BoldUlysses.com

Today is Luke’s last day of kindergarten. There’s no way to understate this: He’s undergone a huge transformation in the past year. He’s acquired social skills, made friends, learned to read and write so much better than he was able to, done some amazing artwork and just had a fantastic time. I can count on one hand (maybe even a couple of fingers) the number of times he’s not wanted to go to school in the morning; most times he’s chomping at the bit, excited to get in the car and go. We’re so grateful to his teachers, Mrs Conley and Mrs Upton, as well. They’ve really been understanding, patient and communicative and have helped draw Luke out so much, and have helped us understand him better as well (though he remains an enigma in many ways).

I’m going to attend “Young Authors’ Day” at his school in a little bit. He’s going to read (perform) a story he’s written, to polish off the school year. Looking forward to it.

I was bothered by what I saw of the presidential debate last night. I returned from working for my father-in-law around 9:30 and saw the last few minutes of it. Diane had watched the whole thing and filled me in a bit. My primary issues have to do with the moderator and the substance of the questions. He seemed far too intrusive and would seem like he was about to cut in when the candidates were only a few seconds into their answer. Between that and the “fluffy” nature of many of the questions, we really didn’t get an opportunity to really learn about any of the candidates. The whole event seemed like a dog-and-pony show more than anything else, which was disappointing.

I was impressed with Bachmann, though. I’ve always been impressed with her determination to stick to the principles that inform her positions on bills that come to her desk in Congress, and knowing that (it’s not as if it’s a secret), I’m a little surprised at pundits who seem bewildered by her campaign for president. They say she can’t win the nomination, which is probably true, but given her voting record, the idea of winning or losing above all else certainly doesn’t seem like something she’s constrained by. I respect and admire that, too. Possibly more than any other candidate (at least those with records of public service), she stands for principle above politics. I hope she goes far.

All that said, and this is something Diane regularly gives me grief over, I do hope Rick Perry decides to jump in. If you look at the big picture, I really do think he has the best shot, out of any Republican candidate announced or rumored to announce, of winning the general election. He’s got the charisma and the record, and is “battle-hardened” (to borrow another pundit’s phrase) by winning three (!) Texas gubernatorial elections. There’s just no dirt left to dig up on the guy. The skeletons have been out in the open for ages. His Achilles heel is the fact that he’s yet another governor of Texas, so if he announces a run, expect a nonstop “Bush’s third term” chant by the MSM all the way through, never mind the fact that the ties between the two are not nearly as close as might first appear (Bush endorsed Perry’s opponent in the 2010 Texas governor Republican primany, for instance). He’s not Bush. He’s much more articulate, a better communicator (Bush’s greatest failing) and arguably more fiscally conservative than W. He’s not perfect—no candidate is—but I think he would be a great fit.

Riveting 20-minute conversation between Michael Horton (of The White Horse Inn) and Michael Shermer (of Skeptic magazine). It’s fascinating to hear Horton lead Shermer away from the traditional apologetic strongholds of attempting to prove the existence of God and instead, toward the historicity of Jesus and the Resurrection. I don’t think Shermer was expecting it, and it seemed to catch him off guard a bit; he seemed to be out of his comfort zone of arguing “objective science versus subjective religion” and started offering up more easily-defeatable positions like “Well, 6 billion people all believe different things about a higher power; they can’t all be right, can they?” Among other things.

It’s a great listen.

Here’s the follow-up conversation between Horton and Greg Koukl (of Stand to Reason).

for something I knew that I would get to keep

The utter joy of BT’s “The Emergency” is infectious. The song is propulsive, driving, leaping, bounding forward with energy and far-ranging sight. Here at work, while listening to it on my earmuff headphones, I briefly turned up the volume while pushing the headphones more snugly over my ears. The bassline and harmonics completely filled my ears. I need to listen to it at that volume more often, and in a place where there isn’t the danger of not being able to hear a summons from another part of the office. Yep.

One thing I appreciate about the pastor of our new church is his humility. He preached an excellent sermon yesterday, beginning a new series in which he’ll be drawing parallels between the life of Joseph and that of Jesus, an entirely appropriate and good thing, since

1. The Bible is first and last about Jesus, and He is the foundation of the entire meta-narrative, and
2. Too often the applications from Joseph’s story are reduced to mere narcissistic moralizing (e.g. “How can you be ‘a Joseph’ today?”), when the whole point of his life was to point to Jesus,

two points which the pastor alluded to in his opening remarks about the sermon series. He moved on by highlighting the correlation between Joseph’s brothers’ response to his dreams and the religious leaders’, His society’s, and by extension our own response to Jesus’ person and teaching. The connections were divided into two categories:

1. The ways in which they/we are condemned by our guilt, and
2. the ways in which they/we are condemned by His glory.

Without rehashing the entire sermon, I was struck by (among other things) how the pastor chose to emphasize his experience of being rightly condemned before a holy God, in the midst of the sermon’s application for the congregation. I don’t recall the specific example or examples he used, and they probably wouldn’t bear repeating here even if I did, but I will say that it was refreshing to have the dose of application, not shoehorned into the text, underscored by the pastor’s reflections from his own life. And all of this in a sermon that could be characterized as a teaching sermon, which can often be devoid of application altogether. I appreciated it very much.

