Intermission -- let's all go to the lobby....

I've said enough here for now. Once upon a time, this was an effective way to communicate outbound with my circle of people about my family. It grew out of an email newsletter I used as a way to keep everyone updated on C's cancer battle. It continued into a phase where the family worked to rebuild, recover and find a new normal.  Inbound communication *from* my people, however? Not so much.

In the past year, there has been, it seems, increasingly less to say here. Not that there's been less going on, but that the blog format just didn't seem as relevant any longer. This has been like an open diary. I'm not feeling like I'm in a place to do that right now.

So, I'm going to take a break from this. I won't shut down the blog. As an online multimedia paper trail for a crucial period in our lives, this blog is still relevant. But if you're reading, do expect me to be quiet here for some time. My guess is that very few people are still engaged with me here at all, making this an exercise in self-indulgence. Right now, I have more important issues to resolve. Respectfully.

Connect with me on FaceBook in the meantime.  I expect that my FaceBook activity will likewise change for a while, but I will continue a presence there during the intermission.

I guess that's an appropriate metaphor -- where as this online journal has been the theater of my life, FaceBook has been the lobby - close to the action but separated, and filled with a lot more chatter.

So, yes. See you in the lobby for a while...

Trying to Hunker Down

The family’s working to hold a rhythm…and strengthen it.

Over the summer, we did a LOT of Hot Air Ballooning related stuff. Then, in the past few weeks, we’ve been working on the Stark house to prepare it for sale. All this is good, but we have a behavior pattern that has kept us out of the house most of every day, seven days a week. That’s starting to change a little. Here’s what’s up:

C:

• Working on her health and fitness. She’s been exercising and walking. Lots of walking. Daily. She’s constantly pushing her body up to her anaerobic threshold, and striving not to cross over. She has made it her mission.
• Actively changing her diet. This continues as well. She has support in the family.
• Practicing an “I can do it myself” attitude every day. C has told me that she’ll set up her own cell phone for email access, and connection to her bluetooth hands-free devices. While these tasks are well inside my strengths, I don’t necessarily help her build her own skills if I just do it all for her. So I’m willing to back off. Others build their skills through necessity and practice. That’s how I built mine.
• Because Moms need day’s off too, we’re trying to give C a change of pace at some point in the weekend…something she can point to as a ‘day off’ or a ‘break’ from the monotony. I get it.

R:

• We talk time management every day. Not a lecture or a scolding, but we sit down with R’s school planner and his homework assignments, and we discuss how to manage time to achieve goals. For R, it takes this kind of daily attention. BUT, what’s gratifying is that his results are much, much better when we do take the time. AND, the proactive time costs me less emotional energy than the crisis management that happens the other way ‘round. R is learning there’s another way to do things than the crisis management method.
• Boy Scouts and Fencing continue. Monday, Tuesday and Thursday evenings. We try to set our clocks by those events. R is stepping up his activity within the troop. Now that he’s almost a Star Scout, and he’s learning to manage his own calendar, he’s showing up for the optional things like Eagle Service Projects, and earning his stripes as a troop leader, not just a junior-level kid in the troop.

M:

• Ballet and ballet rehearsals. Three days a week – Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday.  M is in the same class as last year, and is rehearsing for the same part in The Nutcracker as last year. Because she’s done this before, and is concentrating on mastery/perfection instead of learning it all for the first time, she seems much less stressed than before.
• Because homework is rarely an issue for M, she gets more time to ‘chill’ and play. She did a lot of that this weekend, spending social time with D and her dear old Dad. She went shopping with D and C on Saturday.

N:

• With the turn back inside for winter, I’m organizing a little. Stepping in to domestic duties on weekends as well. This weekend, I cooked dinner on both Saturday and Sunday, put down the primer coat of paint in the powder bath, and had a chance to follow the OSU football game on the radio. It was actually quite relaxing. In return, C got a day off on Sunday to ‘check out;’, and spend the day doing a complete wardrobe audit in her closet.
• I’m cooking a bit more. First, I enjoy it. Second, I get to change up the menu a little. Third, I get to show support for C’s vegetarianism by showing I cook appropriately for her without being reminded.  Mid afternoon on Sunday, C had worked hard on her closet until she ‘bonked.’ She hadn’t eaten, and had neglected to take her meds. She asked me to cook some white fish for her. I countered that getting the fish thawed, then cooked, would take a long time and that I could make her egg white huevos rancheros in five minutes or less. She looked at me dubiously, but when I made good on my promise and delivered her a plate of steaming huevos, she was grateful.
• As for me, I’m working on locking onto my respectful treatment of others. Regardless of what happens, I have to hold on to that as inviolable. I’ve not been very good at doing that in recent months. I’m making that my rhythm – respect and compassion.

D:

• Our long-term exchange student, D is from Taiwan. He tested right out of the PIA English preparation courses, and immediately started attending classes at Marylhurst.
• D is finding his rhythm as a college student, attending class on Tuesday, Thursday and Friday, mostly in the evening. He has four days off each week. This allows him to get his studies done, and also keeps him around the house a lot.

Teddy and Cats:

• They’re learning to get along. Teddy doesn’t chase the cats; he greets Shadow with a nose-kisss in the morning. Sam’s slower to adapt, he doesn’t like the dog in the same room, but no longer freaks out.
• Teddy is learning to follow commands from everyone in the family.
• Teddy has transitioned to sleeping with Ryne… though some nights Teddy is just too rambunctious at bed time for this to be possible. Most nights, though…

We’re looking for a rhythm…I’m thinking I want to just settle into a six week rut, up to the holidays, then settle into a six week rut to spring break and make the drive to Phoenix as we planned. That’s what I’m aiming for…

Hey, you know what? Teddy might just be able to make the trip to Phoenix with us. I have to think about that a bit…\

Note To Self

C has been Facebooking in recent weeks.

She’s also been working on becoming more “herself”. For her, this means:

• dietary adjustments back to vegetarianism
• adjustments to bring more exercise into her daily rhythm
• changing some of her approaches to guiding, correcting and providing feedback to the children
• a concentration on making sure she’s surrounded by respectful dynamics – to her, from her, between others near her

She’s working on her thinking. She’s working on her surroundings. I’m inspired by her work, and trying to follow suit. It isn’t always easy. That, in itself, uncovers where I need to pay attention to my own “self”.

The Secret Lives of Cancer Survivors

I just came across this Article on Breast Cancer and the impact on womens’ sense of sexual wellness. The article uses phrases like “sexual problems” and I couldn’t help feeling like the author is about 24 years old, single and has no difficulty finding a date. Judging from her FaceBook profile, I’d say I was pretty darned close. Marissa, if you happen to see this, the 45 year old you will look back on this article and scold the twenty-something you for letting your youthful sense of immortality sneak in to this article. You wrote it like you’re talking about your grandmother. Then again, maybe you were… I should grant you that room for grace, as I don’t know you.

Nonetheless, the articles on this study show a number of things:

1. 7 of 10 breast cancer survivors see a negative change in their sex lives after the cancer.
2. Changed body image means that most cancer survivors feel less appealing. (Surveys of the survivors’ partners did not corroborate this, however).
3. The post cancer drugs (Tamoxifen seems to be one among them) are huge contributors to the loss of sexual interest.
4. Chemotherapy made the sexuality issue worse at a uniform rate across all patients, regardless of surgery type, etc.
5. Treating reduced sexual desire is done through counseling.

About 200,000 women are diagnosed with breast cancer every year in America, and more successful treatments are creating more survivors. In the United States, there are 2.4 million breast cancer survivors, many of whom will be facing the side effects.

I’ll spare you the specific details, but it’s safe to say that this cancer survivor partnership has experienced what this study is talking about.It’s very real.

Here’s the big “however'” thought, though…

Just being aware of what this study contains, C has become much more aware that she’s not alone in this battle. She has a list of things she “hates” about herself post-cancer. Many of them can be tied back to the issues on this study – body image concerns, physical changes, wanting to go back to who she used to be and being unable to reconnect with that person…

Knowing that she’s not alone, and that other members of the sisterhood are doing the same thing? It doesn’t make it better, but it does make it no longer about her specifically.

Separate from the Australian study mentioned above, here’s another resource from oncolink.com discussing how women react to their sexuality after cancer

Teddy is Home

It's been a couple weeks that Teddy the Black Lab has been part of our family. A rescue dog, we took him in on an interim basis, while another family prepared for him. To be fair, we *did* tell the rescue people at Fences for Fido that we might opt to keep him. They were okay with that.

Well, as of yesterday morning, Teddy is now a permanent member of our family. We decided Monday morning. Teddy, apparently, celebrated by getting hit by a car later that morning. Yep. Welcome to the family!

I've facebooked about Teddy a little - pics mostly. Here's where I'm writing something a bit more thoughtful. What with him becoming a family member and all.

Teddy came to us excited and excitable. I hesitate to say scared; more like he was so attention starved that he'd love-lunge at anyone and everyone. His tail would wag the dog, he was so happy to interact. That much boundless enthusiasm was also easy to mistake as a threat. I think (but don't know for sure) that his previous family couldn't see the friendliness, just bounding nature. They apparently separated him from the family rather than including him. That only made matters worse.

We included him right away. He was so happy to be allowed to roam free in the house that he followed me everywhere the first couple days. When I took my shower, I had to leave the shower door open just enough for him to stick his head through. He had to be close.

He knew his commands. He heeled, came and sat. But he needed firmness and patience to do so -- just because he was so excited to GET attention that he forgot to PAY attention. Getting him to respond to his commands was slow, but he's steadily better.

