We had a new water tank installed and the cardboard box from the tank is providing days of entertainment. It is a cubby to hide in. It is a dining room. It is a stage. And that’s a butterfly drawing on her forehead.
Areas of Expertise for the Curtis Household Children
I imagine it is a common occurrence for people who get to spend more time with their children to start to see how damaging their behaviour can be. Hearing Lucy answer back once or twice isn’t a big deal, but when you hear it all day long for several days in a row you realise you have a problem.
So I did what any geek parent would do and went to Amazon.com and browsed the titles on Parenting. I found several books that I liked, nearly all of which were available second hand and cheap. (Aside: I never understood why more people don’t buy second hand from Amazon.com or alibris.com - do the words have less impact when the ink gets old?)
The first title I read was “How to Behave So Your Children Will, Too!” As much as I puked at the title, I liked the reviews it received and the approach it took. The first areas we chose to target are:
- Lucy taking direction without packing her bags and planning her escape from home.
- Otto dealing with issues without turning on his masterful whining at the perfect adult-annoyance pitch.
- Otto expressing frustration with words rather than through the exercise of his considerable hitting ability.
- Lucy and Otto playing well together instead of starting WWE Friday Night Smackdown in the yard.
The first observation we made is how much we have not rewarded good behaviour. The kids will play together well for half an hour, then when they yell I’ll go out and investigate. Even the Navy Seals use positive feedback in their training. (”It pays to be a winner” is their equivalent.) So we’re working hard at catching them doing any of the above four things well and making them feel good about that.
I wanted to buy a baseball bat. I live in America now so I should own a bat. I went hunting on EBay for a cheap bat and found that there’s a market for bats used by professional teams. So I browsed the Mariners section like a good Seattleite and found the ideal bat - one formerly owned by Luis Ugueto. Now Luis barely played for the Mariners and few people remember him. He hit one home run and batted .214 so he didn’t really stress out his bats unless he used them to take out his anger on the water cooler after he got thrown out at first again.
The bat cost $15. It has Luis’ name and Seattle Mariners branded on it. I figure it is worth it.
08
May
The Master Beta CD
LinkedIn sent me a “join my network” mail from a former colleague called Yan. We worked together on a product called Jamaica, which was the most fun I ever had shipping software. The sync system we built and shipped is still in use and its current incarnation is how the iPhone will talk to Exchange to make all you bberry users switch.
Yan’s invite mail contained the following: “How can I forget the MIS Master Beta CD“. Well, what do you expect when you put a crew of childish anti-authoritarians in charge of a release?
08
May
Last Day of semi-Freedom
Today is Lucy’s last day in daycare. From tomorrow on all three kids will be at home with Jean and me. This is an experiment that would be slow to back out of - the waiting list to get into the daycare we just left is many months long.
Now that two parents are at home we are seeing behaviour changes in the children. They are a lot happier, but we can’t tell if this is from all the time we spend fixing various antisocial behaviours or (more likely) just getting more attention.
I do not come from Seattle, rather I grew up in London and Sydney. My childhood memories of London weather are of standing at a bus stop (in a queue) in cold and wet conditions. Summer holidays from school could get hot, but it would also rain a fair bit. The weather was depressing a lot of the time.
When we moved to Sydney it was warmer all year round and when it rained, you’d get soaked in a short time. No sprinking showers there. Summers could get truly hot. Old Sydney houses were not well built for the heat and were not insulated. Summer could get too uncomfortable when you were trying to sleep and it was still over 30 degrees Celcius (86 Fahrenheit).
Seattle has beautiful warm dry summers with long daylight hours. Summer here is just fantastic, although there’s a joke that “Summer is my favourite week in Seattle.” Winter is damp - there are just so many wet days in December, January and February. This keeps the kids inside for too long. For cyclists it isn’t too bad, it never rains that heavily, just for a long time.
