tennis and cricket

The title for this blog entry is a play on words.

Since my oldest son left for the Army all tennis activity has stopped. This weekend all of the sudden my daughter and youngest son and I started playing table tennis again. When we lived in San Antonio we bought a cheap set of paddles and a foam and plastic net. We lost most of the pieces so we temporarily put a piece of wood molding through the foam holders to make a net. We used the dining room table with the extra leaf and even though the corners are rounded we still have fun. It has been over two years since any of us have played but we picked it up quickly again. Of course I have the advantage of having wasted many hours while at VaTech playing table tennis with my best Indian friend. Then when my wife and I met and eventually got married we were either playing tennis or table tennis daily. All of those hours of practice have come back to help me beat my son constantly.

Every Sunday recently I have been practicing my bowling skills in cricket with my Indian friends. Last year I learned how to bat and this summer I am learning how to bowl. Maybe next year I will be able to do both in the same game. Not that I will be anywhere close to doing it the correct Indian way as I spent too many years playing baseball and softball to unlearn those skills. That is not actually the cricket I meant in the title. This morning when I woke up and went downstairs I heard a very loud chirping noise from behind the refrigerator. I hit the refrigerator a couple of time and it stopped but always resumed. I then rolled it out and the noise stopped immediately. I sprayed insect killer around the back wall and the noise stopped, so I went to work thinking the job was over. When I got home from work in the evening the noisy cricket was again rubbing his legs behind the refrigerator. After a rousing game of table tennis my youngest son helped me search underneath the refrigerator and still no noisy cricket was found. I caulked around the back wall where I sprayed in the morning and had finally given up. I took off the back and front of the refrigerator looking for Mr. cricket and was putting the back on, when right on the floor in front of me was a green cricket! The cricket did not survive, but now we have peace and quiet in the kitchen. No more cricket until Sunday when I play my next match.

volleyball

Yesterday I participated in my first volleyball game in the competitive league at work and had so much fun. Of course is helps when you are on a really good team. Two people are really great setters and make it easy for me to spike the ball. Two of the other people on the team are great at spiking and in general excellent players. Most points I just enjoy watching them make great shots. It is more fun for me than playing basketball or football as it is not a contact sport! It seems like I get injured when colliding with others is involved, so this is a safe sport for me that can enjoy and get exercise. Of course today I have to return to running as I cannot give that up and on Sundays I have to play cricket.

internet connection

So my next to oldest son calls last night and wants me to help him find a way to get internet in his apartment. The first task at hand was finding any place close to him where he could get free internet access. He tried Starbucks since they are every where in that part of the land, but they only provide it if you buy something. That is also a mini story as he tried to buy something and his debit card was rejected, but more on that later. Since we have wonderful internet access, I quickly used Google Chrome to search for "wireless hotspots emeryville ca" and 3rd link had exactly what I was looking for wi-fihotspotlist.com. It showed that a Borders bookstore was right around the corner from his apartment and they had free wifi. He mentioned that a couple of people used ComCast in their apartments, so I went to their web site which he went off to Borders. The ComCast web site looks nice and clean and I quickly found the selections available. All was well until I hit the last step, except it was odd that I was never asked for a credit card or any form of payment. I was put into an on-line chat program for the final step. It did not work as I needed a new version of Java to support the chat plug-in on Vista. The download itself took several minutes and then I had to refresh the browser twice and finally I saw I was next in line for a chat person to talk to me. Once she arrived at the chat window she asked me to re-confirm what I entered and the last 4 digits of social security number to verify something or the other. Then the selections I had made we for existing customers, so everything changed when she found out this was a brand new service. Pretty good prices as just for internet access was $25 initial fee and then $25 a month for the first 6 months, for service that is slightly faster than Time Warner, which is what we use here. At the last step she gives me the account number and order number. I try to copy-n-paste it from the chat window but it does not support any type of selections. I asked her to email it to me and she said she was not allowed. So I wrote down the information and then emailed it to my son. The whole process started off nicely, but was a bit rough at the end. At least no up-front payment and no payment at install time, so that was a nice bonus.

road trip photos

Photos from my son's road trip across the USA.

busy weekend

Friday when I got home from work, my wife started mowing the yard. This means that I have to finish since it takes too long for her to complete the whole yard. No problem as I think of mowing as walking exercise.

Most of the remaining weekend was spent cleaning the garage and fixing stuff around the house. My day started off removing the downstairs toilet as one of my next to oldest son's friend's dropped his cell phone into the toilet and flushed the toilet thinking the phone would remain in the bowl. All his friends had fun trying to get the phone out by using a clothes hanger and finally after a couple of hours gave up. I was neglecting it hoping it would fix itself, which never happened. I removed the toilet and went to Home Depot to get a new one. Once I got home and took it out of the box, I saw the toilet was cracked, so I returned to Home Depot. Not a good start to my Saturday morning I must say. I got the next better model for $99 and with a little effort had the new one working. While feeling handy, I started working on the downstairs bathroom as the ceiling looked pretty bad. This is a mini story in itself as last year one of the kids broke the upstairs toilet by accident and the water leaked downstairs through the ceiling. I did not complete the ceiling repairs as I should have, so I spackled the ceiling and then repainted it.

The next task was to help my youngest son as he is switching rooms. He decided to paint the walls VaTech orange and maroon colors with two walls maroon and the other two orange. The clothes dresser, which used to be in the room, covered up my handy work, where I ran a TV cable from the adjoining room and left a hole in the wall. I had to repair that hole with drywall and spackling and then repaint it. For once I left the painting to other members in the family. Just as I finished my handy man tasks, I had to quickly clean up and be preentable.

It was time to attend a very good friend's graduation ceremony at the Dean Smith Center at UNC (my affectionately known as the Dean Dome). I remember watching so many Tar Heel basketball games when I was a kid, but have only once been on the UNC campus. To actually be inside the Dean Dome was like holy ground for a UNC graduate. They had photos of every UNC basketball team since the late 1970's in the area where you walk inside the dome. Inside the dome itself there were tons of jersey's hanging from the rafters as well as conference titles and championships.

Today I took some rest and walked with my wife and then took off to play cricket with some Indian friends. Last season I practiced my batting skills, but this year I am practicing my bowling skills. I had fun today as I really bowled well. Once I got home I had to finish working on the downstairs bathroom and take some stuff to the local thrift store in order the finish the garage cleaning ceremony. After so much activity I had to take the Sunday afternoon ritual nap to round out an active weekend.

road trip is over

Well, it is official, the next to oldest son's road trip is over. He arrived in Emeryville today after seeing the beach in Morro Bay and then traveling up Highway 1 for a while and then looking all around San Francisco. Tomorrow he has his orientation at school and moves into his apartment.

Even though I was all the way across the USA, my day was pretty exciting in a bad way. My car has not been starting very well since Saturday and then today as I was leaving work my car would not start. Fortunately the person who was car pooling with me knew the number to call for our company's security desk. He showed up within a couple of minutes as he was just driving our way when he was paged. He jumped my car even though it was raining lightly. Instead of going home I stopped by my favorite mechanic. It turns out that my car had a good battery but the starter died. After a two hour wait, I finally made it home. Not exactly what I needed was an extra expense with the road trip, but better this happen to me than my son on his road trip!

road trip : almost there

I talked to our road warrior son this evening and he has made it to Bakersfield, CA. They decided not to go to Roswell on the southern route and instead stayed on I-40 on the northern route. They stopped in Albuquerque for the night and then got up late before setting off to see Meteor Crater which I thought was a bit of a tourist trap when we saw it several years back. They spent several hours at the Grand Canyon, which on the other hand is worth every minute you spend marveling over the beauty and majestic of it all. They spent the night in Williams, AZ which is where we spent the night the last time we visited the canyon as it right on I-40 as you exit the park. They were running out of time so did not see my mother in Tucson, but instead continued to California. They want to see the beach and the large redwoods before our son's best friend leaves by airplane to return home on Thursday morning. The great road trip is coming to a close already...

road trip plus family life

It is official, our next to oldest son has traveled half way across the USA. I talked to him this morning as he was at a rest stop in Amarillo, Texas. After stopping in Nashville, TN the first night and Fort Smith, Arkansas the second night, they now hope to reach Carlsbad, New Mexico this evening after passing through Roswell, NM. I convinced him to forget about the alien's tourist trap in Roswell and go Carlsbad Caves. Plus I told him to go to White Sands National Monument as these are places we have never visited as a family. Hopefully he will make the right decision. As I spoke to him on the phone while at the rest stop, he saw a road runner and was trying to get his friend to look at it. I think sights like these are helping him appreciate the life he has had as we have seen so many things as a family together. Once he arrives in Arizona, then the sight seeing will really begin as he is planning on seeing my mother in Tucson, then drive through Phoenix on the way to Flagstaff to see the Grand Canyon.

