Recently in the "Family" category...
I’ve finally finished with the photos from Steve and Rachel’s wedding. You can find them on Flickr.
During the wedding, Julian was also wandering around with a camera and captured this one of me! Nice shot, little dude.
It’s unusual if I head to Seattle twice in a month, but twice in one day? Entirely uncharacteristic.
Saturday started off normally for the Lacey family with a trip to Arena Sports in Redmond for Soccer practice. Julian runs around playing soccer and complaining that he can’t score a goal (on his own, he’s got pretty good skills), whereas Jazzy really gets into the two year old class.
As soon as that was over it was a quick trip home for a snarnie and juice and Julian and I headed over to Seattle for the 2007 Bolla Grape Stomp at the Festa Italiana at the Seattle Center.
You see, my pal Andy had signed myself, himself and herself up to compete. Team name? Grape Balls of Fire.
We were in the first heat and won! Astounding. The incumbents were in our heat and we beat ‘em!
After hosing ourselves down - it’s a messy business, Julian and I took the winnings and headed over to the Children’s Museum for an hour or so.
Fast forward a few hours and I found myself heading back over to Seattle, this time solo, for a gig I’d been looking forward to for a while.
The Arctic Monkeys. Not a bad performance - great lightshow, but the acoustics really sucked. The vocals were bouncing all over the place. If you haven’t heard them yet, go and pick up a CD now.
Probably the nicest surprise of the gig were the supporting act, VoxTrot - great energy. They really engaged the crowd - unlike the Monkeys.
Sadly, I felt that the Monkeys were just going through the motions.
Last night I found myself back at the hotel (I’m in Mountain View at the moment), and called home to chat to the family units. Julian has taken to answering the phone this trip, which was really cool. I would obviously rather be at home, but to hear his voice saying “Daddy, I gotta tell you something, I love you”, really warms you deep down…
Anyhow, Nabila came on the phone and informed me that dinner was ‘sausages and chips’.
That ‘sausages and really good fries’ to you Americans.
I got a real craving. I was in California. There’s gotta be a British pub around here somewhere.
Then I remembered that back in 1996 I visited some transplanted brits that were living in Cupertino and that we went to a British pub.
That pub can’t be far from here.
Out came the iPhone and Google maps, whereupon I found The Duke Of Edinburgh. That’s it! And it’s under a mile from the hotel.
So I tootle along and it’s exactly as I remembered. Felt wallpaper, east-end feel and everything!
After a perusal of the menu I settle on a starter of two warm scotch eggs with mustard followed by two bangers with heaps of fried onions in a sesame seed bun.
Divine!
The scotch eggs were perfect. I don’t think I’ve had one for about ten years and these were incredible. The sausage inna bun? Well, it looked like heartburn waiting to happen, but at the same time looked gorgeous.
I ate it.
I was in heaven.
I like this place. Squint and you’d believe you were in the east end of London. The accents of those around me made me feel cosy.
Highly recommended.
Fast forward to 5am. Heartburn city…
Oh, and did I mention that as I walked into the place, what must have been an aircraft carrier sized bird dropped the hugest load on me?
I guess being shat on by a bird really is good luck.
Dadcentric has the details. Read it. You’ll thank me.
Tonight I feel like I live in a community more than ever before.
Up until last week I lived on 8th Street South in Kirkland, right next to the Little League baseball fields - the street is part of a Kirkland known as the Everest Neighbourhood.
Recently, longtime neighbours of ours, the Aubrey’s, decided that it was time to downsize after living here since 1972 and raising their kids in their house on 8th. They applied to subdivide their land, but permission came with the stipulation that 5th Avenue South that connects 6th to 7th should be extended through to 8th - obliterating a footpath and lovely area of the neighbourhood in the process.
Not to mention the fact that commuter traffic generated by such a cut-through would destroy the quiet and kid-friendly street one block west.
You can read more about this at the Kirkland Courier’s site and this map will show you what I’m talking about.
An appeal was lodged and tonight a quasi-legal hearing was held at Kirkland City Council. It was quasi-legal in the sense that the council members were effectively judges and jurors on the issue and were not allowed to hear any arguments about the case beforehand. Arguments would be presented for and against and entered into the record and most frustratingly, audience members had to be quiet and respectful - no clapping and no standing up and shouting “WTF!”.
You can understand that I was sitting on my hands and biting my tongue throughout the whole proceedings.
There were many empassioned arguments including one by a neighbour who had done some severe homework, turning the city’s own planning policy against itself.
So many friends from the neighbourhood showed up. Many with kids. Everyone supporting the appeal. Did I mention that 7th Street has almost forty kids under ten years of age living on it? It’s an old school neighbourhood with young parents; kids playing on the street side of their houses with other kids; neighbours chatting and doing favours for each other.
Community.
A community that would have been destroyed by a short-sighted, follow the rules, planning policy.
The end result? A unanimous vote by the council1 in favour of our neighbourhood.
Surrounded by neighbours, I have never felt so much a part of a community.
Rock on.
1 Incidentally, there is a certain council member who urgently requires that a bureaucratic stick be surgically removed from their arse.
