The Continuing Adventures of the American Cuy

2010 Year in Review

2011-01-01T21:53:00.021-05:00

No matter what you may call us – the Carlinos; the Eichlerinos; the Eichler-Carlinos; Paul, Rebecca, Maya and Jonah; Rebecca, Paul, Maya and Jonah; Mr. and Mrs. Paul Carlino; or Mrs. and Mr. Rebecca Eichler; the year 2010 was a milestone year for us. Paul and Rebecca both turned 40 (NOTE: she got there first) and on July 2, Paul and Rebecca also celebrated ten years of filing a joint Federal income tax return together.

In June, Maya ended her first grade year at the top of her class and then quickly established herself in August as a no-nonsense second grade academic – reading a blue streak through the Magic Treehouse series, Babysitter’s Club, Judy Moody, Junie B. Jones, and whatever other above-grade reader she can get her hands on – while mastering those math concepts that we all forget we ever had to learn in the first place – telling time, making change, and recognizing triangles. As long as Maya hasn’t peaked in the second grade, Rebecca and I may have a future valedictorian on our hands.

Jonah turned 5 in August and started his final year in the cooperative preschool that has been such an integral part of our philosophical grounding and social network since we first enrolled Maya in 2007. Jonah also continued his full-on obsession with Star Wars and his influence caused several of his classmates, including some who have not seen even one of the sextet of movies, to costume themselves as little Luke Skywalkers and Darth Vaders for Halloween; a born leader he is.

Aside from these insular family happenings, we also got to see many of you this year; got to reconnect with many of you through Facebook, email, or other online mediums that remain so alien to me that I don’t know their names; or were made to feel guilty when we got your Holiday cards in the mail and knew that we had not sent any ourselves (to anyone, not just to you). Thanks for thinking of us. Truly, we really do appreciate your friendship. Knowing that we continue to make your Holiday card list will make it less awkward for us to knock on your door if we ever need a free place to stay when visiting your neck of the woods. And just so we won’t all feel like complete strangers when that happens, below are a few of our highlights from 2010:

My lovely wife Rebecca continues her immigration law practice that she opened when pregnant with Maya in 2002. Who knew that what we pictured as a temporary situation would blossom into a full-fledged, though still part-time, situation. And Rebecca's aspirations have expanded to include the immigration law partnership, EichlerWright PLC. We are hoping that one day success will be measured financially rather than in the exultations of joy Rebecca brings to families by securing USCIS approval of their citizenship applications to these declining United States.

Did I mention that Rebecca turned 40 on February 9, 2010? In memoriam of her youth, Rebecca organized an April trip for the two of us, and four of our closest friends, and two of their friends, to hike the Inca Trail in Peru.

This awesome adventure had us sandwich days in Lima and Cusco around a four day hike on a 14th century footpath used by the reigning Inca and his royal entourage to travel to his summer home in the mountains – Machu Picchu. The hike took us through a 14,000 foot high mountain pass, affectionately called Dead Woman’s Pass, and culminated in an early morning descent on April 17 to one of the few Incan settlements that was not vandalized by those dastardly Conquistadores – Machu Picchu itself.

Rebecca was so overcome at times on the hike that she has since warned me that she wants her ashes spread as fertilizer at the sprawling agricultural site of Winay Huayna.

True, it was breathtaking, but I can’t think of any better motivation to predecease a spouse than the threat of having to haul your octogenarian carcass up and down the Andes to satisfy her last wishes.

Here is a picture of us overlooking the main buildings and plazas in Machu Picchu.

Next year we plan to photo-shop ourselves into Tokyo and one of the seven wonders of the ancient world – the Hanging Gardens of Babylon.

We were fortunate in June to have Rebecca’s bi-annual family reunion scheduled for the exact time and place in Oregon that we were visiting. We spent several days camping at her Aunt Nettie’s ranch in Grants Pass, Oregon, where Rebecca learned that she had even more cousins than she thought and that 100 degrees with no humidity is still pretty dang hot.

We spent a few days after the reunion camping on the Oregon coast where we saw tide pools and really big trees. You can read more about that trip right here.

In July, Rebecca spent a few days in L.A. visiting her friend from college, Dava. I understand Rebecca and Dava did girl things like going to a street festival, canoeing, and showing up late for dinner, but that they did not get to play any beach volleyball. From L.A., Rebecca traveled to San Diego to sun herself while I taught a class for IRS revenue agents. During off-duty hours, Rebecca and I canoodled and also learned quite a bit about why people don’t travel anymore by stagecoach. Dava and her friend Nick, and Rebecca’s cousin Thea and her husband Matt, drove down from L.A. to join us in San Diego one night. We had so much fun that we nearly got kicked out of our very fancy hotel room.

In September, with amazing foresight and vision, Rebecca determined that we needed an automobile that could fit more than just Maya and Jonah’s car seats. After she revived me with smelling salts, I learned this did not mean that she was pregnant. Rather, the car we owned did not allow our children to bring a friend along on any trip. Thus, Rebecca put her considerable internet surfing skills to the test and we decided on a Mazda 5, the mini-est of mini-vans. We call her Blue Cheese and she is the first brand new car that either Rebecca or I has ever owned. We then promptly went on a car-camping trip with Blue Cheese where we learned that we could pack even a mini-van to bursting and that new cars do not stay looking new for long when you have two young children.

Finally, you may be surprised to hear that Rebecca, that peaceful little flower, took up karate in 2010. The story of how that came about can be read here. Despite her well-known aversion to war and cutting in line at the grocery store, Rebecca has progressed quickly up the arm-twisting, leg-spraining, testicle-rupturing ranks, and recently achieved her purple belt and black gee. As evidence of her limb-breaking prowess, she earned two first place trophies (for form) and a third place (in sparring) at a recent tournament. I’m waiting for just the right moment in 2011 to get in someone’s face so Rebecca can step in and kick their tail.

Maya – I am wiling to bet that Maya’s first quarter report card was the best to ever have the name Carlino attached to it. It was certainly better than any report cards that I ever got – and if that does not shock you, you may be surprised to know that I was spelling bee champion of Mrs. Axley’s second grade class at Memorial School in 1978. The only bad thing you could say about Maya’s report is that she left no room for improvement.

It is also fairly common for Maya to come home with notes from the teacher stating how helpful Maya was that day, how well she grasped the subject matter, or other niceties. Who is this girl? Rebecca and I were at a loss as to how Maya could perform so well in school and behave so poorly at home – fighting with her brother, ignoring or being directly insubordinate to requests for help, crying over spilt milk. When we asked Maya’s teacher for her thoughts, she suggested that Maya is so engaged at school in every subject, activity, and lesson that by the time she gets home her poor little head must be just plain worn out. This provides one plausible explanation for Maya’s ability to turn from happy-go-lucky to wailing banshee on a dime. Another more practical explanation is that Maya matures two years for every one calendar year – so she is actually fifteen years old, hormonally speaking.

Maya got to spend some quality time with her grandparents in 2010. In April, she went on a week-long cruise with her brother and my in-laws to the Bahamas. My in-laws managed to keep her from falling off the boat, thus earning the right to take her on a future cruise. In July, Maya spent a week at “Camp Grandma” with her brother and cousin at my parent’s house on Wolf Lake in New York. This is where I spent much of my teenage years learning to be a juvenile delinquent so we are hoping my Mom can do better with Maya. For 2011, Rebecca and I are resolving that Maya and her brother spend twice as much quality time with the grandparents.

We are told that one of the great joys of parenting is seeing parts of yourself in your children – the mini-me complex. Maya mimics me (and Rebecca) in that she is a voracious reader. She also mimics me in that she is an early riser – but a much earlier riser than I care to be. The great thing about the reading though is that after Maya wakes at an ungodly hour and makes a racket to wake the dead while peeing, she will then retire to her room and read until I get out of bed to help her ready for school.

Maya is very athletic. She holds her own in swimming, skiing, jumping rope, biking, ice skating, and roller blading. She is also a fast runner, good climber, and can hit the heck out of a wiffle ball. However, she is so non-competitive that she once said that she didn’t like to win because it meant the other person had to lose. Rebecca and I are hoping that her attitude improves in this regard.

Another problem is that neither one of my kids will willingly engage in any club sports or group activities. The one exception to the group thing for Maya is Brownies. Rebecca signed Maya up for Brownies without her knowledge and tricked her into attending the first meeting. We were spared any histrionics when Maya realized that she had been duped because she spotted some of her friends in the group. This fall Maya went on a Brownie camping trip where she learned some campfire songs that don’t really have anything to do with camping or Brownies. But she sure is cute when she sings them.

In sum, Maya is a pretty good kid. She tries our patience at times but is very caring and nurturing of her brother, very responsible when tasked with a chore, and is mostly sweet, except when she’s not.

Jonah – Rebecca and I used to hold to the ideal that we would not allow guns (real or toy) in the house. For Christmas this year, Rebecca made everyone their very own marshmallow blaster. This weapon was added to Jonah’s arsenal of pop guns, dart guns, light sabers, swords, daggers and maces; and his stable of plastic soldiers, Star Wars, and knight figures that wreak death upon each other daily in colossal trans-genre battles.

It’s hard to pinpoint exactly when Jonah’s obsession with weapons started, but it has manifested in a more than passing interest in Star Wars. He’s got dozens of Star Wars action figures and vehicles, several Star Wars Lego kits, Star Wars sheets, and Star Wars underwear and T-shirts for every day of the week. He went as Luke Skywalker for Halloween 2009 and Kit Fisto (a more obscure Jedi) in 2010. He starts asking on Monday morning when is it the Wii-kend so he can play his Star Wars Lego video game. When not playing with war-mongering toys, Jonah is play-acting battles from Guadalcanal to the ice planet Hoth.

None of this is unique to 2010, but it paints a picture of what he is all about. It’s a stark contrast to his more serene, gentle-minded sister and gives credence to the old stand-by “boys are different than girls”.

To try to channel some of this physicality, in May we enrolled Jonah in karate lessons where he was quickly declared a prodigy by the instructor. Jonah looked cute as hell and twice as deadly in his white karate outfit and Rebecca and I had plans to leave our home security in the hands and feet of our little black belt.

However, Jonah had to be dis-enrolled from lessons when he refused to attend any of the group instruction that is critical to moving up in rank. It was a dark day when I had to take him, bawling, from the karate studio where he was supposed to get his orange belt because he would not go into the test with the other kids. I am not an economist, but something seemed financially unsound about paying more than $250 a month so Jonah could have 4 private karate lessons with no way to ever rise above a white belt. Nevertheless, we sunk another chunk of money this Winter into a group gymnastics class to which he refused to go. Someone is bound to give in eventually.

These humbling experiences do not negate the fact that Jonah is physically advanced for his age. I have not given up my dream of an early retirement when Jonah signs a contract out of high school with the NY Yankees. For now though, we’ll have to be content with the knowledge that he can climb a fence or tree lickety-split, run circles around most of his friends, perform multiple cartwheels and round-offs, and is tenacious in his efforts. Hopefully, he gets over his reluctance to participate in group settings – jeez, he even refused to play in the annual Carlino family Thanksgiving football game. He would have been at least as good as my sisters.

Jonah turned 5 on August 22. He had a Star Wars party and because he is such a big fan, Darth Vader attended.

In September, Jonah started his last year of pre-school. Hard to believe that next year he will be a kindergartner in the big house, riding the bus, eating lunch with his friends, learning things. I can still remember when he was an infant waking me up at 1, 3 and 5 in the morning. I’m not pining for those days again, but I am trying to keep in mind how quickly these days pass and keep my cool when times get trying so that when my kids are older I can look back on their childhood and be certain that I am not the reason that they are in therapy.