The worst thing about Seattle weather is that there are too many days where the kids play inside. The cold temperatures last too late into the year. This morning my son is playing outside and it reads 45 Fahrenheit (about 7 Celsius) on our fancy thermometer. It is sad that it stays cold in May. I’d rather the kids were outside causing mayhem.
And just to prove me wrong our kids have developed the toughness to go outside in this weather in just their underpants, while I’m freezing in three layers.
07
May
Copying Complete
Well I copied all the entries I care about from http://concretebloc.blogspot.com. Ignore the dates on previous posts, they were all written in 2005/6.
07
May
On Your Left
I bought a small throat mic for my Olympus DS-2 voice recorder. I want to be able to talk to it while riding my bike without having to stop and rummage around my messenger bag looking for the recorder. I set the recorder up to be voice activated, put the mic on my t-shirt collar, place the recorder in my pocket and head on out. I am not certain whether I look more suspicious talking into a recorder or just talking to myself.
So I am now listening to the results of my first experiment. I recorded a ride to Microsoft. I didn’t talk much until the end of the ride, where I had a couple of cool thoughts to record. We’ll hear them at the end of the recording.
The recording is 24 minutes long. I know I only spoke (to myself) for about two. I am wondering what the rest of the time is filled with.
0:00 - The unmistakeable sound of me clomping in bike shoes on a softwood floor. I am moving my bike and locking the door. I can hear myself leave the house then go back in to get my helmet. Putting on the helmet makes lots of noise. There’s lots of heavy breathing as I carry my bike down the 45 stairs to the street. I hear myself click into the cleats. This should be over now and on to the good stuff.
4:39 – I get on the road. The sound of the freewheel is loud – it is a Chris King hub that “rolls good with angry bee sound”. As I approach Nickerson I can hear the sounds of the heavy traffic. I push the button for the pedestrian signal. I hear the traffic noise change as I ride across the Fremont Bridge. It isn’t supposed to be recording all this traffic. I must have it set too sensitive.
9:23 – I say “On your right,” as I pass someone.
10:53 “On your left.”
10:59 “On your left.” Ok, I am going to abbreviate this to OYL.
14:08 – OYL
14:30 – I say “On your…” and then it tails off. I think this is because I said it too late and I was past them before I got to the left part. Oh well, it is the thought that counts.
15:06 – OYL
15:34 – OYL
15:53 – OYL
16:35 – OYL
16:55 – OYL OYL OYL OYL OYL OYL.. I am realizing that for most of my ride all I am going to say is On Your Left.
21:45 – The crossing near the old Albertsons goes “ding” to help the people from the nearby old folks home cross the road. This is only a quarter of the way through the ride yet I am near the end of the recording.
24:54 – Recording ends. Aarrgh!
Lesson of the day - most of the time I pass people on their left.
Steve and I are on the phone, talking about a bike ride. “Don’t bring the fixie,” he says. This means he’s going to go fast. We meet up at Gasworks Park and ride along the Burke-Gilman Trail. I’ve ridden the B-G a lot but I still ride there because it is pretty and I’m less likely to get squashed by a car.
The ride has to destination. We just ride. I don’t have any water bottle cages on my bikes so I stop at every water fountain to drink. I know where they are. Steve always offers me his water but I refuse. If I’m going to be dumb enough to not carry water then it is my responsibility to fill up along the way. Water stop number one is just past Ti Cycles, famed for their Titanium bikes, although part of me feels that a Titanium bike is like having unidirectional speaker cables. Get over it.
This ride Steve needs to pay a visit to the bathroom. There’s a park halfway to the top of the lake so we turn into it. I’ve never been here before. This park is on the lake, there’s an area for kids to paddle in the water. There’s plenty of space and not many people. There’s also a water fountain. Another one to add to the list – water stop number two.
I count the gulps as I drink. Twenty gulps. On a hot day I drink thirty. I used to just drink a lot of gulps then break for air. If I’m already breathing hard this doesn’t work so I figured out a system where I gulp, breathe in, gulp, breathe out, repeat. I think I’m odd for doing this, but it works for me.
