Frenzied Daddy

I strolled into the house today after a long day of slaving over a hot keyboard. I was all fired up to make stirfry wraps for dinner and then get back to work in my basement, slaving over the hot keyboard again. Until I met up with the girls.

Ms K immediately asked me what time it was. (“uhhh six.”). She panicked and started to babble. Ms B lifted her head and said “Miss K has an art show tonight at her school.” Whoa? One of the nice things about Miss K going to the neighborhood school is that it’s ..well, in the neighborhood. So I could turn to her and say “Well, what time is the show?” And I hear that it started at 5:30. I think to myself “It’d be nice to say yes more often. And how long could it take, anyway?” So I say “Let’s go!” Miss K runs to get her shoes and her jacket on. She was all fired up. Ms B says “It’s something about ‘paint mumble bumble’.. there’s a flier on the table. I don’t mumble bumble she has any mumble in the mumble.” By the time Ms B got these three sentence fragments out of her mouth, Miss K had her shoes on and was waiting expectantly by the door. Miss K said something about “we can make art.”

With no knowledge at all of what I was getting in to. But I figured I had a check if they wanted money — we could figure it out. K and I parked back around by the cafeteria where we usually go to drop her off in the mornings and she pulled me feverishly to the front entrance. We walked in, where Miss K was greeted by name. Everybody knew her and was delighted to see her. They give us pizza tickets and we go have pizza, soda, cookies and salad. Then they give her a bag of art supplies: pencils, crayons, water colors and a Strathmore notepad. Then they give her some raffle tickets with her name on them and we take them over to the gym where there’s art on the walls. Real art in frames, or not – photographs, paintings, sketches, blown glass, pottery. There was some really amazing stuff. Her instructions were to put her raffle tickets in envelopes for different pieces, or all for one, or whatever she wanted.

There was enough art for all the kids there; a raucous crazy bunch of kids.

She put all five tickets on a nice mosaic peace sign hanging, and we went back to the cafeteria where we made some more art (we did some landscapes with paper scraps).

Later, they gave Miss K the mosaic to take home – the first “official art” she picked out herself and brought home.

It was a neat evening. I’m glad I said yes. Of course, now, I feel like I should be working and not telling you about all of this; but that’s ok.

How do I tell the universe that it’s ok, I’ve learned that lesson and could we please make this less painful? Specifically finances. I keep shouting on the inside but nobody’s listening!

The kitchen cabinets in front of the sink are messed up. Basically they’re cut from one hunk of plywood. There’s a square “C” and then the center of the “C” is cut in half. Then the whole thing is turned on its side, so the two doors are part of the plywood. The main problem with this is that on both sides of the “C” the hinges have caused the wood to split, and so the cabinet is difficult to open or shut and always feels like it’s going to fall off. Basically I need to replace this front piece, I don’t think reinforcing the wood and using wood putty will do the job I need it to.

Also, the part above the doors is a separate hunk of wood; there’s a seam where it meets the side parts.

It might be easiest to replace this if I cut a new top part, new side parts and attach the side parts back to the top part with those metal brace things you can get to brace wood pieces together. That might be how they did it in the first place, although without the braces. Then re-add the cabinet doors. Although I’d be losing a bit of wood due to the saw blade turning the wood to sawdust in the cut, I think I can accomodate that. However, it wouldn’t give an easy way to keep them closed (I could add those magnetic closers at the top I suppose.

What do you think? Do I need a new tool to fix this?

My favorite joke this year has to be “yeah well in 10 years we’ll be looking back with 2020 hindsight.”

With Miss B turning 13 this year, gifts from relatives have changed dramatically. People have stopped asking me what she wants, have stopped shopping from her Amazon wish list, and have started giving her cash. I’m not sure what I think of this new trend. On one hand, it’s great for the giver and for the thirteen year old. But on the other, it’s annoying to hear “please drive me to Barnes and Noble” when I can barely consider getting myself a haircut. Is that why the cliche for parents is to resent the incessant requests for driving your teenager somewhere? Because the parents are jealous of having some money to spend on yourself? Hmm, maybe more research is required

I’ve also been considering a few things. As Ms B gave me her old iPod when hers got upgraded, I’m listening to more music and even some neat podcasts. I could totally do a podcast — maybe I should give it a shot. But I’m sure it’d be difficult coming up with interesting content for it. On the otherhand, maybe I should read kid’s books and podcast those (hey Mike Mulligan’s Steam Shovel would be a fun little book to read), for .. uh, kids to read along with. Yeah, I know it’s a dumb idea. I’m just not sure where to take it… ESL, maybe?

Miss K is at a stressful age for a father who sometimes just wants to be left alone. She’s determined to get her fair share of time, attention, candy and presents. Sometimes she drives me to the city limits of insanity by climbing into my lap, pushing on me with her feet on my legs and her head under my chin so the chair reclines (either the office chair or the recliner), or asking me to color with her, read her a book, get her some food, find her a kitten, whatever.