I wish I could come up with a way, even just on the side, to make money off my car repair interest. I know it sounds like the answer is in the question (repair cars!), but the logistics are more complicated than they might initially appear:

• My time in the evenings and on the weekends is limited.
• My collection of tools, while appreciable, isn’t perhaps complete enough to tackle every job.
• The liability issue.

Honestly, from a purely ROI potential perspective, web design would be the best possible thing I could do—the hourly rate I could charge would probably be the highest, and all the software I need I either already have, or can acquire free on the Internet. But…the act of it is like pulling teeth. By contrast, I have and will undertake the most menial car repair task freely and willingly. That’s where my motivation is. And I just understand cars better than I do computers. There’s a present limit to my web design knowledge, and it’s limit I could expand through additional instruction, but the principles that govern car operation are so completely ingrained in me that I could undertake almost any task, even on an unfamiliar car, and have some degree of certainty that I would emerge successful on the other side. The difference in my confidence in approaching the two endeavors is significant.

I’ve been thinking about second jobs more lately, mainly because money’s been tight, and it’s nice to be self-reliant to even the small degree a second, self-generated job provides. Also, I’ve gotten back into touch with Ben, a friend of David’s from high school who’s been through a number of classic British sports cars, made money off a few of them, and is currently borrowing my engine hoist. I have crazy ideas of “joining forces” with him and others, like some giant car repair/restoration Voltron, but that’s a pipe dream at best. I can’t even begin to visualize how that would work out.

One thing I do know: Whatever I decide to do on the car repair front will have to wait until the garage is up to par, completely organized. Fortunately, my motivation to do that is sky-high as well.

With Luke, it isn’t so much what he loves as how he loves it. I’m realizing this lately. Actually, I think it’s something we’ve realized for a while, but with him getting older, and his approach to his interests maturing accordingly, it’s brought the realization into sharper focus.

What I mean by my initial statement is this: The common thread that ties Luke’s passions together isn’t necessarily what an outsider would think it would be, on first glance. For example, he’s interested in the planets, and by extension space, so logically, one would assume he’d have at least some interest in, say, astronauts or spacecraft or rockets or things like that, right? And it’s not to say doesn’t—he does, to a degree—but in our observation, he’s far more interested in aspects of his space interest that he can organize and systematize in his mind. That process of organization and systematization is the modus operandi that ties his interests together, as opposed to elements more intrinsic to the interests themselves. Again, it’s more how that what.

I can relate. With me, the appeal of airplanes, at least in my early years, wasn’t first and foremost things you might expect: the speed, or the flying (though those things were present)—it was the aesthetics. It was the way the airplanes looked that drew me, and that aesthetic fascination was part of the reason I connected interests as seemingly disparate as, say, aircraft and whales. They both had the streamlined, teardrop shape that I was after. Another way of putting it is there was as much of me as there was of the interest itself in whatever I was into. The interest and I “met in the middle,” so to speak.

Same goes for Luke. Focusing on his how instead of the what explains the connection between the geography interest, the astronomy interest and the way he systematizes information about each of his friends and family members, among other things. It helps explain his conversational style, and part of why he has such a hard time with discipline—the overarching “grid” of behavior and consequence is really hard for his mind to grasp. Every situation is a little different from the last, and that difference throws him off the track completely.

I want to use that knowledge of him going forward. I want to introduce new interests, or reintroduce older ones that have “glanced off,” into his rubric of how, rather than presenting them conventionally. Hopefully, it’ll help flesh out the number of subjects he can relate to, and create jumping-off points for deeper topics of discussion.

Diane and I watched Tron: Legacy last Wednesday. Overall, we enjoyed it. I hadn’t seen the original in 20+ years, and even when I did see it, I wasn’t all that into it (this being the “cartoon era” of my viewing life, which meant I had little use for live-action films). The new movie’s visuals were very impressive, as was the soundtrack, which I’m currently listening to.

I was a little concerned that due to all the advances in special effects and digital filmmaking since the original came out, we would be too “jaded” to appreciate whatever the new film had to offer, but visually, I think they genuinely pushed the envelope and offered something, if not entirely new (there are homages to / ripoffs of other movies everywhere), at least dynamic and fresh. There have been huge cultural shifts in the years between the original and the sequel; computers have become ubiquitous and much less “exotic” than they were in the mid-’80s, so the new film had a lot of work to do to overcome that familiarity. There were a number of approaches they could have taken with the plot, characters, and visuals, and I was a little disappointed they decided to do pretty much a straight update instead of something more creative and ambitious. They tried to shoehorn in a few more current themes, like the ongoing open- versus closed-source software battle, and the more immediate nature of virtual reality vis-à-vis what it means to be human, but unfortunately, they were just window dressing on a fundamentally conventional and convoluted action flick. But at least the movie looked and sounded great. I’ll choose to focus on that. Very eager to see what they do with the upcoming animated series.

Beautiful Friday. When it hasn’t been raining, the weather’s been uncommonly “California-ish” this past month, with sunny skies, dry air and temperatures in the 70s. Love it. And it’s a great weekend to head to my parents’ house in Chapel Hill for a little visit. Looking forward to that.

The kids are growing up. Penelope has nearly full command of complete sentences now, and has naturally adopted many of the social graces that even now, Luke can’t seem to find a use for, like greetings and goodbyes, among other things. For his part, Luke’s interest in astronomy is deepening, and his mastery of the computer is coming along too. I read him an information-packed library book about the planets last night and didn’t have to skip as much as I used to; I could read straight from the text and be fairly confident that he would understand it, as full of astronomy-related terms as it was. He certainly loves his planets.