While holding down the fort at home, my daughter helped me paint his old room in our house and it is looking very nice indeed. This morning I took a break and played cricket with a couple of friends. On the way back home I stopped by a lake near our home and ran around it for some more physical activity. I visited Home Depot to get ceiling paint to touch up the mistakes we made yesterday and when I got out to my car it would not start. I called home twice but no one answered the phone, so I made an executive decision and went back into Home Depot to get a socket set. I took out my battery and in a Home Depot cart I took the battery to Wal-Mart which is in the same shopping center. They tested the battery and said it was fine. When I got back to my car I took a cloth I had in my car and cleaned the battery terminals and my car started. When I got home I used my battery cleaning tool and finished the job the right way. Hopefully I will have no problems tomorrow morning to go to work.

news from the Army and the road

We received news from our oldest son from Ft. Jackson Army base yesterday. He is doing well, which is very encouraging for all of us. He says he is forced to wake up at 4am and goes to bed around 9pm each day. He actually gets off every Sunday, which is definitely surprising, but we don't know what that means exactly. He really looks forward to the evening meal as he says he likes the food a lot; also a bit shocking to me. He has learned to repel and use a gun so far. He likes learning new things and how you have to work as a team, giving him a sense of accomplishing something together. All in all this is great news.

We heard from next to oldest son last night as he made it to Nashville. I hope he doesn't want to stay and become a country singer! I remember stopping at the McDonald's next to the Grand Ole Opry on our trip back to NC, as it is quite hilly and nice in that part of Tennessee. His next stop should be on the western part of Arkansas in the Ozark Mountains. I don't ever remember going there, but I must have been there at least once.

let the adventure begin...

So my next to oldest son left this morning at 5am sharp for his 3000 mile driving adventure to California to attend school. One of his best friends is going with him so that makes us feel a whole lot better than when he was talking to driving the whole way by himself. They are planning on sleeping in camp grounds all along the way. The last plan we heard, which is definitely subject to change, was for an over night visit in Nashville TN, Little Rock AR, somewhere in the heart of Texas, Flagstaff AZ (where they will make a side trip to see the Grand Canyon), Tucson AZ (to see my mother), then up through eastern CA so they can see Yosemite with a potential side trip through Las Vegas (which I suggested they didn't attempt). Sounds like a wonderfully exciting adventure for a 20 year old to take on a cross country road trip. Especially with a really god friend, who just so happens to have never been further west than the middle of North Carolina. Of course all of this depends on his car, which hopefully will make the journey without giving them problems. We had the whole car checked by my mechanic friend last week and he has extra oil and engine coolant in the car just in case. I emphatically told him that if he goes to Las Vegas just to see it, then he cannot go through Death Valley on the way to California. Just the name alone should scare him, but at 20 of course it does not.

As I was bidding him goodbye this morning, I realized that I was 20 when I went to Europe and then onto India where I spend two years on my grand adventure. Now I am beginning to understand how my mother felt...

raccoons

This weekend my sister visited us and stayed in the local Holiday Inn Express. In the evening our two youngest kids wanted to swim in the hotel pool, so we went after it turned dark. As they were jumping around in the pool and having a good time under the glow of a big flood light, we noticed under the chairs at the opposite end of the pool there were three raccoons entering through the fence. For a couple of minutes they huddled in the darkness, but they got brave and came out in the light. When they saw our kids, who were playing at that end of the pool about ten feet from them, they quickly went back under the lawn chairs. After a couple of minutes, they all went back through the fence, but that was not the end of them. One was the mother as she was larger in size and the two kits were about half her size. We did not see the mother any more on the cement area around the pool as she stayed on the other side of the fence. The two kits then came out to eat bugs that were flying around or crawling on the floor due to the flood light. They saw our children, but ignored them as they played with the bugs with their paws just like cats do. We watched in amazement for about 10-15 minutes as they were intent on bug feeding no matter who was taking over their normal space. After they got their fill in bugs they left through the fence and we left soon after that. That was kind of fun watching them, but it reminds me of another encounter we had with raccoons.

While living in San Antonio, we had a pool in our backyard. There was a huge farm behind us, so we often had wild animals come drink our crystal clear pool water. I often wondered if the animals liked the chlorine taste! We frequently had opossums come, which I learned really smell quite horrible. Sometimes we forgot and left our cat food plates right outside the back door, which was right next to the pool. The wild animals would come to clean the plates of left overs. One time we had an armadillo fall into our pool and could not get out. I got a call a work on that day as some days I would not check out the pool before going to work if it was still dark outside. One time we had a white stray cat come into the back yard and it started fighting with our cats and somehow fell into the pool. I had to fish it out the angry feline and then escort it out of the backyard without getting scratched. The most exciting event of all was one evening when we looked out towards the pool and saw a mother raccoon with three small baby kits. What was so amusing about it was that they were in the hot tub peaking out over the edge at us! I guess they needed a bath, so at least they did not know how to turn on the hot tube bubbles or they might have gotten over heated. I wish we had a camera to take a photo of what we saw as three little raccoon heads staring at us from inside the hot tub was so cute. Those were the days...

B & B

That title could be interpreted in many ways. It could mean Bed & Breakfast, or Balled & Burlap, but for this me now it means Beach & Basketball. Every time we go to see my wife's parents at their house near the beach we pass Kenansville as an exit off the interstate highway. For everyone else that means nothing, but for me it always reminds me of visiting them when they lived in that small rural eastern NC town. I played basketball every time we visited them as they opened up a local high school for free play on the weekends. I would show up as the only white guy to play and they would make fun of me until they saw me play as I was very fast on the court from my endless days of running. I would just blow right by them and then they would understand that I was not the typical slow white guy that knew and hated from rural NC. Oh the good old days. I would also meet a bunch of doctors who played at a local middle school and they were fun also but in a different way. They were pleasant to talk to and get to know while playing with them. After playing basketball for over 30 years I gave it up, but that story has already been shared. Now I run to keep fit like I did this morning. It was very nice out this morning as I ran to the sunrise. I would like to play basketball but at the company where I work I tried playing with a team and got hurt the first game. I tried playing in the company football league last year and got hurt they first game there as well. This year I am going to try volleyball, hoping for a different end result.

home repairs

One of the nice things about having a home is that you have a yard and some land that you can call yours, or in our case we like to think it is ours but actually the bank owns it for us. One the other side is it means you have extra headaches when things break down.

Last weekend our upstairs A/C broke as the water pipe got clogged and when that happens an automatic switch turns off the A/C, which is a good thing as you don't want water running through your ceiling. I called my favorite repair man at Bar-Co mechanical, who happens to be a close friend who I can trust with my $200 that I handed over to him. While we were amusing ourselves at King's Dominion, he fixed our A/C for us so the house was back to the normal coolness when we returned. It always seems like something is in need of repair.

For the last three weeks we have done without a clothes dryer. The button to turn on the dryer did nothing at all. I searched on-line for a timer as that was the indication a bunch of self-repair web sites noted could be the problem. I bought a timer as I could not locate one locally. We waited for it to come and last weekend while we were away, my eldest son took it upon himself to try to install the new timer. When we got home, although we were glad to find a cool house, my bubble quickly burst when he told me he could not get the dryer back together. I was pretty angry as we had waited two weeks already for the timer and now it looked like I would have to call the local appliance repair man. After putting the dryer back together as best I could, I finally gave up and called M&H Appliance. They came out at the first of the week and told me the motor had failed and we had put the timer together correctly. At least we had one thing going for us. I then tried to locate a motor for our dryer. I called Maytag to find the part number, but they would not give it to me, even though I had just the week before called them to get the part number for the timer! I called a local parts distributer, who gladly gave me the part number even though I did not buy it from them. I searched the web and found a new one for $75, whereas from Maytag or locally the same part was $150. The motor arrived yesterday and was waiting for me as my wife announced when I got home. I think she was tired of taking the laundry to the nearby laundry mat every day! I called the man who had come to our house from M&H and he told me how to take the dryer apart to get to the motor, which was nice of him as I had paid him $50 to diagnose the problem, but this was free advice. After a couple of hours, a couple trips to Home Depot and my daughters help for a couple of hours, we got it back together and working by 8:30pm. I already have the next problem waiting for me.

As I crawled under the house to check on the dryer exhaust vent I saw water standing under the house. I wanted to finish the dryer so continued on that task, but after we were done I went back under the house. The downstairs A/C is leaking under the house, so I have to call Bar-Co back today and tell them I have a new emergency for them to take care for me.