So we’ve actually moved in to our new house and now I’m surrounded by unpacked boxes, all alike.
A prize to the first person to guess the reference…
House warming occurs as soon as I get the plasma on the wall…
Hey, so it’s a different day in the US than the UK, but anyhow, Happy Mother’s Day Mum!
Also interesting as far as coincidences go is that today is my Mum’s birthday as well as being Mother’s Day in the US.
Randomly interesting is that I was actually born on Mother’s Day… Of course that means that I’m my own best present to my Mum. Heh :-)
One of Julian’s school friends had a birthday party today - and not at the usual sort of places either!
The party was at the Woodinville Fire Station - what an incredibly brilliant idea!
The day started out in the fire station’s classroom when Lieutenant Davis showed a kid friendly instructional video and then one of the Fire Fighters donned all of his gear, including the breathing apparatus. To be quite honest, this was the first time I had seen a Fire Fighter fully kitted up, so I asked how much it all weighed. About one hundred pounds apparently, but much heavier when it all gets wet…
However, Lieutenant Davis had an alteria motive for doing this. Apparently a big problem with rescuing kids from a burning building is that a Fire Fighter can appear quite scary with all their gear and their voices sounding Darth Vader’s, plus the fact that the kids are already freaked out by the fire. Sometimes they run and hide from the very Fire Fighter that is attempting to rescue them…
So he got on hands and knees and crawled around in front of the kids, letting them hear his weird voice and having them touch his hand.
That one thing was probably the most valuable part of the day.
Anyhow, after that everyone got to go outside, play with fire hoses and sit in fire trucks. We also got a great tour around the station, including the dorm rooms and gym (which included a large plasma and an Xbox 360).
A great day, topped off with them extending the ladder truck’s one hundred foot ladder whereupon one of the Fire Fighters climbed all the way to the top!
Superb!
Man, this just sucks.
She had raised her daughter for six years following the divorce, shuttling to soccer practice and cheerleading, making sure schoolwork was done. Then Lt. Eva Crouch was mobilized with the Kentucky National Guard, and Sara went to stay with Dad.
A year and a half later, her assignment up, Crouch pulled into her driveway with one thing in mind - bringing home the little girl who shared her smile and blue eyes. She dialed her ex and said she’d be there the next day to pick Sara up, but his response sent her reeling.
“Not without a court order you won’t.”
Within a month, a judge would decide that Sara should stay with her dad. It was, he said, in “the best interests of the child.”
So today we bought a new house. Or at least we put in an offer on one that was accepted!
We’re only moving one block away from where we currently live and some people consider that as odd, but I consider it as “Hey, we love this area, dumshit, we just need some more room”.
And now we start the process of moving into a new home, improving our current place for sale, selling it and being happy…
Anyone want to buy a wonderful home in Kirkland?
Recently (i.e. it seems like forever), the boy has been testing my patience more and more - to the point that I just lose it and want to curl up in a ball because I can’t react like a man would to another man winding him up in a similar fashion…
Along comes the wonderful ParentHacks with a link to Tips For Controlling Your Temper. Wonderful! Especially the link to ‘The Problem’ is the problem — not the kid:
When I have a problem that concerns one of my kids (meaning: When I want them to do something that they refuse to do), I see that I have a choice. I could visualize my child standing on the other side of a line, next to “The Problem”, with me yelling across the line, “Hey, you better solve “The Problem.” Instead, I get myself to stand next to my child, with “The Problem” alone on the other side of the line, with me putting an arm around my child, saying “Hey, you and me, we’re gonna defeat “The Problem” together.” I find that this attitude seems to make my kids feel better about themselves. It minimizes/eliminates shame.
This approach is actually working well. I am so in debt to the ParentHacks folks that anytime they’re in the Seattle area, beers are on me!
I can’t think of anything interesting to say. Call it writer’s block, call it brain stuck in writing C++ instead of english.
Well actually, I wish I’d been at GDC, it looks like Kim had fun.
So, in payment for my awful writing habits recently (and just for Karen), here’s a picture of my daughter taken during my Mum’s recent visit…
Just go and subscribe. You know you want to.
After all - who has time to work out when you’re newly married? The year after my wife and I got married, the only activities we did in the apartment were have sex and eat. We’d go on Amazon and buy KY Jelly and a deep fryer. At one point, I think we subsisted on hot dogs for an entire month. A few months after that, we lived off Popeyes fried chicken.
Comic relief for the paternally challenged.
Please go and subscribe to Chocolate Makes It Better - tales from an Aussie dad. At times touching, at times rip roaring funny.
When talking about how weekends are for family time:
Nope. Doesn’t always happen like that at our house. It’s more like sweat your arse off vacuuming, trying to fit in 5 mins to take a dump in peace and kids screaming, teething and throwing hard plastic toys at their sisters.
Subscribed.
Well, we lost power at about 10pm on Thursday night and it finally came back on at around 3am this morning.
But we’re lucky.
We live pretty close to a substation, plus a PSE repair guy lives on our street (though I’m not sure if that had anything to do with it…) and our power is back. But I just nipped out in the car to head to the local safeway which is running on a generator, and nobody else in Kirkland appears to have power.
