Category: Family & Home

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How to Pack a Weekend

Over the past couple of weeks I’ve been repairing earthquake cracks in the living room with mesh tape, Flex-All, and stucco. In the process, digging through previous generation’s layers of accreted paint, realized for the first time that our living room was once upon a time coated in gold glitter, top to bottom. Trying to visualize this former hey-day, and the shag rugs and chandeliers that must have accompanied it.

Friday moved everything to the center of the room (including 300 lbs. of LPs and a 1950s capiz shell console) and went at it with the orbital sander. A little detail work with Crawford’s spackling paste, then out for a couple of beers with a friend. Saturday up early, friends took Miles for the day, and Amy and I dug in on a long-overdue paint job (we’d never loved the chiffon yellow LR paint we inherited, but over the past year it had started to make both of us nauseous). Six hours later it was a more mature “Woodwind” (named, I think, for the color of the bamboo reeds in saxes and clarinets), and looks FABulous. We’re so stoked.

Saturday night, off with another friend for a mind-blowingly good sushi dinner, then off to see Martin, Medeski and Wood with John Scofield at the legendary Filmore Auditorium. Amazing 3-hour show (will write it up for Stuck if time permits) left me inspired and exhausted.

Today up early again to touch up the baseboards, then get ready for Miles‘ fifth birthday, at Head Over Heels gym, where circus performers train. M’s friends had full access to trampolines, trapezes, a deep foam pit, balance beams and an obstacle course of misc. gymnastic equipment. This is the third year running we’ve had his birthday party at the same gym. The kids dig it, why mess with a good thing?

One of his friends, whose mother is way into letterboxing, put together a multi-stage geocache for Miles, so after an afternoon wrangling tiny Playmobil parts, he and I took off to discover it. Such a cool, thoughtful present, with hand-drawn maps and clues, and plenty of places to play along the way. Amazing.

Returned home in time to start putting the LR back together, do some grilling for dinner, and get the DVR hooked up in time to record the start of Ken Burns’ The War.

Life is rich.

Music: Don Preston :: Ode To The Flower Maiden
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Kindergarten

Miles Kindergarten How does this happen? One minute they’re born, and the next they’re starting kindergarten. At the risk of sounding like a cliche’, the passage of time is blowing us away. Hard to believe Miles has already done two years of pre-school, plus the summers in-between. The K-5 we chose for him is a parent co-op, structured similarly to the preschool he was in, which means we’ll be putting in one day per week as parent participants (or, rather, Amy will be, since I’ll be at work), plus monthly meetings and plenty of weekend maintenance “parties.” In exchange, we get a level of involvement with his education second only to home schooling, get to help shape the curriculum and philosophy of the school (an arrangement that’s worked out marvelously at the pre-school), and get to go along on the tons of cool field trips the school does. Many adventures to come.

Aside: An apparent unspoken requirement of the school is to own a pair of Keen sandals – my straw count the other day turned up about 80% of the children’s feet clad in Keens, another 10% Crocs, leaving only 10% for some antiquated invention called “shoes.” Fortunately Miles was properly pre-equipped with his – the most perfect work-horse footwear for kids ever invented.

Music: Teh Zakary Thaks :: Bad Girl
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Gull Lake, 2007

Gull Lake If it’s been quiet around here lately, it’s because I just returned from a much-needed two-week vacation in Minnesota, relaxing with extended family. Five days of the trip spent on the shores of Gull Lake – canoeing, fishing, reading, golfing (yes, I said golfing!), playing tennis, geocaching, fishing, feasting, relaxing our hearts out. Nice little water skiing injury to show for my efforts – a ski whacked the top of my foot at speed and created a 3/4″ pillow bruise on top of the foot… which forced me to sit on the beach and devour a book and a half* (ah, shucks). Still recovering from that. Did I mention Wi-Fi in the trees, so you can use a laptop from anywhere? Life’s rough.

Back at work now, trying desperately to hang onto the vacation glow, but it’s fading fast. Big semester coming, with me in a new role at the J-School (more on that another day).

Just uploaded a pile of vacation images. Again trying something new – Image Rodeo has been great over the past few years, but never liked the fact that it forces you to output a separate database from iPhoto and then generate an album from that. Decided to give the free Galerie (which generates galleries with custom templates directly out of iPhoto) a shot and loving it so far, though it did take a while to port my template to its syntax.

Rained a bunch in the last few days (and I had my first encounter with a storm of nickel-sized hail – scary stuff!), but didn’t let that stop me – had an amazing experience on the last day doing a 15-geocache run in the rain, on bicycle. I’m almost always caching with Miles – was great to get out on my own. The Land of 10,000 Lakes is just packed with gorgeous meadows and wild lands. Trails run everywhere, ponds around every corner. The vegetation is incredibly lush — I could die of greenery.

* Read Sam Harris’ “Letter to a Christian Nation” and half of Sam Leavitt’s “Freakonomics” – both incredible. Hope to post more on those some day soon.