He SOOOO loves to play. He hasn't gotten the running/bounding play out of his system quite yet. In fact, he needs to play this particular game a lot more so as to satisfy his pent up need and, hopefully, move past it.

Teddy joined us on pretty short notice. That first night, we had just a harness and a leash, plus his blankets and toys from his previous home. He was EVERYWHERE. he wanted behind EVERY door. He wanted to bound and patrol every square inch. He was nearly frantic but excited. The dog crate wasn't delivered yet, and his scratching behavior meant that we couldn't use a bathroom as a makeshift crate. So, that first night, I slept on the couch, with Teddy on a leash, lying on the floor next to me, with my hand in constant contact with him. In fact, if I moved my hand for any reason, Teddy got antsy, and woke me up. So I must have slept a couple hundred 3 minute cat naps that night. But, we got through it. And Teddy was calmer in the morning.

Each day he got calmer and calmer. We learned that Teddy likes walks. We learned that Teddy doesn't go far, and returns home quickly and easily...except when we NEED him to obey our command to come home <grin!> We learned that Teddy is skittish about cars, and behaves unexpectedly around them. We also learned that Teddy doesn't see roads as a barrier whatsoever (that's a learned human trait, clearly).

We then promptly got ourselves a dog crate and took Teddy camping in the High Desert of Oregon for nine days.

That trip bonded him to us pretty quickly.

The drive was an interesting one. Excitable as he was, Teddy wanted to climb into the drivers seat with me. It took a little coaxing to convince him that sitting on the floor between the front buckets in the van, and leaning his nose against the crook of my elbow would be sufficient. By the time we got to Salem, however, Teddy had decided that was an okay compromise. But he owned my elbow, just so you know.

Without a fence or containment system while camping, we had to build a level of trust pretty quickly. Teddy showed that he was willing to stay nearby, and that he'd not roam far. Since we had the whole campground to ourselves for most of the time, this worked out pretty well. The whole group could come and go as they pleased; Teddy would generally stay within 50 feet or so of whomever was showing the most action or movement. He started on a lead line - which irritated him and inspired him to bark - but as we learned to trust each other, he was off the line more and more. Some mornings, I just put him on the leash and took him with me wherever I happened to be -- cooking the pancakes, cleaning dishes, going to the bathroom, whatever.

In fact, going to the bathroom is a good measure for how he calmed down, connected to the family and demonstrated his intelligence.

When he first came to join us, a closed door triggered barks and immediate door scratching. That behavior was still present when we went camping. The first morning in camp, I took Teddy on a leash to the nearby pit toilet facility. Inside the building we went, and I locked the door behind us. The facility was handicap accessible, so there was plenty of room. but as soon as the door closed, Teddy got nervous. He barked, He scratched at the door. He wanted out. And, he wanted in at the same time. He just didn't want to be constrained is what is was.

Well, the second day, after a day of some free roaming, and snow play, we did the same drill. Teddy and I left the tent and headed to the pit toilet. Teddy did his business on the way, then hesitated a few seconds before agreeing to go into the toilet with me. He whined, but didn't bark. He scratched, but less than before.

On the third day, Teddy did his business in the same spot, then immediately started walking to the pit toilet without my lead. We went in. he whined a little, but did not scratch.

On the fourth day, Teddy would wait a little impatiently, but would be quiet throughout the duration.

It just kept going from there. By the end of the week, Teddy could generally be trusted to be non-threateningly calm when approaching a stranger. I say this carefully: he was still boisterous and puppy-like, but not so enthusiastic as to resort to lunging and jumping. This was great. Teddy could be trusted to stay around camp and to return to camp when called back. Without cars in the vicinity, this was very easy to work with (except for the car issue back at home, this arrangement would work in Portland too, Except...)

We learned that Teddy is amazingly vocal. He does have different sounds he uses for different meanings. After a couple days, I could tell when he was asking for food and water, versus when he was notifying us of a full bladder. The danger bark was clearly different from the welcome bark. It got pretty easy to read his meaning after a while.

And, he was so absolutely eager to please us. We clearly engaged him at his level much more readily than he'd experienced heretofore. He was only too happy to oblige and to conform. We have photos (posting to the blog separately) of R and Teddy frolicking along the edge of the lake. The scenes were the essence of "a boy and his dog" in the woods together. Teddy followed along with R as his trusty companion tirelessly.

Driving home, Teddy was all too happy to lay down on top of R's feet in the middle seats, and sleep. My elbow belonged to me again. R's feet? Teddy had traded up...

Upon our return home, Teddy has been more than acceptably calm. He's energetic. He's a puppy. He's nowhere near laconic. But he is calm, and he does collaborate and integrate into our family.

Except for cars.

Monday morning, Teddy bounded out the open front door before any of us could catch him. Running around the front of the house like he was camping again, oblivious to the unique dangers presented by a busy street during the morning drive, Teddy bolted in front of a car and got hit.

He's okay. An evaluation visit to the vet, some muscle relaxers/anti-inflammatories, and some rest and he'll be fine. Just two smallish abrasions on the outside, no apparent internal damage. He's a member of the family now.

The same day he collided with the car, our previously installed invisible fence containment system was put back on line. We haven't completed the training to the fence yet, but Teddy now wears a collar and will soon have free reign of 12,000 square feet of yard and forest. He won't be suffering.

Welcome to the family, Teddy. You found your home.

School Starts

The 2010-2011 School Year began yesterday. R is officially in the seventh grade, and M is in the fourth. For R, this represents the end of a four-plus year effort to roll him back a grade to his appropriate age*. R is starting the school year off his ADD meds. We'll see how he does. We all agreed that, if he can function as well or better without the meds, we won't take them any more. So far, no calamities...

The first week is always a bit crazy... the school bus schedule changed. The bus driver didn't adhere to the new schedule, AND didn't know where the designated bus stop was. Class assignments were a little different than expected. C was there yesterday to work out all those details.

To top that off, Ballet class started at OBT on the same day. We went from the Labor Day holiday to a full-blown School day on Tuesday, replete with class, ballet and fencing. It was like our summertime hammock got launched off the aircraft carrier using the catapult.

Our short-term exchange student also started school on Tuesday. After class, he went with class friends downtown to Pioneer Square. No problem except that he took the wrong bus home and, while he got to within a mile of the house, he couldn't find his way for the last bit of the trip -- I picked him up at 9pm from a transit center that was the end of the line for the bus route he took. We worked out the details for next time, though.

The dog, Teddy, decided to bolt out the front door as C was going to pick the kids up from school, too. So the dog's roaming the neighborhood, C *has* to leave without delay, and I'm 25 miles away at work. The good news is that Teddy isn't really a *roamer*, he's more of a full-acre-of-territory kind of dog. When he realized nobody was chasing after him, he went home and sat on the front porch, waiting. Dave stopped by and let him back into the house. Crisis averted.

Of course, this is the same day that the kitchen sink clogs up, allowing the dishwasher to overflow onto the kitchen floor...while nobody is home. Thankfully there wasn't that much water.

So, it was controlled chaos yesterday. Typical for a first day back to school. Especially one that catapulted like this year's first day did... we did okay.

======

* See, R's birthday lies right on the cutoff date between grades. R attended Kindergarten early at the Creative Children's Center way back when. When it came time to enter school, we had a choice of Kindergarten again, or First Grade. We chose First Grade because R needed the academic stimulation, and we took the risk that he'd be almost two years younger than the other kids in the class at neighborhood school. We'll, by mid-year in Second Grade (when he *should* have been a First Grader age-wise), R was doing 5th grade level work in some subjects. That's when we started learning about Access Academy.

Now that R is at Access, he's surrounded by like-talented kids, and in a program where he no longer needs to be moved ahead for academic stimulation. Access slowly rolled him back into the class with his appropriate age, and as of last spring, made his grade level official. R is now right where he belongs for his emotional abilities.

Loose Goose Fly In

Saturday morning liftoff. Winds were light and variable. Many pilots were able to land back where they started after an hour criss crossing the skies over McMinnville airport.

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Heard in the field - poetic genius

"I Just don't use my words very well. I'm not the most articulated person in the world."

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Nylon Gulliver

I've been working the crown line a lot lately when we're crewing balloons. If you trace out the anatomy of a hot air balloon, it all starts at a single piece of milled metal - the load ring. About the same cross section as a man's thumb, and about 8 inches in diameter, the load ring is the key.

The balloon itself is constructed by attaching about two dozen pieces of heavy nylon load tape (think half-inch wide seatbelt fabric) to the load ring. These load tapes run all the way to the bottom of the balloon envelope and become the vertical load-bearing parts to the balloon. Horizontal load tapes maintain the shape, and the colorful nylon - which keeps the air inside, but doesn't carry the weight - is stretched to fill the gaps between the load tape network. When the balloon is in flight, everything ultimately dangles from the load ring; when on the ground, the position of the whole balloon is maintained through control of the load ring. That's where the crown line comes into play.

The crown line is a rope connected to the load ring. You maneuver the load ring from the ground with the crown line.

When we stand a balloon up, we first use a fan to cold pack the balloon with air. While cold-packing, the crown line is astonishingly boring. The balloon fills, and the crown line just dangles there. For the uninitiated, it would seem like crown line is the least interesting job at the launch site. That'll change, though.