Yes, even when I’ve just arrived home from work! Yes, when I’m trying to get some “down time” — yes! When I tell her to go bug someone else! I love her, and I love doing all that stuff with her, but seriously, sometimes daddy’s lap is daddy’s lap!

Anyway, she gets me to the suburbs of insanity, and then she looks up at me and tells me she’s got a secret to tell me. She wants to whisper it in my ear. Gritting my teeth, I bend forward to hear it and what does she say?

“Daddy, I love you. You’re very special to me. Don’t tell anyone else- this is a secret.”

Jeez. Make me cry why dontcha.

Here’s a great thread where someone had a typepad blog where they celebrated their baseball team, switched teams, and the good folks at typepad gave her blog to someone else.

Note that typepad later fixed the situation.

Any time you have your stuff on someone else’s service, you run this risk. This site is on Site 5’s servers, and it’s theoretically possible that someone could pretend they’re me and take control. I can only hope that site5’s support would quickly resolve the issue.

Is it true that girls grow up to marry their dads? To look for, in a partner, similar qualities to what they had in their fathers?

I compare myself to my Dad In Law, Rich, and I see some similarities- we both make sacrifices to “take care of” our families, we’re both engaged with our spouses (and kids). We’re both “family guys” – our aspiration is to take care of our families, not to make a million dollars or rule the world. Of course, there are some differences. He mumbles was in the Navy, for instance.

If this is true- what qualities would the TT or the DQ see in me that she would want to have in a partner? And what qualities do I have in me that I wouldn’t want them to think are appropriate? I don’t (seriously) beat them, for instance. What about you? What do you see in your women and their fathers, and what do you see in yourself?

On reflection, I don’t think this is the first time I’ve contemplated this.

It’s Earth Day! Congratulations, and happy 4,550,000,001’s birthday to Earth. No, really, you don’t look a day over 4,549,999,000.

It’s also my brother’s birthday tomorrow (he’ll be 38, my waist measurement. Weird coincidence, eh?) and my friend Rachel’s birthday tomorrow (she’ll be 40! Happy Birthday, you young chicken, you!).

The job hunt is going. I had an interview yesterday with an interesting company; they do direct marketing of meditation and self-improvement “stuff.” (Yeah, I’m being kind of vague, but it’s ok). Every time I’ve become unemployed, I’ve been impressed at how much energy the job hunt takes. Not only do I have to keep up on my “normal” stuff, but also have to scour the paper, scour the websites, follow LinkedIn pages, follow twitter feeds, check CraigsList and even check up on RentACoder and Odesk jobs.

If I could finagle a grand a week from RentACoder and Odesk (and craigslist gigs), I wouldn’t need to find a job, but I’d need to make damn sure that money was rolling in. But I can’t make sure of it, so I have to find something substantially reliable. It’s frustrating. It’s also frustrating that I haven’t been to a real face-to-face interview since I met Don at Pacific Coast Fruit ten years ago, in a dress shirt that still had ketchup on it from eating lunch at the preschool with my daughter. I feel a little anachronistic in a dress shirt, slacks and a tie; how many programmers wear those to an interview? I don’t know, but I suspect not many. And I fear my ties are a little outdated too. Goodwill isn’t the place to shop for trendy ties.

Anyway; we’re getting along here, and I’ll keep ya posted with any new news.

Speaking of new news, congratulations to my Mother, who passed her Doctorate presentation and will be doing her studies and other doctorate stuff soon. She’ll be known around the house as “Dr Mom.”

To be totally blunt, I haven’t given much thought to “the problem of Israel.” I don’t think about it, I don’t particularly want to think about it, I don’t have much of an opinion on it. I know that there are reasons the US supports Israel. But this should have some interesting fallout. The US Army has revealed that Israel has nuclear weapons. Generally, it’s been handled like gay people in the military; the US doesn’t ask Israel, and Israel doesn’t tell the US if it has nukes. Which has left us in an ambiguous Schroedinger’s Missile state.

However, with release of this report, the US military has confirmed that they do have nuclear weapons, which puts US aid to Israel in jeopardy:

Prohibits most U.S. assistance to any country found trafficking in nuclear enrichment equipment or technology outside of international safeguards. President Jimmy Carter found Pakistan in violation of the Symington amendment in 1979 because of Islamabad’s clandestine construction of a uranium enrichment plant. U.S. aid to Islamabad was possible between 1982 and 1990 only through the use of presidential waivers.

That’s from armscontrol.org, and it covers how we kept aid flowing to Pakistan (and other countries listed on that page) through the use of presidential waivers.

I’m positive that President Obama will do the waiver thing for Israel. I’m not sure how else it’ll play out. It might be interesting for the future of our countries though.

Man, this sucks. I should stick to family stories