Such things remind me of other long term problems we have suffered as home buyers:

1) When hurricane Fran hit this area in 1996, we lost our power for one week. That was not much fun as it was in the first week of September and it was pretty hot at the time. There was nothing we could do except wait for the power company to fix the electricity. After a week of being hot, we went to Greensboro for a night to get a good night's sleep in A/C.

2) We bought a new refrigerator when we switched to a larger house and then it failed within a couple of months. We called for a replacement and it took two weeks to get another one. We used a large cooler packed with ice instead of a refrigerator. They did give us $100 to buy a small refrigerator but that can only hold so much as it was the size most college dorm students use.

3) During the last drought in NC our large-bore shallow water well went dry. That was a pretty big deal, so I called a well driller and forked out $4500 to drill a 400 foot deep well. It only took a couple of days for him to complete the work.

4) Our heat pumps went bad in that same house and since they were 25 years old, there was no hope in repairing them. That little inconvenience cost me almost $10,000 as the whole heat and A/C systems for upstairs and downstairs had to be replaced. Although done quickly the lost of that much money hurt.

There are many, many more house repairs over the years, but those are all of the major ones I can think of that had a lasting impression on the family and myself.

he's off

On Monday after I got home from work, we did our usual episode of going to play tennis. After a few minutes a bunch of teenagers from the local high school came and played next to us. They believed they were a lot better than they really were. Such arrogance really bothers me big time. I tried to ignore them and pretend they were not there, but my youngest son was intimidated by them and sat down and watched us play. We had a good time once we go into a zone and ignored them and their stupid behavior.

The day before our oldest son re-hurt his hand when he drove on the tennis court for a ball. I had never seen do this before, so it was kind of odd. My next to oldest son was with us and was full of energy running all over the court. Maybe this motivated my oldest to expend too much energy and thus hurt himself. His first remark was he would not be able to go in the Army as his hand hurt so much and he could not do push ups! His recruiter was due to come to our house on Monday to check his physical fitness abilities. He was very discouraged and I was kind of shocked he wanted to play tennis on Monday with his hand tapped, but it is a stress reliever for him.

Yesterday we learned that his recruiter was coming to take him to an Army doctor to check his hand. Since he is over 18 and not full time in school, our medical insurance for him expired, so this was nice news to hear. We heard in the afternoon that his recruiter was taking him to the military hotel to wait for deployment to boot camp! That was interesting change of events. He went to get his hand checked so it must have been good enough as to not prevent him from going to boot camp. We got a phone call around 9pm last night that we would find out today if he was of to boot camp.

Today we heard from his recruiter that it would not be final until around 12:30pm as to whether he was off to boot camp or not. We never heard and he never came home to we assume he is in South Carolina at boot camp. We heard they pay them $250 to buy stuff they need as he really took stuff only for Tuesday appointment at the Army doctor, so that is good. He finally has started a new phase in his life. His recruiter told us we should get a phone call in a week. After nine weeks he will be done with boot camp and have a day off to see us. He will them go to Maryland to train as a tank and heavy machine mechanic. We hope this will be best for him!

amusement parks

We went to King's Dominion amusement park this weekend with our two youngest children. My wife and I went there 25 years ago during the first summer after we got married. I don't remember much, but there were a couple of things I do remember. There was a geodesic dome as you entered the park, where we laid down on the carpeted floor and looked up. A movie was shown flying through the Grand Canyon and that was pretty sickening, even though it did look amazing. The other sickening thing we did was near the back of the park they had a ride where you entered a huge hallow metal drum through a door in the side. You look up and you see the sky as it had no top. You look down and you see a metal floor. There were small seats all around the edge of the drum with seat belts. As you sit down and strap yourself in the music begins, which was Michael Jackson's Thriller. The music gets louder and the drum begins to rotate faster and then the floor drops and you are spinning in a huge centrifuge with your body pinned to the side of the drum. This lasts a couple of minutes until you are so sick you want to vomit. Now that is good times! Actually that is one of the times I have felt the most motion sick in my life. Both of these rides have long been replaced.

Now the "in" thing is very fast metal roller coasters, which the kids really enjoy, but they go so fast it kind of messes up your internal system. While waiting for one ride, the man in front of us had three daughters. We had been waiting for almost one hour, when his daughter started having an epileptic seizure. The man in front of them was right there so he helped the girl's father take the girl downstairs. Somehow they made it through the crowd as it was a very crowded area they had to go through. By the time we got down to the ride, the girl had recovered and walked away on her own, so that is a good thing. I then started talking to the man who had helped carry her down as he looked Indian. The kids had commented about his t-shirt earlier as he had a funny saying on it about pirates and rum. He was upset at me for assuming he was from India as he was from Antigua and Barbuda. He had been in the USA since 1968 and he had no accent at all. Obviously his family hundreds of years ago had moved to the small Caribbean group of islands from India. Trying to insult me, he asked if I were British since my ancestors had come to USA a long time ago, so I understood his point immediately! All of the memorable events happened while waiting forever for this one ride.

soon to go

We received the final word today on where our oldest son will be going with the Army. He is joining next Wednesday and will doing his basic training in Fort Jackson, South Carolina. Because he scored well on the military tests today, he will receive $8000 bonus if he completes boot camp, so that is good news. After that he will be stationed in Maryland as a mechanic. He will go in one rank above the lowest rank if he completes 40 push-ups within 2 minutes and 50 sit-ups within 2 minutes and runs a mile under 8 1/2 minutes within the next week before leaving for boot camp. He also has to memorize a bunch of Army jargon. This is all wonderful news as this will keep him busy and has a real goal for the next couple of months!

almost in

We heard late Friday afternoon that our oldest son was leaving for Army boot camp this evening, well actually at 3:30am Monday morning. His recruiter came to pick him up around 4pm today, after a whole day of restless family members wondering what was going to happen. We had a bit of a scare when he called Saturday morning for me to come pick him up as he had cut his hand. In his drunken state he was showing off for his friends and jumped off the porch and landed on bike in the yard and cut his right hand. He thought he may need stitches. Immediately I thought it was not really an accident but a ploy to get out of joining the Army for another week or two. Turns out the cut was not that bad and on the way home we bought butterfly bandages to seal the wound. He messed with his cut most of yesterday and today. He woke up at the last minute and wanted to go to church with us and then the rest of the day laid on the couch watched the Beijing Olympics with me. Nothing much exciting on, just hanging out doing nothing waiting for his recruiter. At 6pm I received a call from his recruiter that he had dropped him off, but that he only had to choose his Army career tomorrow and that would determine his boot camp location and start date and completion date of boot camp and length of his service. If we can just keep him home for the week, then all will be well by next Sunday night when he really leaves for boot camp. Just another step closer to him getting out on his own. I think he really wants to go now and will do just fine.

tragedy or triumph

I cannot say that we have had any tragedy in our direct family, but if you watch the news on TV or read the newspaper it sure seems like bad news is all around us. Car accidents taking lives, armed robbery and murder, cancer victims, sometimes it seems like the we are immersed in a horrible society.

I can say that we have had many extremely stressful situations in our family, but when you are in the middle of them they sure seem to make us miserable. I think stress caused me to have heart problems a few years ago when we lived in San Antonio. I went to the doctor for a cough and chest pain as I have been paranoid about coughs ever since I had pneumonia when our daughter was born. The physician's assistant who was on call thought I was having a heart attack, after doing an EKG, so he rolled in the oxygen tank and immediately gave me nitroglycerin under my tongue. I told him I felt fine, but he insisted I go to the emergency room right away. He called my wife since he would not let me out the door without her, as he did not want me to drive. After months of tests, I finally found out that I had a heart aneurysm that is common among Japanese men who run. The only problem was that I am not Japanese; however, no one knows if I have had this from birth or it has been growing with age. I had my weekly check up this week, which was really a waste of $20 as the heart doctor did very little.

Also this week our daughter had surgery on her impacted teeth to help force them to come out straight. Her braces are going to help pull her teeth down into the right place over the next year or so. Sounds pretty nasty to me, but she had no problem with the anesthesia and is slowly recovering. This is another example of you read about people who die from going under, so you can get worried about such things. I think that only leaves our youngest son as the only one in the family that has not been put to sleep for surgery. All of the other kids have had their wisdom teeth removed, so they survived without any bad side affects. That reminds me of why my wife hates dentists as growing up in South Korea, the dentist she went to never used anesthesia. That must have been a lot of fun having cavities filled or drilling into teeth without your mouth being numb. It sounds so middle ages to me, but I guess I am a spoiled American!

It doesn't seem like much tragedy or triumph was shared in this post, but I certainly am thankful for these days of calmness in our family.

week of change

The family metamorphosis has begun...

