particularly hectic week at work, so I’m not dying to get there… but, as always, the prospect of a surf and sun vacation has my mind drifting ahead in time.

Back in real life, Sharaun returned home from her weekend away with girlfriends in Florida (must be hard for her, going from a Gulf beach to a Pacific one over the course of a week). I managed to keep Keaton clean, fed, and happy while she was gone… single-handedly dispelling literally hundreds of dad ineptitude stereotypes in the process. She was greeted home by a clean house, empty laundry hampers, and a very thankful husband and daughter.  And, while we had fun just Keaton and I, it was a welcome homecoming for us too.  Moms do a lot, y’know?

It’s nighttime on Tuesday now, Keaton and I are watching Alice In Wonderland… the smoking caterpillar is on.  Keaton thinks Alice’s name is Alison Wonderland, first and last just like that.  A pretty reasonable misconception if you ask me.  After I put her to bed (which I just did) I plan to put some music on (which I also just did) and listen to it while I write (which I am doing right now; time and tenses get really messed up as I write in bits over the course of the evening).

Anyway, I’ve got the newish record by Edward Sharpe & The Magnetic Zeros on.  I grabbed it a month or so ago on the band name alone (I do this somewhat often), and, at the time, ended up digging about 50% of the tracks and filing it away as something with prospect.  For whatever reason I spun it again yesterday and was pleasantly surprised to hear it aged very well, and I think I may have judged it kinda low originally.  Been listening with gusto today, and I like what I hear.  After looking up the band (which is one of hose Polyphonic Spree style two-digit member cult kinda hippie collectives) I found out that the lead singer is a dude from a band Ben and I used to like called Ima Robot.  Small world, this LA indie music biz… small world.

At work the other day I booked a coming trip to China and Taiwan.  My first travel to the Orient in nearly two years.  Not sure how I’ve managed to not be there in all that time, but I guess I tend to offer the international trips to the troops moreso than take them myself these days.  Will be good to get back to Shanghai and Taipei though, I do miss the frequency at which I used to visit both those fun cities.  And it’ll be good for me to re-invest in my work network while over there.  Oh and of course there’s the excellent food.  November comes the day I’ll take off; and I’m sure I’ll go into the whole pre-trip “I don’t wanna gos” here on the old blog about one week prior to travel… look for it.

Goodnight folks.  I wrote.

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as the week wanes

I could jump off and sail away forever...Tuesday night and I just got done putting Keaton down.  Sharaun had volleyball so we spent some time together listening to music, playing Jenga (a favorite of hers), and, in a late fit of productivity, deciding to make cookies.

Baking with Keaton is kind of a “thing” of mine.  We do it quite a bit.  Banana bread, cookies, etc., it’s just a good sharing, learning, constructive time together.  Tonight I asked her what kind of cookies she wanted and she answered, “Chocolate chip marshmallow.”  Hmmm… OK…. well if anyone knows if such a cookie exists, it’s gonna be the internet.  So I took to the iPhone and Googled, and up they popped, top return.  Like all cooks worth their stained aprons, we had to improvise a little.  Using shortening substituted for a lack of butter, and we scissored-up both Hershey bars and big marshmallows to take the place of chocolate chips and miniature marshmallows.  Unsurprisingly, they turned out divine, and we were vindicated in our experimentation.  Even Sharaun wolfed them down.

The weather here in Northern California turned Fallish today.  Clouds skittered around up in the sky, the temperatures dipped, and a wind came up.  Around 9am a friend popped on my instant messenger at work.  “I bet you’re loving today,” she said.  Yes, yes… my predilection for Fall is well known and well-documented here on the blog.  I’m excited about the work we’re doing on the house going into this end-of-year season; I think of it as “cozying up” the place or something.  I’ve written before about my strange attachment to the size and shape of our modest house, and going into winter I tend to think of it as a perfect little womb where we can hide away from the cold and wind and rain and be comfortable with what we have.  It’s part of the reason I like investing in improving the place… since I see it as one of those little “caves” I could live in.

Early gym tomorrow… gotta hit the sack.  Not before a few cookies though… need a reason to be in the gym, after all.  Goodnight.