Music: Porter Wagoner :: Albert Ervin
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For Want of a Washer

Tiny drip in the supply hose from a valve under our sink to our dishwasher yesterday. Unscrewed the connector, re-taped it with Teflon, and … the leak continued. Ah – must be the washer in the braided hose! Removed it again and dug at it with a razor blade until the old compressed one finally pulled free (in shreds). Off to Ace for a replacement. Dozens of types of plumbing washers in cute little bins, but — uh oh — none in the size I needed (3/8″). They had 1/2″ versions, but nothing a smidge smaller. Talked to the employees, who said they didn’t sell them, never had. One employee said that in six years of working in hardware, she’d had a ton of requests, but that they had never sold them – didn’t even think they were available. Though she wasn’t sure why.

So here’s where the day gets complicated. Rather than a 10-minute job and a .25-cent washer, it was starting to look like replacing the entire braided cable ($16). And that meant pulling the entire dishwasher… which meant pulling the baseboards out from under the kitchen cabinets. And that’s how simple jobs turn into all-day affairs.

Got it done before dinner, but the whole job took three hours (including trips to the hardware store), some bruised knuckles, a good dose of swearing, and a ton of disbelief. Why in the world would they not sell 3/8″ conical washers? Some arcane historical reason? A good (but opaque) reason? No profit in it (come on, the rubber washer industry is no profit center for anyone). Or did I just get totally bogus information? But our Ace has everything, and super-knowledgeable employees. I don’t get it.

Music: Funkadelic :: Promentalshitbackwashpsychosis Enema Squad
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Chocolate Powder of England

Miles: “I’m going to sprinkle magic dust on your head and make you a rock and roll star! You’ll play drums and I’ll play xylophone.”

We then proceeded to form a series of bands with the following names, each of them dutifully introduced to an audience of one (Amy) with a shouted “El Cerrito, are you read to rock and roll?,” changing instrumentation with each iteration, none of them lasting longer than a few minutes:

The Electric Motors
Plato of the USA
The Growing Plant of the Maraca That’s Been Fired
Chocolate Powder of England
Blue Bamboo
The Electric Pennies
Chalk Dust Slipper

Music: Meters :: What’cha Say
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Two Wheeler

Two-Wheeler Miles has been riding with training wheels on his bike for half a year now. Somehow, a sunny summer evening seemed like the perfect time to try ditching them and flying free. He had a bit of trepidation, and after his first wipe-out he declared his “new” bike “stupid” – said he wanted to give it as a present to a 7-year-old. Then he said he wanted to try again. Riding on the grass turned out to be the magic ticket, and made wipeouts fun. Within half an hour he was flying free and ecstatic. Strange, almost comical coincidence – practically every crash was complemented by the ping of a baseball on aluminum bat in the diamond we shared a field with.

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Wind-Up Whale

Miles Whale Gorgeous photo by Amy of Miles showing off a wind-up whale he found in a geocache at Mt. Diablo last weekend. Today he asked what “chaos” meant and I told him. Then he re-defined the concept for me: “Chaos is when dogs are howling and light poles are bumping into each other and the toilet is walking around the house.” Later, talking about how you could turn a mistake into part of the project while making art: “If an artist makes a mistake she can just bonk her booby bone on her head and then her bones will be gone and she’ll flop over like a jellyfish.” It’s more or less an endless string of delightful dada platitudes around here, punctuated by meltdowns and small miracles.

Music: Janet Seidel :: Deep Purple
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Why I Love My Wife #377

Amy: “Would you mind if I got ruby grapefruit dish soap next time, instead of crisp cucumber?”

Me: “No, why would I mind?”

Amy: “Because it might not go with our kitchen walls.”

You think I’m making this up.

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Mountain Goats

Cerritos-Cache-Creek     Miles-Scot-Ccc

Great time geocaching with Miles around Kensington today – pegged three caches in one day. First two pretty easy urban and park finds, but the third was a level-3 difficulty hike – a creek bed at the bottom of a steep canyon with no trail to speak of – bushwacking and slip-sliding our way down, holding onto roots and vines. Miles keeps up without complaint, loves the challenge. I swear the kid is a mountain goat in a boy’s body.

Once at the bottom, had a really hard time getting coordinates from the GPSr – couldn’t see the sky for the trees, and the steep canyon offered a much smaller horizon to scan. But using provided hints, finally honed in and M scrambled into position. Nothing really special inside this one aside from an autographed picture of Brad Pitt, signed “I was here”; it’s all about the fun of the hunt. Ecstatic day.

Music: Green-Eyed Lady :: Jerry Corbetta formerly of Sugarloaf
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Hollow Tree

Yesterday Miles and I planted our first geocache, near Jewel Lake in Tilden Park. After planting the cache I was averaging waypoints to get a good fix, and Miles was traipsing along behind me, playing with a stick. Suddenly he wasn’t there, and I thought he had taken off down the trail (he’s been doing that lately). Started calling his name when I heard him whimpering – from inside a hollow tree nearby, which arched like a comma up over the trail.

Stuck my head in there and see him about 20 feet in, light at the end of the tunnel about five feet beyond his head. Said he couldn’t get out. Coaxed him to slide backwards down on his belly and he did, until I could grab his feet. Turned out fine, but scary for a few minutes there.

Half an hour later we were on the back side of Jewel Lake when he calls out “Waah! Daddy!” Look down to find him missing a shoe. Start poking around and find a recession in some syrupy mud, which had apparently reached up and grabbed the shoe right off his foot. All the way buried. A samaritan lent us a plastic bag for his shoes, and I carried him back to the car on my shoulders. Never a dull moment with this kid.

Music: War :: The Cisco Kid