We heard that our oldest son has been accepted into the Army, after the Navy and Air Force rejected him. His recruiter told him that the Army is no longer taking new recruits for the infantry, so that is good news. That means going to Iraq and Afghanistan may not be in his future, which is a very good thing. I think he feels relieved to know his future is set for the next couple of years.

We also found out that our next to oldest is accepted in the school he wanted to attend and that my mother has graceously offered to pay for his tuition. He may be her only grandchild to attend college full time! Since the school has monthly start dates, he moved his to September so he has time to work out the financing for his housing. Just the fact that he is going has him excited. He has been playing with a band at local places and last night played somewhere in north Raleigh. He plays base guitar even though he started playing drums, then switched to guitar and now plays bass. He thinks these skills will help set him apart for the others at his school as he knows how to play music instead of just wanting to learn the skill of sound production, he knows what it means.

Our youngest son turned 16 this week, so we took the annual pilgrimage to Wet'n Wild Emerald Point water park. I remember many years going for our first time and he was around 7 years old. He was fearless going down the 76 foot high nearly vertical slide. It was all I could do to look over the edge and go down as I am fearful of heights. This year my daughter went along, so she was my excuse to NOT go down it as she wanted me to help keep her brothers from forcing her to go down it. I willingly obliged.

After spending most of the day at the water park, the only bad thing was I got lost trying to find it, again. I actually turned around in the very same exit ramp where I got lost last year. I hate repeating mistakes a second time, so this really irritated me. What makes matters worse is that I almost hit a car on that ramp. For some odd reason a car just popped out of the other lane and I came within millimeters of hitting that car, just after the car behind me honked at me. I had to thank GOD for protecting me as that reminded me of a childhood disaster... As a family of four, we drove by car to Walt Disney World in Florida the year it first opened. As we were getting off on the ramp to the theme park, a car hit us from behind. It jolted us pretty good as I can still remember it. What was even more disappointing was that we had to use of vacation money to fix the car and we never made it to Disney World. I have actually never been to this day. We have been to Disneyland in Los Angeles twice, but never the one in Florida. So you can see why I was so thankful that I did not repeat history and ruin our son's birthday bash in the sun and water.

Speaking of Los Angeles, last weekend my wife and I went to Lake Junaluska in order to see a couple who are really good friends of my wife's parents, who live in Anaheim Hills, California. That is a wonderful place right in the mountains, just 30 miles from the Tennessee border. It is one of our favorite places in North Carolina. We first went there over 10 years ago for a South Korean missionaries reunion, for those who had lived and worked in that country. My wife's parents live in South Korea for 25 years and my wife was born there and lived her whole life there. Around the lake next to the hotel is hundreds of rose bushes lining the lake. Every different color and fragrance you can imagine. Sunday morning I woke up at my usual very early time and went for a run around the lake. I felt like I ran twice as fast as I do in the humid part of the state where we live. Maybe one day we will be able to live in the mountains. I am a mountain man and cannot understand how people want to live at the beach! That kind of change for us is quite a ways down the road.

car keys

One last post for today as some strange things happen to me this week. I am car pooling almost every day I go to work. It is over 20 miles from our house to work. I typically have to drive in my car only one day a week, so it is so worth it for me. This week I had car trouble again. This time my car was over heating as I left it running too long in the hot weather. The black electrical tape I put on the key was so hot it melted off the key. When I got home I had a great idea to use some of the extra metallic tape I used on our shed to seal the attic vents. It is extra sticky, extra strong and just right for the job or so I thought. When I got ready for work on Monday, I could not start my car. I have a friend who is a mechanic so I called him. He towed the car to his shop and found the fuel pump had gone bad. It seems like I cannot have anything repaired on our cars these days for under $300. At least I am helping a friend feed his family! Late Monday I called him and he said that the electrical system had reset on my car and that only a dealer could fix it. I had my wife take my spare key to him on Tuesday morning after dropping me off at my car pool meeting location. Later I called him and he said the car started with my spare key! Turns out that with these new fancy electrical car keys, you cannot cover up the plastic part of the key, especially with metallic tape. Problem solved and now my car is running as it should.

hawk : up close and personal

As I started my run this morning, I saw a hawk fly in front of me and then landed in a tall pine tree next to the road. At the end of my run I went back the same way and the same hawk was resting on the top of the street sign and remained there as I ran by. When I got home I looked it up in our bird book since I got such a close view from 20 feet away and it was a Red-tailed Hawk. We have heard a hawk flying around the back of our house for weeks now, but last weekend we heard him no more. As my wife and I walked in the neighborhood across from our house, we heard that same distinct noise of the hawking yelling. I think it must be the same hawk, but that is hard to know for sure. It sure is a thing of beauty.

wish list

Some people called it a to-do list, others a wish list, still others a bucket list and then of course there is a honey-do list. So many different lists we can keep. I like to keep lists so I can sleep at night and not worry the next day on what I have forgotten to do at home or at work. I often write down on a post-it note at the office every thing I have left to do and did not finish, before leaving to go home. I am not talking about that kind of list. The honey-do list does not get used much around our home as I know when my honey wife tells me something needs to be done, then I need to do it instead of waiting until later or another day. I am talking about a list of things you wish you could do in your life time. It may be lack of money or time that prevents you from checking things off that list. Maybe you don't even have such a list. I was reminded of this as we watched the movie The Bucket List last night. It is right up there with Secondhand Lions as our favorites. I feel extremely fortunate as I used to keep a mental list of stuff I wanted to do in my life time. I have done them all. Now there are some I would like to repeat, like living in India and visiting the Himalayas. Some of the big things I wanted to do and have done are: visit the Grand Canyon, see beautiful mosques in Turkey, look around Europe, go to the Himalayas, see the Taj Mahal and work in the Middle East. There are related things I would still like to do, like raft down the Colorado river in the Grand Canyon, go on a long trek in the Himalayas and really go all out and see Mt. Everest from Base Camp. If I died today, then I would have no regrets as I have seen many things that I never thought were possible as I was growing up.

Life for me was very simple growing up in the foot hills of the Allegheny Mountains in Virginia. My world was the valley in which I lived and I never thought of life beyond Virginia. Our adopted grandparents next door were born, raised and never left the valley. It was just how life was lived. We had a small farm with cows, chickens, sometimes sheep, a horse, a pony and a couple of dogs. I heard one time that a neighbor's son lived in Saudi Arabia, but that seemed so dream like to me as I could not imagine what that meant. I spent hours in the garden, mowing yards for neighbors and playing basketball. That was my life. I would get lonely and hope that someone would stop by and play basketball with me in our drive way, but often it was just me shooting alone. I never ever thought of any other life. Not until I got to high school that is. Then I just wanted to get out of the valley and go somewhere else, anywhere else. My adopted grandfather who I called Bob-boo, had been to France in World War II and had only talked to me about it once and cried the whole time he spoke of it. That was really my only exposure to life outside of Virginia. Sure we took many trips to see Civil War battlefields throughout the south, but I never thought of living anywhere else. Bob-boo also graduated in one of the first classes at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University in 1903, which is now called VaTech. That was where I wanted to go, but Bob-boo died before I attended the first year out of high school. His wife felt the need to pay for most of my schooling since it meant so much to him that I go there. That was the beginning of the adventure for me as once I left the valley I have been a pilgrim all over the world since then. Not bad for a rural small time farm kid from a town of 500 people. I could never have imagined it would turn out this way.

no go

So we learned yesterday that our oldest son will not be joining the military after all. His three alcohol related traffic tickets were too overwhelming for the Navy and Air Force. This means a major change of plans are in order for him. He can no longer depend on the military to help pay for his future schooling nor give him something to do until he gets his license back as a Christmas present at the end of this year. Now he has to get a job locally somewhere and try to start all over with his life. Just when we thought a change was in order, it will be hard for him not to revert back to the same old life he led before. He was hoping the military would help point him on a new path, but now he has to take the hard way and do it himself.

Our next to oldest son is attempting to go to Expression College for Digital Arts in the beginning of August. He went for an orientation session in the beginning of July and really liked it. The amazing thing is that he arranged the whole thing, but of course I had to pay for the airplane ticket and the hotel stay! He is trying to get financial aid so he can actually attend, so he is motivated to do it quickly as August is almost here. He has been approved for housing, which is really subsidized furnished apartments near the school. He keeps mentioning that he wants to drive all of the way from North Carolina to San Francisco, California as a major road trip. We keep trying to suggest that is probably not a good idea; however, he keeps insisting. We will see how it all pans out shortly...

We are still playing tennis daily, which is a still a shock to me. It is fun as the oldest and youngest son are definitely improving slowly as they learn how to hit and server the ball. It has been such a long time since I played so much tennis. It is a fun sport to learn.