And I’m grateful for that inasmuch as it’s a point of convergence between his interests and mine. I do have a very wide range of interests, so it was nearly a foregone conclusion that there would be a point of contact, but I’m glad it occurred in such a pleasing spot for both of us. If he had decided to be passionately interested in, say, baseball trivia, I probably wouldn’t have been able to “hang” as well as I am.

He doesn’t seem to have much interest in the things I’m really passionate about, though, which is totally and completely fine. Cars, airplanes, spacecraft… He doesn’t really track with me there—again, something utterly fine and expected. Interestingly, however, Penelope might be the one who’s more into those things than he is. Granted, she’s only 3, and as such is kind of all over the place with her interests, but I have demonstrated a few things about the car, and it’s held her attention, and she does point out with some frequency when an airplane flies over. Who knows. She’s such a crazy quilt of interests at this point: clothes, vehicles, sticks, animals, being “a superhero to save you,” TV, and many other things. Never a dull moment.

My back is hurting again, but at least I don’t know it. It’s been hurting for a good half-week now, and I finally broke down and took some ibuprofen this morning. It was sore over the past few days to the point where it was affecting my posture, which I think was probably exacerbating the situation; I’m hopeful the restoration of my posture helped by the lack of pain at the moment will help eliminate the pain long-term. We’ll see.

Good, albeit tiring weekend. I put the rest of the beadboard up the in the kitchen, took the kids to church Sunday morning (Diane wasn’t feeling well) and had a reasonably productive Sunday afternoon and evening. The job I’m doing for my father-in-law requires the use of a tool which happens to be portable, so I brought it home and clamped it to my (awesome) work table in the garage. I’ll be able to put in a lot more hours this week, and get the job done more quickly, which is a big win-win for both Mr Eppley and myself. I’ll be down there tonight, listening to my homeboy on the radio starting at 9 p.m. whilst I crank away. Should be fun.

I’ve had a real hankering lately to play the old games in the Gran Turismo series. I was a huge GT1 and 2 junkie and played most of GT3 before GT4 came out. But when I saw the size and depth of GT4, I decided I didn’t want to spend a month holed up in my house completing the game, which I certainly could have done, so I kind of fell off the horse. This was during flight training in ’05-’06, so I certainly had enough to worry about at that point without getting engrossed in a video game. And I’m still not sure I’m ready for something that immersive, but…I would like to revisit the earlier games. GT1 and 2 at the very least. I remember blasting up Trial Mountain in GT1 with an Impreza WRX…good times.

let your headlights
drill a hole in the darkness
let the closing
shoot you forward
let the convergence
squeeze you through the night

the dash lights are out
but we'll find our way home
the radio is mute
but our thoughts will avail us

tumbling forward
pressing onward
falling inward
pushing upward

cut a hole through the blackness
reach out through the moment
fight
fight
fight

but at least we can move

I wish it didn’t take me so agonizingly long to finish books. I’ve been working on my library copy of The Silmarillion for ages now… I’ll read a few pages once every couple of days, and I’m only just now about halfway though. I used to read much faster. Maybe I had more time in high school, or maybe, because the activity was encouraged or required then, time was made for me. In an event, I remember the first book it took me longer to read through: Dickens’ Great Expectations. I loved the book; it just took me forever to read for some reason, and it’s been like that ever since.

Both cars continue to hum along without a hitch. They both need cleaning, inside and out, though; they’re filthy. Between the mist that’s been hanging in the air the past few days, not washing away anything, but just causing grime to be stuck to the cars, and the bird population explosion in our yard over the past month or so (they seem to consider the cars worthy targets), the cars have just been in a bad way. I feel for the Minkevan particularly; it doesn’t live in the garage at the moment, so it just seems to stare longingly at the E34 in the garage every night, wishing it could be inside too. Needs some love. Thankfully, both cars engines are in good shape—they both recently had oil changes, the Minkevan with some good ol’ dino 5W-30, and the E34 got a new formula: I’m trying Castrol Syntec 5W-50 instead of the usual Mobil 1. The lifter tick at idle drives me up a wall, and it’s still present (albeit softer) after the oil change. I’m going to have to try some MMO, I do believe.

When learning a new answer in her catechism, if she doesn’t quite remember what she’s supposed to say but needs a hint, she’ll tilt her head ever so slightly, squint her eyes and say, in a cute, shy voice, “Wha’s that say?”

Kills me.

Longing for the beach today. Or the mountains. Actually, I’d settle for just rain. Something different. We’re visiting my parents next weekend, so that’ll be a nice change of scenery, among other things. We’ve been so house-focused over the course of the past 6 months or so; I think we need some distance to help establish perspective, and to help us keep from getting burned out. I’m looking forward to the feeling of “coming back” to our house, driving up the cul-de-sac and having it come into view. That’ll be nice.

Speaking of nice things about the house, here are a few:

1. It is, apparently, under the GSO approach flight path, like the old house. Regional jets routinely scurry overhead, and on Saturday afternoon, I saw the unmistakable silhouette of a Citation X. It’s near the practice areas of several local airports, too, so there’s always something up there.
2. No power lines. I realized yesterday whilst mowing the yard that they’re all buried. Very nice.
3. Ridiculously easy yard to take care of. Big, healthy rectangle of grass in the backyard, no maintenance trees and bushes. Only the side yard needs occasional tending, and that’s very manageable.
4. The crest of the lot. Love, love, love this. Drainage is ideal and the house is very well situated—but not “exposed” or too prominent. The two trees in the front yard help with that
5. Normalcy. After the adventure that was the old house (as grateful as we continue to be for it), it’s refreshing to be in a house with normal studs and drywall, normal doors and windows, and normal squared-up dimensions between things. That isn’t to say some things aren’t off, but they’re the exception rather than the rule.