Once nearly full of cold air, the balloon lies, sideways, on the ground like a sleeping giant - a sort of non-human gulliver. The pilot, once they deem it's time, ignites the propane burner and blasts the first wall of heat into the cold envelope. That first burn knifes a jet of heat into the mass of cool air. Finding itself confined by the balloon envelope, the warm air balls up like a fist and presses hard against the uppermost part of the envelope - a spot near the balloon's equator. As that first heat ball spurs the balloon, it looks for all the world like gulliver just quivered into life with a sudden heartbeat and a gasping intake of breath. The chest rises, the ribs and shoulders shudder and quake. Ripples run across the fabric, threatening motion like a stirring giant.

About this time, the pilot gives another jolt of heat. The fist of heat is enlarged to fill about half of the balloon envelope's volume. And with this, the balloon shudders more deeply, then rises to its feet, awakened and alive, towering above the lilliputians that are the ground crew, able - but for it's natural benevolence - to inflict great harm upon the small, frail beings who dare to believe they are the masters of the balloon.

And that's when the crown line becomes an interesting job!

A typical hot air balloon stands in excess of seventy feet from top to bottom. That's a seven story building. When it shifts from lying down to standing up, it takes about 10 seconds. The person holding the crown line must engage in a game they are destined to lose - applying pressure to the load ring so that the balloon does not wobble once upright. But not too much pull - because the balloon can and will lift you off your feet if you're not careful. Just prior to the balloon standing up, the balloon envelope and the crown line are stretched out in a straight line. Seventy feet of balloon to the load ring, then 100 feet of crown line rope extending beyond. When the balloon stands up, the person holding the end of the crown line moves from 170 feet away to about 90-100 feet away in about ten seconds. That's about 7mph or a healthy jogging pace. Except you have to have full body weight pulling back against the crown ring to avoid a wobbling balloon envelope once its upright. So in other words, the crown line attendant looses a tug of war in a controlled fashion, at a speed of a healthy run!

It's a balancing act, managing the crown line. But it's something most anyone can do. This morning, for example, my wife C handled Crown line masterfully. R weighs about 90 pounds: he's capable of crown line except on particularly breezy days. I like to run Crown Line because my personal favorite sight - that of the gulliver awakening - can only be fully appreciated from the Crown line's point of view.

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Willamette Aerostat Society

C and I attended our first meeting of the Willamette Aerostat Society tonight. It was a good time and a lot of fun. More details later.

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Inspections, Connections and Best of Intentions

It was a busy week. The calendar was full to the point of bursting. C spent most of the week jetting around with her afterburners on, so as to get two high school exchange students where they needed to be on time, a college-age exchange student on a slightly different schedule where HE needed to be on time, groceries, other shopping, household finances and banking, schedules for R and M (thankfully ballet was done by this week), fencing, and a couple days of early morning balloon crewing. There's no way around it, she was running HARD all week.

N's work was a busy schedule, too. With two parents and five 'kids' in the house, it took a lot of coordinating and schedule juggling to get everyone everywhere on a reasonable schedule.

So, as we rolled in to Friday night, we were both exhausted-type tired. But it wasn't over yet. Friday required the hand-off of R and M to the grandparents for the weekend, and a complicated coordination for the exchange students. See, the students were spending the weekend with the exchange program leaders in Seattle. Except the teenagers could not stay overnight in the house unchaperoned. A PIA adult needed to stay over Friday night with them all. That was fine, in that the PIA adult then just rendezvoused with the larger group for the Seattle trip. Still, we had to wait until the students were finished at 7PM, feed them, orient the adult, clean the kitchen, and all that. It was nearly 10pm before we were done,

Now we could get on with our PERSONAL agenda.

C and I were heading to Walla Walla to look at a hot air balloon, you see.

The balloon we were inspecting might be for sale. If it were for sale, it would be the perfect balloon to use for training some new pilots. Whether that balloon could ever be a part of the Johnson family is quite the stretch right now, but we had the chance to go through the inspection process, and learn what to look for in a balloon when considering a purchase, THAT was the big lesson from this process - C and I had a 'date' and learned more about ballooning by going through this exercise.

That date, however, came with some pretty hard-core scheduling. If we thought we were tired at 10pm on Friday night, that was nuthin'...

C and I poured ourselves into the car. With just the two of us, we had a great opportunity to just put our stuff in the trunk and drive the smooth rig. The Jaguar's odometer reads over 100,000 miles now (though few would know to look at it), so it's preferred to rack up the miles on the high-mileage, 30mpg Jag as opposed to the lower-mileage, still under warranty, 24mpg Odyssey. "Don't take the Odyssey if you'll fit in the Jag" is our new motto.

Anyway, we headed out Friday night with a few convenience items in the trunk:

• a small tent
• sleeping bags
• folding chairs
• overnight bags with clothes and toiletries
• balloon crewing gear
• camera gear

We were prepared for a number of options. We didn't know if we were staying over until Sunday, or exactly what. We didn't have a hotel reservation, but we knew of availability in a couple hotels in town, and a close-in RV park with tent spaces. So we had all our options covered.

The getting out of town was relatively easy. Traffic was light; the night was warm. We popped open the sunroof and motored out of town on I-84, headed down the scenic Columbia River Gorge for points east.

But we were tired. C fell asleep as we got out toward Troutdale, and mostly slept the whole trip. She assured me that she could drive if I needed her to, but I could tell from how heavily she was sleeping that I shouldn't ask her to drive.

So I set the cruise control and worked to bring the things on which I had to concentrate down to a minimum. I set cruise control so I only had to think about steering. I turned on some music to occupy my brain and help me measure the passage of time. And I tried to make a four hour drive seem like it was going fast.

It didn't.

We were about halfway (Arlington, OR), when I nodded a couple times, and slightly misjudged my line through a couple curves. That was it. I pulled over at the next exit, an overpass out in the middle of nowhere. I turned left, crossed over the interstate on the overpass, looking for a reasonable place to pull over and snooze safely. As I rolled slowly over the overpass my headlights picked up a long thin object splayed out across the still-warm asphalt. As i got closer, I could tell it was a rattlesnake, stretched out to its full five or six foot length, soaking up the heat still in the road. I straddled the rattler with my wheels, so as not to hurt it, and made a note not to step outside the car without a good look around first,

C slept through this whole thing. She roused enough to ask what we were doing. I told her I needed to nap a bit, and she muttered assent as she relaxed back into her own sleep. I shut down the engine and the lights, was pleasantly startled by the eruption of stars in the sky, and took a nap for about an hour.

When I awoke, I was better, though still tired (naturally). Good enough to drive, though. So I rustled around a little to get prepared -- a drink of water, stuff like that.

This woke C up. She checked in on my with loving concern, then she too noticed the stars, "oh wow! Look at all the stars. Can I just get out for a bit to enjoy them."

Remembering the rattler, I said "I really wouldn't recommend that.,"

"why not?"

"It's just not a good idea right now." I didn't elaborate. A big rattlesnake in the vicinity would be a major freakout for C. She doesn't like snakes. She heard the undertone of 'I say this for general safety reasons' and she decided not to press the issue.

"Oh. Okay, Can we take just a minute and enjoy the stars from in here?"

"Of course. Absolutely."

We did, and then C said "okay. We can go now."

I turned on the ignition and, when the headlights erupted with light, we caught a field mouse and a desert rabbit in our beams, just a handful of yards in front of us. They scampered. I was wondering if either had had a run-in with the snake yet.

I drove slowly back to the freeway on-ramp. The rattler was no longer where it had been before. I didn't have to say anything to C then. I think she was asleep again even before I got up to highway speed and set the cruise control.

Not quite two hours later, I was looking to take another survival nap, when I realized we were within 20 miles of Walla Walla. I just pushed on through, and just after 3am I found the hotel where we were to rendezvous at 5:30. We just pulled up next to the balloon trailer in the parking lot, rolled the seats back and settled in. I turned the key off, shut my eyes and -- what seemed like an instant later -- was awakened by a gentle tapping on the glass. There was our group -- glad to see us, even though we were still so dazed that it took us a good five minutes just to regain our command of the English language.

A potty break, a brush of the teeth, and a fresh cup of Joe from the continental breakfast, and by 6am we were enroute to run an inspection of the balloon.

We all rolled out to a farm outside town, where we met a well-regarded balloonist and Repair Station owner. This gentleman had the balloon system in his possession, while the current owners decide their go-forward plans, We helped him load the balloon into his truck and headed back into town to set up at the Walla Walla Fairgrounds.

The balloon is stunningly gorgeous, We've been accustomed to crewing on 100,000 CuFt sizes, so a nimble little 77,000 CuFt was like a sports car. As we walked through the inspection process with the agent, and handful of other pilots we knew, we learned so much about what to look for.

• How to assess the fabric for condition
• Spotting scorches and repairs
• evaluating the condition of the basket, burners, fuel lines and tanks.
• tons of details.

It was a delight. Its a beautiful balloon. Should it get a new owner, they'll be delighted with it.

So, by 9am, we were done. The balloon was packed up and hauled away, leaving the Portland pilots nothing more to do than get a coffee and debrief, then - as we learned at that moment - start the drive home.

Yep. Less than seven hours in Walla Walla start-to-finish, and we were done!

C had slept a lot more than me, though neither of us was truly rested. So, I took the opportunity to ride shotgun with another Pilot, Tom, and let C have four hours of blissful, leather-wrapped solitude in the car. After her busy week managing the lives of five youth from nine to twenty-three, she was delighted to drive the Jag solo, tucked in behind the Portland-bound balloon trailer and think about the beautiful balloon she'd just seen. I rode with Tom, and we talked balloons, events, books, music, family life, and all sorts of stuff. We also rode along in silence for quite some time -- like guys will so often do. It seemed that C was thankful for the quiet time. She called us a couple times during the second half of the trip, just to talk and ask questions about the morning inspection that came up as she replayed it in her mind. It was good.