At the top of the Lake we keep on going. At this point I know I am eating into the afternoon. The ride to the top of the lake and back is about two hours and I haven’t turned around yet. Water stop number three is here, but it is closed for a few months as they renovate the little park it inhabits.
As we keep riding we pass onto the ‘Sammamish River Trail’. This confused me at first. The B-G used to go all the way to Marymoor Park but they renamed it at some point recently and forgot to tell me. So when I passed the sign for the SRT I figured I must have taken a wrong turn and it took me fifteen minutes to unfigure it.
The SRT has much nicer pavement than the B-G. Maybe this is intended to highlight the spiritual differences between the Eastside and Westside, like changes in road surface as you pass from England to Scotland. Although I have driven from England to Scotland, expecting the road to get rough and potholed and inhabited by wild Haggis but instead the road quality improved. The Scots were making McAdam proud.
Water stop number four is a crescent shaped structure with a map of the B-G and SRT inlaid on the concrete outside the toilet block. Two Titanium Serottas are parked there. The Eastside has nice bicycles. Continuing on we pass a salmon watching area. Yes, people are watching salmon swim up the Sammamish River. Good for them. We race by.
Water stops number five and six are by sports fields and close enough together that there’s little need to stop there. We overtake a couple. He’s riding a Davidson, made in Seattle and a nice shade of red. I say “Nice bike,” and ride on. He smiles.
As we get to Marymoor Park we have been gone about two hours, maybe more. I might know where all the water stops are but I don’t bring food either and I have no idea where the food stops are on the SRT. Marymoor Park is near Redmond Town Center and there’s plenty of food there. I didn’t bring a bike lock so one of us will have to guard the bikes while the other gets food.
Despite my hunger we must first find water. Marymoor Park must have water stop number seven, so we ride around and look. We ride into a cluster of baseball/softball pitches and there see something unexpected yet welcome. A Subway. There’s a franchise of Subway in the middle of Marymoor Park. I join the line while Steve guards the bikes from the hordes of thirteen year old soccer girls. One twelve inch meatball sandwich later and I’m fueled enough to head back.
But not fueled enough. At water stop number five is a concession stand that is open. Hundreds of school-age kids and parents are milling around watching various soccer games. I buy chocolate. There are bags of chips sitting out in the open on stands. It remind me of something Kevin’s sister said when visiting us in Seattle and seeing all the bunches of flowers outside Metropolitan Market – if this was Australia they’d all be stolen.
Back on the Seattle side of the lake a pedestrian motions us to slow down. We look ahead and someone is sitting in the middle of the path. A protest? As we pass it becomes clear that a cyclist has knocked down a pedestrian. As we dawdle past he scene two policemen arrive and ask some dude standing there, “Are you the cyclist?” I hear him say yes. We leave the sad scene.
The next few miles are up a gentle slope and we don’t talk much. We maintain our pace up the hill. I can feel it working my legs hard, the effect magnified after four hours of riding, and making me thirsty. In this state I don’t look around at the view or admire the trees or feel the wonder of cycling, I just want a drink. At the top of the hill I smile – water stop number one is close. This is my favourite part of the ride. I’m thirsty, the wind is at my back, I am going downhill towards the water fountain and the track is wide with few pedestrians. Life is good.
Saturday afternoon and I’m on the Gunnar. The Gunnar is my commuter bike, a cyclocross frame set up to be a pothole-diving, car-dodging fast city bike. The frame is in high-visibility black with a couple of dark green bits for hubs, headset and skewers. It looks it came out of some factory in military industrial complex. I ride the Gunnar if it is going to be wet or I have to ride a long way. On Saturday the clouds were thick and the forecast said “Seattle in October”.
I am riding to the Seattle Public Library. If I ride my ddn8r fixie down Dexter I have to spin but on the Gunnar I can change gears to something nice and tall and put the hammer down. As usual, I envision car doors opening into my path as I fly down the hill. Maybe it adds to the thrill.
