Monthly Archives: August 2010

Mailbag

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Whad’ up in FL? Mother Dear isn’t getting any younger. Love her a tad bit more than I hate flying. Just hangin’ with her. Helping her with her new iMac, swapping stories from the last several months, even accompanied her to Ybor City for the Saturday morning Cuban coffee/toast confab with the girlfriends. And there’s no (provable) truth to the rumor that I timed this trip to overlap with the Cal Lutheran college roommate reunion at the crib.

Where are the fitness updates? Stopped moving? Nah, still moving. Weird summer in that regard. One week, no teaching, getting every work out in, pushups, stretching, planking, solid 12-15 hours of swimming, running, cycling. Next week, full-time teaching, missing some workouts (no bike in Eastern WA), cutting others short. So not enough of a rhythm. Zero races and I’m skipping our local triathlon breaking my nine year streak. A couple of new events on the calendar over the next six weeks. Average swimming/running shape, slightly above average cycling shape. Getting soft(er). Niece asked me if I wanted to work out with her today at 1p. Heat index north of 100. I politely declined.

Starting college in a few weeks, top three suggestions? 1) There are power outages, dropped internet connections, empty printer cartridges. Never leave printing until the morning something is due. Even if it’s 2 a.m. the “night” before, print all final drafts before going to bed. You’ll sleep better and “tech glitch” excuses are tired. 2) Backwards plan. Who are you going to get to write recommendations to grad school or other post-grad first steps? Go to office hours with genuine questions about the course content and/or your work in the course and get to know at least one prof a quarter/semester. 3) Study abroad. Bonus suggestion: call or (even better) email your dad regularly. 

Best blog discovery of recent weeks? The best five books on everything.

Considering an iPad?

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1) Read this to decide whether you want to wait for the second generation.

2) If you just can’t wait to be like all the cool kids, buy it here. Free shipping and I think no sales tax.

3) Get this stand. It’s la ultima. I lay in bed, put the groovy stand on groovy torso, and walah, primo pad reading/viewing.

4) And here’s my case if you want to be like the grooviest kid.

Fly Little Bird

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Man enough to admit it. Tearing up listening to Eighteen playing the piano and singing downstairs. Thinking how much I’ll miss that. I’ve been suppressing how much I’m going to miss her daily presence when she leaves for college because the galpal has probably been emotional enough for both of us.

Tired of compensating.

Like the labradoodle, Eighteen is nearly always a positive presence. She was absent from school the day they distributed the “How to be a Surly Adolescence” guidebook. She learned early on to roll with my sarcasm (and return serve). Yesterday she said, “I didn’t know you’re going to Florida next week, I thought you were going to Yakima.” “That’s because you’re a self-absorbed teen, you’re really not expected to know those things.” Warm smile.

I’m going to miss her friends who poured in this week as a wisdom teeth extraction support team. I got them to eat leftover birthday cake and suggested they wash it down with chocolate milk so that they “could just get the freshmen fifteen over with”. Not stopping there, I suggested they go home and set their scales on 15lbs to ease the “psychological transition”. Of course I could only kid because they really could use a few more lbs.

Eighteen never seemed TOO embarrassed by me. She may have even enjoyed having me guest teach in her elementary classrooms and help coach her high school swim team (at least in 9th and 10th grade).

Come on man, toughen up. It’s a part of the natural cycle of life and it sure beats the alternative of being stuck at home without much vision. She’s going to kill it at college and in life. Couldn’t be more proud.

The silver lining is I’m going to savor Fifteen’s next three years. Center of attention. Groovy friends too who are at the age where they sometimes enjoy and always tolerate my antics.

Don’t even want to think about three years from now when she starts charting her own course.

But Will It Make You Happy?

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Title of an excellent article in last Sunday’s NYT with one disruptive “how the heck are retailers going to sell to people if they become more thoughtful consumers who prioritize relationships” thread that detracted from it. That article lead to a Sunday afternoon of blog and e-book reading about minimalism, content I was mostly familiar with already. I continue to be interested in positive psychology and living more simply.

