The End of April

I'm just back from a four-day, three-night tradeshow trip to San Jose. It's been a busy and productive week for the Typhoon. It's a good time to do a recap of the week:

1. M has been a primary focus this week, as she finishes up preparations for the SOBT Annual School Performance. Wednesday and Thursday were technical rehearsals on the Newark Theater stage; today is dress rehearsal mid-day, followed by a standby role for tonight's performance. Then, her scheduled performance on Saturday afternoon. She attended school in the morning only on Wednesday and Thursday, not at all today.

2. R stepped up during my absence to be a bigger help. He took the 'man of the house' role seriously and was a great assistant to his mom. After a quick false start, that is. We all false start from time to time so that's nothing really. Well done, young man!

3. C has not only managed a very busy schedule on her own, but she also had the house clean and orderly when I got home from my trip. I fully expected that things would be a little disarrayed, just because the schedule has been SOOO over-packed this week. It was an unexpected pleasure for me to come home to a clean and orderly house; it is a triumph for C, who ran such a well-oiled team in my absence; it is a tip of the hat in thanks to two children who pitched in to make the whole thing work so well.

4. N's business trip was extremely productive, and chock-full of time well spent on work and industry issues. Industry Roundtable MC duties; a video panel interview; Guest Editor spot for PCB007; show floor duties; meetings/meals with press representatives; customer/testimonial meetings; strategic planning & whiteboarding with fellow collaborators in other companies... It was a busy, busy time. I got just a little sliver of personal time on Monday night. Otherwise, I pulled about nine hours total out of the following three days for sleep and down-time.

5. Our friends in SE, on Stark Street, who were expecting their baby any day? Yeah. A healthy little baby girl. Perfect.

The boys get to do a boy scout campout this weekend, in addition to all the other stuff. We'll only be a few miles south of home, in Champoeg, so its convenient. We can camp, AND get back in to town to see Meredith's show.

Grandma G, Grandma MA, a couple family friends, and the whole nuclear family will be on hand to watch M's performance. Photos will be taken. Some will undoubtedly be posted to the blog.

A New Blog Tool for the Typhoon

So, here's the deal.

• I've usually blogged to the family site via Live Writer on a windows machine. Mostly because I've liked Live Writer so much. But,
• My personal machines run LINUX (netbook) and Android (phone) nowadays.
• My work PC is a Windows environment, but I'd prefer not to blog from there if I can help it.
• The rest of the Typhoon has Windows machines, but like work, I don't want to have to use someone else's PC just to blog.
• Until today, finding a blog client I liked in LINUX has been met with abject failure.

Add to all this the fact that my netbook's LINUX install collapsed on me, leaving my machine unbootable until a kind friend with deeper LINUX knowledge than I, helped me get the machine reloaded. Yes, we resorted to the 'nuke and repave' strategy, but I kept all my data elsewhere anyway. Now that my netbook is running again, I can make that separation between personal machine and work machine actually happen. And, as luck would have it, I was pointed toward Bilbo Blogger as an alternative to everything else I'd tried and been dissatisfied with.

So, starting with this post, I'm blogging from my own LINUX box, using Bilbo Blogger, to see if I am satisfied with the experiment. I expect to encounter a number of tradeoffs and constraints I decide to live with or not...like most things in life.

Off I go. Wish me luck. If the blog posts *look* different going forward, it's probably a side-effect of Bilbo...or the dimunitive keyboard on my netbook. Let's all watch what happens.

Hopefully? Nothing.

Peace of Mind

We helped out some friends this weekend. Their rental house has a wonderfully landscaped yard, needing some of that springtime attention to help launch the yard on the right path for summer. But, 9 month-pregnant momma-to-be was in early stages of labor. This just would not do. So we went over to their house on Saturday and did the yard work with them. When we left, the grass was mowed and edged, lots of weeds had been pulled. Plants that didn’t survive the winter were removed; some replacements planted. Color spots from the nursery were put in the ground an hanger baskets, and all the winter accumulation of leaves and yard debris from all the storms was taken out. They were ready to enjoy the yard, while concentrating on the new arrival and the parade of family and friends that comes with the baby. They had a noticeably high level of peace-of-mind when we left.