Downtown I am riding up Fifth Avenue. Seattle is hilly and Fifth is no exception. I get to the front at each stoplight. There’s always an open lane on one side or other and I sneak into it. As the light goes green I sprint off, and I can beat most vehicles. A lot of this sprinting is uphill. I am breathing heavily. I park under the Library by the security station, figuring that should be safer, although having seen ‘Bike Thief’ I have my doubts.
I am twenty minutes early in the lecture room. I figure I should read a book. I have a pannier full of Alain de Botton books and one I haven’t finished yet. But since I am sitting waiting for a lecture by Alain himself, I’m feeling self conscious. If I read “The Architecture of Happiness” waiting for a lecture on the Architecture of Happiness while a giant screen in front of us reads “The Architecture of Happiness” I feel like a sucky teachers pet. I decide that valour is the better part of discretion and pull the book out. I needn’t have bothered, I’m still so wired from sprinting through downtown that I can’t focus on the words. I put the book back and try to relax instead. My efforts are interrupted by a stream of people wanting the seats either side of me. “I have friends coming” I say. I hope they arrive.
Five minutes before the scheduled start I see Alain wandering around. He looks the same as he does on video. Youthful face, always the potential for a bright eyed look. He’s also tall, taller than me. I wonder how someone so tall can come across so soft. Maybe he’s gentle on the TV but a rugby-playing brute offscreen..
The lecture is brilliant. He goes through the content of the book, enlivening it and adding emphasis where he feels it is needed. His timing is spot on – he leaves a photo of a Holiday Inn hotel room on the screen for a while before commenting on it. He describes how it made him feel. Worthless. We signal agreement with our laughter.
Most of these events have one magic element. One thing that sticks in your mind and alters how you see the world. When I saw Curtis White talk he listed his goals in writing as to create something beautiful, to misbehave and to win. I recall his words when I think about what music I want to write or what stories I should tell.
With Alain de Botton the magic moment came when he was describing the walls at Versailles. He showed pictures of their elegant, gold-decorated features. The designs were detailed to a tiny level. The artistry was fine. It was clearly expensive. In my house we choose a paint to colour our walls. On Seattle’s Eastside they don’t even choose a colour, they just pick Bellevue Beige. At Versailles they hire artists and craftsmen to create gorgeous masterpieces on their walls.
Alain’s theory is that the French Kings put up such extravagant walls to help them overcome their fears. And what is the greatest fear of a French King? To be poor! So the walls remind them of their wealth, easing their fear. This was magic for me since I have been trying to understand people’s actions in terms of what they are trying to achieve. There may be times when I’ll learn more trying to figure out what they are scared of.
The lecture ends and I line up to get my books signed. I brought four of them, three of which are second hand library copies that cost me a couple of dollars each. I don’t tell this to Mr de Botton. If he examines the covers he’ll think I nicked them from libraries around America and moved to Seattle to avoid prosecution. Alain signs my books and we exchange small talk about Australia. Kent gets a book signed (How Proust can Change Your Life). Kevin didn’t bring any books, although he may have more of de Botton’s books than Kent or me.
We head to the Lighthouse coffee shop in Fremont. Riding up Fremont Avenue on a geared bike is easier than on the ddn8r but that ease means I work out less and feel less achievement when I get to the top. Do I ride everywhere on a fixie just to make it more or a challenge and more of a reward? If so, why don’t I leave the bike home and run everywhere? In heavy boots. To resolve this I am going to choose a transportation method based on what feels right. If the journey fits the Gunnar, I’ll take it and be happy despite lowering my technical difficulties.
At the Lighthouse a lot of conversation is on how people act to help cope with fear. We all wonder what the fears are that drive our actions. I haven’t got far yet. I think there’s a fear of wasting my life that is in heavy conflict with a fear of being bored. The conflict arises when my boredom makes me want to fill my life with small pleasures. These eat away at my time and I don’t achieve anything big. I’ll be pondering this for a while yet.