We got home about 3pm to an empty house. C and I had a date night roughed out in our heads... some time to ourselves. AND, we were tired and in need of a shower and food. I sat down on the living room couch for a one hour nap while C headed for the shower first.

The next thing I knew, I woke up not in the afternoon light, but in the pre-dawn light of Sunday morning. I checked my watch and I'd slept 14 hours uninterrupted. On the couch, In my clothes. With my shoes still on. In fact, it was now Sunday morning and I was still wearing the identical clothes that'd I'd put on after work on Friday. This had absolutely turned into a rock-and-roll road trip. Three days in the same clothes; sleeping in cars and on couches. We hadn't used a single convenience item except our toothbrushes and the camera. Geez. At least I woke up at home on the third day!

There was evidence that C had slept on the loveseat as well, though she wasn't there when I awoke. I learned later that she'd gone up to bed.

I was disappointed that we'd missed a Saturday night opportunity (they're so rare) together, and so was she. But, she was very understanding of how hard I'd pushed to keep the schedule and get everything to fit. The balloon inspection was a great treat for us. So that became our date.

Sunday evening, the students all returned happy from their trip. Seattle was a lot of fun for them, what with Pike Street Market, the original Starbucks and a Mariners game. They liked their trip very much,

Monday morning? C got up at 5am and helped on a ground crew. Bless her.

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Live Like You're On A Cruise Ship

So the Typhoon house is in transition with international students. Jin, our Korean student who has lived with us for 5 months, is going home on Tuesday. We have two teenage Japanese high school students overlapping; here since Thursday and staying three weeks.

The result? We've been getting a lot of sight-seeing done. Jin and his friend Soo Jung, had a few things they wanted to see before they left; the Japanese boys were interested in a number of the the same things. So a number of big-group trips took place over the weekend - some planned, some serendipitous.

For me, though, involved in the execution and oversight of much of this agenda, I was exhausted at the end. Happy, but exhausted.

Friday Night:

Rose Garden at sunset.

Saturday:

4AM Wake up call

6AM Balloon crewing in Jefferson, OR.
M and C stay home so M can go to Ballet class

10AM Watch the Jefferson Mint Festival parade in downtown Jefferson.

11AM Stop at the State Capital for a picnic lunch, find a street basketball tournament. Stay to watch for a while.

M and C go to Portland Saturday Market

2PM Nap

Saturday night movie night

11PM lights out

Sunday:

4AM wakeup call.

5AM Balloon Crew in Woodburn. Take FIVE members of the household.

9AM Breakfast at home in Portland,

11AM Day trip to Mount St Helens with SEVEN in the car - three Johnsons and four exchange students.

8PM Dinner for seven at Sivalai Thai restaurant (our favorite Thai place) at 7PM on the return.

11PM lights out

This is the sort of non-stop, all-hours, high-energy, touristy activity that I remember from the cruise ship. Whew!

Moving Faster Than Light

Things are good. Just a quick post to register the fact that we currently have three Japanese exchange students living with us. They'll be here for the next three weeks or so. They're delightful and we're having a blast. R is running with a posse of boys, and M is the extra-special team mascot.

Some of our acquainted families have four or five children in the household...for us, it's a bit of a step up to manage that many sets of agendas simultaneously. But we're enjoying the energy and the attitudes.

The side-effect, however, is that I have much less time available for thoughtful introspection or blog updates. Don't be surprised if I'm a little quieter for a while here at typhoonjohnson.blogspot.com ... I'll be back shortly, to be sure.

Wally Backman

Over on Facebook, I recently came across a fan page for Wally Backman, the firebrand utility player who showed that utility guys could be impact players. He's got a World Series ring, to prove it.

• Wally is my direct connection to the major leagues.
• Wally was my grandparents' next-door neighbor in rural Beaverton, Oregon when we were kids.
• Wally taught me to throw and to hit.
• Wally must have been all of 14 or 15 at the time.

The fan page for Wally is a campaign to get him the Manager's job for the Mets. He had a near-miss with the Diamondbacks a handful of years ago, and I think he's the right guy for the Mets at this particular time.

There. I said it. This I believe. Others will have a myriad of opinions. I don't care. I will not be swayed with your separate analysis. If the others had taken the time to teach me the game, and THEN gone on to show they knew what they were talking about, I might be inclined to listen.

In the meantime, just this once, this highly analytic fan is going to go with his heart, letting his emotions carry the way, and supporting an imperfect-but-catalytic man toward a higher achievement.

Go, Wally, Go. An emotional, imperfect Man? Yup. We all are. It's those emotions that make you right for the job. You're not running for President, you're a potential candidate for a job as Manager of the F'in' Mets. Baseball Managers need to be firebrands. I wish you the very best luck, sir.

And thank you for teaching a punk eight year old how to handle a ball. I may not play, but I'm the guy in the stands who quietly keeps score...and by the third inning, people next to me are asking questions. By the Fifth inning, the answers have become a running color commentary from the score book. Your place in baseball is glorious; mine is miniscule. But we both share a love for the game. AND, I can honestly say that the 14 year old Wally taught me to love the game.

Thank you, sir, thank you.

R Takes Responsibility - UPDATE

As I approached home last night, after a long drive from work, and approached the turn onto our street, I saw a tall young man running toward me on the opposite side of the intersection. As he rounded the corner onto my street in front of me, I recognized him as my son. I often see my son run in a plodding, I-don't-want-to-do-this way. This time, he was running with great long strides like a distance runner. He was also carrying a bucket.

When I got parked in the driveway, R was putting the bucket away in the garage. He was beaming with a clear sense of self-satisfaction. Seems his business had a really good first day of operations.

Three hours of weeding work for his first customer netted him a check for $30, and two hours more work. It also netted R a happy and satisfied customer. And if that weren't enough, R also acquired a second customer with a weeding project. This second customer has already pre-paid R for two hours of weeding work.

The result? R has earned $70 of the $95 required to pay back his lawn mower in just three days. The irony was very clear to R -- he's almost paid off his lawn mower, but has yet to even USE his lawn mower!

He was dirty from the work, AND he was happy. He's off to the beach for some one-on-one time with the grandparents. His customers are pleased, Mom is pleased and proud.

There will be challenging days, and failures. Just not today. And that's good. A thanks to God and the Concourse for watching over R's first forays into teenage-type maturity.

R Starts Taking On Responsibility

My son is still squirrelly, but he's also developing a longer-range view of things. I see progress in his ability to focus himself, though he still backslides (with amazing ease, sometimes) into six-year-old silliness. It is clear that he attempts to get himself into a more mature carriage. I saw him handle Boy Scout merit badges in such a way that I really had to do nothing but spend time with him; he knew where to be and when to be there. He knew what he had to do. He just needed someone nearby...like training wheels that the young beginner no longer leans upon...

I should also point out that R has been off prescription ADD meds for over a month now. Yes, he's a bit more squirrelly. But he's also eating like mad (3x the calories he used to eat), sleeping well, and thinking pretty clearly overall. It will be interesting to see how he feels/thinks/behaves when he goes back on ADD meds for school.

This ballooning thing is getting serious. R is taking it very seriously. For example, R has just started a lawnmowing business to help finance his pilot training. This has pretty much become his own idea. We *may* have planted the seed, but he took full ownership of the idea over the weekend.

To the point that yesterday he bought a power lawn mower of his own, using his own money. It's a simple little Murray push mower. The wheels are adjustable; it's a rear-bagger; it has a kill switch bale on the handle. It's got a red deck, and its in good shape. He paid $95 of his own money for it, and knows that he has to pay ALL that back before he can even think about spending his profits. His mom and he brought it home in the Odyssey, and he - beaming with pride - immediately mowed the front yard to show us all how well it works. I felt pretty comfortable with his choice. The mower is in good shape, and requires that the bag be in place to operate - that keeps his feet from getting under the back of the deck. Good thinking.

Mom bought him a 'log book' to track his jobs and customers. He'll be able to write down the work he did, and use that to bill his customers.

A little while later, R and I worked out a sales pitch. We outlined his script, and rehearsed a couple times. It was simple and to-the-point:

"Hi. My name is ________, and I live here in the neighborhood. I'm starting a lawn mowing business to earn money for my Hot Air Balloon Pilot's License. Can I mow your lawn for you?"

I helped him understand that the customer's response will be either "No thanks!" or they'll ask a question. We thought up the ten most likely questions and wrote down the answer he should give. Prepared for most anything, we took our sales pitch door-to-door in the neighborhood.

And, as is the way of the world, even though he was well prepared, success threw him something he hadn't even considered. Of five houses tried, four weren't home. At the one house with someone home, they hired him to do the lawn AND to do some large-scale weeding.

The sales pitch was perfect. When R said what he was earning the money for, the lady smiled a big happy smile and said, "I've been in a hot air balloon before! It's wonderful. You want to be a pilot? That's great. Now, how much will it cost for you to mow my lawn right over there?"

The coolest part was seeing R recognize that she responded with a question, and that he had a potential sale. Instead of his usual tensing at the question, he relaxed instead. He knew he had a probable customer and that the hardest part was over. I really enjoyed seeing him figure out the good news.

After the lawn discussion, the new customer looked carefully a R and asked "do you think you could do some weeding?" Ah-hah! Off-menu work. We hadn't considered diversifying into weeds yet!

There was some give-and-take on the weeding job. It's a big job - probably 4-6 hours for him. BUT, he knows he's earning money and that he's paying for his flight lessons starting in August, 2011. AND he knows that the more he earns now, the easier it'll be in the long run.