A couple of firsts for Jonah this year – he saw his first rock concert – They Might be Giants at the Kennedy Center. Jonah is a big music fan and has even professed to like Michael Jackson better than he likes Rebecca. He lost his first tooth last March from natural causes and lost three more during the year, also from natural causes. The tooth fairy got two of them, but Jonah is holding on to the others; probably waiting for inflation to increase his return.

Jonah is not reading yet, but if he applied himself instead of bouncing here and there while we are sounding out words, I bet he would pick it up quickly. He definitely still enjoys having 2 books read to him before bedtime and try as he may, there is no place for Waldo to hide where Jonah can not find him.

So I guess that just leaves yours truly. I also turned 40 this year – a few months after Rebecca did. I celebrated a 10th anniversary with Rebecca and a tenth anniversary at my job at the IRS, which, I think, puts me solidly in the middle-aged demographic. Wow. Who saw that coming? For our wedding anniversary dinner, Rebecca and I ate at this wonderful restaurant in Grants Pass, Oregon (her aunt was kind enough to babysit our kids). The name of the place escapes me at the moment, but I remember the event very clearly. We ate in the shadows of a beautiful, warm evening sun – definitely worthy of my ten mostly-wonderful years with Rebecca.

My fantasy baseball team had an exciting year. We started out in the basement and made a run past ten teams to first place in September before falling back to a fourth place finish. Because the baseball season runs from April until October that kept me entertained for most of the year.

I brought a new bike in September and have committed to riding it to work (about 6 miles one way) on something like a daily basis. Nevertheless, I still managed to gain five pounds this year making me the heaviest I have been since my college freshman fifteen.

I also joined the Slightly Overweight Father’s Association (SOFA). SOFA is basically a boys club of some local guys where we do fun things like play softball, watch football, and talk about the movie “Roadhouse”.

Anyway, I could go on and on about all the routine things that happen during the year that are memorable, but that would be like telling you my life story. I’ll save it for when I see you.

Here's to a happy, healthy, and successful 2011!

Maya and me, and Maya

2010-11-02T20:29:00.002-04:00

Maya and I are usually the first ones out of bed each weekday morning. Maya has to leave for school around 7:30 and I get up to help her with breakfast, make her lunch, and get myself ready to go to work. The other morning, I had the additional experience of helping her choose her school clothes. This is probably the last time I will ever be able to do this since, as Maya becomes more mature and aware, she will recognize that I am, to put it mildly, fashion-challenged.

When Maya was younger, my mother-in-law made her some skirts and pants. Maya still has some of those clothes and the other morning she pulled out this frizzy, red skirt and said, “Fancy Nancy would pay money for this skirt!” In case you don’t know, Fancy Nancy is a serialized book character who likes fancy things. She dresses fancy, uses fancy words, wants to go to fancy places, and likes fancy dogs. Fancy Nancy would definitely have paid money for this skirt!

After Maya decided she was going to wear it to school that day, I sat in and offered advice on a shirt and tights to go with it. Despite my failure to keep up with the "in-thing" in the world of style, in this case I think I did her right. I put the ix-nay on the purple flowery legging-type pants Maya picked to wear under the skirt. Instead, I directed her to a more reasonable pink tights ensemble. And even though it is my favorite of her shirts, and I would have loved to see her sporting it around the 2nd grade, I knew that her grey-blue Black Crowes T-shirt didn’t go well. Neither did her dingy, white sparkly T-shirt. Come to think of it, I can’t remember what shirt we picked out – but I know it matched, and she looked great. It was a fun time! Who knows, maybe because the experience went so well she’ll have enough confidence in my fashion acumen to take my input on what to wear to her first date? Her coronation? Her induction into the rock-and-roll Hall of Fame?

Which brings me to my next topic - Maya. She got her first quarter report card for the second grade and - WOW! - I'm not sure how she is going to top it. She got all E's (that's E for excellent) and 5's (a 5 is also for excellent) and AL's (that is above level). We may have to skip her ahead a few grades but are going to be forced to hold her back from enrolling for a degree to allow her college fund time to grow.

Seriously, it feels kind of neat to be parent to a good student. Not that I can really take much credit for her shining ability. I have zero role in her completing her homework and whenever I ask her what she is doing at school, she doesn't know. Maybe it's just my smarts and work ethic that have rubbed off on her, or the fact that I was smart enough to marry her mom. Actually, Maya is more my daughter than I give myself credit for - the only two G's she got (G is for good) were in grammar and music - proof that she and I are kin.

They Might Be Giants

2010-10-11T23:12:00.002-04:00

On Saturday, October 2, They Might Be Giants performed a free concert at the Kennedy Center in Washington D.C.. We have been listening to TMBG for a few years. I think we got their kids CD “NO!” shortly after Maya was born in 2002. That was my first introduction to this lyrically quirky, but musically accomplished band. Though, I do think I remember hearing of them back in the days when MTV showed music videos.

In the summer of 2004, I was in Portland, Oregon for work. Rebecca and a nearly two-year old Maya were with me and one night we went to a Taste-of-Portland event in a field along the Columbia River. I randomly picked up a flyer while we were sitting and eating and saw that TMBG were playing a free concert that night at eight (how do these guys make any money?). I hustled Rebecca and Maya back to the hotel room and made it back in time to stand only ten feet from the stage. I could see that the space was pretty packed with adults, but since I was only familiar with their kids music, I wasn’t sure what to expect. TMBG came out smoking and didn’t stop rocking – who knew an accordion could be an integral part of a rock and roll band!

That show hooked me and I exhausted the BMG Music Club TMBG catalogue. So we’ve now got about six or eight TMBG CDs – not including the three kids TMBG CDs we have. Honestly, there is not much difference between their grown-up records and their kids stuff. Compare “The Edison Museum” with “James K. Polk”.

Maya and Jonah have also come to dig their music. A few years ago, Friday night was a really big deal in our house because that was the night a new podcast was available on the TMBG website. Each podcast contained one or two songs off the much anticipated release of their CDs “Here Come the ABCs” and “Here Come the 1, 2, 3s”. Of course, we got the CDs as soon as they came out and even now I often find myself singing “Pirate Girls Nine” or “Pictures of Penguins Painting”.

Fast forward to last Saturday. We’d been psyching the kids up all week for the show and they were pretty excited, talking about what songs they most wanted to hear (“D is for Drums” for Jonah and “Where Do They Make Balloons?” for Maya) but Jonah still managed to fall asleep on the way to the Kennedy Center. The show was set to begin at six and since it was free, I anticipated a lot of people. We were able to get some friends to the Kennedy Center by four p.m. so when we showed up at 4:30, we went right past about two hundred people to the front of the line where our friends were. In that way, we were some of the first people let through the doors to stake our spot. There were some stairs along the right hand side as we approached the stage and we claimed that spot so the kids would be able to see over peoples’ heads. So, there I am again, ten feet from a free TMBG show. It’s the only way I’ll see them.

The hard part was waiting for about an hour before the show started. But when it did finally start, Maya was bouncing up and down to the music with a smile. “It was worth the wait!” she said while clapping her hands to “Clap your Hands”.

About halfway through the show, which was a mix of kids stuff and regular stuff (really, no difference! Compare “Nonagon” with “Dr. Worm”) confetti got shot into the crowd. The kids loved it. They spent most of the rest of the show pushing the confetti that was on the ground into piles, picking up the piles, and throwing the confetti back into the air. The band shot confetti into the crowd during a few other songs and this made the piles that my kids picked up bigger and better.

After the show, while we waited for the crowd to thin out so we could do the same, Jonah proclaimed that it was the best day of his life. What did he like about it? The confetti. He wants to know if stores sell it.

I Think I'm in Love

2010-07-23T21:40:00.004-04:00

Friday night. I had to go to my office because I forgot my phone charger. On the way out of the block I see Anna and Jeff walking their dogs and carrying bags of poop. Hop in, I say, we'll throw poop at people. We laugh about it.

I get into D.C. and park near my office then decide to walk a few blocks to the Borders that is going out of business. It's so fucking hot that I stop at a bar for a beer on the way. Service is slow so I leave. I get to the Borders just as it closed. No big deal, I turn around. Lots of pretty women are out walking. Back to the office and the guard says about the spots on my shirt from my shoulders to my belly, "Oh, is it raining?"

No, I say, that's sweat. We laugh about it.

On the way out of D.C. that Eddie Money song comes on. It's a good one I haven't heard since a long time. Moving like a sea of madness, yeah!

With the windows open I get a whiff of Maine Avenue; the marina and seafood market. Lots of people would balk but I revel in it. Bring it all the way down the GW Parkway past the Marina where the Belisana, our friends' sailboat was once docked. It's that kind of night.

Maya and Jonah are happy at Wolf Lake. Rebecca is happy in Santa Monica. I'm going to meet her in San Diego on Sunday but right now I'm going home and all my chores are done. The song that comes on the radio as I pull in front of our home; Joe Walsh, Life's Been Good.

Travelogue - Camping in Oregon, Summer 2010

2010-07-15T21:52:00.005-04:00

We recently spent some time in Southwestern Oregon. Our first stop was at Rebecca's cousin Nettie's property outside of Grants Pass for the Eichler family bi-annual reunion. This event draws aunts and uncles, cousins and kids from all over the west - LA, Washington, Utah - and us Easterners - together for three or four days of camping, games, storytelling, drinking, and bear-hunting.

This year, Maya and Jonah got to meet some cousins that they hadn't ever met. In particular, they palled around with two girls, Jasmine and Kaylie, who belong to Rebecca's cousin Jason (who is Nettie's son). The four kids, and a dozen or so other Eichler offspring, roamed Nettie's property (which was about two acres - and fenced in, which was perfect) unsupervised for most of each day - playing on the rented moonbounce/water-slide, in the rented dunk-tank, with the goats, chickens, dogs, gathering wood for the fire, rolling around in the dirt, eating occasionally, and generally going feral. At night, Uncle Ernst would hide his bears around the property and the kids would go on a flashlight bear hunt. It was a grand time as it always is.

Since I have been going to these reunions with Rebecca, they have taken place at Lake Quinnalt in Washington; Moab, Utah; Jalama Beach in Santa Barbara, CA; Bear Lake in Idaho, and now in Oregon. These are not like I would imagine it would be to go to Rebecca's high school reunion - where I would feel like an outsider. Without exception, the family is warm, friendly, inclusive, and just fun to be around. One of the cousins even offered to let me handle her bikini bottoms (after she took them off). Hospitality, I tell you.

After the reunion ended we buddied up with Rebecca's cousin Thea and her husband Matt and drove out to the coast for a night. The most direct route to the coast from Grants Pass is through the Siskiyou National Forest on a windy road up and down mountains where the top speed is 20 MPH. We learned that Jonah gets car sick. Fortunately there was a bucket that we had brought along for tide-pooling right in front of him and some of the berries we had eaten from Nettie's strawberry patch that morning ended up in there. Others ended up on Jonah's shirt and car seat. And the sweet smell hung in the air. But it was the damndest thing - he'd be moaning and crying while we were driving and then we'd stop and he'd be tearing up and down the side of the road like nothing in the world was bothering him. His car sickness must be the equivalent to the sea sicknees I felt in 1992 on a ferry from Ireland to Le Havre, France on a rolling sea. My mind felt like I was on acid - no way out - and my stomach wanted to jettison all the Guinness I had drunk that day. Nothing to do but lay down on the floor of the ferry (like dozens of other passengers) and try to sleep. Of course, telling Jonah to close his eyes and try to sleep is useless - he won't do it. So, our 78 mile trip from Grants Pass to Gold Beach took about 4 hours.