Favorite sentences from the afternoon of reading. From Leo Babauta’s e-book titled “The Simple Guide to a Minimalist Life”. Leo’s Zen Habits blog has 185,000 subscribers. “Plan your ideal day. Then strip your life of the non-essentials to make room for this ideal day, for the things and people you love.”

Okay, I’ll try.

Summer Camp Missive #2

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For this week and next Fifteen is ensconced at a beautiful church camp not far from the Canadian border. No electronics, but we can send email messages. Here’s my second in a series of missives.
Hey, hey, hey. Thanks for the groovy note. When did you start writing so well and get so funny? Glad camp got off to a great start and hope it’s continuing to go well. Today’s game is called, Abbreviation. I got your biggest and baddest bday present today, two tics to SYTYCD. See if you can unravel that one before you’re picked up. Other exciting news, a small package from Norge. Other exciting news, my song writing is progressing very nicely thank you. Here’s a little bit of today’s diddy.
I like that boom boom pow
Them chickens jackin’ my style
They try to copy my swagger
I’m on that next sh*t now
I’m so 3008
You so 2000 and late
I got that boom boom boom
That future boom boom boom
Let me get it now
(*church camp)
Peace out,
Dad

Lance Armstrong

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This just in. “Prosecutors and investigators can corroborate Lance Armstrong’s use of performance-enhancing drugs without relying on testimony from Floyd Landis, an admitted doper.”

I don’t take any joy in (apparently) being right.

For the sake of his phenomenal cancer fund raising activities, I just hope he doesn’t borrow from Roger Clemens, but instead comes completely clean and expresses genuine remorse at not being forthright for so long. Bonus points for making amends with Lemond and Landis.

There’s a chance he may not read Positive Momentum, but even if he does, I’m not optimistic he’ll follow my advice.

Empathy Impaired

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The New York Times’ commentators have been writing a fair amount about how to revive our moribund economy and related issues like consumer and government spending, taxes, and unemployment. Sometimes I find the readers’ “recommended comments” more interesting than the essays themselves. They’re liberal and decidely cynical about life in the U.S. today. Their most common rallying cries are corporate greed, class warfare, out-of-touch politicians, and right-wing media.

Recently, they’ve been most fired up about members of Congress being out-of-touch with ordinary citizens, many who have been laid off, and too many that appear to be entering into permanent unemployment.

The question I haven’t seen asked is how does one, whether a member of Congress, or a college professor, develop empathy for the under-employed or short, medium, or long-term unemployed? The best answer of course is direct personal experience, but giving up one’s job in the interest of greater empathy doesn’t make much sense.

There have to be better ways, whether documentaries, essays, novels, photographs, music, and plays, that can help humanize the out-of-touch among us. The arts seem especially well suited to this task. I wish The Times’ irate, cynical commentators would each choose an art form and begin telling their stories with the out-of-touch Congress as their primary audience.

High School Reunion No Show

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Just missed Cypress High School’s class of 1980 30th reunion. I vaguely remember the 10th and 20th, but I’ve now officially left the stage. I have to confess to an “out of sight for a long, long time, out of mind” mentality. Skimming the reunion website and checking on people’s updated profiles has been sufficient.

I’ve kept up with a couple of friends from high school, but maintaining sporadic long distance relationships isn’t a strong suit.

I’ve lived in a lot of places, traveled far beyond the “Orange curtain”, been extremely blessed to have lived a fulfilling life, and don’t have much need to relive high school.

I don’t remember half of the 700+ graduates when skimming their profiles. It was a large, relatively impersonal suburban high school. My memories of my teachers and classes are vague. I remember sneaking out of English once to get to the golf course early. I remember exploding for five goals against Western in a junior varsity water polo game. I remember getting drunk and hurling in the parking lot at the “happiest place on earth”.

Why bother trying to catch up with 95% of my classmates when they are strangers? My life is and has always been focused on and enriched by family and friends where I’m living at the moment. I’m sure that’s also true for most of the people who attended, so maybe I’m just not as social.

I’ll always enjoy visiting SoCal (especially if my brother ever finishes his house), but it’s in the rearview mirror. Everyone that played in the reunion golf tournament Tuesday is no doubt celebrating that fact.