Question of the day: Should we name our house? Would that be pretentious? Thinking of house-related words for the name of the post immediately brought to mind the names of some of the houses in P&P: Longbourn, Netherfield, Pemberley, and so on. It would be nice to be able to tell the kids, in returning from an errand, “Okay, now we’re going back to Such-and-Such,” instead of simply, “Okay, now we’re going back to the house.” But maybe it’s too much.

So, ever since I saw Back to the Future Part II I’ve wracked my brain trying to figure this out so I could build my own flying DeLorean. True story.

The first thought in my then-11-year-old mind was to design the wheels (inside the tires) of the car as fans and articulate them so they could pivot down on command, at which point they would spin up, blowing air downward, which would levitate the car, similar to a helicopter or hovercraft. The problems with that scenario: I had no concept of AWD at that point, the power-to-weight ratio would be totally out of whack (i.e. there’s no way for four little fans to blow enough air to levitate a car), the issue of transitioning between one state and another, and it’s not a true anti-gravity device.

My second idea involved electron resonance. I did some research and discovered that if you can get any atom’s electrons to spin, you can affect them with magnetism. The idea would be to have some kind of “electron resonance gun” at the center of a magnetized, doughnut-shaped plate of metal which would then push away the magnetized atoms, creating an action-reaction effect, pushing the gun-and-plate assembly upward. Unfortunately, this idea has a number of problems as well: I’ve never been sure of the energy required to create resonance (but I’ve been told it’s unmanageably large), I’m unsure of the whole principle of the thing in the first place, more power-to-weight ratio uncertainties, the question of would the magnetism just push away the electrons and not the whole atom (ionize the atoms, in other words), and again, it’s not a true anti-gravity device.

Lately, I’ve started to ponder true anti-gravity. I have a pet theory that quantum field theory is barking up the wrong tree vis-à-vis a TOE and that high-dimensional physics is where it’s at, regardless of whether or not we can observe said dimensions. That said, I believe the hypothetical “graviton” particle doesn’t exist, and that gravity, light, higher dimensions and mass are inextricably linked. So there’s no hope of creating an “anti-graviton” to counteract the effects of gravity. The universe, in my estimation, just isn’t put together that way.

That said, if we visualize space as a two-dimensional grid, and that masses create depressions, or wells, in the grid, what we need is for something to create an “upward dimple” in the grid, an “anti-well,” so to speak. That would seem to imply something with the theoretical property of negative mass. In theory, if you’re, say, standing on the Earth, holding an object with a negative mass equal to your positive mass, you would “appear” to the Earth’s mass to have zero mass, and thus there would be no attraction. Spacetime would be flat at that location, and you would levitate.

The problem is creating, containing and using negative mass. As I mentioned above, I believe gravity, mass and light/energy are all linked in higher dimensions, light in particular simply being a “ripple” of spacetime in a higher-dimensional plane. I think if we understood light better, and its relationship to matter and spacetime, it would better illuminate (pun intended) the problem of negative mass and by extension, anti-gravity.

Been talking with Aaron more lately. I’m ashamed to say I’ve let our friendship languish over the years, shades of what happened when I was in college during his final year of high school and we didn’t see each other much, except that this time the distance is much greater and our respective activity levels are much higher. But while it may be more difficult for us to casually get together and play tennis and shoot the breeze like we used to, there are definitely many means of communication I can avail myself of, ones that I haven’t used, sadly.

But lately our friendship has been picking up a bit. He’s decided to get back into tinkering with cars, which naturally opens up a huge common ground for us to talk about. A couple of months ago, he bought a 2nd-generation RX-7 (a blue example of the type was his first car), fixed it up and flipped it, and subsequently purchased his dream car: a 3rd-generation RX-7.

While it’s not necessarily my dream car, it’s certainly in the top five, and it’s a car he and I have lusted after for years. He got a good deal on the car he bought, but it was in particularly poor condition, so he’s got his work cut out for him in terms of restoring it. It definitely gives us something to talk about, though. And of course, it’s not that we couldn’t (or shouldn’t) talk about other, more “weighty” things, but having a conversational point-of-entry definitely greases the wheels, so to speak.

I’ve been trying to write a bit more lately, too. Any time I find myself in the position of not having written consistently for a while and trying to pick back up, I inevitably ponder the “scope” of my journal, how long it’s lasted, the memories it contains, and so on. And between thinking about that and musings on the “resumption” of my friendship with Aaron, there’s been a convergence of sorts between the areas. That is to say, my journal does contain a wealth of memory; however, it only goes back so far, to December 2000, and there are many gaps and fits and starts. Friends like Aaron, who have known me for ages, “contain” memories of their own, and provide a link to my past just as strong as, and that reaches farther back than my journal does. It’s almost like the act of having friends fleshes us out an individuals, connects us with our past and illuminates our present through all those “remember whens” we share when we converse. There are so many details he recalls that I’ve forgotten, or never noticed about events we both witnessed, and the same is true of me for him.