We finally got to the campground we had chosen the night before with Thea, and in advance of Matt and Thea who were still breaking down their tent when we left Nettie's that morning. Matt is this giant of a man with such an easygoing and bright-side nature that you can't help but want to hang out with him. Add irrepressible Thea to the mix and it is one fun couple. Matt and Thea were driving back to LA and the plan was that we would camp with them the one night in Gold Beach and then go our separate ways. At least that was the plan, but Matt and Thea ended up renting a "cabin" at the campground (after we had pitched our tent in a fierce windstorm) and Maya and Jonah ended up in their hot tub. I adjusted the heat down because my kids were doing a slow-boil and ended up messing up the setting so that when Matt and Thea tried to get in the tub later that night, the temp was about 70 degrees. Maybe that's why nobody likes me.

After we left Matt and Thea on Wednesday morning, we headed a few miles further south on U.S. 101 to the town of Brookings, where we stayed at Harris Beach State Park. The plan was to stay there one night to do some tide-pooling but the campground was so nice and the beach so beautiful that we scrapped our plan to camp the last night in the Redwood forest in CA and spent a second night at Harris Beach. We did pass through the Redwood forest on Friday on our way back to Nettie's where we spent our last night before flying out on Saturday morning, so got to see some big tree specimens. I had never seen a redwood and have to say they were pretty impressive. Rebecca remembered a photo from her youth in which she and Chris and parents are standing next to a Redwood and look like dwarfs. She wanted to re-create that for Maya and Jonah so we tried to take some pictures.

We also did a detour on the way to Gold Beach to see the world's tallest pine tree. Maya was asleep in the car so she is going to have to visit it again someday. It's too bad because Maya is actually a big fan of trees. I remember being in Shenandoah National Park when she was our only child teaching her how to hug a tree. Her school lunch bag has a tree on it. I have a picture she drew for school of her flag design - which is a flag with a tree on it. We should have made her middle name Oak. Anyway, the world's tallest pine tree is in the Pine Campground in Siskiyou National Forest. It's pretty old too.

Both Maya and Jonah are such good campers. Many of our friends say we are so brave for going camping with them (that's city folk for you) but they are so easy and I think they really enjoy it. Of course, they may also like it because we don't pester them to wear clean clothes and bathe themselves! About the only real life rule that applies when camping is that you still have to brush your teeth.

Jonah is really into helping set up and break down camp. They both love to gather wood and help start the fire. Our second day we had to move from one site to another and Maya was so helpful in gathering our things and following the camping rules by not walking through other peoples campsites (even though it was a shortcut). I've noticed that Maya is very good at being respectful of other people's rights/things/privacy. She is really a very mature person for only seven years old!

The highlights of our Harris Beach state park time were the fish dinners we had each night (at a restaurant); tide-pooling where we got to see some cool aquatic things (mostly anemones, star fish, mussels, but also some crabs), build rock cairns (there are some cool looking rocks in Oregon), and listen to me tell stories about my childhood summers at Belmar on the Jersey Shore (I may have enjoyed that part more than the others).

I guess I could go on and on . . . and maybe sometime I will add to this post. But right now it is getting late and I'm going to wrap it up. I'll post some pictures shortly.

Martial (Brain F) arts

2010-05-19T20:33:00.007-04:00

Jonah began taking karate classes a few months ago. So far he has learned a front ball kick, a side kick, a hammer punch, a thrust punch, defensive maneuver #6, and stepping out on guard. He tests for his yellow belt this Saturday.

Jonah was encouraged in this endeavor by Rebecca, who actually took photos of Jonah as an infant at an anti-war rally so that she could create a a photo album to document his lifelong pacifism so that he could avoid being drafted into the army as an adult. Apparently if Jonah were to show this album to his drill sergeant at boot camp he would be excused from service, with apologies. This is the kind of crazy thing you read on the internet and think is a good, solid idea.

Anyway, the studio where Jonah takes karate lessons is running a promotion that allows mothers to take classes for free for the entire month of May. The promotion is purportedly in honor of Mothers Day, but is obviously the brainchild of one of the hot, young-buck instructors who see slightly-toned, been around the block a few times women parading their kids in and out of the studio every day. I will eat my hat if this studio runs a similar promotion in June for Father's Day.

Rebecca, always in search of a good deal, is of course taking advantage of this offer. It is just coincidence, I'm told, that Rebecca and all her friends, who debate endlessly about whether to allow their sons to play with pretend guns, have taken a sudden, keen interest in "learning" the deadly art of karate. Rebecca even got Jonah's teacher, Sensei (one of the aforementioned hot, young-bucks) to extend her free lessons into June.

All along Sensei has been telling Rebecca that he has never taught a more athletic or coordinated 4-year old than Jonah. Originally, we thought this was just to keep our checkbook open. However, I now think it is Sensei's master plan to woo Rebecca into his Dojo permanently, so that he can have unfettered 24-7 access to Jonah, in order to mold the boy into the next Bruce Lee/Chuck Norris/Jackie Chan, and bonk the bird to boot. Not a bad little scheme for a guy who, as far as I can tell, never wears shoes and only owns one belt.

Actually if this plays out the way I've imagined it, it would have a bright side. I mean, it's true I want my kids to have things better than I had; and the best Jonah can hope for from me is to learn how to read a box score.

The Junk Collector

2010-04-27T22:20:00.003-04:00

I read an article in the Washington Times recently that was premised on some good old fashioned twentieth century thinking - that recycling is actually more costly to communities than if we sent the stuff to a landfill. The article went on to analyze this premise from a dollars and cents perspective - which I don't think is any great revelation. However, being that this was an article from the Washington Times, it completely neglected to compare the concept of recycling versus not recyling for the long-term good of the planet (the Washington Times not espousing far-left views.) Though, to give the author some credit, he did stop short of advocating throwing your empty beer cans into the river when fishing.

In the spirit of Earth Day, Maya's first grade class has been studying the environment and earth-friendly attitudes. In that context, Maya brought home a checklist the other day of all the household items that can be recycled. I was happy to see that Maya had checked off each item on the list (things like plastic, aluminum, glass, paper, compost) and had even added one of her own - bringing food scraps to the chickens at Tauxemont, her former preschool. It's nice to see Rebecca and my influences rubbing off on the girl.

Then I had these thoughts while running past a perfectly good pencil eraser, baby bottle, and red bandanna on the Mall the other day. I could very easily see myself, in fact, I nearly had to prevent myself, stopping to pick those things up. Whether they had been lost or cast away by others, they still had some use. I could take the eraser home and give it to Maya to put on her school pencil. I could run the baby bottle through the dishwasher and post it for free on Craigslist. One hot wash with Rebecca's special homemade dye and perfume free detergent and the bandanna would be perfectly fine to put on my head or mop my brow. At the very least, it could be a rag.

The problem is, once one starts down that path, where does it end? Why not stop to pick every little thing up that someone has lost or cast away that still has some use? I see plenty of pens and pencils on the ground - why not stop and pick them up? All those popsicle sticks could be picked up and stored for neat crafts. Reduce, reuse, recycle is a fine mantra for a junk collector.

And what about items that can be recycled that are left on the ground or deposited in the trash? I could spend all day every day gathering the empty gatorade bottles strewn about. Some of them might be worth 5 cents in NY. How many abandoned newspapers have I seen on the Metro or bus? Don't the Boy Scouts pay cents on the pound for old newspaper? Can I bring it to the animal shelter? It gets to be too overwhelming to think about the waste and ignorance and I have to just carry on and do what I can do.

Of course, while I am running, thinking all of this, I am listening to Van Halen's 1983 album Diver Down on my iPod. Some people would call Van Halen useless junk, yet I've been listening to the stuff for more than twenty years and I still get good use out of it (just try sitting still while listening to the Full Bug). No need to thank me, I'm just carrying on doing what I can do for the Earth.

Sign of the Times

2009-11-12T20:45:00.004-05:00

Rebecca read the headlines from the front page of the newspaper to me last night. There was something about the killings at Fort Hood. A mass murderer was executed in Virginia. The chief of police got pulled over on a DUI. Public transportation ran behind schedule. Congress fought. Nothing really uplifting was going on. And today it rained all day and I realized that this country really is going to hell in a wicker hand basket that was woven in China. Think about it. We've been the omnipotent presence in the world for generations and we still have to walk around in the rain with an umbrella that might break any moment the wind blows the wrong way.

I remember my picture bible had a shot of Jesus in Nazareth carrying a Totes model that they still make with the same cheap plastic arms it had in B.C. The Georgetown Yacht Club advertises that it's Cinzano umbrellas were purchased from a cafe in Yalta where FDR, Stalin and Churchill had absinthe before holding the conference that launched the cold war. What kind of world do we live in? In all this time someone hasn't been able to improve the umbrella design so that a gust of wind doesn't turn it inside out?

I've probably gone through more umbrellas in my lifetime than I have pairs of socks (Rebecca can attest to that). Granted, I've seen some folks walking around with those vented umbrellas that look like one smaller umbrella placed on top of a larger umbrella, presumably to give a gust of wind a realease. Is that it? That's the improvement the world is waiting for? It's so ugly. But do they work? I can overlook ugly if it works. I don't know anyone who has one. What do those things cost? Who can afford one? Anyone? Please, restore my faith in the world.

Secrets of the Future Revealed - Stay Tuned

2009-11-06T22:51:00.000-05:00

Now that the Yankees have reached the promised land of their 27th world championship, and there is no more baseball to watch on t.v., my nights lack meaning. I lack direction. and since even i have to admit i've been at the top of my witty, good-humored game lately, i thought it was time to start up this blog again. though, honestly, it's mostly because my kids, maya and jonah are so damn funny and cute that i want to capture the funny and cute things they do and say so they can read them sometime when they are older and say, "damn, we were funny and cute. why was poppy such a goddamn crank all the time?"

well, that's easy enough to explain. rebecca and i never had a fight before we had kids. now all our fights are over the kids, or caused by the kids and their complete inability to do anything the first through the fourth time you ask them to do it. i will never be the husband who is divorcing his wife and giving his kids the platitude, it wasn't your fault. if rebecca and i ever get divorced you better bet it will so be the kids fault. it will be all because of them! but whatever. i'm not going anywhere. rebeccca does have a crush on this guy named hans who lives down the street and rides a bike. so, i'm not sure what her plans are. she's down the street right now. she told me that she was going to a baby shower. it's eleven o'clock. should pregnant moms-to-be be up this late?

just to get you back into the groove with where we are as a family; Maya is almost seven (December 14) and started first grade this past August. In some ways she is so grown up (the way she can tell a story and roll her eyes and make expressive faces and voice inflections makes me think she might have more talent as a story teller than me!) and in others she is still so exasperating (do we really need to cry for twenty minutes because we don't have eggs in the house?). in all ways she is wonderful. but sometimes i have to remind myself of that truth!

Jonah is obsessed with star wars, guns, swords and sometimes plays to the dark side of the force. he bit one of his friends tonight. that's a first. he doesn't bite. usually he will punch, kick or push them. he's also a big sports fan even though he doesn't quite understand the rules of the games (he's four this past August). But he is committed to playing for the Eagles, the Yankees, and an undisclosed soccer team when he's older. Early retirement, here I come!