That felt really, really good.

M’s rehearsals have gone well. They’re still on the fence as to whether she’s an understudy or a cast member. Regardless of which she ultimately is, this has already turned out well. We all have a good feeling about that.

R left on Sunday for Outdoor School. Six days of environmental awareness education along the Sandy River east of Portland. He’s going to have a blast. He might just come back a little disappointed once he realizes how much environmental awareness he already possesses.  Even if he’s a little disappointed, he’ll have the validation that he’s knowledgeable and increasingly expert.

The rest of the Typhoon spent Sunday working on our own house. Two different neighbors stopped to say ‘hi’ and to comment that they’re glad we’re back. They can tell we’re back because the yard already looks so nice. They’re thankful for that. We did some landscape planning and some cleanup. I took out the seven small junipers that C has always hated. We’re planning for something new, but we don’t yet know what.

I got the cars washed, too. M helped a little bit. Both got washed on the outside; the Jag got vacuumed out in the cabin and the trunk. Then I washed both sets of floor mats, and sprayed vinyl protectant on the rubber mats … same stuff that makes the tires look all shiny. The mats never looked better. A little protectant on the shielding under the hood, and my car looks showroom new again.

Most of the day, however, was spent on the garage.

See, the garage still is full of ‘stuff’ left over from the move: extra appliances; boxes of tax paperwork old enough to be discarded but still with us; clothes ready for donate/resale/hand-down; and the like.  We managed to get a bunch of stuff onto the shelves, and consolidated/culled a bunch more. We have three loads of stuff to go to donation, and will post the appliances to craigslist this week. Once the donations are gone, and the appliances are sold, we should be able to get one car into the garage. Both cars? Well, that’s a different story. That’ll require phase two of the culling of the contents of the garage.

While we worked on the garage, M shared that she’d like to become a vegetarian. She doesn’t want to eat meat that had to die to make the food. She’s okay with vegetables, fruit and beans. She’s okay with eating eggs and milk because no animal ‘died’. She wants to include bacon and sausage and fish. In other words, she wants to avoid most pork, most poultry and all beef. That’s her idea of vegetarianism. She’s a lacto-ouvo-baco-sauso-pesca-vegetarian. Uh huh…

Well, far be it for us to put that down in any way. While R (the vegephobe) is at Outdoor School, we’ll use this as a family project to explore lacto-ouvo-vegetarian eating habits. M can see for herself how a vegetarian puts together the right foods to make for a balanced diet. This’ll be fun. And it’ll be informative for M. Then, she can decide what she really wants to do, and feel peaceful about her decisions.

So, we feel pretty good about where we are. It was great to be of service to someone else at a valuable and critical time. We spread lots of peace-of-mind this weekend. And for that, we were blessed with peace-of-mind in return.

Design Competition Update

Last Friday was the trebuchet design competition. C accompanied R to the event, held on campus at Portland State,  for the whole day. I don’t think she planned to spend the whole day there, but I also think the physics major in her had some serious fun.

I got just the summary, but here’s what I got from them:

• R was pleased to have had a trebuchet to submit for competition.
• In competition, the judges made him use a trigger mechanism that he had to jury rig together. With this untested, untuned trigger, he was unable to get a successful launch.
• Other kids about his age, with trebuchet’s about like his, typically saw a 20 foot range. This is about what he threw in practice at home, when he triggered the trebuchet by hand.

So, at this point, he was disappointed but not ashamed. The trigger thing was unexpected, now we all knew better for next time. R devoted his time to watching and learning from others. C, bless her heart, like a dutiful Mom, helped keep R focused on using his observational skills to gather up tricks for next year.

