Rob and the California George Family

The girls each made a paper chain to hang in their bedrooms. At the end of each day, they cut a link from the chain. When it gets to the end, we leave for vacation. They are pretty excited.

P.S. In case anyone is curious, we will leave for vacation on April 14th whether they have cut the last link or not.

Labels: Vacation

In two weeks, I will be in Sacramento with Hayley and her 4th grade class. The trip should be fun. I went with Bethany and her 4th grade class 3 years ago and had a good time. The trip is similar, but different enough to be interesting. It is an overnight trip on Thursday / Friday. They are two long days with a flight up and back included. However, the trip is a lot of fun.

The funny thing 3 years ago was what the highlight of the trip turned out to be. When we visited the capitol building, we had a chance to meet our state senator and state assemblyman. The state senator visit was ok. The thing I remember the most was a kid asking if he had met Gray Davis (governor at the time). After an affirmative answer, the next question was if they were friends. Gray Davis is a Democrat and our state senator is a Republican, so I was very curious how he would answer this to a group of 4th graders. The answer: "He's not a very warm and fuzzy guy." Pretty good.

Anyway, on to the highlight (for the kids anyway). Instead of our state assemblyman coming down, he sent his Chief of Staff. Why? Because the Chief of Staff attended the elementary school that we were coming from. The kids loved that! They had a ton of questions about the teachers that he had (3 of them are still there), the sports he played, where he lived, etc.

For me, the most fun was panning for gold in the American River on day two. We didn't get much, but there was definitely a visible amount in our little bottles. I didn't get to keep mine though. One of the kids dropped and broke her little bottle of gold on the rocks as we were leaving. I gave her mine. Anyway, it was really cool to me to have this chance to do some "real" panning for gold in an open river without paying someone for the privilege.

This time, we don't get to pan for gold in the river. However, I still think that the trip looks better overall. Some of the boring stuff has been replaced with more interesting items.

Some highlights:
* Paddle Wheel Riverboat Tour of Sacramento
* California State Railroad Museum
* Gold Country Underground Mine Tour
* State Capitol Tour (see how it is different with our new governor)
* Old Town free time (Bethany and I rode a horse and buggy -- Hayley wants to do the same)

Labels: Bethany, Hayley, Rob, School, Vacation

Tonight is the start of the Globe at Night. I referenced this in a prior entry. The chart above shows where Orion will be in the sky here in So Cal. This will be a nice family event that won't take up too much time.

If you are interested in this, here is the URL for this activity: http://www.globe.gov/GaN/index.html

When my alarm clock went off this morning, I was surprised. In my head, I was thinking that it was Saturday. I got over that pretty quickly and realized that it was just Tuesday. However, it made me realize that when I was working really long hours and traveling all the time the days seemed to really fly by. Now that things are getting back down to normal (last week was only 53 hours and trending downward) it seems like life is slowing down. That's a good thing. While I like the weekends as much as anyone else, I don't want my life to always be going by as a blur of activity.

Tonight I will get online to play City of Heroes with my friends again. It is a bad sign when I come home and my family is surprised that I am not bringing work home with me (ok, I brought work home last night -- but not tonight). Even the fact that I have had time to start this Blog and update it fairly regularly is a good sign.

Maybe I'll keep my sanity intact after all.

Labels: Games, Work

Apparently 4 leaf clovers (and clovers with more leafs) are mutants.

I found this information at http://www.fourleafclover.com/5fact.html :

Yes, the 5-leaf clover is a mutation like the 4-leaf clover that does appear occasionally, but less common than the 4-leaf clover. There are 6, 7 and other multiple leaf clovers that sometimes occur.

So, if these clovers are mutants what is their superpower (or have I gotten to much into City of Heroes because I am even asking this question)?

Since I don't know my family's ancestry ("mutt" comes to mind), I will claim Irish heritage for St. Patricks Day.

Happy Happy!
Rob


P.S. I just re-read this and realized (belatedly) that I really like parentheses today. Huh.

This made me smile today. I found it at: http://www.thejokester.net/JokeDayFS.htm

Basic Flying Rules: Try to stay in the middle of the air. Do not go near the edges of it. The edges of the air can be recognized by the appearance of ground, buildings, sea, trees and interstellar space. It is much more difficult to fly there.

I just reviewed my posts and realized that I haven't written anything about Hayley yet. My kids don't read my Blog, so I'm not worried that she will be upset about that. In fact, it is probably just the opposite. Hayley would not like the fact that I write about her (this is probably true of Bethany also). However, like any proud parent I have to share stories sometimes! :-) We'll start simple.

On Tuesday mornings Hayley has chorus practice before school. I normally take Bethany to school and Hayley goes with mom. Bethany stayed home sick today, so I took Hayley instead. We stopped at the grocery store for some donuts (a treat for breakfast!) and then on to school. Since Hayley is in 4th grade now, she does not like me walking her to class anymore. She didn't even want me to help her get her heavy backpack out of the car! The compromise was that I helped her get the backpack out from inside the car and she walked herself into the school. That works.