What can I say about Rebecca? She still makes me smile. She still makes my mouth dry. I still want to please her. She's still a wonder to me. Like, I wonder why she married me. I wonder why she sticks with me. I wonder why I got so lucky. I wonder if I'll get laid after she reads this? Well, that will be our secret (figure yes) but not much else will be. I'm doing this to tell it like it is. if it feels like rain, i'll write it. but when the sun is shining, i will be too.

The End of an Era

2009-04-03T22:40:00.000-04:00

The other day while I was looking through the medicine cabinet for my nose hair clippers, I came across my hair brush. It's been awhile since I'd seen it. It's been even longer since I've used it.

If you haven't seen me in a while, say about a decade, you might be surprised to know that I am nearly bald.

My hair brush hasn't had much to do lately except act as a stand for our tube of Neosporin. In fact, I can't remember the last time I used it. I got to thinking, have I even used it since we moved into this house? I used to use it, so when we moved here, I likely put it in the medicine cabinet out of habit. But we moved into this house in 2000. That's nine years. I don't think I've used my hair brush in nine years.

Then I got to thinking about all the other things that don't seem like that long ago but are almost nine years old too. I started dating Rebecca in 1998. That's eleven years ago! We've been married since 2000. I've worked for the IRS since 2000. That's nine years! I've been listening to the music I've been listening to for years. I've been wearing the clothes I've been wearing for years. The people I know, I've known them for years.

My life has moved into the "decade" phase. Most of the things that I've done can be measured in decades now.

"I've known her for about a decade."

"We've lived in Alexandria for about a decade."

"Remember that time . . . when was that? About a decade ago."

"Gosh. I haven't brushed my hair in about a decade. There just hasn't been any need."

I'm not a sentimental guy. I realize it's time to move my brush from the medicine cabinet where it is taking up space that can be more productively used by a box of Dora the Explorer band aids to a less intrusive spot in the linen closet. But I haven't done it yet. I feel like there needs to be some fanfare. My hair is gone. Did it have to take my youth with it?

The Long, Dirty Winter

2009-03-10T20:36:00.001-04:00

I started a new job last week. I am not going to bore you with the details except to say that I now get to go to court for the IRS and get after the folks who are screwing this country out of what is rightfully hers. You know, tax cheats like the octogenarian who had two heart attacks but failed to report the settlement he got from his employer as income on his Form 1040. And the guy who operates heavy machinery but can't stay awake on the job because he's got narcolepsy so he had to retire early and didn't pay the 10% early distribution penalty on the payments he received from his pension plan. And the blind, bed-ridden woman with cancer who never bothered to show up for her court date because she never knew she had received a notice to appear in court because she can't see. And even if she could read it, she can't get up.

Well, those are all true cases and I'm not proud of it. But it is also true that we are going after a multi-millionaire athlete who decided he didn't have enough money and needed to create some offshore accounts to hide his foreign earnings and make it appear as if he was paying expenses from his U.S. accounts to his own foreign accounts to create deductions to reduce his U.S. income. A real American hero.

But the interesting thing about this job is the neighborhood. It takes me away from the downtown area of D.C. that I am accustomed to and where all the government buildings and yuppies are to a less polarized quadrant of our great capital. Sure, there's a fair share of yupsters, but this morning they had to weave their way around the man sleeping or dying or whatever it was that he was doing lying there motionless in the middle of the sidewalk. Careful not to step on him, he might actually be dead and how would that look?

There is always someone standing outside the metro doing something interesting. My colleague saw someone taking a leak there. Not hiding behind a newspaper dispenser or a parked taxicab, but right there. I listened to one wizened soul lamenting all the pretenders who tried to be his friend. He wanted none of it. He let them have it. Last time I say good morning to him.

The best, in my opinion, is the two guys who play a bevy of five gallon paint buckets like a drum set. Talented, motivated, entrepreneurs.

In the other direction from my office, towards the Tax Court, is a homeless shelter. Couple of guys sitting on the curb smoking a joint the other day. Me walking past them didn't seem to matter. I mean, sure, I don't care, but they were the ones who were smoking and they didn't care either.

A woman wearing two or three torn skirts followed us back to our office from the liquor store where we go to get lunch. There's a deli in the back. You walk down aisles of gleaming, rounded bottles for your tuna salad on wheat. She didn't ask for anything. She didn't shout any nonsense. I guess she just liked what she saw; I was wearing a suit that day.

I have a view of Capitol Plaza from my office window. There is a building in the way so I can't see the Capitol. Beyond Capitol Plaza is a triumvirate of Senate office buildings where I had the opportunity last week to go and witness a hearing sponsored by the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations. Permanent, I guess, because temporary just isn't going to get the job done. On the hot seat the day I visited was one of the uber-executives of UBS. He testified in front of a panel of very irate and photogenic Senators that yes, indeed, his company did proactively solicit and assist tens of thousands of U.S. citizens in hiding assets from the U.S. government and the IRS. But, no, we will not give you their names. Here's $728 million to make it better. Yawn.

On my way back to the office I crossed Capitol Plaza. In the Spring time it will be green. The fountains will be full. The homeless people can finally take a bath after the long, dirty winter.

Snow bunnies!

2009-03-02T11:58:00.000-05:00

(By guest blogger, Rebecca)
Here are some pictures and movies of our mini-vacation in the Poconos last week.

Maya geared up and ready to hit the slopes:

Jonah looks like he was born to be on skis:
Maya, Hunter Peterson, his little sister Kaitlyn, and Jonah:

Maya and Hunter had a blast together!Wow, a family picture!

Maya has been asking to go skiing for some time now, and it turns out the place where we were staying (Split Rock Resort) was next door to Jack Frost ski area. So we had no excuses. On Monday, we took the gang skiing.

We had just put the skis on the kids and they looked to be doing okay going down the beginner slope, so I pulled out the camera to film their first run. Paul, who was a bit rusty after not having skied for almost 4 years, didn't exactly think it was the right time to be filming and instead wanted me to give some sort of lessons to the kids. As you can see here, Jonah didn't really need much instruction:

We started skiing around 11:15am, then took a break for lunch. This next movie is Maya at around 2.30pm. So she's been skiing for around 2 1/2 hours at this point:
This was Maya's last run of the day. She wouldn't stop skiing and we were the last ones on the hill:

As we were leaving the resort that afternoon, Maya wanted to know when we would be going again. The next morning, she woke up and wanted to ski some more, so I took her for a second day:

We got a nice dumping of snow today - great light powder - but it doesn't do us a lot of good here in Alexandria. So we're going skiing tomorrow. When Jonah woke up and saw all this snow, he said, "Are we going skiing today??" He was so excited. Maybe we'll have more movies/pictures tomorrow.

Washington, D.C. before the storm

2009-01-16T20:05:00.000-05:00

Today, Rebecca and I picked up her tickets for the swearing in ceremony on Tuesday morning. Rebecca was able to snag eight tickets from Senator Bennett of Utah by usurping her Aunt Ellen's and Cousin Scott's names. Her theory, correct as it turns out, was that folks from Red states like Utah couldn't give two shakes of their wives' tails to attend the inauguration. Fortunately, Rebecca has about 80 relatives who live in Utah and two were willing to risk breaking Federal statute and allow her to use their names to secure tickets to the event. Actually, Aunt Ellen and Scott seriously planned on coming to the event themselves. We can't wait for them to get here late on Monday night.

Here is a picture of the Dirksen Senate office building where they would have had to go to get the tickets if they had gotten here today. Instead, Rebecca had to go in and get the tickets for them.

This is what the inside of the Dirksen Senate Office building looks like with Rebecca smiling inside it.

Here is a picture of Rebecca moments after she was handed two manilla folders that had been saturated with ether. We'll have to send a thank you note to the two girls in the background who were able to revive her so she could get the manilla folders that had the tickets in them.

Temperatures in D.C. today were in the low teens. The forecast for Tuesday is low 30's. This picture is of the front of the Capitol where a lucky few will be able to have their buttocks frozen to their chair while they witness the historic moment when Barack Obama, the 44th President of the United States, belches into the microphone.

There will be speakers and jumbotrons so the other lucky few who don't have seats and have to stand way back here will be able to see and hear the historic event as well, all while having their arses frozen off.

Here is a picture of Rebecca with her coveted ticket, standing in front of the reflecting pool. Doesn't she look cute? This is where she will be standing on Tuesday with Aunt Ellen and Cousin Scott. Obviously, President-elect Obama has better friends in the Senate than Mr. Bennett.

After the swearing in ceremony there will be a parade along Pennsylvania Avenue, from the Capitol to the White House. The Newseum fronts Penn. Ave and Rebecca purchased two tickets to the Newseum so that she would be assured of "being there" if she wasn't able to score tickets to the swearing in. Because the number of people allowed to view the parade from Pennsylvania Avenue will be limited to 300,000, she is not sure she will be able to make it from the reflecting pool to the parade area before the parade area has maxed out. So, she is contemplating selling the Newseum tickets on Craigslist to support her new ether habit.

Rebecca took this photo of the Newseum while she was driving to the Dirksen Senate office building. She's been a bit over the top about this whole thing, even going so far as to purchase a red carpet to roll out on the front walkway of our house for the Inaugural Ball we are hosting on Saturday night. Today, she had tears in her eyes as she drove along Pennsylvania and saw all the bunting and flags blowing in the wind and contemplated the great moment she will be a part of on Tuesday.

Christmas, New Years, and January 6th

2009-01-06T20:55:00.000-05:00

The excitement that Maya and Jonah showed in anticipation of Christmas this year was contagious. Even Rebecca, a notorious scrooge (albeit, a scrooge who continually outdoes herself in the gift-giving category. See below.) caught the bug. For the first time in our history, my Christmas stocking did not hang limp and forlorn on Christmas morning. Courtesy of Rebecca, it was brimming with all the sundry items that make Christmas morning magical – socks, a “Dumb and Dumber” DVD, and Clementines.

We spent Christmas Eve at our house with Opa, PoPo and cousins from Hong Kong – Eliza and Diana Chu. Diana just completed her first semester at Washington University at St. Louis, which is located in St. Louis. Eliza, her mom, was of course coming to visit and spend the holiday with her after not seeing her for four months. Eliza and Diana, and Alex, the dad, lived in Blacksburg, Virginia for a number of years before moving to Hong Kong about a decade ago, right when I started dating Rebecca. In fact, while they attended Utah State in the 1980’s, Eliza and Alex lived with the Eichlers. When they moved to Blacksburg, Virginia to become professors at Virginia Tech, the Eichlers were living in Woodbridge, Virginia.

Now, Virginia is not like New Jersey, you can’t drive through it in two hours. But even though Blacksburg and Woodbridge aren’t the closest of towns, Eliza, Alex, and then baby Diana were still the closest located family to Rebecca during that time (other family being in Utah, on the west coast, and in HK), so they spent a fair amount of time together. Being able to host Eliza and Diana added a special element to our Christmas celebration – it brought back feel-good memories of youth for Rebecca and we didn’t have to host only Opa and PoPo, who we see all the time.

While we waited for dinner on Christmas Eve we watched Santa’s flight across Asia and Europe on the computer. The look on Jonah’s face as he watched Santa’s sleigh make its way in and around the Roman Coliseum was pure wonderment and joy. It’s nice to see that technology has added something of value to life besides “Dancing with the Stars”.

