Washington, D.C. before the storm

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

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

Six Years in Suburbia

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)

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

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

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.