Of course, friendship accomplishes many things besides just allowing us to reminisce. But for me, the recent ruminations do provide a sort of “grounding” for the idea of having “history” with someone. It’s not such an ethereal concept any more, and I realize its importance in light of my need to be tethered in time. There are few things more unsettling to me than the thought of being “weightless in time,” of losing my bearings with respect to my past (good and bad events alike), of falling off the slope I’ve climbed so far, through my 32 years of life. So among a myriad of other ways, I’m tremendously grateful for friendship in that.

Natalie Merchant’s “Carnival” on the headphones:

Fall ’96, blaring out of the PA system at the North Carolina State Fair. On the top of the Ferris wheel with Aaron, Jason, Cara and Natalie. Hot day, sticky painted plastic seat. Hearing the screams and yells from the pirate ship ride nearby. High school feelings, posturing, uncertainty, unnamed desires… Wanting the girls on the ride to like you, but you wouldn’t date them if they did; it would just be some kind of validation. But then again, you don’t know what you’d do; you haven’t even thought that far through the whole thing; all you know is the yearning for something. Thoughts about family, school, the future and the all-encompassing activity that was Odyssey of the Mind. Velcro sandals, khaki shorts and a nerdy, patterned polo shirt.

I often wish my journal entries went back that far. I have a few hand-written entries from a senior year English class assignment, but that’s about it. All I have is what’s in my head.

1. They reported late last night that Osama bin Laden was killed. I feel strangely numb about the whole thing. I’m glad justice was done (at least, as close an approximation of justice as can be done in this world), but part of me hesitates to rejoice in the death of another. As evil as he was, he was still an image-bearer of God, however corrupted and twisted that image might have become. But, on the other hand, there are many verses in the Word where David, a man of an upright an pure heart (but a man nevertheless), pleads with God to avenge him, and tells God how much he hates his persecutors (see the end of Ps. 139 for an example). Is that prescriptive? I don’t know. Suffice it to say that while I firmly believe bin Laden was killed justly, and by the proper agents to perform such a task, it’s still a strong reminder we live in a fallen world desperately in need of redemption. I’ll leave it at that.
2. I’m sure the link will stop working eventually, but for the time being, enjoy this. Make sure you listen to the 250 GTO—the sound is like catnip for a car buff. Unbelievably good.
3. Luke and I went stargazing for the first time Friday night. He stayed up late, until it got dark, and we went out there around 9 p.m. We used his new telescope, the one he got for his birthday, and it worked well. It was a really “productive” first time, and I was happy about that. We saw Arcturus, Capella, Sirius, Betelgeuse and Spica, as well as Saturn and the Beehive. I was really proud of Luke; he remembered from his excursions on Google Sky that Saturn was supposed to be in Virgo this time of year, and sure enough, when I checked the star charts, there was a “star” in that constellation that wasn’t “supposed” to be there. And it was Saturn. Pretty neat. We both had a great time.

Sitting here at work putting off eating my turkey and cheese sandwich. Dave is out sick today, Charlie’s off to get his allergy shots, and thunderstorms are popping up here and there. The brunt of them is supposed to arrive tonight. It’ll be nice to have the rain. I love a good downpour.

Luke’s home sick, and Penelope amused herself this morning by getting into the (gas, thankfully) fireplace downstairs and emptying every last bit of dirt and soot out onto the white carpet. Diane called me in exasperation this morning and told me about it. Amazing how she chooses to ignore the dozens, nay, hundreds of toys downstairs and decides to mess with the fireplace. Unbelievable.

But we’re all well. Our latest home improvements are as follows:

1. Painted the outside shutters black to match the front door. They look awesome.
2. Spent all day Friday and Saturday putting up beadboard on the kitchen walls. Nearly cursed at my utterly useless stud finder.
3. Built a big, long work table for the garage. It fits between the cars and has storage on the bottom shelf.
4. Scored some free wood on Monday, courtesy of a crate the company was going to throw out. It’s good plywood and two-by-fours I’ll use for additional shelving in the garage.
5. Finished painting the hallway and front room Seashell Gray. It looks wonderful, cool, calm and refreshing. Love the color.

I’ve been really itching to start on the Datsun restoration, even though I know

• It’s a multi-year project,
• It’ll be far more expensive than we can budget for now,
• Home improvements are the first priority, and
• I really should be focusing more of my time and attention on my family, given where they all are.

So that’ll definitely have to wait. I might just move it to our house, though, just to help Mom and Dad by freeing up some space in their garage. And there might be little things I can tackle without spending any money. Ahh…we’ll see.

The wind is really blowing outside now. I can see the pollen and leaves come off the trees. Storm’s coming.

Luke’s 7th birthday last Saturday was a lot of fun. We all went to Funigan’s, same as last year, but this time he invited his Kindergarten classmates. Many RSVP’d, but unfortunately the “big two” he would have liked to have seen make weren’t there: Evan and Caleb. But Dominic, the Triplets and Sophia were there. His party was solar system-themed, and it was neat to hear from Sophia’s mom how he’s been teaching Sophia about the planets in school. Neat little quasi-mutual interest they have. All the relatives were in attendance as well, and Luke’s behavior was exemplary. He had a great time. He received lots of space-related books, a pair of telescopes, a water gun, a huge crawl-in inflatable ball and a few other odds and ends.