Our daughter has been away at grandma's house all week long. She is learning how to do cross stitch and crocheting. I taught her how to start cross stitch as my mother taught me when I was just a young thing. No one in the family believes I know how, as everyone thinks only women and girls know how to do such things, so I guess I am a victim of reverse prejudice. My wife's sister is an expert at crochet so the extended stay is a reason to learn yet another new thing. Hopefully when our daughter returns she will not suffer boredom and complain as she will have many projects to complete and to keep her busy. We are about half way through the summer school break, so we don't want boredom problems affecting the family this soon.

Teens, Tennis and Texas Hold 'em

Today marks the one week anniversary of no bad news in the family, which is quite remarkable for us. I don't remember when a whole week went by without one of the kids failing to think before they did something stupid. Sad but true. This week was very different. Maybe it was the one month span since they got out of school for the summer. Maybe they are bored and need attention. It is just shocking that after so many years that they actually want to hang out with their parents. For example now in the evenings my middle son always wants to play cards with out fake poker chips. He has been watching TV where they show world class poker players. They typically play Texas Hold 'em, which is a new game for me, but very easy to learn. In just a week my son has learned how to maintain a poker face, whereas at the start you could obviously tell when he had a good hand as he got excited about it. The nice thing about playing cards is that you talk about life in general since it is not that mentally challenging. The other event I have already mentioned in previous postings, where my oldest and youngest son want to play tennis with me as soon as I get home.

I remember when I was a young teenager and found tennis the greatest thing ever. We would play every day after school for a couple of hours. We rotated which courts we played on just to keep life exciting but normally which ever one we could find that was free. I took tennis quite seriously until I was a sophomore in high school and ended up breaking my right wrist right at the start of tennis season. I wish I could say it was from diving for a tennis ball on match point or some other brave event. However, it actually happened in our high school gym when it was raining outside and we were practicing tennis indoors in the gym. I was only 5'7" and a couple people told me there was no way I could even touch the basketball rim, so of course I had to show them. I took a tennis ball in my hand and ran from half court and dunked the tennis ball to everyone's amazement. The only problem was on my way down I got my hand caught in the basketball net and lost my balance and fell back on my arm. That ended my tennis career. I kind of fell out of sports in general and started a bad life on the wild side. It was not until I got married that I took up the sport again as my wife and I played a couple of hours every day until our oldest son was born. In between high school and my marriage, I grew 6" my freshman year in college so took up basketball which was originally my favorite sport. I lost interest in basketball in high school since I was took short for the team. Even though clearly I was never professional quality at any sport, I certainly enjoyed playing team sports regularly until I turned 40 and decided to retire while I was completely healthy.

The one thing I have done consistently since the seventh grade is run. I ran on the high school cross county team and was the youngest person to ever get a varsity letter at our school as I was a ninth grader. I loved to run on county dirt roads typically 8-10 miles a day. Back then it was important how quickly I ran each mile. I ran to keep in great condition for basketball and tennis. Now I am still running 30 years later as I enjoy it, but don't even care how long it takes me to run each mile. My only goal now is to be running when I turn 50 years old.

silsila vs vivah

This weekend we watched two very different Indian movies.

The first, Silsila was made in 1981 but had pretty shocking subject matter for it's time. The main character's brother had premarital sex and his girl friend became pregnant, which was revealed at his premature death. His brother had a choice to marry his brother's wife or to follow his heart's desire to marry his girl friend. He choose his duty of taking his brother's pregnant wife to cover up her pregnancy. He regretted it and finally had a long term adulterous relationship with his girl friend. Quite shocking subject matter indeed for an Indian movie even today.

The second, Vivah was a complete contrast. It is about the prefect premarital engagement process. Long drawn out and shows how traditional marriages are arranged and work themselves out. I found the movie very entertaining as for me, this is the "real" India that I saw when I lived there.

On a complete different subject, this weekend was a long 4th of July holiday and it seems like we have changed as a family all of the sudden. And I don't mean that the kids started watching Indian movies with us. The kids all went outside and we played frisbee together on Friday, which was the first day of the long weekend. That set the tone for the weekend. As I have mentioned previously, we typically only get together during vacations, but we got together several times this weekend. Eating together, playing cards together, talking together was enough to send me into a state of shock. I even took two of the kids to play tennis with me. We repeated that again today, so at the moment life is very good in our household, which I cannot always says was the case. I am going to keep it all positive and now regress in time to contrast to our current situation.

The sickness

Sometimes it just does not pay to get out of bed. As our beach vacation ended, everyone started getting sick. Our daughter got sick right before our vacation started and slowly it spread to the whole family. Every one but the two left handers in the family. This certainly is an odd illness that only affects right handed people! What is even more strange is that the disease affects every one differently. My wife got tonsillitis, which I thought only young kids got. In fact for her she got it quite often as a child and had not had it since. Also both my wife and daughter got really bad sores all over their tongues. My middle son who was the first to get it from my daughter never had a sore throat but had a cough and felt really run down. Our oldest son had the symptoms the longest and after the initial sore throat had a cough that lasted two weeks. For me I had a sore throat for over a week and then cough and then a sinus infection and now may have bronchitis. Recently any time I get a viral or bacteria infection it always spreads to my sinuses. Now can one illness spread by my daughter have so many different manifestations? I think someone has come up with a biologic weapon than finds the weakness in the person affected and takes advantage of it. The only problem with this theory is we are not important as a family for someone to try it out on us. The sickness mystery will have to remain unsolved - I just hope we get well soon.

Almost perfect vacation

As the kids get older, we seldom take vacations together. For the past two years we have made a weekly trip to the beach right after the kids got out of school. Last year we went to Surf City, NC and this year we were a couple of miles down the coast at Topsail Beach, NC. This small strip of NC beaches is almost all beach houses with very few hotels or condominiums. It forces us to relax, enjoy the beach and the kids. It is so interesting to watch the kids change how they interact with each other while on vacation together. At home, they all separate into their rooms and seldom interact. While at the beach, the play around in the surf together, play games in the rented beach house and talk to each other while taking a break to watch TV together. It is worth it to take a vacation just to see them talk to each other! For me, a vacation means no computer, no work and no thinking about work and spending time with my wife. In that regard this year was a perfect vacation.

Well I should say almost perfect as we all got sick except for my next to oldest son, who somehow avoided it. My daughter picked up some nasty virus the weekend before from her friend's family. She had a temperature of 104 last Thursday, right before we left on Saturday for the beach. Then our middle son got sick on Wednesday, but in desperation still made it to the beach each day as he had been waiting for a very long time to learn how to surf. Then our oldest son got sick on Thursday. Finally on Friday my wife got sick and today I am not feeling to well either. It starts with a sore throat, then a high temperature, then fever chills and finally after a couple of days it is over. That is pretty amazing that we could still say we had a great family vacation in spite of us getting sick, but it was that good. It may be our final family vacation together like this as our oldest son is joining the Navy soon and our next to oldest is talking of attending a recording studio school far, far away. This may be a year of major change ahead for us.

I must get back to the beach vacation to end on a positive note. My wife and I walked both morning and evening on the beach sand. We had a couple of thunderstorms but it did not really affect us as the kids normally spent a couple hours in the morning and a couple in the afternoon fighting the pounding waves and loving every minute. Even though my wife's parents live at the beach in Wilmington, NC just having a week of continuous beach activity makes them become immersed in it and enjoy it much more than a couple of hours during a weekend visit. The older boys all learning to surf to some degree and that kept them busy trying to conquer a new thing. We also did the ritual sand burying ceremony a couple of times to take a break. One night was especially nice as the full moon appeared in a yellow tint and the moon light reflecting on the water was really special as we could see it from our top floor balcony. Nearly every day we saw black dolphins swimming near the shore when we were in the water playing around. Normally we only see them in Wilmington in the winter, so that was nice.

One final thought on beaches. As a family we have stayed on all of the North Carolina beaches (except Cape Hatteras as it takes a very long time to get there) and all of the Texas beaches and the Gulf Shores in Alabama and Florida. The Texas beaches are not very nice, but were convenient when we lived in Houston and Austin. The drive to Gulf Shores was an all day event but worth it as that is one beautiful beach with white crystalline sand. All of the NC beaches are nice, with some nicer than others and some way more expensive than others. For now I must say that the memory of this last week was really special as it was more than just a beach trip but a true family vacation.

What was amazing to me was the vacation transformation quickly reverted back to normal life in our house as within 30 minutes of arriving, my daughter was on the phone talking to her friends, my next to oldest son took off in his car to see his friends and the other ones were on the computers - all back into their individual worlds as if they never left.

users

That is such a bad term for people who use computer software to help them get their job done. Sounds like a drug addict, who uses drugs to try to alleviate pain in their life. What a second, that does match. Computers are painful to use and most software does not really help; software just softens to emotional distress of sitting in front of a computer all day. Working with computers can definitely make a manual task automated, but there is so much more we can help our customers than what we are doing today.