And what they learned came mostly from the high school age kids who showed up with elegant, compact little trebuchets with articulated arms that flung the projectile as much as 100 feet!

R studied the articulated arms in great detail. He learned that PVC pipes make for a very adjustable, lightweight, STURDY trebuchet frame. We now have a year to build our next trebuchet, based on all the lessons we learned from the first competition.

It was great, actually. When I asked him how the competition went, he said, sadly: “My trebuchet didn’t perform very well…” and then immediately beamed, offering, “but I learned all about how to make a GREAT one for next year. You see, there are these articulated arms, and…..” Five minutes later, he was still going about the advanced trebuchets.

My kid overcame disappointment and humbled himself to the learning process. A major, MAJOR breakthrough.

The Med-volution

R is in transition again. His meds are like that. This time, though, we also have a new doctor. The new doc is reviewing R’s charts and has made the following changes:

• The Risperdal is done. We’ve been using this one since 2004,
• The clonidine sleep aid, in use since 2004 also, is being replaced with something similar but safer.

The impact over the last two weeks? Good. R is so present, so in the moment. He’s helpful, courteous, he’s sensitive, he plans ahead. He seems to recognize the tension in someone else’s voice and feels the tension himself. He hates the ‘drill sergeant’ tone of voice that, before,  was required  just to get through to him. Now? Not so much.

A year ago, we switched his ADD med, and our kid came back from the brink. It was an improvement, but there were still some issues. Now, though, as the Risperdal slowly flushes from his system, we’re getting a kid who…. acts like a kid.

Even as recently as a month or so, I would regularly find myself telling him that he needed to start acting his age, and to stop acting seven. Hmmm… only now do I realize that he was seven when he started using the Risperdal? And that as soon as the Risperdal is gone, he starts acting more like his age? I should have known. It’s my fault for not seeing that connection for myself already.

R’s people skills are much, much better. R’s fencing is now rather passionate and interested. R is diving in to his boy scout activities, and he’s already reading next years’ math texts in his spare time. He’s behaving more like a kid with a 150 IQ would be expected to behave. And that’s a good thing. He’s getting lots of positive reinforcement. He’s being taken seriously and treated with great credibility. And he should, because when he is able to express himself, he usually has a LOT to share, at a very high caliber.

And, today was the school Design Competition day. R and I built a small trebuchet for the trebuchet competition. It’s his first go-round on the trebuchet competition. We’re prepared to participate but not place very high, then learn from the experience for next year. R can wrap his emotions around such a strategy now…before? No way.

I’m proud of him. I like having a twelve year old boy in my life.

This Is What We Do…When We Dance

Last weekend marked the three-week mark for the Annual School Performance for the School of Oregon Ballet Theater. M has been attending rehearsals ever since January, in addition to normal class time. On last Saturday, the staff asked to see C for a ‘meeting.’

It was the staff’s assessment that M was just not ready for the stage yet. She “didn’t know her steps” well enough. Inside, I suspect that C was quaking. I also suspect that she put on enough of a calm face to ask the following questions:

• Was M the only student struggling with her steps? 

  NO. THERE ARE OTHERS. SOME OF THE OTHER GIRLS ARE NOW ENTERING THEIR THIRD PERFORMANCE OF THIS PIECE. M IS NOT UNUSUAL.

• Would this impact M’s ability to attend school at SOBT next year?   

  NO. NOT ONE BIT. THIS IS RELATIVELY NORMAL.

• Would we have to miss the performance?

  NO. M WILL LIKELY UNDERSTUDY.

• Can we help her with additional practice or rehearsal?

  SOBT WILL HAVE EXTRA TEACHER HELP AVAILABLE BEFORE HER CLASSES, IF SHE WANTS TO MAKE USE OF THE OPPORTUNITY.

• What music is she dancing to? Perhaps we can get it at home and let her practice at home?