Yesterday it was out everywhere. Kirkland, Bellevue, Redmond, you name it.
Our friends Dawn and Darwin in another part of Kirkland don’t have power, so they’re planning on heading over here with the kids.
But I still feel lucky.
One of our neighbours lost their roof. Another had an Atlantic Cedar come down on their garage, narrowly missing the house. It took their power and phone lines with it.
Last night all four of us humans plus the dog slept in the one bed after cooking dinner and heating water on our barbeque’s single burner - handily we had a full tank of propane.
So, we’re fine.
And we still feel lucky.
Update: Check out this great post by Joshua Allen. It’ll give you a better insight as to what was going on than I can.
Also, we spent most of yesterday listening to NPR (KUOW) and KOMO 1000 on the our portable radio (with handily stock piled batteries), and most of today watching the news after the power came back on.
I tell ya though, listening to the radio all day (and a lot of the night), especially NPR, was a treat.
Anyhow, impressions? Yes, it really was as Joshua described. I was sickened by the dude selling gas at $15 a gallon (a mark down from $25…) I was also briefly worried about running our Christmas decorations once the power came back on in our little oasis in Kirkland, fearing that people driving by might take it as some sort of affront.
Anyhow, Joshua’s post sums it up nicely. It makes you wonder what would happen if the shit really hit the fan…
A friend of mine, Kevin Kennedy, captured this photo of me at the previously mentioned holiday party. Kevin is a D70 guy… He’ll upgrade soon :-)
Love it.
Julian loves looking at our pictures on Flickr. We also use the site as a distraction when he’s getting uppity.
“Want to see some trains?”
“Yeah!”
And off I go to Flickr for a tag search and some happy browsing with the kid. Normally though, he’ll see something and point to it on the screen with his finger.
Another hobby of his is climbing into either his mother’s desk chair or mine, and “hitting letter H”. ‘H’ is his favourite letter.
This evening, however, I was doing some video transcoding on my machine and didn’t want him touching anything.
“Go and mess with your mother’s computer”, says I.
Up he bounces onto her chair and grabs the mouse and starts pointing, using the mouse and on-screen cursor, at pictures on our Flickr site which happened to be in the browser.
He pointed to one he liked, so I said “make it bigger”.
And he clicked.
I’m astounded.
“Show me a big picture of Julian”, I asked, whereupon he starts using the mousewheel to scroll the window, mouses over to a little picture of him in the sidebar and clicks again.
“It’s me!”, he says.
Wow. A combination of observation of us working and playing around on a machine at daycare and it just clicked for him. So to speak.
It also made me realise how important the mousewheel is for a kid. He doesn’t have the fine motor-skills yet to reliably to click and drag a scrollbar, but he can sure use a mousewheel to scroll.
Mind you, the dude is three years old and using a laser-precision wireless mouse on a dual-core 64bit AMD desktop, hooked up through an nVidia GeForce 7800 to a 24” LCD flat-panel.
The first machine I played around with to any extent was a KIM-1 when I was seven…
‘And you try and tell the young people of today that… they won’t believe you.’
This afternoon one of the powerlines on our street came down, dropped on two cars, sparks everywhere, flames, burning cars, tires melted to the sidewalk, etc…
Not your everyday occurrence.
This didn’t affect the power to our house, but the power company switched it off anyway while they made repairs (which involved fire engines, lots of trucks, inspection of poles, etc…)
I went home early, before Nabila got home with the kids, as I wanted to get the front door unlocked (obviously the garage doors aren’t going to open) and make it easy when bringing the kids home to an unfamiliar, dark environment.
I brought out the candles and lit them all around our house. It was really quite nice. Shortly after I got it all set up, Nabila and the kids arrived and we had some fun with no electricity - just us, talking and playing with flashlights.
We then went out for dinner. Well, Nabila, Julian and our neighbour did, Jasmine was playing up - she was just plain tired, so her and I took off and left the others to eat the good stuff at the Yarrow Bay Grill. Jasmine and I headed to the office and I fed her some food, let her sit on my lap and gradually fall asleep with her head on my desk while I wrote code.
At 9pm, Jasmine and I headed back to the restaurant to pick everyone up and then we all made our way home.
The power was still out, but we lit the candles again, talked, played and had fun.
At 10pm the power came back on.
“Hey Julian, was that fun or what?”
“I like it. Can we do it again?”
Nabila and I agreed that from now on, once a week, we’re going to turn everything off. No lights. No computer fans. No random beeping.
Just candles and talking.
Does the boy have it, or what? :-)
The blogging has been light over the past week due to something I’ll be hopefully posting about tomorrow, and the fact that my sister, Sue, has been in town for the past week.
Sue came out from the UK to visit us, and it sure has been fun. Quite a trip for just a week, but she got to see her niece for the first time and I took the week off to spend with her. During the week we took a little trip to Gig Harbor, and stopped off at the Tacoma Narrows Bridge’s viewing area to view the construction.
Btw, I’ve finally added pictures of last weekend’s fun to the related post.