On Christmas morning Maya woke up before everyone, as she typically does, and claims she heard someone eating cookies in the living room. Being the bold spirit she is, she came halfway down the stairs and saw 1) Santa’s hat, or 2) Santa’s whole being. She changed her story so I’m not sure what to make of it.

On the topic of Rebecca’s gift giving, she got me an even more awesome present this year than she got me last year. I think I’ve blogged about the gift she made last year, a family camping flag consisting of an acorn (representing Jonah Oak) sewn onto a purple background with snowflakes (representing Maya Snow). We hang this from something near our campsite when we go camping and it’s totally cool. Well, this year Rebecca managed to format the entire “Adventures of the Cuy” blog that I wrote this summer while we were in Ecuador and bind it into book form. So, now it looks like I actually wrote a book this summer instead of complained and got drunk. It’s sweet.

Though, I have to admit, I felt a bit like a geek when my friend Adam asked me what I got after he came rolling down the street on his brand spanking new adult size scooter that his wife MaryAnne got for him and then told me about the rock and roll DVDs and the New York football Giants jersey that his kids got him.

“Uh.” I said. “A book.”

Then he took my lunch money.

On New Years Eve, we decided to host a party. This was actually a good idea. We invited all the families with kids from our neighborhood, so it had potential to be a relatively early night. It was a pot-luck and we have some amazing cooks in our neighborhood so we had a good spread too. At nine o’clock, we celebrated the New Year arriving in Greenland by popping the cork to some Sparkling Apple Cider, making a bunch of noise, and throwing confetti all over our living room. Then we sent the kids to bed and everyone else went home.

Some girls that live up the street were having a party so after Rebecca and I got the place mostly cleaned up I went over there with Adam and managed to avoid having to do any Karaoke. It was a pretty good way to send off the old year.

I guess the expected thing to do now is to spend a bunch of lines reflecting on the year, but I don’t really feel the need. Life goes on, right? I’m thankful that we continued to be very fortunate in 2008, and I expect all the good things that happened for us in 2008 and all the positive momentum that we built up as a family to keep rolling along with us. Hopefully, that type of thing doesn’t recognize artificial stops and starts like New Years Day. Two-thousand and eight rocked. If we just keep doing the same thing we’ve been doing, 2009 is going to rock too.

And so far so good. The kids recognized the hilarity of the pictures on the cover of the Dumb and Dumber DVD (in particular, the one of Jim Carrey giving Jeff Daniels a wedgy) so we watched some of that on New Years Day. Maya made us turn it off because it was scaring her.

We’ve gotten back to eating right, alfalfa sprouts and garbanzo beans, after the indulgence of the holidays.

We continue to have dance parties as time permits. Last night we were listening to the Warren Zevon album “The Wind”, which has some good dance songs on it. After we rocked out to “Disorder in the House” which has a guitar part by Bruce Springsteen like nothing I’ve ever heard him play before, we were catching our breath on the couch listening to Zevon cover “Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door”. Maya asked me, “Who’s Kevin?”

Speaking of Maya, she recently went to the dentist and came home with three cavities. Rebecca blames this on me and my habit of giving the kids ice cream nearly every day this summer. Well, I say, what else are summers for but eating ice cream? Perhaps, brushing your teeth? I thought we did that. Anyway, the cavities are in baby teeth but it is still a bit disconcerting because Rebecca has a mouth full of cavities. Repairing her teeth has cost us a pretty penny. I hope Maya’s cavities aren’t a sign of things to come with her. It is also disturbing because, rather than being contrite; Maya is wearing her cavities like a badge of honor.

Since Maya’s diagnosis, I have been reading her a book that I wrote for a school project called “The Little Men Who Made Cavities in Steve’s Mouth”. My friend Rob Lembo, who is a fantastic artist, did a great job illustrating it, and I must say that the story holds together pretty well for a first effort. As we were paging through it last night, Maya was making me read every little thing written in there. The cover page, the dedication, and some other silly things I wrote in there. On one page, I had put down the date; January 6, 1988. How crazy that exactly twenty-one years to the day that I handed this thing in as a senior year school project, I was reading the book to my six-year old daughter.

Jonah skating

2008-12-22T11:39:00.000-05:00

Six Years in Suburbia

2008-12-15T20:36:00.000-05:00

One of the things Rebecca and I like best about our home is the location. A fifteen minute walk in any direction will bring you to all that is great about America – chain department stores; Home Depot, chain restaurants; Chinese take-out; and clear-cut, 20x20 fenced yards with one piece of plastic playground equipment. We are also a short walk from Metro – the easy-to-understand, color-coordinated public transportation system that serves Washington D.C.

We all know the many wonderful things that “The City,” as folks who grew up around here call it, has to offer. And I’m not even talking about the young co-eds and drugs. But while it may rank as the top one or two power cities of the world, I recently saw that Teen Beat did not rank it in the top fifty as a destination for night-life. This may be why Metro closes at midnight on most nights.

But, seriously, the fact that we can, if we choose, go days without having to get in our car to drive somewhere to partake of one of life’s necessities – the 99-cent Taco Bell menu, seeing Archie Bunker’s chair, a Starbucks mocha latte - has been an essential element in why Rebecca and I haven’t upgraded to a place that would make us house poor like so many of our friends.

Now, Rebecca and I realize that we are giving up something by living in the yuppie suburbia that we do. A move to the country would grant us access to air that contained fewer toxins, provide us the ability to see cows and smell manure whenever we wanted, and maybe even have a P.O. box as our mailing address. It would also probably increase our chances of being grandparents while Maya and Jonah are still in their teens.

Which, finally, brings me to the point of this blog post. Yesterday, December 14, we celebrated Maya’s 6^th birthday.

Because we’ve gone ice-skating a few times recently and she’s gotten pretty good at it, Maya wanted to have an ice-skating party. Here she is carving it up yesterday.

Because none of the local ponds were frozen over, and anyway, I can’t think of any local ponds, we had to go to the local skating rink. In keeping with the theme developed above of how great our location is, how many of you reading this live near an ice-skating rink that is accessible by public transportation?

Having the party at the ice rink rather than a local pond was fine by me since it set my mind at ease that none of our guests would fall through the ice and get trapped. What a head-ache that would have been for us!

After deliberating over who to invite for two or three days, Maya settled on ten of her friends, including Jonah, her cousins Gabriel and Bella, five of her classmates, and Celeste, her friend from our street. Rebecca sent out the E-vite and we were all set.

The way it went was this, we rented a “party room” at the ice-rink that consisted of four cinder block walls, three folding tables and enough folding chairs. My mother-in-law made a tray of baked ziti, Rebecca made some cupcakes,

I poured the drinks, and my father-in-law provided the entertainment.

Thus fortified, the skaters strapped on their skates and headed to the "sheet" to flop around on the ice for a couple of hours. Of the young ones, only Jonah had skated before. But, I’m happy to say that no one hurt themselves except for Bella (no stitches were involved). There were also a few of us old folks that were lacing up skates for the first time in years (my sister Cathy)

or, in some cases, ever (my cousin Mike).

Neither of them admit to any bumps or bruises.

After skating, we came back to our house and gathered around the Christmas tree while Maya opened her few birthday presents. We had asked folks not to bring presents, but no matter how many times you tell that to grandparents, they don’t get the message. And anyway, Maya has been to a few parties recently where the parents did not tell folks not to bring presents, so she was excited to have some presents to open.

Maya was really excited to get a jewelry box from my parents and a camera from me and Rebecca. When Rebecca was tucking Maya into her bed last night, they debated keeping the night light in the room on or off. Maya wanted to keep it on in case she woke up and wanted to take some pictures.

After Maya opened her presents, she, Jonah and Celeste ran around the house crashing into things. This prompted my Dad to remark that someone was going to end up in the emergency room. That would have been no problem, from our house we can catch the 9A bus and be at the hospital in 24 minutes.

Esta haciendo los recuerdos con los Rolling Stones (segunda parte)

2008-12-04T21:09:00.000-05:00

Rebecca and I purchased a lot of DVDs in Ecuador. They were cheap . Someplaces sold them for $2 each. At other places you could get them for a dollar each. We brought about 30.

The catch is that they are all bootlegged. Imagine walking into a store that is selling nothing but bootlegged DVDs. Imagine that this could be your job, bootlegging DVDs and selling them for $2 each. Ecuador is great.

Even though we checked out each DVD we purchased on the store DVD player to make sure it was more than just an empty DVD, once we got them home onto our machine, some of them didn't work. Here's where this blog post would get real technical if I were a technical guy. But I'm not. If there is an opposite to a techno-geek, (something like a techneophyte), I'm it. Light switches are as complicated as I dare to get. I let Rebecca handle everything else. Whenever my guy friends get into discussions about digital versus HDTV, or how many channels they get, or pistons versus spark plugs or some such idiocy, I do my best to stay out of the conversation so as not to be emasculated.

But, to put our DVD issue in layman's terms, the problem seems to be that certain DVDs are made for certain places in the world and they won't play in other places. Don't ask me how they know where they are. I can't remember if it's the formatting of the DVD itself, the wiring of the DVD player, or what, but a bunch of the DVDs that we purchased in Ecuador are useless to us here except as coasters.

I brought two music DVDs in Ecuador. One was an AC/DC documentary which I watched a few weeks ago and which worked fine. The other night I popped the other, the Rolling Stones' Forty Licks concert DVD, into our DVD player. Everything was working fine while I got myself to the menu screen and selected "Play Movie". But once the movie started playing there was no audio.

Since it's nearly pointless to watch a concert video without sound, I started pushing buttons and somehow got myself to a screen that had "Audio" as an option. That sounded like just the fix that I needed so I selected it and lo and behold, I found myself on a screen with an option to select a different type of TV. Not a different model, but some different frequency or something. The techno-geek in me remembered something from a past conversation about T.V.'s being the root of the problem, so I selected the other T.V. from the one that was already selected and all hell broke loose.

The screen started rolling from top to bottom at great speed. Static lines started moving diagonally across the screen. The only sound you could hear was the war cry of the Bohemian Wahoo. This sudden change into techno-anarchy made it impossible to read the words to undo whatever the hell it was I had just done. Crap, I thought. More indiscriminate button pushing didn't help. Fuck, I thought. Something that started out with so much promise ended up completely fucked up.

In a last ditch effort to salvage some shred of manhood, I took the Stones DVD out and put in a DVD that I know works in our player - something Made in China but sold in the USA - held my breath and encountered the same problem. The screen rolled from top to bottom at great speed. Static lines started moving diagonally across the screen. The Bohemian wahoo cried it's war cry.

So basically, when you put a DVD in our DVD player, it's impossible to see what the hell is going on. It's impossible to read any of the words or see any of the pictures. Our DVD player is kaput. I am so discouraged that I can't even remember if the sound was working so we could at least listen to a movie.

Making Memories with the Rolling Stones

2008-12-03T20:50:00.000-05:00

The other night I called my friend who lives on the street to see if he wanted to stop by. Since it was a week night, and it was already pretty late by the time I thought to call him, I expected to have to work a little bit to convince him. When I got him on his cell phone, I said to him all in a rush, “I just listened to Sticky Fingers and I’m listening to Beggar’s Banquet now and I’m probably going to listen to Exile on Main Street next. Why don’t you come over?”

“That sounds cool.” He said. “I’ll be there in a minute.”

So much for the hard sell, right?

About five minutes later he came walking down the street with a drink in his hand and we proceeded to tear it up in my kitchen listening to the Rolling Stones, talking, dancing and just having a good ole time. Though, because we are both responsible grown-ups and had to go to work the next day, one of our four eyes always strayed to the clock.