  UMM, I DON’T KNOW THE NAME OF THE PIECE, BUT IT’S BY STRAVINSKY. SORRY I CAN’T BE OF MORE HELP THERE…

C then responded, I’m told with a great deal of acceptance and understanding, saying something like: “Well, I’d rather have M be an understudy now, than push her onstage if she’s at risk of a bad performance. This news may be disappointing, but messing up on stage could be a big blow to a fragile ego. We’ll do what we need to do – I’m paying attention to the long-range view here. If pushing her too hard now spoils her love of dance, then that’s just not the right choice.

Apparently, one of the staff members then turned to the Director and asked, referring to C, “can she be one of our backstage mothers, please?”

Well, two saddened and disappointed girls came back from rehearsal that afternoon. Sad and disappointed, maybe, but not defeated. I was given the challenge of finding a piece of Stravinsky music that might match with a ballet called “Circus Polka Pink” C and M started dissecting the “count sheet” – the closest thing we had to a choreography sheet.

I had no idea what to do for the music. The task seemed impossible. Even if I could find such a thing, the only person who could tell me if it was the right piece was M. Same thing for C’s task, however. Even if we did find the music, all C could do was take M’s word for what the movements where, and when to start counting. There’s no available video of the specific SOBT choreography,and parents are not allowed to watch rehearsals.

Well, not to blow the suspense, but achieving the impossible didn’t take very long. Stravinsky happened to title the music “Circus Polka for Elephants” so a search for “circus polka elephant” on amazonmp3 (I was using my Droid) scored me a direct hit. I downloaded the song for $0.99, and a minute later, M was acknowledging that this was indeed the right music for her performance.

Just as I got the MP3 transferred to both M’s netbook and cellphone/MP3 Player, she and her Mom had worked out the movements on the count sheet!

Typhoon clobbers impossible situation twice in less than two minutes!

But we didn’t rest on our laurels for too long. We now had the music and the choreography, so now commenced the at-home drills.

When I left on my business trip the next day (Easter), C and M had rehearsed the Circus Polka a dozen times. Ultimately, by class the next Tuesday, C and M had rehearsed 40 or 50 times. C was convinced that M knew the moves, steps, and timing quite well. The extra rehearsals uncovered no ambiguity in M’s understanding of the routine.  C called SOBT and pre-arranged an early teaching session for M. The two of them got to ballet class 30 minutes early, and a teacher was waiting for them.

M worked for a half hour with the teacher. Then, when regular class started, the class instructor asked M to perform the dance alone, in front of the whole class. Nervous as all get-out, that’s what she did.

And at the end, the teacher pronounced her rendition “perfect”

We still don’t know if M will be in the show or remain an understudy. But, M has learned a number of lessons this week:

• M now knows that rehearsals require the same level of precision that a performance does. In real ballet, you don’t hold back in rehearsals.
• She can do the steps ‘perfectly’, and that her classmates, teachers and parents have acknowledged that to her directly.
• That she will understudy parts all throughout her ballet career; it’s a normal part of ballet training.
• That understudies sometimes have to fill in at a moment’s notice – it’s important for the understudies to be just as capable and prepared as the cast dancers.
• Her parents are proud of her mostly for giving her all, regardless of whether she’s in the performance or not.
• Her parents are more concerned with her lifelong development than this one specific performance.

I spoke with her last night. Once again, I told her how proud I am of her. Performance or not, she’s accomplished huge amounts this year.

Oh, that reminds me. M’s Summer Intensive sessions start June 28 and run through the end of July. Three days a week.

This is what we do. When we dance.

We Dance.

This is NOT a Joke

On April 1, 2005, my lovely wife was diagnosed with stage 2 Breast Cancer. The rest of the year was devoted to two surgeries, six months of chemotherapy and eight weeks of radiation treatments.

Today represents the five year anniversary of that eventful diagnosis.

It also represents the five year anniversary that makes for an official Cancer Survivor.

I kid you not.