I much say that I really enjoy visiting customers and observing them do their daily tasks. It reminds me of one of my previous jobs, where I did this daily. The technical term is contextual inquiry for shadowing a customer in their daily work environment. The more you observe and collect notes, the better you will understand exactly what problems and tasks they are trying to complete daily. Another favorite of mine is called task analysis where you try to understand the tasks and come up with a better or automated flow to help them do the task quicker or eliminate it altogether. For me, there is just no better way to learn about your customer than seeing them in action. Even though this was but a single day in my life, it was totally worth every minute. It also reminded me that I enjoy doing it and it was part of my life for two years. I need to incorporate it more into my life!

jail time

I have mentioned this before, but just have to say something more on this topic today. My oldest son got out of jail yesterday. It was his third trip to have some down time in jail and hopefully his last. All three were short stints, but for me it demonstrates how the world is changing. I did many stupid things when I was a young out of control teenager, but I only visited jail once and that was on a school field trip. I think it would be a good idea to re-introduce this kind of a field trip into public schools again today as there is way too much glory in going to jail. Of course it does not help that I am writing about it, but I have to blow of some steam. Jail up until recently was not a merit badge and had a derogatory aspect to it. For some odd reason that was lost somewhere along the way in the last few years. My son has been three times. The first time occurred when he was caught by police on a NC beach as a drunk underage 18 year old. Since he ran his mouth to the policeman and got out of control, they put him in jail for 36 hours. I remember talking to him about later on and he said that he never wanted to do that again as it was not a good experience at all. I guess that can be explained from massive alcohol consumption causing his good and bad brain cells to be lost. His second time was when he drove drunk after loosing his license last summer. They compounded his friend's car which he was driving and decided a little jail time was in order overnight to sober him up. The last time ended yesterday as it was a follow up visit to the previous time, and I have blogged about that already. I pick him up today, so will find out the details later as to whether it will be his last. He is joining the Navy finally and maybe all of this will be the final straw to teaching him a permanent life lesson. Hopefully jail will be a history lesson he does not want to repeat.

flexible in 3D

So at work I am using Adobe Flex and my current task is working in Flex 3D graphics. I have tried using Papervision3D and Away3D. This week I found a couple of new libraries that I may have to try this week if I have time. One of the libraries is FIVe3D. I found the site before but did not think much about it until I saw this site Everyday Flash.

One of the sites that is my current favorite is:

Eco da Zoo

Upon digging I found that the fellow who created this site can be found at:

Roxik

You must see his 3D presentation for Adobe MAX Japan, it the most amazing thing I have seen in 3D animation:

Presentation

I created my own character and published it on his site, which he automates:

we all have a story

For the last several weeks I have been sharing rides in a car pool. We are thinking of raising it up a notch by getting a van from the local transit authority. Since we have 30-40 minutes together twice a day we talk about all kinds of things. When I hopped into the car on Monday and was asked how my weekend was, I had to say not good, which then prompted me to explain myself. After I finished complaining, one of the women in the car said "every family has a story". It turns out that she had a rough time with one of her sons when he was 14-20 years old. The owners of the house we fixed up this weekend had a really hard time with one of their boys also. At least we are not even close to being alone in the battle for our kids sensibility over impulse. The key question for me is if everyone has a story, then maybe that is why blogging is so common as you get to share your story with who ever wants to listen. Every problem can feel like a notch is taken out of your heart, but knowing you are not alone somehow helps.

On a side note, after a long stressful weekend, my wife and I watched one of our favorite movies of all time as it was on TV. I don't understand why Hollywood does not make more movies like Second Hand Lions. This is a movie that tells a story, is not stupid, rude, violent or crude. Just a great movie to relax and enjoy after a hard weekend. Now I see the value of taking a day off as I did not get one this past weekend and I have felt tired so far this week at work. So that is why people rest on the Sabbath day.

wasted weekend

Our lives changed this week yet again, except this time it was not by our choice. Our son was removed from his house, but it was not a polite goodbye. The owners had enough of late payments or not payment at all. Of course it did not help that the previous month they did without water as they did not pay their bill. This month they did without electricity as they "forgot" to pay that bill as well. Then they did not pay their monthly rent and that was the end of the house for them all. My wife found out this last Tuesday that they all had to be out of the house immediately. We rented a truck from Home Depot in the evening and drove over to pick up all of his stuff from the house. The woman who oversees the rent told me when I dropped off the keys to the house that she would file a civil lawsuit against everyone who signed the leave to pay for the damages done to the house. I offered to do the repairs myself to save everyone from loosing even more money. Maybe I should have put more thought into it before saying such a thing. So for nine hours yesterday and seven hours today I worked on the house while my wife cleaned everything in the house. Yesterday I moved the lawn, picked up leaves and cleaned the gutters. By the end of the day I had around 30 trash bags and many pieces of old worthless furniture to be thrown away. I then proceeded into the house to start patching the five huge holes that one of my son's roommates had caused by his endless rage. Of course I had two broken windows and three messed up doors to fix also. Plus paint two rooms that had been poorly decorated with random painting techniques. After a full day of work I was so tired it was hard to fall asleep last night. Today we returned to finish off the unfinished tasks and to carry all of the trash away. One of my other sons helped with as he borrowed a friends truck. We had one load of nothing but trash bags. The other load was fun for him as he got to break up tons of furniture. I think he really enjoyed that a lot. So much for a weekend of rest around the house. I hope it was worth it somehow; even though I did talk to the owner of the house today and she told me they were going to redo the whole house. I feel liked a lost a weekend that I can never get back.

Let's walk

This week while attending a conference in our nation's capitol city, I took very long walks in the morning by myself and in the evening with fellow conference attendees. The hotel I stayed in was 5 blocks north of the White House.

The first morning I walked to the White House and returned, which took me around 30 minutes total. Nothing too eventful took place, but the weather certainly was perfect. That evening we walked around looking for a place to eat and eventually landed in Zed's, which was a wonderful Ethiopian restaurant.

The second morning I walked to the Lincoln monument, which took around 45 minutes one way. When I arrived at the feet of Lincoln's statue, an elderly man arrived having run up the many steps and saluted Lincoln. He turned around and told the guard standing watch that this was his favorite day of the week as he ran and saluted Lincoln every week on this day. That was interesting and odd at the same time. The last time I saw the Lincoln monument was several years ago with the whole family. We got a cab to take us there from the Space Museum as the final part of our educational trip for the kids. That was a fond memory as the kids were very young. The only bad thing was that I could not find the car as a parking space was very hard to find so I parked on a side street very far from the Washington Mall, or huge green grass lawn.


In the evening we walked to a Chinese restaurant and then proceeded to the Mall at the end where the Lincoln monument is located. We went by the Vietnam monument, which I had seen in the morning, except this time there were thousands of teenagers on field trips present. It reminded me of my boss in Saudi who was an American in Vietnam. He told me he never smoke nor drank before going to Vietnam. He was very pleasant at work, but had serious alcohol issues. Every night he got staggering drunk, which was quite a chore for Saudi where alcohol is banned. I felt sorry for him, but avoided talking to him in the evening as he was so well intoxicated that nothing made sense that he said. He was not the only one that caught this disease in Vietnam. We continued to the Korean monument, which for me was the highlight of my time in D.C. We then proceeded to the Franklin Delano Roosevelt monument down the road, which was second favorite thing. It was getting dark, and the teenagers were still roaming around, but the waterfalls were lite and it was so pleasant as the monument is right on the lake on the opposite side from the Jefferson monument. As we headed back to the hotel we stopped by the Washington monument. Even though it was way past my bedtime we stopped by the Old Ebbitt Grill for dessert. I saw on the sign out front that it was founded in 1865 and it was located right across the road from the White House. I am sure for the day that I walked way over 7 miles.


The third morning, I walked to the US Capitol building. It was just as far a walk as to the Lincoln monument the morning before. On the way back I walked by the Old Post Office, which I mistook for the National Cathedral as it looked just like an old church. In the evening I went with one of the conference attendees by Metro to the airport. I really enjoy having a subway, but we will never see on in this area of NC where we live.