Or at least, such a claim was scrawled by Luke on a piece of paper now residing on the fridge. It’s amazing how literally he takes this stuff, how black-and-white it is for him. I tell him that the environment on the surface of Venus is like the inside of our oven, and I can just see the gears turning in his head as he works out the similarities between cooking foods in the oven here and what it must be like on Venus. It’s palpable.

Here are some of the latest Penelope-isms:

• A determined “No FANK you!” when a suggestion/command is unwelcome.
• Every morning she asks, “Dad, is it time for tasty breaktast?
• She loves to sit and watch TV with you, but she hates Pinky Dinky Doo.
• She loves to wear her headband, shoes, watches, any kind of accessory.

I finally found all our long-overdue library books after the move, returned them and was able to check out H.A. Rey’s Find the Constellations for Luke. We went through and it interested him, though he wasn’t exactly captivated by it. He’s getting a telescope for his birthday, so I foresee many stargazing nights ahead. I love that he loves the stars and constellations, by the way.

Finished reading the recently-published, excellent Children of Hùrin. Started the Silmarillion. Yes, I’m on a Tolkien kick.

A few little things to update you with:

1. Home improvement continues apace. Diane and I (mostly Diane, whilst I tended the kids) completely painted the family room downstairs, and she’s been painting other things like the TV cabinet, doorknobs, picture frames, decorations, etc. I installed stick-down vinyl tile flooring in the main bathroom upstairs, and it looks surprisingly good considering what it is. We think we might actually install stick-down vinyl “hardwood-look” flooring in the kitchen as a cheaper, lower-maintenance alternative.
2. There have been a few car repair successes to report. The ripped PCV hose on the Minkevan (causing a check engine light and very rough running) was repaired by using a copper pipe, heater hose and hose clamp pliers to remove the old unit. The E34’s ICV hoses, throttle body gasket and intake boot have all been replaced, along with its fuel pump and filter (after it failed to start on me last Monday morning). So things are good on the car front. If only I could get a longer hose so I could give them a proper bath…
3. Luke continues to be obsessed with stars and planets, but particularly stars these days. I want him to learn the constellations before I pull out the telescope, and I plan to use the H.A. Rey kids book to teach him, the same book I used when I was only a little older than he is. There’s a local astronomy club I want to take him to as well. I think he’d like that.

We got it.

The house, that is. We closed on our new house last Friday. The aftermath was completely surreal as we stumbled out of the attorney’s office and out to the car. Even driving over there and visiting immediately afterwards, it didn’t feel like “our home,” though I don’t think it will until we actually move in and experience life there.

Speaking of moving in, we might actually do so sooner rather than later. The logistical difficulties of driving back and forth to work on it, the “separate-ness” and particular the fact that the kids don’t understand why we can’t be there now… All those factors are good reasons to just move. The idea is that the inconvenience of working around family life is less than the inconvenience of essentially living two places and constantly driving back and forth. So, we might actually move over there this Friday.

It was a busy weekend. Diane spent a lot of time over there testing paint and various stains for the kitchen cabinets. I watched the kids and borrowed the work van to empty out the storage unit, an achievement which felt fantastic. It’s awesome not to have to worry about that any more, and $46 more a month besides. The contents of the storage unit are in the garage at the moment, which I think will become a staging area of sorts for the move into the rest of the house. Well, staging and triage—we’re definitely taking the opportunity that moving affords to weed out the junk we’ve accumulated.

Moving right along…

What with the snow we had on Monday night, Luke’s been out of school all week, going bonkers cooped-up inside and driving Diane nuts. I’ve been at work all week except for a two-hour delay on Tuesday morning, something Diane was very grateful for.

Driving to work that morning was a bit of a different experience, given that the roads were clearer of traffic than they usually are, and there were different programs on the radio. I usually listen to NPR on the way in, just to have something to wake me up and shout at (Marketplace Morning Report is the most liberal show of economic reporting I’ve ever heard). Tuesday morning just before 10 a.m. was time for the BBC’s news hour, and it was near the end of the show, when they cover the cultural news.

That morning the reporter was discussing “the end of rock n’ roll,” her name for the fact that the fewest number (3, I think) of traditional rock songs occupied spots in the British hit charts since the heyday of rock in the late ’70s. Two pundits weighed in, a British editor from NME and an American writer. I didn’t care for the British bloke’s opinions very much, as he prattled on about rock not really being dead, but just being incorporated into today’s pop music, or some such. I’m sorry, but adding a guitar or two to a Katy Perry song doesn’t make it rock any more than adding a banjo to an orchestra makes them play bluegrass. Rock is about the sneer, the rebellion, the anti-establishment attitude. And to that point, the American writer made an astute observation: Rock music was the “social network” of the pre-Internet youth world. It conveyed so much: Not just about sex, but about politics, ideas and values. Artists were still commercial, but albums were held in higher esteem; they were more of a milestone in a rock group’s career than they are now. Now, the convenience of just buying and downloading the songs you like is easier (and cheaper) than having to commit to the whole album, which, as an art form, is suffering the effects of that shift.

The main point of the American writer on the BBC show was that the conversation venue for political issues, ideas and values has moved from rock music to the Internet. Young people use other means to communicate their rebellion, their anti-establishment sentiment. And the only thing that leaves for popular music to convey is sensuality, sex. That jives completely with any cursory scan of the radio dial; I commented to Diane the other day that the theme of 90% of the songs of the radio could be summed up thusly: “Let’s rut like rabbits.” Not to put too fine a point on it, or anything. Hahaha.