I haven’t yet figured out how many hours of sleep I need to function properly the day after I’ve had a few drinks, but I think it is in the 4-6 range. It also helps (a lot) if I don’t have my last drink minutes before my head hits the pillow. On this night, after my friend left and before I went to sleep, I made myself some spaghetti, drank a bunch of water, swallowed a few aspirins, and still felt pretty lousy the next morning. But it was the day before Thanksgiving and work was pretty slow so it didn’t matter much.

If you haven’t listened to Sticky Fingers recently, you should. We’ve all heard a lot of those songs on the radio before – Brown Sugar, Wild Horses, Bitch, Can’t You Hear Me Knocking – and probably are sick of them. I’m sure I’ve turned at least one of those songs off while it played on the radio recently.

But hearing them in context with the rest of that record - Sway, Dead Flowers, Moonlight Mile – reminded me how musically outstanding the Stones were during the late 1960’s early 1970’s. I had forgotten how much I liked the Sticky Fingers record. It’s a classic example of taking something profound (music, relationships, Hostess Ding Dongs) for granted just because it is there for you whenever you want it.

It also reminded me of something that happened to me many years ago when I was in college. I went through this period where I was bumming around about this girl that I liked who was spreading herself around for other guys. So, to make myself feel worse, one night I decided to sit alone in my dorm room in the dark listening to “I Got the Blues” from Sticky Fingers. I Got the Blues is a real slow, melancholy song that among other suicide greeting card ready lines, contains the lyric “feelin’ low down, I'm blue".

At some point my buddy stops by and this really depressing song is playing and I’m depressed over this girl that this guy had actually put some moves on. I let him in without turning the light on and he comes in and when I think about it now, I think “what a loser I am!” There I am in college, the greatest time of my life to that point, and I’m passing the hours sweating it out over some silly little thing like unrequited love!

Anyway, after trying to cheer me up some and get me to go out with him with zero success, my buddy asked me what I was listening to. I told him and all of a sudden it was alright with him that I wanted to sit in my room by myself in the dark. He left. Somehow the fact that I was listening to the Stones didn’t make me so pathetic. Maybe I was cool, even, to be feeling low down and blue over a girl and just letting the Stones wash over me.

I wonder now if my buddy remembers that night and what he thought about my situation. I don’t talk to him anymore so I can’t ask him. I probably wouldn’t ask him anyway, I think I’d just rather he forget about it. If I ever run into him again we’ve got lots of times to reminisce about when we were both happy, so there is no need to remember a time when we were not.

And anyway, my new memory of Sticky Fingers is dancing in my kitchen with a drink in my hand while my friend from up the block takes a break to pour himself another.

Rock and Roll Fantasy

2008-11-21T20:24:00.000-05:00

The Washington D.C. area is a great place to live if you like to see live music. Within the metro area (Maryland, D.C., and Virginia) there are venues of all shapes and sizes, and as a result, there is a place for bands of any genre and any degree of popularity.

There are innumerable bars that have live music during the week. There are small venues like the 9:30 club, The Black Cat, and The Birchmere that hold only a couple of hundred people. There are mid-size places like the Patriot Center or DAR Constitution Hall that hold a few thousand. We have outdoor venues like Wolf Trap and Merriweather Post Pavilion. And of course, we have arenas like Verizon Center and stadiums like RFK that the mega-selling bands like Pearl Jam and Hannah Montana can pack with tens of thousands.

Then there are the artsy places like Strathmore and Millennium Stage at The Kennedy Center which roll all kinds of symphonies and jazz bands through but once in a while have something more pop/popular (i.e., The Beach Boys, Dec. 8 @ Strathmore).

A few weeks ago, on a Friday evening, Rebecca and I took Maya and Jonah for a picnic in the Sculpture Garden outside the National Museum of Art to see a jazz band that was playing there. This is a recurring summer event, Friday evening jazz performances in the Sculpture Garden, and we had a good time so I think we will do it again in the future.

Jazz isn’t really my thing but I appreciate good musicians and the band was great. Though, I think in this case the best moment was when the band started the Bill Withers’ song “Use Me” then encouraged folks to grab their instruments from their cars for a free-for-all winding jam that never lost the bass groove that makes you want to get up and dance in the first place. It was one of those moments where you couldn’t find a face that wasn’t smiling a big, broad, happy grin. Plus, the kids were transfixed by the musicians. They really enjoyed watching the performance.

Looking through the upcoming concert listings is enough to make one’s mouth water – Ray Davies (Dec. 8 @ 9:30 club); Oasis/Ryan Adams (Dec. 20 @ Patriot Center); B.B. King/Buddy Guy (Feb. 20 @ DAR); Tina Turner (Nov. 22@ Verizon Center); Loretta Lynn (Dec. 5 @ 9:30 club); Thievery Corporation (Jan 27/28 @ 9:30 Club); and it goes on and on with lots more bands that I’ve heard of and lots and lots more that I haven’t.

On the one hand, I feel like I am missing an opportunity by not seeing these bands now while I can still see and hear and dance. It reminds me of the David Budbill poem “While We’ve Still Got Feet.” On the other hand, some might question my priorities if I saw every band that stoked my interest.

Fortunately for me, I have a really great wife who indulges me (maybe?) more than she should and I’ve been able to see some really great live music in the last month, with some more on tap in December.

It started with three Black Crowes shows at the 9:30 Club in October. The Black Crowes are a band that I’ve liked since their first record came out in 1989 or 1990. I saw them play The Ritz in New York City around that time (a story in itself – we ended up in the emergency room) and most of my friends from that time always tell me that they think of me whenever they hear a Black Crowes song on the radio. I’m like their number one fan.

So, when I saw that The Black Crowes were performing for three nights in D.C, it was hard for me to pick just one show. I had to go to all three.

The Black Crowes are the type of band that you can see on consecutive nights because they change the set list all the time. They are kind of like the Grateful Dead in that regard – you never know what songs they’ll play at any show. Over the course of the three shows I saw, they only repeated three songs. But they also didn’t play a couple of songs that I wanted to hear so I’m going to have to see them the next time they come through town.

I say that the Crowes are the type of band that you can see on consecutive nights, but in practice, some folks doubted that my body could handle it. These are the folks that know how I can get at times.

But, truly, I never had any doubt that I would be okay. On opening night, Thursday, I went by myself so it was no problem, I was home and in bed by 1 a.m. On Friday night (the second show) I went with my friend Ty and we stayed up pretty late after the show. I only slept until 9 a.m. on Saturday so my ass was dragging on that afternoon. I think I actually took a nap on Saturday which is something I very, very rarely do. But by the time I got to the show on Saturday night around 9 p.m., I was ready. I ended up having to take a cab home that night because the Metro only runs until 3 a.m. on weekends.

I did have a revelation that I recall while watching the Crowes – Luther Dickinson will be to guitar players what Babe Ruth is to baseball players – a household name. Mark my words. He’s that good.

Last night (Wednesday) Rebecca and I went to see Michael Franti and Spearhead, a rock/hip-hop/reggae/funk band with poetic lyrics that trend politic and a really, really good-looking front man (the aforementioned Michael Franti). Well, I don’t think he’s that good-looking, but I do like his music and lyrics.

Rebecca really thinks he’s sexy and has Mr. Franti on the ubiquitous list that we all keep of the five people we’d most like to be stranded with on a deserted island. So, she was extra excited that as we walked up to the venue, Michael Franti was in the street kicking around a soccer ball with a bunch of folks. We had to stand there in the freezing cold and watch him finish the game so that I could take this picture.

After the picture Rebecca and Michael disappeared into the bus for a while, but Rebecca made it out in time to see the show from more or less the front row (the 9:30 Club is general admission so as far as you can elbow your way forward is where you stand for the show).

Overall, I thought the show was pretty good. There was a lot of jumping and sweating. I’d never seen Spearhead before (Rebecca has been two other times) so I was happy to finally be able to do that. We listen to them a lot at home because Maya and Jonah really like them too. Before we left for the show Maya asked Rebecca to take a picture of Michael Franti for her (mission accomplished!). Jonah is a fan too. We have a great video of him dancing to the song “Hey World” that I am going to upload to YouTube. Check it out.

The show that I am looking forward to now is Ray Davies. Ray Davies is the main guy in The Kinks. If you’ve read any of my previous blogs, I probably mentioned that I like The Kinks. To give you some idea of how much, I offer this quote that I made to Rebecca some time ago. “Rebecca, if you ever leave me, at least I’ll still have The Kinks.”

Since I’m probably never going to get to see The Kinks play together (the other band members, including Dave Davies, don’t get along with Ray) I consider Ray Davies as my substitute. This is okay seeing as he wrote most of their stuff. I’m just not sure how much of it he’s going to play since he does have solo records out in the last few years that he might like to play more, now. Thinking about it, I regret that he’s not playing two consecutive nights – more chances for him to play all the songs that I want to hear.

The Rise and Fall of the Family Bed

2008-11-18T19:04:00.000-05:00

When Maya was born, Rebecca and I invested in a king size bed rather than a crib so that Maya could sleep with us. Rebecca and I had read many articles about the benefits of co-sleeping – how it promotes bonding, the fact that it is safer than crib/cot sleeping, and, of course, the all important potential for more sleep.

Because Maya was breastfeeding, and I would never be able to deliver on her midnight cries for feeding, co-sleeping is a more convenient arrangement for mommy. Whenever Maya stirred, Rebecca could boob her so that none of us ever really left Z-town, and we all satisfied our FDA required sleep quotient.

For the first few nights of her life, Maya slept between us in this specially designed box made of hard edges to prevent me or Rebecca from rolling onto her in our sleep. Of course, the idea that we would roll onto her in our sleep was completely ridiculous as all Rebecca and I wanted to do during sleeping hours was look over the edge of the box at our golden child. Eventually, though, Rebecca and I decided we did need to sleep rather than gawk over the edges of the box. So, we got rid of the box and Maya continued blissfully between us to no ill effect. And in fact, I loved having Maya next to us all night – would not have done it any other way.

In anticipation of adding Jonah to the mix, we purchased Maya a bed, set up a room for her, and talked about how much fun it is for big girls to sleep in their own beds in their own rooms. Maya didn’t really go for that idea, especially when she saw Jonah enjoying the co-sleeping arrangement that had been solely hers for so long. So, rather than fighting about it (and really, we liked having her close to us) we built a raised bed frame next to our bed and put a crib mattress on it to create something even bigger than the California King. We called this part of the bed “the nest” and for the most part, that’s where Maya slept. Jonah of course, continued to sleep between me and Rebecca, but mostly nuzzled next to Rebecca.

And that’s how sleeping life went on in our home until, sometime before May 14, 2008, Rebecca and I got sick of only being able to snuggle with our feet because one or other of our kids was between us. Since we knew that our apartment rental in Quito was going to have three bedrooms, we devised an elaborate plan to have the kids sleep in their own beds while in Ecuador. Rebecca even went so far as to set up a room for Jonah in Alexandria before we left so that our transition back home would not include having to reintroduce the family bed just to pull it out from under them again.

I am sure this jinxed everything. I’ve previously detailed the painful reality of our Ecuador sleeping arrangements in a blog post on “Adventures of the Cuy”. It’s too difficult a memory to rehash here so please don’t ask me to do so. If you haven’t read that post, or if you revel in your fellow man’s misery and want to read it again, here is the link.