Yesterday I referenced the "second longest walk" of my childhood. I got curious and decided to use MapPoint to see how long it was. Only 1.1 miles! OK, that is a lot for a 3rd grader by themselves. However, my memory sure made it a much longer walk than that.

The longer walk happened in the summer between 3rd and 4th grade. It felt like a march across the state! My brother (age 5) and I (age 8) were taking swimming lessons at Estancia High School across town. Our grandfather dropped us off. My dad was supposed to pick us up (this was before his accident that left him in a wheelchair for the rest of his life -- another story). However, he was running late. My brother and I waited for what seemed like forever. Based on my distance estimates, I have to realistically say that we were there for no more than 15 minutes. Anyway, we decided that we would help out by starting to walk home. Nothing like the helpful mind of an 8 year old!

We made it almost all of the way home. The route to follow was pretty simple, so there was really no chance of getting lost (abducted is another story). Within 5 minutes walk time of being home, our dad found us. As a parent now, I really appreciate the anxiety my dad had when he couldn't find us. We had walked a route that included some of the busiest streets in Costa Mesa. To us it was no big deal. The total walk was about 3.5 miles in swim suits, towels, and flip flops. It probably took us about an hour. That had to be the worst hour of my dad's life (and he went through a lot).

In hindsight, I did a lot of walking when I was 8 years old -- but not as much as I thought.

In the short time since Shoo got me started on Blogs, I have really gotten into reading them. I like the short tidbits that people post about their lives. It is a great diversion when I need a few minutes between one task and the next. I also like the random "Next Blog" feature to see what else is out there (although there is a lot of advertising and other junk to filter through).

Also, reading other Blogs reminds me of things on my own that I want to write about. For example, Tim wrote about seeing snow in Mountain View today. Similarly, we have snow on the local mountain (Saddleback) here in Orange County and some of the nearby hills. However, I have only seen show really get down to the hills and make a pretty backdrop to South Orange County. That was around 1990. It hasn't been like that since -- only close (like now). I remember a story that my mom told me about snow in Hollywood when she was a little girl. Although it has been really, really cold here before, it has not snowed in my lifetime to my knowledge.

Also, Bob wrote about some memories from childhood. I don't know why, but it reminded me of a story from 3rd grade. I was new to Costa Mesa at the time and still meeting friends (Shoo being one of them that I met then and have known ever since -- Lee was more like 4th grade; but I digress). I lived at one end of the housing tract, my elementary school was in the middle, and one of my friends lived at the far end from my house. One day after school, he convinced me to walk home with him. It was probably a 1/2 hour walk. I called home from there. Boy were my parents surprised!

As a parent today, there is no way that my 8 year old would be out walking the neighborhood without a parent around. Similarly, if I found out that they went somewhere on their own I would go get them immediately. However, (not to get into a "good old days" discussion) my parents told me to walk home. Alone. That was probably the 2nd longest walk of my pre-Boy Scout days. What made it worse was knowing that I was in trouble when I got home. I don't remember the punishment, but I do remember that walk!

Thanks, Tim and Bob, for today's triggers for my own memories.

Labels: Blogging, Family

This sounds like a cool thing: http://www.globe.gov/GaN/index.html

Basically, this group is asking people to record how well they can see the stars for about a week at the end of March. This might be a good excuse for a scout star gazing event. Any excuse to bring out my telescope is good! It's nothing too fancy, but it is good enough to see some interesting things.

As of last night, I have been able to start an official "game night" again. This is something that I had a chance to do in the past, but has been notably missing for about the last 18 months. Lee did a great recruiting job to get me to try out City of Heroes. The game itself isn't as important as the chance to get together online with some friends.

A personal note to Lee: Thanks for sticking with getting me to try CoH. It took over a year from when we first talked about it, but I'm glad I finally made it. Thanks for the emails during my travels too -- they were an important sanity check for me.

I don't want to go too long without an update, but work is busy right now. I am juggling the wind-down of a long term project with a couple of other projects I am helping on. This isn't a bad thing -- it's nice to be able to work on something other than the one project that has dominated the last 14 months of my life.

Time to reminisce. I made a passing reference to this story in a previous posting.

When Andrew was born, he had his mom and I to himself for almost 6 years. When Bethany (child # 2) was born, my wife and I decided to have a 1-night-per-week "boys night out" for Andrew and I. This was an attempt to make sure that he wasn't losing out on time with us due to his new sister.

Boys night out continued for quite a while. It didn't happen every week, but nearly so.

...Time passed...

Bethany is now somewhere between 1 and 2 years old. She is definitely following many of the cliches and stereotypes of being a girl by now. It was amazing to see how she got into picking out her own clothes before she could even walk! Anyway, she is able to walk and has a funny little run with hands down at her side and a kind of waddle to her body.

So one night, Andrew and I are in the living room discussing what to do for boys night out. Bethany gets a sudden look of inspiration on her face. She does her hands-at-her-side waddle/run across the room to us and tosses out this exuberant suggestion with a huge grin on her face:

"How 'bout shopping? That'd be fun!"