It just digusts me, honestly. I know that polite society (of which I consider myself a part) and rock music have had their ins and outs, but the debasement of rock, the stripping away of anything substantial—I’ve railed against it for years, and it just gets worse and worse. There’s no authenticity, no honesty there… Even if I disagree with your ideas, I can appreciate the earnestness with which you deliver them. But now, even though there are many artists and groups out there bravely soldiering on with rich, thoughtful rock, they no longer occupy the focus of the public eye. They used to. Now the radio waves are filled with saccharine, oversexed, barely literate dreck.

Thumbing through iTunes yesterday, I stumbled upon my copy of Nichole Nordeman’s “Every Season.” Call me a sap, I really do enjoy the song. And it’s the most cliché sentiment in the poetic universe, but the personification of nature in the song really resonated with me this time around.

Especially considering we’re closing on our new home tomorrow, the thought of the house, the yard, the trees and bushes standing vigil over the empty, “hoping” one day they’ll get a family, owners who will care for them and enjoy them… It’s the most overused device in song and poetry, but the idea that the inanimate objects we’re about to enter into a “relationship” with have active wills and desires of their own and “want” good caretakers… For whatever reason, I felt strong sense of responsibility when I considered those ideas.

Is it just me giving in to some treacly Disney-fied notion about “my brothers and sisters the wind and the waves?” Or did the song evoke, for a fleeting moment, some primordial sense of our God-given stewardship of the Earth and the attendant responsibilities and joys of the Great Commission? I’d like to think it was the latter.

Drove the kids in the E34 back to my parents house for our annual New Year’s visit. My car’s original owner is a lady who lives on their cul-de-sac. She replaced the E34 with a new-ish E90 325i, but still misses her old car a good deal.

Parked by the curb on Friday afternoon, she saw her old car for the first time since selling it last spring. She had to run to an appointment, but the incident reminded me to ask her something I’d been wondering about for a while. So I sent her an e-mail later that weekend asking for her story of the car’s purchase.

Here’s her reply. It made me really happy.

I would love to tell you the story:

In about 1994 or sometime around there, I was in Germany on business and rented a car for business purposes, as I was traveling to another city for a second meeting. The car they offered me was a BMW 328i, and I drove it from Frankfurt far into the countryside (I can’t remember the town), on the Autobahn. OMG, that just took me right out re: BMW’s. It was a manual shift.

I had driven a manual shift earlier in my life (school bus in high school, old Volkswagens, Mazda 626, which I had at the time)), so a manual shift was very much at home to me, and frankly, what I consider…shall we say…driving.

Back in the US, I started thinking about how nice it would be to have a BMW, but what a dream that would be. I went to the Performance dealership, and thought they were snotty and arrogant, but I did connect with a sales person there who took me for a test drive in a white 525 with black interior. It was pouring rain and we’d stopped on a dime in the rain on a back road, so that was impressive to me.

But black interior? High price? Arrogant dealership? Automatic? That was 4 votes for NO.

Sometime later I was having dinner with my then insurance agent, Peggy, and her husband Ed. Over the course of dinner I learned that Ed loves BMWs and is always on the lookout for good deals. In fact, Ed loved hanging out at Leith in Raleigh and knew the guys there. He’d be on the lookout, but you know how people say those things, so I didn’t think much of it.

And then…about 4 or 5 months later, out of the blue, it was December, and Ed called and said that Leith had a 525i with manual shift in house, at the price of $34,000. It had 4,000 miles on it because it had been driven by an Executive at the recently opened BMW plant in South Carolina, so it had been really packaged nicely for the Executive (hence the burl dash, which was new at the time). He talked to the sales person and they would hold it for me if I was interested.

I went to Leith, drove the car, and (remember this was December, 1995, and car salesmen were not as equalitarian or enlightened in the awareness of Women as Legitimate Customers). The sales men (I emphasize the men word here) were commenting with some shock that I could drive a manual shift. (Huh?) They couldn’t imagine that I would want a manual shift.

OK, but I did and yes, I bought the car. I had incorporated my business, so bought it with profits from my business. I paid cash for the car. That same unenlightened salesman said, (brace yourself for what’s coming) “So, little lady, who’s going to be paying for your car?” I replied, “I am.” “Well, I know that you will be making the transaction today, but who holds the loan, or who is giving you the money?”

I looked him square in the eye and said, “I own a business. I earned money in my business to buy this car. There is no loan. There is no one else. I am paying cash for this car. T O D A Y. If you have a problem with that, I can speak with someone else.”

He sputtered and said something about little ladies today, blah blah blah, and we proceeded with the transaction.

I only mention that as laughter as to how times have changed. I noticed that salesman was not there very long afterwards.

For the entire time I owned that car, I had all service done at Leith, as you can see from the records. I never had one lick of trouble with it (except for a water pump that went out 3 years ago in 100 degree heat, and Chapel Hill Tire replaced that in an emergency).

All service was performed by the same mechanic, Conrad, their top mechanic, until he moved to Virginia. Then I interviewed Conrad’s recommended replacement, who I think was William.

The service manager at Leith in Raleigh, Kelly, knows me and this car like his own child. They were always good to me.