So we wrapped up our door-to-door work once we had this customer in place. R has a big job to do over this week, AND one ongoing customer to figure out the weekly mowing schedule. I suggested he make a flyer with R's sales pitch, and use that as a leave-behind when no one is home. He thought that was a great idea. So we headed home. When we got there, we found M sitting at the kitchen table - get this - making a flyer for Ryne to use advertising his lawn mowing service! Nobody had said anything to her about it; she was just helping out!

Later that evening, after dinner, I checked in on R. He was in his room, using his computer. He showed me what he was doing - creating a 'visit card' as his leave-behind when he mows someone's lawn and they aren't home. Again, I told him that would be a good idea ... he ran with it and took his own initiative to make it happen.

On the ride back from summer camp. one of the boys in the senior patrol rode with us. This young man is nearly finished with his Eagle work. He also started in the troop as squirrelly as R has been. And yet, he's grown up to be a well-regarded and consistent young leader. Over a root beer float at the A&W, this young man explained to R that he is now in the 'middle'. He's not one of the younger scouts either by experience or by rank. He can lead the younger scouts and show them the proper way. Then, this young man dropped the bomb on R. He told R that virtually the entire Senior Patrol will be gone in the next 12 months... and that leaves R among the oldest scouts in the troop. The suggestion was that R should start to learn from the older scouts now, so he has techniques in place before they are all gone. This was a wake up call for R. I could tell his gears were spinning on this, and recognizing the truth in it.

He's stepping up with a lawn mower. He's refining his demeanor for ballooning. He's coming to realize that he's next in line in the Troop. He's growing in responsibility.

Whether he likes it or not...something tells me he'll like it as soon as he masters it.

Boy Scout Summer Camp

Short and sweet:

Camp Makualla Review

Good:

• Four merit badges for R.
• An opportunity to try the rock climbing wall even though he's technically underage.
• The food, all things considered

• The environs. Crescent Lake reminds me of old Spirit Lake
• Camp was very engaging for all the boys.

Bad;

• Bugs. Mosquitoes by the gross. And they were persistent. They'd figured out that there was blood behind that bug spray so they pushed right on through. Relentless.
• Some apparent, but unprovable, favoritism in the camp-wide competitions. Troop 22 should have placed high in the overall competition, but the camp staff seemed to enforce a "out of council" penalty. Rules and conditions often emerged after the competition, citing rules that weren't made clear at the BEGINNING.
• Staff all on the same page regarding competitions and schedules. There's still some inconsistency in the execution of the programs

M's Teeth are Moving

I'll post a new photo to the blog later today, when I can take a snapshot. Here's the deal, in LESS THAN 14 DAYS, M's wayward front tooth is pointed correctly. Her smile is COMPLETELY different.

That was a FAST start, I must say...

First Ascent

If you've never seen a woman in her forties do the "happy dance" with the same purity of emotion as a four year old, then you've never really lived.

I, and a small group of friends, got to see that today.

The Typhoon is spinning off in differing directions for the next week. The parents will split time at Boy Scout Summer camp, while R attends all week. M will attend her ballet intensives, and spend some time at the beach with grandparents. I'll hold down the fort for the first half of the week.

So, when the call came to do a little balloon crew work on Friday morning, we made our schedules fit and showed up. Turns out there was a surprise in store for C, R and M.

This time, we had trouble getting out the door. Nobody except Dad seemed 'able' to get out of bed at the 4am time required. Good thing we pre-planned and everyone had effectively slept in their crew clothes. We got out late, but not as late as it could have been. Two cars down to Woodburn so I could go directly to work afterwards, and we got there only a few minutes late.

As we pulled in to the launch site, we got our first surprise. There, sitting at the launch site, were TWO trailers - Pacific High's trailer (whom we were expecting) and the Floatin' On Air rig of the Rafns. A closer look while we drove by and parked, showed that both the elder and younger Rafns were there. As were a small crew - including Terri from my work - just starting to roll out the Pacific High balloon.

W parked, joined in, and got the update. Pacific High was flying a commerical flight for a family from New Orleans; Floatin' on Air was running a tandem check-test on their new balloon, Morning Melody. So we helped Pacific High get airborne, then we turned our attentions to Morning Melody. I must say it was excellent practice to setup and launch two balloons back-to-back... good repetition for procedures.

As we got Morning Melody ready to launch, J (the younger Rafn and the obvious pilot for this morning's flight) announced that he was ready. Then, he said the fateful words:

"c, R, M... you ready to get in the basket?" The reaction was a moment of stunned surprise for those named.

"You... you mean I get to FLY with you???!?!?!" C blurted.

That's when the happy dance took place.

Then she forgot to breathe.

AND she started to well up with tears of joy.

T Rafn stepped up to her and gently said, "Breathe. Remember to breathe. And no tears. Stop that right now." C made a big effort to calm down a bit, and asked in a desperate voice for her camera, which was in the car. The camera was retrieved and all were loaded into the basket with Jesse.

Launch was gentle and smooth... a couple burns to to heat the envelope, and the balloon lifted with the fluid majesty and graceful bulk of a frolickiing grey whale.

My job? Drive a chase vehicle. I didn't have to be lead chase, but I had the Pacific High rig at my disposal. T led the way. It was a picture-perfect flight. Winds were steady but slow. The balloons drifted along at about 4 mph all the way. Winds at different altitiudes give steerage to both the right and the left of the ideal landing spot, a small private airstrip just north of Keizer. As a result, both balloons landed in the same 10 yard by 10 yard corner of the airstrip.

Ground crew had a leisurely drive to the airfield, and spent about half an hour sitting in lawn chairs, watching the balloons proceed at a pace barely faster than a stroll. On the route, we called up on the radios for a status check. T asked how the Typhoon passengers were doing.

"I don't think I've EVER seen a happier person" replied J, the pilot, "Be sure to tell N that he's going to need to free up a LOT of money to keep his family in balloon equipment." The laughter in the chase vehicles was enormous,to say the least.

So there we were, on the air field, watching the balloons coming in, like planes on final approach at PDX. Except SllloooooWWWWWWeeeeerrrrrrrrrrr. As the balloons came in, they held a line just west of the air field, then negotiated a left turn as they came to ground through the west-to-east winds on the surface. Gentle bumps and they were down.

Ground crew completely packed up the Pacific High balloon while Morning Melody made its final approach. We had the gear in the trailer just as Morning Melody touched down. Jesse was smiling. The Typhoon? Beaming. Radiant. Resplendent, Glowing. How do I possibly describe? My lovely wife was transported. My often-unfocused son had a laser-locked look in his eye. M? situationally aware as she always is, she had the contentment of a super-cool experience.

In the chase vehicle, heading back, the Typhoon traveled with the Rafns. We debriefed a little. When asked if they still wanted to pilot for themselves, both C and R responded with an emphatic yes. The kind of yes you punctuate by hammering the table with your shoe. THAT kind of yes.

So, working at the edges of my own knowledge, I asked R about J's flying techniques, R could point out in detail how J both followed the techniques in the manual, and how he deviated. R also pointed out that J tended to 'contour fly', which called for a closer touch and varied technique. That's when J offered up that R would begin with lots of straight-and-level flying and proper handbook technique. J was already instructing. And R was COMPLETELY listening, with his ears, brain and whole heart.

I have some of Terri's photos posted to the family facebook page; others to follow when I get my hands on C's photos.

The Rite of Writing Right

Fourth of July Weekend -- we've got a bit of a rhythm going. It's a busy rhythm, but it's a rhythm nonetheless.

R is working on his writing, and adapting to life without ADD meds. He's taking some naturopathic substances, but generally going without hardcore meds. It's been pretty okay, all things considered. He's squirrelly, but he's ALSO very present more attentive, and highly interactive. He's also just a wee bit more impulsive in the sense that he acts annoyingly, but he's actually aware of this trend and how others respond. So he's working on it. Paradoxically, he writes more prolifically when he's not on his meds. I have to consider that for some time...

R is dancing at ballet intensives three days a week. Then she works on her writing, too. I don't ask her to write; she just writes as it is. She picked her own project - a fictional story about a nine year old girl and her pet cat. This dynamic duo are secret superheroes with incredible ninja powers. The story will be all their amazing adventures together.

C has been painting tables. Some for our personal use and decoration. At least one for sale. She's been writing some, too. Specifically, ad copy for her items for sale.

All-in-all, there's a lot of writing going on in the house. This has the effect of subconsciously helping R realize that writing is a normal daily process. But it does have some unintended side-effects.

Like yesterday, July 5th. I was sitting in the living room toward the end of the afternoon. Dinner was cooking away in the oven, and all family members were nearby. C was in the home office, near the front door, writing on her laptop. M was at the kitchen nook table, writing a story on her laptop. R was lounging on the living room loveseat, just across from me, writing on HIS laptop. Me? I'm trying to read the Balloon Pilot Handbook.

An important detail to this story is to point out that I'm a pretty darned good speller. The rest of my family? Not so much. R and M are about age appropriate; C is admittedly weak at spelling, but that doesn't stop a good writer. So it doesn't stop her. Anyway, about every two minutes, M would call out, "Dad, how do you spell _____". And I'd answer by spelling the word for her. R, was doing exactly the same thing - every couple minutes, he'd ask for help spelling a word, and I'd help. Well, darned if C wasn't playing the same game. Except, in her case, the questions were more along the lines of "Hey, N, the sentence is 'don't put it there'... which spelling of 'there' do I use?"

Three writers each asking one spelling question of ME every couple minutes.... that pretty much averaged out to me spending 20 seconds out of every 40 answering their question and spelling the word.