After the abject failure of our Ecuador sleeping plan, Rebecca and I dug in and insisted that our children would sleep in their own beds when we got back to Alexandria. Of course, it took a few days of cajoling and screaming to convince Maya and Jonah that sleeping in their own beds was the right thing to do, but finally, they submitted. And of course, the first few days of the new arrangement were marked by Jonah getting out of bed a dozen times or so to run into our room smiling because it was such a silly game, four or five trips to the bathroom each, repeated calls of Mommy, Mommy, and much hair loss and dejection on mine and Rebecca’s part (well, the hair loss was mostly mine. And I’m not sure it was related to the sleeping puzzle).

But finally, both Maya and Jonah got used to the idea. And now, with slightly devious parental tricks (“help you stay in bed” vitamins for Jonah, and promises to Maya that we will come back in “five minutes”) and only three or four trips to the bathroom between them, both Maya and Jonah are tucked into their own beds and fall asleep there.

Rebecca and I are still required to remain on the same floor while Maya and Jonah fall asleep. But this is a vast improvement on the status quo. We stay in our bedroom and can actually read a book, talk, surf the internet or otherwise ignore each other, or (gasp!) snuggle; whatever our hearts desire.

The arrangement has been working out so well, this reclamation of our room and of our bed, that Rebecca and I have basically been shutting off the downstairs when the kids go to bed and spending the rest of the night in our room. It has really been making the liquor on our bar last a lot longer than is usual. And lest we forget how nice it was to have the kids in our bed to snuggle with during the co-sleeping years, not a night goes by without Maya or Jonah (or both) waking up, walking the long hallway to the big bedroom and finding their old spot between Rebecca and me.

My Wife, Proud to be an American Dork

2008-11-07T20:23:00.000-05:00

So, it's crazy Thursday and Rebecca and I are doing our crazy Thursday thing; I'm in front of the sink up to my elbows in soap suds and she's in front of the computer. She says, very sincerely and with emotion in her eyes, "What a great picture." So, I go over expecting a picture of Maya and Jonah looking particularly cute, or a picture of me looking studly, as usual, or a sunset or something, but what do I see on the screen? A picture of Rebecca standing next to a cardboard cut-out of Barack Obama!

Proud to be an American

2008-11-06T23:48:00.001-05:00

What an exciting day!!

The President himself took time out of his busy transition schedule to stop by and thank Rebecca personally for all the work she did on his election and turning Virginia blue!

Opus Dei Camping Trip

2008-10-27T20:16:00.000-04:00

When we were in Quito I purchased a necklace at one of the markets that has an alternating pattern of small pieces of wood (bamboo?) and some kind of nut or seed. Ordinarily, I’m not one to wear jewelry (except my wedding ring) but there was something about this style of necklace that I liked. Perhaps it was the price. Anyway, I brought it, put it on and haven’t taken it off since.

In the few months that I’ve been wearing it, something strange has happened. The seed, or whatever it is, has started to wear away. I don’t know if the cause was the salt water from the ocean at Canoa, or my rather pungent sweat, the daily shower I take (sometimes two!), or the fresh Washington, D.C. air. And I can’t tell if it is continuing to wear away or not.

Whatever the cause and pace, the seed is currently a spiny, prickly, shriveled thing that scratches my neck whenever I turn my head quickly to look at a pretty girl or to flag down the ice cream man. I call it my Opus Dei necklace.

So, on Columbus Day weekend we went camping. At this point, we’ve established camping as a regular family activity. So far Maya has been camping every year of her life.

In the summer of 2003, before Maya was one year old, we camped a few days at Mount Philo state park in Vermont. In 2004, we camped for a week at Jalama Beach County Park, north of Santa Barbara, California. In 2005, we did a few overnight camping trips to Virginia Beach (First Landing State Park is great!) and to Shenandoah National Park. In 2006, we camped at Bear Lake in Utah for a week and around Salt Lake City for an overnight. In 2007, we did a few nights at Vermont’s Grand Isle state park on Lake Champlain and did a few overnights at some Maryland state parks. And this year, because we were in Ecuador most of the year, we were limited to only this two-night trip to Point Lookout State Park in Maryland.

Jonah, of course, has been camping with us every year since he was born too, starting with Bear Lake, Utah when he was just about one year old.

In fact, camping has become such a big part of our summer routine that Rebecca made me a family camping flag for Christmas last year. The flag is an oak leaf (representing Jonah Oak) and snowflakes (representing Maya Snow) on a purple background. If she was really thoughtful, Rebecca would have stitched and sewn the leaf and snowflakes onto a green background, since green is my favorite color. But, I’ll take what I can get.

This camping trip to Point Lookout State Park on what I think is called the southern shores of Maryland was the first time we got to use the flag. We hung it on the site post and it looked great. We had a good camp site in the “playground” loop. The park is situated on the Chesapeake Bay, so there is a pier and a nature center where we got to watch some folks crabbing with fish heads and see the turtles and crabs in the aquariums get fed. I never saw a crab eat before; it was pretty cool and creepy at the same time. I think getting eaten by a crab would be a horrible way to go.

In addition to all that fun, Maya liked riding her bike all by herself around the loop and Jonah, of course, liked gathering sticks for the campfire. I taught him how to pee on the fire to put it out. When he gets older, I’ll teach him how not to fall in the fire while peeing on it when drunk.

So, for obvious reasons, even though it’s about a two-hour drive from Alexandria, we really like this park. There is also a grass picnic area and sand beach that we pretty much had all to ourselves. The beach is along the Chesapeake Bay and the weekend was warm enough so that we could swim.

The problem with the warm weather was that the mosquitoes were still out in full force. Even though I kept myself covered up, I got eaten to pieces. Including some monster bites on the back of my neck. Fortunately, whenever I needed to scratch my neck, I just turned my head and my necklace took care of it for me.

If I ran for President

2008-10-16T19:46:00.000-04:00

Lately we have been hearing a lot about some incidents that occurred in the lives of the presidential candidates when they were aged twenty-something and thirty-something. We’ve heard that one had some tenuous connections to persons of unsavory character and the other was a drunk, gambling, wife-cheating, plane-wrecking, silver-spooned, self-promoter.

Well, after hearing these things, I got to thinking how much each candidate must now regret these things and wish that they hadn’t done them. Then I got to thinking how, if I ran for president, and had to look back over the wreckage of my teens and twenties, most of my regrets would be over things that I did not do.

Like, I remember one time in college I was invited by this girl to come to her house one night. I can’t remember her name, but she was pretty and fun to hang out with. I went over to her house with a bottle of wine and it was just me and her there. We drank the wine and talked some and watched T.V. and then we went to the diner and had something to eat. Then I went home. I regret now that I didn’t bring a bigger bottle of wine.

Another time I went out with a girl on New Year’s Eve (nope, I don’t remember the year) and we had an okay time and then went back to her parents house where she lived. She insisted on keeping her bedroom door open, signaling that the year was not going to start with a bang. When I got back to the house where I lived with some college buddies, they were hanging out having a good time. I regret now that I didn’t hang out with my friends that night.

One year in my journalism class, the big project that we were going to be graded on was a visit to a Super Fund site to write a cover-story article for the college paper. If you are not from New Jersey, you might not know that a Super Fund site is a place that is highly polluted and to which the Government has devoted all kinds of money and resources to clean up. All semester my professor was talking about how important a project it was and how excited he was that we were getting to visit this place. But when the day of the event came, I had no idea where we were supposed to get on the bus. I regret missing that trip.

I also regret not talking to my journalism professor more about baseball. He was/is a big Philadelphia Phillies fan and must be so excited that they are now in the World Series with a chance to win their second championship in the last 100 years.

Speaking of baseball, I regret not betting on the Yankees more during the 1998 season when they won almost every single night. Out of 162 bets, I would have won 114 times. That kind of money would buy a lot of ice cream.

I regret that I decided in 1978, at the ripe old age of 8, that I was a Philadelphia Eagles fan and not a New York Giants fan. The Giants have since won three Super Bowls and the Eagles have won zero. I had no business deciding what was best for me at that age. I regret that my Dad didn’t whip me for declaring that faulty devotion.

When I lived on Lamberton Street in Trenton, NJ, I often left my car windows open. I also traveled with a box of cassette tapes that included a really great mix tape that had, among others, “Sittin’ on a Dock of the Bay” by Otis Redding, “No Sugar Tonight” by The Guess Who, and “Time” by The Chambers Brothers. One night, the box of tapes was stolen from my car. I regret that I left my car windows open that night.

Despite the fact that I’d like a do over on all these things because each would have made my life a little more pleasant, I don’t have much right to second guess my actions. In fact, if I had done even one thing differently, I might not be where I am today, which is in a pretty good spot.

For example, I learned a lesson from that fateful night in my college days when I didn’t take a large enough bottle of wine to that nameless girl’s house. The next time I had an invitation from a girl to come to her house, I made sure to get the big bottle of wine. And it worked out pretty well. That girl is now my wife.

English to Spanish Dictionary

2008-10-09T23:57:00.000-04:00

the big lebowski = el gran lebowski
brokeback mountain = el secreto de la montaña
the kinks = the kinks (nobody will have heard of them)
red wine = vino rojo
rebecca = rebecca
drunk = borracho

Does Membership have its Privileges?

2008-10-08T07:05:00.000-04:00

Everyone knows that going to work where I do every day is the major compromise of my life. I’ve given up the freedom to do what I want when I want for the security of a few dollars and a dental and vision plan for my family. Well, last week, the compromise was ratcheted up a notch as I was required to give up my anonymity for all time.

Employees and visitors have always been required to show identification to get into the IRS building. To this point in my career, I’ve had to flash an ID card containing a photograph of me taken when I first accepted the job eight years ago at a disinterested rent-a-guard. Then I am free to enter and use whichever of the many conveniently located toilets on any of the seven floors of the building – no questions asked.

A year or so ago, I lost my ID card and had to get a new one. I made an appointment with security and figured I would have to sit for a photo and then come back in a day or two for a new card. But instead, when I walked in for my appointment, they handed me a new badge with the same eight-year-old photo. They didn’t even ask for an ID to confirm that it was me they were handing the ID card too.

I guess this isn’t really a problem with the likes of me. I look almost exactly the same now as I did eight years ago – bald. But my boss who has been here for 30+ years is still walking around with a photo of herself from 1982. Trust me, she does not look the same now as she did in 1982. No one would have hired her if she did.

So anyway, to make a short story long, last week I got an email that I had to go to Room 1102 for my “enrollment card” – which I’ve learned is the new name for an ID card.

Since I am employed here and want to remain so, I didn’t think I had any choice but to make an appointment and show up when the time came. So, that’s what I did.

During my appointment, I had to sit for a photo. I had to update all of my contact information. Then, I was fingerprinted on a digital machine with an ominous red light that turned green after it had successfully created a computer file of my prints for the United States government to maintain until the next big bang. Understandably, I felt like Winston Smith agreeing to constant surveillance by Big Brother.

When I was a fresh-faced attorney clerking for Judge Pizzuto at the New Jersey Tax Court, he told me that you’ve made it professionally when you have your own private bathroom and parking space. I’m optimistic that my enrollment card membership means that I have arrived.

And Don’t Even Get Me Started on Hannah Montana

2008-09-30T20:43:00.000-04:00

The other night while we were sleeping, a man shot his wife dead while she cowered in a closet in their home in Alexandria. Then he took his weapon for an erratic drive. When he was pulled over, he shot an Alexandria police officer in the chest. He then led some other officers on a high-speed chase before killing himself.