Now that I have covered all of the high points of my trip, I have to regress and cover how we got to D.C. I left the house around 1pm as I needed to pick up the car tags from the dealer for our SUV on the way to the airport. I was at the gate at 1:30pm for my 3pm flight. Our flight was late but was sat on the tarmac, I could see other planes next to our waiting. They made an announcement that the weather had caused all outbound flights to be canceled, so we went back to the gate. Total chaos set in as people were everywhere trying to get information on their flights. The rain started coming down heavily after the black clouds rolled in, so I was glad we did not take off in our very small plane. One of the people I was with got on the phone to call our airline and for the next hour was able to reschedule all 7 of us on a different airline. We finally took off around 9:30pm and was at the Metro waiting for a subway train at 10pm. We had to wait for a train as an announcement was made that the Washington Nationals baseball game had just ended and trains were overly crowded. When we got to the main hub downtown, the whole underground was full of people as far as you could see. Somehow we kept pushing until we got to the transfer train and we finally arrived at the hotel at 11:30pm. Not bad, 10 hours of elapsed time to travel by plane for 30 minutes, when we could have driven in 4 hours. At least the whole time was not like the start of our trip!

change

I see the world changing before my very eyes. I am sure in the past 100 years other dramatic changes were more obvious, like moving from a local agrarian society to the country wide industrial age or from traveling by horse to bouncing along in a car. My wife's parents tell stories of going to South Korea by boat, which normally took a month and then flying for the first time by plane. In order to cover the cost, they chauffeured Korean orphans to the USA for an agency that matched them to their adopting parents. That is a pretty dramatic change, going from a month long voyage to 24 hour. Maybe it is the communication age we have entered in my lifetime. This week the whole world knew about the flooding in Myanmar and the earthquake in China within hours. When a new Indian movie comes out half way around the world, I don't have to wait three months for the release date, I just drive to the local Indian shop and rent it for $2. When I want to listen to just released music, I just go to iTunes and I can listen or buy it today. It seems like the whole world has gone from patiently waiting to expecting immediate results within my lifetime. I did not even mention computers either. Another example from my wife's parents illustrates this perfectly. When my wife and I first got married, I saw her write a hand written postal gram letter every week to her parents. We would receive the same from them. It took two weeks to receive the latest news each way. On a really fast arrival we would get it in ten days. Then came email in the past twenty years only. Now that takes too long so we have instant messaging. Last but not least we have games. I remember when my best friend's father worked on computers when I was a kid. We were all amazed at his secret lifestyle. I also recall living in Saudi Arabia and hearing of the wives of the employees playing computer games to pass the time - which always amazed me still to this day. I remember our kids going from Super-Nintendo, to Playstation, to N64, to XBox, to XBox 360. We first started out huddling around a desk playing Mortal Kombat. Now my youngest son plays with people all over the world from his room on his XBox 360. Some of them are his friends, but most of them he has never met nor can they even speak English. Simply amazing.

The most dramatic change I am thinking about today is in attitudes of young people. My oldest son was given an option in court yesterday. Pay $200 and do 24 hours of community service OR spend 24 hours in jail. He did not even think twice. He wanted to spend time in jail. One of his friends, who he has known since elementary, is in jail for 60 days for possession of drugs. I guess he will join him.

adrenaline rush

Only twice in recent memory has my heart raced so fast I thought it was unhealthy. This past week was one such occasion. At around 3am one night my wife sits up with her back absolutely straight and says "What's that?" loudly. That obviously woke me up and I start to think what she could have possibly heard. Was there a fire she smelled? Was one of the kids coming home in the middle of the night hurt? Was it her woman's intuition kicking in or just a bad dream? It turned out to be a mild anxiety attack, but my heart had already picked up the pace as if I was running for my life as the adrenaline rushed through my heart. That is such a crazy feeling.

The last time my heart saw massive amounts of adrenaline, we lived in San Antonio. At about the same time in the middle of the night, I saw lights in the living room being turned on and off. Our master bedroom was on the first floor and it was right next to the pool on the outside and the living room on the inside. At first I thought it was a bit odd as the kids typically turn them on to get something to eat but don't turn them on and off. I initially woke up as I thought I heard someone walk by our window and brush up against the bushes and make some noise. So when the lights kept being switched on and off, I immediately thought a thief had broke into our house. Off to the races went my heart beating much faster than normal. I kept wondering whether I should get up and check on it or not. One of my middle son's friends was beat up by a local gang down the road from our house, so I also knew there were bad elements around that I did not want to see. If only I had a metal baseball bat under our bed I would feel better about going to see who was testing our lights. By the time my heart calmed down the phone rang. Now that was odd turn of events. I was so happy as I hoped that would scare away the burglar. Sure enough the lights stopped flashing. After waiting a couple more minutes I went out to see what was going on. As I entered the living room I saw police car lights flashing in front of our house. Now I was saved as the cop must have caught the intruder who was wasting my electricity! He came to the front door and rang the doorbell. I look out and I see one of my sons in the back seat of the car with handcuffs on. I was so confused my head was spinning. Such harsh treatment for switching the lights on and off! Turns out the story was just beginning to get complex. I asked the policeman if he saw anyone turning lights on and off in our house. He said he did not. I asked him how long he had been there and he said a few minutes. That was odd. He then said he was writing my son up with a warning for being out after the 11pm curfew, which existed for everyone under 18 in San Antonio. They do this since there is so much gang activity at night that they don't want good kids getting involved I suppose. He goes and gets my son and after unlocking the handcuffs brings him to the front door. As I close the door I learn even more facts.

Sometimes life is much stranger than fiction as I have learned from our two years in San Antonio. I was very angry at my son but glad he was safe. I asked him if he saw the lights being turned on and off and he said the policeman handcuffed him to the car so he did not run away. He then went around the back of the house and somehow entered the back door. For 30 minutes he was going through our house! He told our son that he was checking for a photo of him to prove this was his house. I had read many stories in the San Antonio newspaper of dirty policeman, because of all of the drugs and gangs. I guess I had just met one. He had no right to come into our house, but he had denied being in it to my face. Just one of many extremely odd things that happened to use when we lived there.

Of course the real story as to why my son was out that time of the night was only amusing looking back at it. A mutual "friend" of two of my sons was, as I would find out later a drug dealer and generally a very weird person. He had come by to get my son since he knew he played the guitar. He knew where a bunch of skateboarders hung out at night and wanted to have a rock concert for them. He broke into an abandoned grocery store, let all of the skateboarders in so they could skate around on the floor while being entertained by music. The was all premeditated as for weeks he had smuggled in sound equipment. My son was like the rock star, showing up for the concert with everything ready to go. The problem was they turned the amps up so loud that a policeman getting gas at a nearby gas station heard the noise and investigated. All of the skateboarders fled by running into a nearby field. My son and another one jumped into the car belonging to the bad "friend" and turned on the car and tried to escape. By then a bunch of cops were there and they could not escape the parking lot, so they got caught. This bad "friend" showed up at our house a couple of nights later and I asked him about what happened and banned him from our house in the future. He said he crawled up into the air vents and stayed there until the next morning. The police confiscated his car and all of his sound equipment. I did not feel sorry for him in any way. That was not the last we heard of this bad "friend" as my oldest son attached himself to him for some strange reason, but that story will have to wait for another day.

searching

I must comment on how to find a car. Last weekend we needed to drive different cars and SUVs so we could feel how they drove and to see how much room each had. Looking at a photo on a web site just is not good enough for us. We have to physically touch it and hit the accelerator to feel the power. Having said all that, the two best web site designs for searching for vehicles are Ebay Motors and Carmax. A more traditional approach can be found at Auction Direct.

Looking at the later one, you see many dropdown menus populated with tons of choices. This is nice to see all of the choices but the dropdowns are totally disconnected. The result is information overload, but since we are all well trained internet monkeys, we do not seem to notice. Until we see a usable interface that actually helps us find our way through the huge forest of unlimited choices of vehicles. This is not a new revelation, just tried and true usability design principles applied to real life situations. Of course if we only had a couple of choices then we wouldn't need this creative thinking. A couple of choices, a couple of dropdowns and we are done.

I must say that I really enjoy using the Carmax site. It always tells me how many cars in each category even before I filter down my choices. As I refine what I am looking for, I can easy remove the filters to increase the choices. Very nice and worth seeing and using even if not in the hunt for a used car. I am so happy when I find usable software!

And the winner is...