From the office....."Hey, N? do I apostrophize ....."

"yes, in that instance you use an apostrophe.", then I glance down at my page to relocate my spot.

Then, from the loveseat ... "how do you spell 'species'?"

"S-P-E-C-I-E-S.", then I try to find my place again.

Then, from the kitchen nook .... "Dad, if declawed is a word, then is reclawed?"

"hmm... spell it R-E-dash-C-L-A-W-E-D." look for my place....

Then, from the love seat ... "how do I spell 'biosphere'?"

"B-I-O-S-P" he cuts me off..

"Right That's how I spelled it, but the spell checker doesn't like it."

"Oh, that's okay. 'biosphere' may not be in the dictionary for your word processor yet."

"Oh, Okay." he responds as I glance back at my page. My eyes don't even get focused before I hear from the office, ... "do you spell 'tempera paint' T-E-M-P-U-R-A?"

"No, not unless you're dipping it in rice flour and deep-frying it."

and around and around it went. I read the same page 20 times.

After a good 45 minutes of this, I lovingly but firmly said out-loud to all my family members:

"Okay. I'm glad to help with spelling, but I've done nothing but answer spelling questions in turn for 45 minutes. It's time for my family members to stop leaning on Dad as the spelling crutch. I can help, but this has been ridiculous."

There were sheepish looks on the two kids, and a sheepishly nervous chuckle from the office, as the three realized what they'd been doing. They must have all realized that they needed to pay Dad back, because almost simultaneously, they all said:

"hey, do you want to read what I've written so far?"

I wasn't that upset... my family was writing. All of them. Writing their own things. R had no problem staying on task because he was surrounded by writing. I think he sensed that others help each other write, and that - in its own way - writing can be a social activity.

We broke up the writing workshop and quickly shared each others work. A spirit of collaboration popped up from that. Again, the boy struggling to write saw that we could all contribute to making our respective writing better.

That was a much-needed lesson. For us all.

C's First Taste of Ballooning - Tethered Ride

That was the START of the Balloon Festival weekend. By the end, she was best friends with half the pilots, and had already received four lessons on pilot-specific tasks, and attended the Sunday Pilot's Briefing.

I'd, uh... I'd say she's interested in this stuff.

Summer Begins

School’s out. Summer vacation has started, even if the ongoing rainy weather makes it seem like Summer will never get fully underway. But never fear; this will not be a weather rant. I’m only going to talk about good stuff.

Troop 22 Family Campout: The annual family campout at Newport’s South Beach State Park was fun, though more of a long, drawn-out event than last year’s Paulina Lake trip. Early campers showed up Thursday night, and campers cycled in and out until Sunday morning. There was rain, but there was also some very nice sunshine. And, the cathedral tent finally showed its full potential.

See, last year’s family campout was a non-stop rain-fest. We had just upgraded our tent to the big barrel-vaulted unit, thanks to Next Adventure, and this trip was its christening voyage. It’s a nice unit, which I’ve blogged about before – two big rooms: one a built-in screened porch setup, with a solid partition separating the porch from the very large main room. Sometimes we use this as a two-room tent, with the kids sleeping in one room while the parents sleep in another. Other times, we use the porch for its intended purpose. On th first trip, we used it in two-room configuration, with two kids, two adults and the dog. Except that, like I said, it was a nonstop rainstorm.

And I hadn’t sealed the seams on the new tent.

So the tent leaked.

Back at home, and Seven bottles of seam sealer (“one bottle coats one entire backpacker sized tent!”) later, the tent was ready to go for its next scheduled trip: a week of camping in the mountains of southern Oregon in August. Should be dry. No worries.

Except, somehow, the rain fly didn’t get returned to the tent bag after sealing.

Oh yes we did, we arrived at camp, four hours from home, with no rain fly. Oops. We used a hodgepodge of blue tarps to cover the tent. C was somewhat embarrassed (and I don’t fault her) for the hillbilly-Bedouin look of our tent all week. I tried to tell her that we were paying homage to the look of SkyLab, but while she appreciated the reference, she didn’t appreciate the aesthetics of our campsite.

So, by now, we’ve used the tent twice and not had a fully operational tent at either time. This trip to South Beach with Troop 22 was my final chance at redemption.

I’ll save you the suspense: it worked fine.

We had rain overnight both nights. The seams didn’t leak. The zippers didn’t leak either. The rain fly over the porch area is rather minimal, while the bug netting area is maximized (for the view potential) which allows water to find its way in somewhat more easily in this section than in the main room. Nevertheless, we stayed dry, and relatively clean. Even with all the sand.

I had packed a radiant space heater and an extension cord, just in case we had electrical at the camp site. No such luck. Otherwise, we’d have been nice and toasty. We really weren’t cold anyway.

R was able to demonstrate some of his new skills as a First Class scout. He slept in another tent with fellow scout, and showed a noticeable improvement in his self-reliance skills. M reacquainted herself with a couple sisters in the troop, and started acting as girl group hostess, using our porch as their clubhouse. Imagine that…. <GRIN!>

Benson High School: The campout afforded a lot of good community discussion. For C, she got a chance to talk in-depth with four alumni from Benson High School about the appropriateness of Benson’s program for R. The short summary is that all the alumni were unanimous that R was the kind of kid that 1) tends to thrive at Benson, 2) will benefit from the AP-level course material at Benson, 3) needs the practical and practical-minded style of education at Benson, and 4) will continue to be challenged throughout the entire four-year program.

One of the alumni is a young man who just graduated two weeks ago. C had made the connection that this young man had been where R is at the same age. Now he’s articulate, educated, a leader, and on his way to college with an athletic scholarship and an agenda focused on education. She didn’t speak about it out loud, but I sensed that this talk gave C a sense of peace that there is indeed a High School that will suit him. I think she’s starting to really understand what Benson is. The older alumni shared just how well known the Benson program is for technical universities (and R’s preferred choices, by the way), and that many students going on to college after Benson often earn as much as a year’s worth of technical equivalence credit just because of what they learned at Benson. This fact was not lost upon her.

Undersea Gardens: More back story is required here. Oregon Coast Today ran this article a while back:

“Built in Seattle in 1966, the Undersea Garden was towed to Newport and anchored on 10-foot I-beam pilings. Back then, the cashiers (called “Aquamaids”) had to wear skin-tight neon uniforms that looked like wetsuits, complete with “weight belts” and headgear, and a diver provided an underwater performance.

“Today, the Aquamaids’ outfits are polo shirts and khakis. But the diving show continues, offered at regular intervals throughout the day (if you’re doing all three attractions, it pays to check in at the Undersea Gardens first, so that you know when the shows are scheduled).

“Divers like Mike Stonum wear a wetsuit, scuba gear and mask, and swim through the water surrounding the viewing windows. In coordination with a narrator that talks inside the vessel’s theatre, he picks up Dungeness crab and sea stars, cuddles wolf eels, and feeds the rockfish and shark. He’s slowly coaxing a new octopus into the open, Stonum said, but for now she’s a no-show at showtime. The Undersea Gardens also has a tidal touchpool and, of course, a gift shop.

After the show, Stonum walks up to the rampart for photos and questions. He’ll tell you about the water, the job and how the octopus seems to know him from the other divers. A one-time longhaul truck driver who thought life should hold more, Stonum can now call wolf eels with a dinner bell. “

We didn’t meet Mike, but we did meet Jim. Jim was the diver on duty that day and he’s (in)famous for jumping off all sorts of high places around the Gardens, and splashing into the bay. He’s quite a character, and his antics certainly draw attention to the Undersea Gardens for their show.

Now, see, in the late 60’s when the Undersea Gardens moved to Newport, I was a little guy – 4 or 5 years old. At that time, there was no other aquarium on the Coast to speak of. No Hatfield Marine Science Center; no Oregon Aquarium. Just the Undersea Gardens. And this four year old boy LOVED it. I remember being THRILLED to go there. The Undersea Gardens WAS my destination. Once we were there, we weren’t going anywhere else that I cared about. I was fascinated by the diver show. I never got tired of the fish and the crab, the eels and the octopus. I’m told that we’d have to stay through multiple diver shows before I could be convinced to leave.

Though I couldn’t dredge up an exact memory of the inside of the place, once we descended the stairs to the viewing gallery, I knew exactly where I was… even after (ahem) 40 or so years intervening. No really. Sorry I didn’t share that before, did I? I haven’t been back inside since I was, seven or eight. The program had changed a little – updated information – but not very much. Same basic idea. You watch from the gallery and the diver serves up specimens straight to the window along with a scripted piece on each one. A quick, 20-minute educational piece in which the children can interact with the diver.

Oh, and meet the diver to ask questions after. Which my kids did. R’s question? “What are the qualifications for your job? What do I need to do to get this job when I grow up?”

Farmers and Fliers

On Saturday, We Were Balloon Chasers and Home Improvers.

We got the opportunity to crew for PacHigh Balloons again. Same drill: meet Bauman Farms at 5am. Set up and launch, chase, assist in landing and packing the balloon. Except this time, we were a known quantity.

The ground crew chief greeted R that morning thusly:

"Hi, R. So. When are you going to become a balloon pilot?"

R stood up straight, looked him dead in the eye, held his index finger straight up in the air like an exclamation point and said, "TO-MORROW!"

That, actually, was a magic moment. The paying customers happened to have a six year old grandson hanging around. With that interchange, R was suddenly that little boys hero. R helped with the balloon, listened, followed directions, and took that little boy under his wing.