This past Saturday while we were apple-picking, a man had a domestic issue with his girlfriend, who lives within sight of our house. When the police, their helicopters, and the SWAT team responded to the hostage situation, he shot at them. He was eventually taken into custody by a man with twigs on his hat without anyone getting physically hurt.

I’d like to say these are isolated incidents, but it would be more accurate if I called them the latest incidents. Since we moved into our house in May of 2001, there have been two gang-style murders within spitting distance, an errant drive-by shooting (which means only that the bullets missed their intended targets), and numerous assaults along the roads leading to and from the metro. Oh yeah, we also were rammed twice from behind by another car as we waited in our car at a traffic light. The guy wanted to move us out of the way so he could continue his flight from the police in his stolen car.

All these incidents occurred within 100 yards in any direction of our house. I don’t even have to put pen to paper to illustrate that this condition permeates our larger society as well. Everyone knows that all they have to do for the latest fix of local violence and tragedy is to turn on the five o’clock news.

Before we left for Quito, the one question that everyone posed was, “Is it safe?” I even blogged about it, if you can believe that. My answer was and is, “It’s at least as safe as it is here.”

In many ways I think it’s a legitimate question, but my instinct is that it is mainly derived from this culture of fear that is instilled by our televisions and newspapers. The perception is that the world is fucked up and the only place we are safe is in our homes (so long as we’ve shut and locked the windows, installed a bolt-lock and maybe a chain lock on the door, and pay for a home-security system). But the reality is that we aren’t even safe in our own homes. I mean, it wouldn’t be that hard for some fucked-up, self-important asshole with a gun to get in if he really wanted to.

One of the reasons that Rebecca and I have doubts about living permanently in Ecuador is the poverty. Not the fact that it exists, because it exists here as well (we just cover it up better), but that it exists so obviously.

The fact that children work in the streets selling gum or polishing shoes is heart-wrenching at first. But after you see it day after day, it becomes routine. Sometimes it even becomes a nuisance.

The other concern we have is the obvious disparity among the classes. If you transplanted the Eichlerino’s to Ecuador, you would be transplanting us from the ranks of the middle-class to the privileged world of the upper-class. Yes, in Ecuador we would be able to afford household employees, could easily visit Volcano Park two or three times a month, and might even be able to own a septic system that can handle flushed toilet paper.

If Maya and Jonah grew up in that environment, how long would it take the street children to become invisible? How long would it take Maya and Jonah to feel entitled to having someone to pick up after them and drive them here and there? Yes, I know that they are already accustomed to these things, but dang, eventually Maya is going to put her own clean underwear in her drawer, right? She doesn’t need the hired help to do it for her until she’s eighteen.

But the flip side is, by remaining here, how long will it take them to become accustomed to and accept the random violence that Americans endure? And will that errant drive-by bullet find them one day?

Rebecca's Neurosis

2008-09-28T22:13:00.000-04:00

Here's an email that Rebecca sent to some friends of hers. As Dave Barry says, "I am not making this up." For her birthday, I was going to take her skiing in Montana, but I'm reconsidering and thinking of donating honeybees on her behalf instead.

I have a question for you collectively as a group of mommies, and individually with different styles of doing things.

Jonah's been invited to a b-day party this weekend. A little boy in his pre-school class is turning 3 and they've invited the whole class plus many others to go to a farm/park for a party. It looks like it'll be a cool thing and so far there are 52 people who will be there (17 families or so , according to the evite guest list.) So a lot of people.

As always, I'm stuck on the gift. Having just returned from our trip, I'm on a total anti-consumer roll - even more so than before, if you can believe it. Personally, I don't want more STUFF in my house and my kids have more things than they will ever need. I could get rid of half their things and I know they wouldn't notice. As some of you know, we've always requested no gifts for our kids' parties, which suits us quite nicely.

So I'm struggling with a gift for this kid's party. Well, not really struggling. I thought that a gift donation to Heifer International would be a really cool thing.

For those of you who haven't heard of this organization, their goal is to eradicate hunger and poverty by giving animals (cows, goats, chickens etc) to poor people who can raise them for food and also pledge to give some of the offspring to neighbors, thus spreading the "wealth".

My question is, is this a horrible gift to give at a 3 year old's birthday party? I'd throw something else in perhaps, like a token cow toy or rabbit, depending on what I give -You can give a flock of chicks, a share of a cow, a trio of bunnies etc. - so he'd have something tangible from the gift and it would fit in with the farm theme of the party itself. But considering he's having 17+ guests, whatever gift I end up giving him is going to get lost in the pile anyway. At least that's my thinking.

I figure this donation is something meaningful, thematically appropriate, doesn't add clutter to their house, and doesn't require me to go out and buy something stupid for a 3 year old. My biggest personal beef with birthday parties is that I don't like buying this plastic kid crap for my own kid, and so feel bad about buying it for someone else's kid, even if perhaps that's exactly what they want (or have been convinced they want by commercials).

But by giving such a gift, is it open to some bad interpretation? Could they be offended? (By the way, I don't even know these people - her kid is in my kid's pre-school class and they've been there for about 3 weeks now. So I can't speak at all to their values.)

So, do me a favor and let me know what your take on this is. Keep in mind, if you say that it's okay to do, expect a llama donated on your kids' behalf at the next party (unless you thankfully say "No Gifts Please").

Taking off the Training Wheels

2008-09-27T17:43:00.000-04:00

In the summer of 2007, when Maya was just four years old, one of her peers was already riding a bicycle without training wheels. Her parents told us that she was able to balance on her bicycle after she had learned how to balance on her scooter.

Of course, Maya got a scooter from Santa last Christmas. We brought it with us to Ecuador this summer and as June became July, I noticed that Maya had pretty much mastered the thing.

There was a large, paved courtyard outside the apartment building in Quito where we lived and many afternoons while waiting for Rebecca to come home from work, Maya and Jonah would scoot themselves around the yard at great speed and with impeccable balance. A lot of times Maya would have only one foot on the platform while her free leg would be poised in mid-air – her flamingo pose.

Other times, I would count Mississippi’s to see how fast they could get from here to there. In those instances Maya would be hunched over her machine, her leg pushing frantically off the ground to gain the speed to beat her last time. Yes, I always feared she’d hit a pebble or something and face-plant into the ground, but she never did.

The other feat that she accomplished on her scooter this summer was to inch her way down the steep hill on the way home from her school. She would keep both of her feet on the platform and control her speed with the foot brake while steering herself around the bumps, cracks, debris and dog crap littering the sidewalk. It was pretty impressive (especially since the sidewalk is not exactly what one would call “newly poured” or “just swept”) and I suspected that balancing on her bike would be a relative breeze.

And it was. I took the training wheels off her bike a day or two after we got home, and we went into the park to see if she could ride. I held onto her bicycle seat as she pedaled across the field. I let go for an instant and she was riding her bicycle. However, Maya has to be in the mood if she is going to do a thing, and that day she was not in the mood to ride her bicycle. So, after that initial test-run, we packed things up and went back home.

About two weeks later, she went out with Opa and bang, she was off and riding. She made Opa call me at my desk at work to tell me because she was too busy riding around to stop and tell me herself.

That night when we got home we went into the park and Maya rode circles around Rebecca and me on the basketball court. There was no doubt about it – she could ride her bicycle (but no pictures or movies were allowed).

Last Sunday I asked Maya if she wanted to go for a bike ride. Now, it turns out that taking a bike ride in Old Town Alexandria with a novice bike rider is no easy feat.

The streets are laid out in your typical grid, so to set a good example, I had us ride on the sidewalk and stop at every corner to make sure we weren’t going to get creamed by a car or truck while crossing the street. At one point Maya said, Boy, we sure have to stop a lot.

And because it was my first time riding with her, I didn’t know exactly how we should position ourselves. Should I ride behind her so I can keep my eye on her? Should I ride in front of her so I can watch for potential trouble spots? Should we ride two abreast so I can keep an eye on her and troubleshoot?

I alternated between my choices, and only nearly ran her down one time when she stopped short in front of me. I guess I’ll figure out the best way to bike ride with her as I get more practice.

We eventually made it to the post office to mail Grandma some pictures that Maya had painted at school. Then we went to Trader Joe’s to get milk and yogurt. Then we had a nice ride home in the September sunshine.

It was pretty cool experience - just a dad and his daughter out for a bike ride. I’m pretty certain that it’s one of those moments that will flash through my mind when I’m driving away from her college dorm that first time.

How Lovely Things Are

2008-09-23T20:58:00.000-04:00

I was sitting at the bar the other night and despite my best efforts, I could not help but contrast what I was seeing with what I have become familiar with in Quito. Call it post-partum depression.

There were no kids juggling for their lives in the streets. Instead, there were a bunch of pudgy, disheveled, suit-types eating dripping mounds of red meat at 10 p.m. on a Monday night.

In addition to the indignity of having to pay $6 for a beer that is half-the size of what I could get in Quito for 80 cents, I was walled in by conversations that were seemingly derived from an Eagles of Death Metal song, without benefit of the hip-shaking punk riffs. Meaning people were talking in clichéd inanities.

There was no discussion about how well eucalyptus trees have adapted to the South American climate. But if you care to know, it took the girl wearing the print dress eight weeks to find the right stone for her engagement ring.

Thus goes our readjustment to life in the good ole U.S of A.

It didn’t take long to fall back into the old routines we’d left behind and it took about a minute longer to remember why we wanted to live overseas in the first place.

Hey, I’m not suggesting that the plight of the third world needs to be in the forefront of everyone’s consciousness, but if someone mentions NBC’s Thursday Night Must See T.V. to me one more time, I might just have to run out, buy a flat-screen, pulsar-radiated, neutron-tested, 58-inch television that is digitally-equipped for a moon-landing and tune in (or tune out, as it were). I mean, “The Office” sounds totally awesome.

On the other hand, I also walk away from the so-called intellectual conversations I’m subject to. All anyone at work wants to talk about is tax law and politics. And frankly, I’m just not that interested right now in either of those topics. The best conversation I’ve had since I’ve been back was with the new attorney hired in my office. We talked for an hour about all the bands that we like. We like the same bands.

Geez, don’t I sound like a cranky old man? This is stupid. He’s a jack-ass! Who cares? Fuck if I know!

I’m 38-years old and I think I’m entering my mid-life crisis years – which is encouraging. It means I have 38 more years to go, right? I just hope I don't go out and buy $1,000 worth of Propecia.

Despite my seeming discontent with the world at large, I like living. I like my kids. I like my wife. I'm not unhappy.

Living is just easier when you don’t have to hear everyone’s righteous opinions. I’m sure the same thing was going on in Ecuador. The difference was that everyone was talking in Spanish and I couldn’t understand all the stupid things they were actually saying.

But maybe people aren't so stupid and it's just me? I’m at a point where I’m wondering what the hell I’m supposed to do. Should I keep going to work or should I quit? Should we stay where we are or should we not? Is anyone going to read this blog if I post what’s actually going on in my head or do I need to write about how lovely things are?

I was due for this period of soul-searching. In retrospect, I feel like I was sleep-walking through the last few months before the summer and probably a few months before then as well. But our adventure in Ecuador has accelerated the arrival of my time to butt my head against the wall trying to find my happy place.

It’s a mixed blessing that we were able to do what we did. It was nice to get up and go. I'm proud of it and inspired by it. But after being reminded of how much the world has to offer, and how easy (theoretically) it is to pick up and go, waking up every morning at 6:30 so I can get on the train to sit at my desk and talk to people about making a retroactive qualified electing fund election for their passive foreign investment company just doesn’t, as they say, cut the mustard.