South Korea. I should have expected that decision all along. Since my wife was born in South Korea and grew up her whole life there, what other choice could there be? My wife's father has a Hyundai, her sister has a Hyundai and now so do we. It is not like we have plenty of other choices! It really came down to what vehicle cost the least and had the most features and drive the best. We found three different used Hyundai Santa Fe vehicles. I want to saw cars but they are not cars. Some people say they are SUVs, but they are not the typical SUV in size. For now it will have to be vehicle. The nicest thing is they don't drive like an SUV, but more like a car so my wife will enjoy that after having driven our huge Ford custom van for almost 10 years now. I am happy we only buy a vehicle every ten years as the whole process wore me out. I dislike shopping in general but car shopping and messing with car dealers is right at the bottom of my fun list. One last thing I have to comment about. It sure is strange how a Korea vehicle would be named after a city in New Mexico and the similar yet smaller model named after the city where my mother lives in Arizona. Pure intelligent marketing I think.

car dealers

On top of everything else last weekend, we sold our Ford custom van. At a wonderful 14 mpg and the quick rise of gas prices, I just could not take it any more. It a momentary lapse of judgement I told me wife we should take the van to the Wal-Mart parking lot and leave it with a For Sale sign in the window. We sold the van within a couple of hours and so we were down to a single vehicle between us. Not a bad thing, unless you consider the fact that I have to drive to work which is 20 miles away in one direction every day of the week. Since it was late Sunday, we had a couple of choices and decided to try Enterprise Rental cars since they are just down the road a couple of miles. All week long my wife searched the internet for the best car for us. We did not consider a brand new car because of the high price and we do not want to have monthly payments for 5-6 years as that is no fun. Yesterday we checked all of the local small-time dealers in the huge metropolis of Fuquay Varina. One sells high end cars, one sells perfect cars for teenagers which you don't mind if they trash or crash them, one struck me as not very honest, one was from the county of Jordan. Quite a mixture for such a small town. We then ventured outside the town limits to a couple of new car dealers right outside town, as they sell what are called "program cars". These are cars that are owned and driven by dealerships and then sold as used cars. We ended up driving just about every reasonably priced SUV on the market for sale: Ford Escape, Jeep Liberty, Jeep Grand Cherokee, Honda CRV, Nissan Xterra, Mazda Tribute, Toyota Rav4, Hyundai Tucson, and Suzuki Reno. Like my wife said yesterday, there are just too many vehicles to choose from and that makes it even harder. We ventured to the Cary Auto Park in the evening, where there are just about every vehicle brand for sale in the USA can be found. The final place we visited illustrates what I think of dealerships. We drove around most of the dealers looking for the used cars on display in the lots. As we were leaving the final dealer, we saw a nice Mazda Tribute displayed nicely as it was parked on the sidewalk. We went back, which was our first mistake, and asked to drive it. At the big dealerships,someone rides with you from the dealership while you take a test drive. Since the price was too high as said we were not interested. The salesman went inside and said the owner would do something silly to get rid of it as it had been on the lot longer than any other vehicle. I told him I would buy it for $3000 under the price listed right then. He made me sign a paper saying that and ran off to talk to the owner. He came back and told me that was too low. So much for doing anything to sell it!

no water

It was definitely an interesting day yesterday. Another sunny day meant all of the kids were outside by 11 in the morning. In itself that was already a different and unusual start for the day. We played Frisbee and the older picked up their tennis rackets to play a game they made up two summers ago in our present backyard. That is worth a digression for a couple of sentences.

Since we have a fairly large backyard on our one acre lot, when we first moved into this house, the kids went crazy in the lawn. We had never had a big backyard like this. They just had to find a way to use it for fun. Somehow, I don't remember all of the details as it was during my pre-blogging age, one of the boys picked up a tennis racket and started hitting the ball in the backyard. Then another one of the boys did the same. Before you know it they were at each end of the yard hitting the ball to each other. All summer long they enjoyed this super lawn tennis without a net. Yesterday was the first day this summer they got back into this custom family sport.



While the boys were being boys and having fun, my daughter jumped on her motorized scooter and raced around the house. As I was pulling weeds in the backyard, she came up to me and said the front yard was saturated in water. That sounded strange as it had not rained in a couple of days and we never have standing water in the front yard. As I went around to inspect, I found water all over the yard at the end where our water well was located. I crawled under the house to see where the water main came into the house. Then I traced the line to the well. I could actually see the water bubbling up out of the ground. That certainly was not normal. As I dug around the well with my hands the normal rock hard red clay was like soup. I could hear the water pump turning on and off constantly, so I quickly turned off the water pump at the main fuse box. I started digging a hole around the well and was amazed at how easy it was to dig down two feet in solid clay.



I then got the boys involved to help me dig. What an adult would consider a disaster, my son took as a challenge for yet another fun adventure. He jumped into the trench and as it was mid-day the sun was starting to roast our white skin, he started covering himself in mud. He was having fun doing hard labor, which is a great lesson to learn from energetic teenagers. He was building up muscles, getting a valuable skin treatment and helping me all at the same time. If you have ever seen Arnold Schwarzeneggar in the original Predator movie, then this is what he claimed to look like. When we got over half way to the house the water line was getting deeper and deeper, so we decided to turn the water pump back on and see is the leak was visible. It was right back at the pump, so all of the digging was not needed, but we certainly had some dirty and entertained teenagers in the meantime. I drove the the local hardware store and for $15 had the repair kit and pip I needed to repair the PVC pipe. We fixed the pipe and waited the required two hours before turning the pump back on and all is back to normal on the water front.


The completed job. You just never know what you have until you have to do without water, if only for a single day.

past ... present ... future

I constantly have this dilemma of living in the present moment and enjoying it for everything it is worth. Like last weekend my middle son wanted to throw Frisbee with me. We have a cheap $1 one from the local store which broke when he banged his knee with it on Friday. I bought the real version which we threw around most of Saturday and Sunday. He is such a natural with it and just enjoys be outside, which is not his normal behavior. I had to soak up each moment as you just never know with teenagers when it will happen again.

Then there is the past which just went by me. This blog is record of my past. Some days I think about things to write in my blog. Other days events just occur that I have to write about. When I think of the past, I want to learn from history or other people's mistakes. That is one of the reasons I like to write a blog so I don't forget lessons I have learned as I live them. I want my teenagers to learn from each other. When I got back from the county courthouse with my oldest son, I just had to yell out loud when I got in the house that no one should ever "drink and drive".

Then there is the future. I sure hope all of kids don't repeat the same mistakes their siblings made or else I will not make it. I feel old every time a major drama occurs in our family that I have to deal with these days. It seemed easier to take when I was younger. Now every time I feel older. I sure can hope for a bright future where the same mistakes are not repeated in our family. Maybe that is another reason I have read the books on drug and alcohol addictions. I have lived it once and I don't want to live it again, so I want to be better informed of the root problem. A quick fix does not work. If you ignore a problem it does not go away.

Beautiful Boy vs. Tweak

Last month I reviewed Beautiful Boy by David Sheff and this week I finished his son's book Tweak: Growing up on Methamphetamines by Nic Sheff. I must say that drug or alcohol addiction when in the family is not fun. I only read these books because we have lived it, maybe not to the extreme mentioned in these books, but that does not make it in any way less painful. For me, they are both hard to deal with as they transform a person from who they really are to someone else, who I don't want to see or get to know. I think it is interesting to read how the father became addicted to his son's addiction to the cost of neglecting his wife and other children. I have been there and no that feeling. I also like this pair of books as it also shows the son's side where he talks a little about his family, but he is so self consumed that while on drugs that totally consumes him as he must get high again and again. For me, it is very difficult to know what is true or not in such a book as how can someone know what happened when they are stoned out of their mind and without normal senses? Reading this book just gives you an idea of how someone who is an addict thinks and lives to really understand how addiction grips someone and does not let go easily.

In the tradition of my blog I will refer to some of the comments from Nik's book:

• I felt like everyone else had gotten this instruction manual that explained life to them, but somehow I'd missed it. pg 17


• I always thought once I was an adult, independent, whatever, these feelings of hopelessness and despair would go away. I could be like those characters in the movies. Drugs and alcohol gave me that feeling. pg 63


• It is like someone came in and with a vacuum cleaner and sucked out my brain - removing any trace of joy and excitement, leaving me with nothing but his overpowering hopelessness. pg 132


• Staying sober right after coming back from a relapse is no struggle... I always seem to forget why I needed to get sober in the first place... And, each time, I get a little closer to being dead. Things fall apart more quickly. I hurt more and more people. pg 142


• But there's also this part of me that is so dissatisfied with everything. pg 150


• I also have incredible anxiety socializing with people. I mean, if I'm at work, or I'm high, then that's okay. But sober, going out with people my age, I am just really uncomfortable. pg 161


• As long as you look for someone else to validate who you are by seeking their approval, you are setting yourself up for disaster. You have to be whole and comlete in yourself. No one can give you that. You have to know who you are - what others say is irrelevant. pg 195-196


• I guess I'm just selfish. My needs always come first - that need I have to escape or something. pg 202


• Suddenly I can't wait to leave - get back on my own - not have to deal with this cutesy, overprotected, sugarcoated world of my dad's family. They're keeping their children so naive, so unable to cope with hardships of the REAL world. pg 203