For us grownups, having us there a second time was great. The first time, we got told "do this..." very little explanation. But given that we came back for more, this time, the senior guys explained exactly how the pieces go together, started teaching us the names of things, and started teaching the whys and hows of the balloon components. At one point, the ground crew chief started one of these little tutorials with "when you have your own balloon, you'll want to remember...." His little bit of subliminal programming was not overlooked <grin!>

The balloon setup and launch was smooth enough. The paying customers were a married couple in their mid 80's. Turns out he had been in the Navy Air Corps in World War II. They had a great time. Our son's ethusiasm and positive energy buoyed them as well.

In the chase vehicle, the Ground Crew captain drove. I rode front seat. Everyone was balloon spotting. We taught the kids not to just say 'on the right' but to use a clock position, like: "on the right at 2 o'clock." R was spotting other balloons in the air as well. Finding a landing spot was not quite as straightforward as the first time. There was a lot more consulting of GPS maps than we needed the first time. The chief and I were pretty busy hunting landing spots; it seemed that this flight needed to land in an area where they hadn't had much call to land before; there weren't too many pre-loaded landing choices, So, the chief had some extra scouting to do.

o, there was a moment where we pulled the chase vehicle up to a four way stop, and the Chief bailed out to scout on foot. He was looking behind all the farmhouses to see if one of them had a suitable yard they could use for landing. In the middle of this scouting trip, he told me to move over to the driver's seat. I did so, and things were expectantly quiet all of a sudden in the back seat.

So, I stage-muttered "Well, it looks like I just got promoted."

"Field promotions happen quickly." C offered, supportively.

"I guess we're doing okay, then." I replied. And I could feel the kids get easy with it all. About that time, the Chief hopped into the shotgun seat, pulled his GPS off the windshield mount and started navigating. Me? I just started driving. From that point on, until we found the landing spot, I was the driver and he was the navigator. Chief seemed to be happy with how it worked out.

The ultimate landing site was - get this - a dirt road that a farmer used for tractor access to his onion fields out back. The pilot put the balloon basket onto the road, then we walked the balloon up the road, around a 90 degree bend, across a plank bridge, and onto a grass yard, where ultimately we brought the thing down. Again, the kids did great. R was called upon to hop inside the basket as we walked the balloon to the grass. He was thrilled. Once we got to the grassy spot, the Chief sent R up to the trailer to bring back the big bag for the balloon. Not only did R do so with perfection and speed, but he ALSO brought a special tool, called the paperclip, along with him. When the Chief saw that R had the paperclip, he said, "oh look at that. He thought to bring the paperclip too. That kid just went up a couple EXTRA notches." See, R had thought ahead and done EXACTLY the right thing. Very heartwarming for this Dad.

Back home, we did some more yard work. I got the treehouse roof cleaned off, and we did some much-needed tree pruning around the back yard, First time since we've had the house, so if tree limbing is always a once-in-eight-years event, I'm pleased as can be with that.

We did a bunch of other house maintenance items. All the rhodedendrons have been put in the ground. We've cleaned the windows and sprayed the dust/dirt off the shutters, wood trim and siding. With the rain finally letting up, we're making up for lost time.

C has started re-arranging the draperies on the main floor. Now that she's got a very formal set in the dining room, she's turned the living room and kitchen nook into much more casual spaces. I tease her that it's starting to look like a house from Whoville in Dr Seuss. Really, though, it's quite fun and lovely. I like the space.

We got the barbecue grill up and running as well. In fact, we had a small dinner party with Jin (our exchange student) and a new friend, T, who's in her early twenties and an art student. She came over to have dinner with us, and we all had a great time.

And so ended a very gratifying Saturday.

Then, On Sunday, We Were Farmers.

We got the garden in, up at my sister's place outside Banks. Corn, carrots, onions, pole beans. Cucumbers, squash, peppers, zucchini, 45 tomato plants, melons and --- loufa. No, really. We'll see how it goes. Oh, artichokes too. C is particularly coveting the artichokes.

All in all, I think we planted about an acre. Three-quarters over on the original site, bordered by trees. The new plot is right along the side of P's house. She's calling it the Salsa garden. That's where we put the plants that like full sun all day. They're going to get it, in this new spot....

We got a late start thanks to all the endless torrential rain this spring. Really, the garden should have gone in almost a month ago. Even still, we rushed it a bit. The ground is still almost too wet to plant. P has been tilling the garden area every other day, trying to bring the moisture to the top and dry the ground. We tilled it all one last time again before planting. That gave me a chance to learn how to use the tractor, and to start teaching my kids how to run the tractor too.

I had P give me the tractor tour. It took about five minutes. Then I tilled a couple passes to get the basic hang of it. At that point, I got R up on the tractor with me, and we worked together. I had him steer the furrows while I gave my full attention to the rototiller on the back. This worked well because the ground was still so wet that it could easily gum up the tines. We had a team going, and R seemed to stand just a little taller when the family praised him for running the tractor.

M got on the tractor, too, a little later, with P. Aunt and niece together. I don't think M was as interested in the machine operation as she was in getting a ride. But, it's good for the girly-girl ballet dancer to see my sister in action as a living example that women can do anything a man can do.

We also planted about eight fruit trees. Apples, mostly, but there's a pear and a plumb. That starts the orchard. Three generations of the family put those trees in the ground; and these trees will easily bear fruit for the next two generations to enjoy (God willing that the farm stays in the family that long). So, we were calling them the five-generation orchard. That thought seemed to make everyone feel deeply good about the work we did.

After all that, the kids got a treat -- Aunt P saddled up a horse and let the kids ride. R, being twelve and a half, and a strong intermediate horseman, rode solo for quite some time. M rode while Aunt P walked the horse on the lead line. Something tells me that by next planting day, M will be handling that horse by herself.

Akiko and Nekko are both buried in the cedar trees along the garden spot. I spent a couple minutes with them both on a couple occasions throughout the day. I'm not sure if any other family members thought to drop in on them. It's okay if they didn't. It seems that I grieve less intensely but for a longer period of time than do the rest of my family members. I needed to commune with their ghosts; the rest of the family members probably just bounded around the garden with the animal ghosts right behind them. It was me that needed a little quiet reassurance with them.

Balloons, Ballet, Dresses, Furniture and Flowers

The local meme seems to be the word mashup "Juneuary". That's how we seem to be referring to the winter-like, Pineapple Express-style, incessant, crazy-making, depressing, endless pipeload of South Pacific moisture in the jet stream, aimed squarely at the Portland metro area for almost TWO WEEKS NOW!

Looking at the weather, we have ANOTHER WEEK TO GO!

<sigh>

On Saturday, we got a break in the constant downpours and found ourselves under mostly sunny skies. After two weeks of temperatures that barely cracked 60 degrees, the thermometer instantly bounded up to a shirtsleeve mid-70s. Oh. My. Gosh. It was like coming out of a bomb shelter and into the world again. I told our exchange student, Jin, that this is how our Junes are supposed to be, that the weather systems full of Fiji Water that won't go away are the culprit. That, as soon as they stop, our weather will be just like Saturday. I could tell… he wanted to believe.

Well, we had the chance to make the best of the sunny Saturday.

The Typhoon was invited to help as the ground crew for a local balloon pilot. We took them up on the offer, arriving at the launch location at 5am, dressed warmly, interested, and completely untrained. The untrained part didn't take long. With the quiet help of the two experienced ground crew folk, we all helped set up the basket, unfurl the balloon envelope, hook everything up, inflate the balloon with cold air, and hang on while the pilot heated the air to create lift. Then, we all piled in the chase vehicle and rode to the landing point, where we got to help land the balloon, take the balloon down, pack up the envelope and put everything in the trailer. From start to finish? 90 minutes. We were back at the launch point, standing at our car, just before 8am.

The kids and Catherine had a lot of fun. They thought it was great fun to have jobs like scurrying under the envelope while it inflated, thereby helping the balloon fill faster. They also liked how cool it was to catch the balloon when it landed, and to bundle it up.

With an adventure like ground crew out of the way, we got on with our day in the sunshine! For the girls, that included sewing a pioneer style dress for M's upcoming 'museum day' at school. Her class is putting on a Museum for Oregon Trail pioneers. M will be a docent, representing a young girl on the trail with her family. She wanted a pioneer dress. C and M used the weekend to make one.

For my part, I worked to get things ready to go in the yard. Mowed grass? Check. Installed the new pipe trellis for the wisteria? Check. Build the bench for the front yard? Check. Do all the other kitchen-related tasks while C and M made a dress? Check.

Now, if this all weren't enough, C has also been engaged in buying and selling furniture. I think Juneuary finally got to her. She embarked on a Craigslist binge, buying a round dining table, a hand-painted, funky-fun table for the kitchen nook, and brightly colored used living room furniture. Now, she's either sold or posted all the replaced furniture on craigslist. Gone (or soon to be gone) are the pub table (bummer), the 20 year old leather couch, and the kitchen table we bought back in the Fall. Take the money C can get for the furniture we have, and subtract what she paid for the 'new' stuff, and she's turned over the furnishings for most of the main floor of the house for about $150 out of pocket.

So Saturday had room preparation included – clear the rooms of the old furniture and – in the case of the dining room – receive the furniture.

By dinner time on Saturday, the Balloon pilot had emailed us official forms to fill out, thereby making us official ground crew helpers in the future. It would seem that we did an okay job!

Jin helped us move things as needed. Then, he spent Saturday afternoon and evening with a PIA group event at the Rose Festival, along with many of his international student colleagues. Late in the evening, we received a phone call that two of Jin's friends had missed the last bus to their respective neighborhoods and could we put them up downstairs for the night. C agreed, and made out the hide-a-bed. The friends then left at about 8am on Sunday morning. I never saw them, but C did. Their departure was my gentle wakeup to Sunday morning and the new day's activities.

Sunday, we rented a U-Haul and picked up the living room furniture from NE Portland.

Sunday. Ah yes, Sunday. The wonder sunny Saturday weather didn't hold. So Sunday, we picked up the living room furniture in a torrential downpour. I rented the truck, then stopped by the house to gather up Jin. As I pulled in to our driveway, I noticed something weird across the street. See, directly across the street from us is a short embankment with trees on it. The embankment goes up about 20 feet, then stops at another road above. What struck me was that lots of very muddy water was streaming out from a spot in the embankment where water had never streamed out before. The sudden emergence of muddy water from a hillside like that is an early warning sign of a landslide. Local authorities have been warning us that the ground is SO saturated now, that water has virtually nowhere to go. That creates the opportunity for chunks of hillside to actually start floating and sliding. Nothing has come of that spot so far, but we're watching it carefully. It's in a location where, if it slides, no homes should be directly impacted. Still, there are trees and power lines all in that tight space. A slide could be ugly in the short-term.

Jin and I drove in the downpour to NE Portland, where we picked up the furniture – a blue couch, a red love seat, and a yellow easy chair. We got the furniture home just in time to say hello to Grandma and Grandpa, who borrowed the kids for a family reunion picnic at Champoeg Park. Yes, in the rain. That, of course, left room for C and I to see the matinee performance of Oregon Ballet Theater's Bolero downtown. Lovely, that.

I liked Bolero very much (Bolero promotional image from www.obt.org) I didn't care so much for Hush, though. I don't know why. Originally debuted by OBT in 2009 , the choreography for Hush was complicated and unexpected, which should have been interesting to me. The performance showed clear mastery of the work. But I had difficulty 'feeling' the piece. Then again, maybe I didn't have any difficulty at all – detachment, loneliness and disappointment seemed to be themes to the piece. Perhaps I felt it just like I was supposed to feel it. It provoked internal thought, that much is certain (link to Hush review in The Oregonian)

Back home from the picnic and the ballet respectively, the girls struggled to finish the prairie dress by the end of the day Sunday. They were both burned out; neither wanted to finish. M was resisting learning how to sew to help. C was losing her patience and getting irritated; which only pushed M away more. They ultimately worked it out, but we had to frame the work for M – by age 9, a pioneer girl would already be expected to perform basic sewing tasks within the family. That helped her connect a bit better, I think.

Finally, with the dress done enough, C turned her attention to the kitchen table. At some point, the top of the kitchen table had been painted in a Memphis-meets-Picasso style. It's fun, casual. Except, that the leaf hadn't been painted at all. So, C put the leaf into the table, and penciled in a design that connected the two sides. In the center she plans to include a Dr Seuss quote that reads:

"Be you… those who matter don't mind, and those who mind, don't matter."

By late Sunday, she'd put down a base coat and had started on the background fields. I think she's rather excited about doing this to the table. And you know… based on the style and colors of the new living room furnishings, as well as the crazy style of the table, there's a sophisticated bit of Seuss-meets-Cubism in the whole room now. It's really kind of fun. And different. And it cost us effectively nothing to live with it for a while.

Parents and Dance United

I got to attend the Observation Day for School of Oregon Ballet Theater yesterday.

It was really good for me to see a bit of how the school functions. Lovingly strict, disciplined. All business. Actually, it's quite to M's liking, this sort of structure. She's all business and highly focused when work is being done. She knows when to allow herself to get silly, too. Dance class? No silliness.

Normal SOBT rules stipulate that parents aren't to wait or loiter in the building. We drop children at the outside entrance, and pick them up outside as well. I always feel a bit like a groupie or an autograph hound haunting the theater stage door come pickup time. Even when we're there, we're not supposed to go past the gate at the lobby. So this was the first time I got to go behind the gate. Once I was in the center of the building, the rules for access started to make a LOT of sense. The space is well arranged for the dancers. The studio space and the central area let the dancers see each other and interact, inside and outside the separate dance studios. If parents just off the street were milling around in the central area of the building it'd be a huge distraction to the dancers as they work. I get it now.

As you might imagine, parents sat on chairs along one wall of the dance studio. The dancers were all positioned at four consequitive rows of barres. I'm guessing there were 40 students, of which five were boys. Instruction started without fanfare, introduction or a need to call students to attention. During class they went through drills, were quizzed on terminology, and practiced practiced practiced. About half of class was at the barre, the other half included some prances, and some other work the name of which I must admit that I don't know.

Then, class was over. Student discipline dropped from locked-and-loaded 9 on the scale to s restrained 7. Some children waved to their parents; all hugged the teacher in a circle hug. Then they quietly and quickly cleared the room and got their dance gear ready to go home.

Didn't look at all like our chaotic morning routine to leave the house, I must admit.

I also must admit that I couldn't have been prouder of M. She works hard in this class. She takes the instruction and correction very well. She seems to be in her element there; I'm delighted.

After class, I went to a company-related party. One of the local PR firms was celebrating 20 years and I was invited as a representative of Sunstone. So, I went directly from SOBT to 100 SW Main, just across the river. C and M changed clothes and headed over to the OBT performance Dance United, featuring visiting dancers from a number of ballet companies around the world.

At my party, I found myself next to Mayor Sam Adams, who stayed for about 15 minutes, I texted C that the Mayor was there. So imagine her surprise when, a few minutes after my text message, Mayor Sam Adams appeared on stage at Dance United to introduce the program! Laughing, C said she felt intimately connected to the Portland community at that moment! It was fun.

As a footnote, I've been told that my blog posts periodically show up on OBT's google news clipper searches. To date I've spoken my unedited personal opinion about SOBT, and will continue to do so.

Memorial Day -- At Home

So, what'd we do with a stay-at-home Memorial Day?

1. Removed moss from the roof; treated to kill
2. Mowed the grass
3. Treated the back yard with moss killer
4. Painted woodwork in bedrooms and bathrooms
5. Planted ferns in the front landscaping
6. Cleaned gutters inside and out
7. Deep-cleaned the whole house inside. And I mean DEEP (don't ask why)
8. Washed ALL bed linens throughout the house (don't ask why)
9. Took down some tree branches that were growing into the house
10. Fed the squirrels
11. Got all homework finished (both kids)
12. Made progress on finishing a merit badge (R)
13. Updated our fire safety emergency evacuation plan
14. Detailed both cars inside and out (don't ask why)
15. Booked a group camp for a multi-family camp out in August
16. Watched some movies - learned to use the Redbox kiosk
17. Repaired the vacuum cleaner
18. Started installing new outside house lights
19. Shopped for a new dining room table
20. Sprayed weeds and blackberries all around the house and parking strip
21. Slept in, believe it or not

And we spent most of Sunday at an Society for Creative Anachronism (SCA) event learning about medieval history re-enactment.

So all-in-all, it was good. Glad we didn't try to go camping. The people at the SCA event were camping at the Columbia County Fairgrounds - it was a soggy, boggy mess. Though the event was supposed to last through Monday morning, fully half the camp was packed up and driven home during Sunday afternoon.

I do wish that we'd gone to the family compound at the beach for the weekend, but there were reasons best left unsaid here for why we couldn't go. I think we made the productive best of it, though. And I must say: even though we can't get our a car into the garage yet, our house is coming together nicely. All we need to do is sell the surplus appliances and we're in the garage with one vehicle. Two by next winter? Probably!

The Electric Fence

Last night was fencing class. R has been fencing for almost a year now. I've been fencing for about six months. And last night was our first experience using the electrics. I had a blast!

There were five of us in the class. I was the only adult; the other four ranged from ten to twelve in age. Though, one of those eleven year olds is a 5'9" girl who fences better than I do, So it was a good mix.

To fence electric foil, you run a wire down the sleeve of your fencing jacket. One end plugs into a socket on the electric foil, the other plugs into a cable that trails out the back of the jacket and back to a controller box at the end of the lane, Each fencer wears a jacket with metal mesh in it; each foil has a button switch on the end. Make contact with the jacket, and the electrics count a point successfully landed; push the button anywhere else NOT on the jacket, and the electrics ring an off-target hit, Brilliant!

Here's where it got different. Now that electronics were monitoring the touch, there's much less open to interpretation. I immediately figured out that I got credit for touches I'd previously passed on as short or insufficient. I also figured out that touches I'd tended to concede to my opponent often didn't ring as true on the electrics. Bonus!

I really enjoyed it. Really enjoyed it. Fencing with wires, I mean.

The teeny-boppers, though, didn't like it so much. Maybe its because they tend to do age appropriate things like argue over every point, and argue over every procedure, and argue over, well... arguing. You know what I mean:

"That last point didn't count because your foil <insert excuse/explanation/story here>"

"Will you please stop arguing about the last point and fence?

"I'm not arguing!"

Yeah. That sort of thing. Suddenly, with the impartial closing of an electrical circuit doing the counting, there's little to argue over. For a couple of the teeny-boppers, it frustrated them greatly. My son was one of the frustrated ones. He also learned that the electrics rang touches differently than he thought it would. Except in his case, he didn't get as many breaks toward points as he did before. See, what he normally claim as a touch ... didn't count all of a sudden.

Just for the record, it wasn't because the arguing was squelched that made electrics so enjoyable. Though squelching the argument was certainly a pleasant side-effect. Rather, it was just downright inspiring.

Did I mention I really liked it?