And that car represented my business ownership, my success beyond my dreams as a small business owner, and a real sense of pride for me. It also drove like a dream. I “fit’ in the bucket seat (no small feat for a 5′ 1” tall woman with short legs)

I had grown up in a large family where we were always limping along with second hand cars and Dad doing the repair, and we crossed our fingers on big trips, so it was important to me to be religious about preventative maintenance.

Mostly that car represented to me Dreams Realized, and I’m not just talking owning a BMW (I was always a little embarrassed about that, I don’t like the Ego stories that people make up. It was always less to me about having a BMW as having a nice car that I had didn’t have to worry about, that I could be proud to drive up in, that I paid for from my business and that I loved loved loved to drive…It was so much about the way that car drives).

Thank you for taking such good care of this car, and for understanding that sometimes a car is more than a car.

And thank you for asking….

Happy New Year,

Bailey

Very full of chili at the moment. I had to supplement the cheese topping with crushed tortilla chips instead of crackers, since we were all out of the latter. It’s a big lump in my stomach at the moment, but it’ll keep me going all afternoon.

Good Christmas and New Year’s holiday. Diane and I agreed last night that we’re happy to be through it, so we can focus on the house purchase and just returning to “normalcy” as a family. Every December seems like it’s more of a roller coaster than the last.

The kids got many good toys. Luke’s big item this year was his long-awaited violin. I’m still in the process of lining up lessons, but it was enough for him this year just to have the instrument. Penelope’s big things were her kitchen set (with a veritable deluge of toy kitchen foods and cookware) and her dollhouse. Both kids have been playing with all the toys (except for the violin, which is exclusively Luke’s).

New year’s was just another night. Diane’s been sick the past two weeks, and Friday was a particularly bad night, so I think we went to bed around 9:30 PM. The next morning we greeted each other with an absent-minded “Oh, happy new year’s.” Pretty low-key.

The house purchase is moving forward. There was a bit of an incident a few weeks ago in the aftermath of the home inspection. The house passed with flying colors, except for a few ticky-tack kinds of things. Until, that is, the inspector returned two days later to pick up his radon testing equipment, whereupon he discovered a big pool of water in the kitchen and sizable stains on the basement ceiling immediately underneath the kitchen floor. Turns out the dishwater had sprung a leak from not having been run in a year or so (since whenever the previous owner vacated the house). Thank goodness the inspector ran the dishwasher or we’d have been up a creek (pun intended).

The silver lining to the situation is that we’re getting a new dishwasher (replacement being cheaper than repair in this case) and the seller is going to foot the bill for ceiling repair in the basement, along with all the other standout issues on the home inspection report. Lord willing, we’ll be closing in less than two weeks!

Getting some water in the office kitchen a few minutes ago, I glanced over to the fridge. A magnet on the side caught my eye. It was advertising Burke Street Pizza, the restaurant we order our pizza from during office lunches and other functions.

My mind drifted to the last time I had takeout pizza. It was at Diane’s parents’ house during a tornado watch. Whenever there’s a watch we camp out over there, since our apartment doesn’t have a basement and Clemmons seems to be in the “line of fire” of many tornado-producing weather systems. The last time we were there was a couple of weeks ago. Diane’s parents had graciously ordered pizza for us, and we had eaten and put the kids to bed in the upstairs bedroom. Diane and her sister were downstairs watching TV, and I was upstairs at the kitchen table performing “guard duty” in case one of the kids decided to wander out of the bedroom. I had a glass of Coke to wash down the pizza, and there was a beautifully-illustrated copy of Grahame’s The Wind in the Willows sitting on the table in front of me. Diane’s dad read it to her and her siblings when they were little, and he bought a fresh copy so he could read it to Luke and Penelope as well. He had attempted to do just that downstairs earlier, before the kids went to bed, and at the time they played around the room with other toys, not paying his reading the slightest amount of attention. They’re just unable to follow it at this point in their lives.

I picked it up, though, there at the kitchen table, and dug in. I finished about three-quarters of it before Diane came upstairs and I had to make a quick run back to the apartment to gather a few things. During the time I was reading, however, I was completely absorbed by the book. There was something enchanting about it. I remembered watching the Disney animated version of the book when I was younger, and there was a familiarity there borne out of the obvious parallels with the book that made it seem very…cozy. Beyond that, though, the writing and illustrations themselves had a quality to them that felt like a comfortable easy chair. Maybe it was the “warm” British-ness of it all. Perhaps it was the lengthy descriptions of settings and meals. It could have been the general good nature of all the characters in the story. Most likely it was a fusion of all of those qualities.

Seeing the magnet on the fridge just brought back the sensations of the whole of that evening. And I definitely intend to finish the book.

We had a bit of a scare on Saturday evening when looking
at pictures of the house on Google Maps. Here’s the satellite view:

The area of concern is just on the other side of the Leyland
Cypresses on the northeast side of the yard, indicated by the red arrow.

What does it look like, upon first glance?

Yes, a cemetery.

Diane (understandably) was freaking out; I was upset, and kicking myself that I hadn’t thought to investigate what was on the other side of the privacy trees before putting an offer on the house, something we did last week.

We fretted for a good half hour…until we looked at the same area with Bing Maps:

There you can see the area at more of an angle, which made it clear it’s a dressage course for horses. The objects are gates and obstacles for the horses to jump over and go around. Of course, then the lightbulb went on and, having lived in the immediate area for 25+ years, Diane remembered that she had seen horses on that lot many times before.

A lot better than some centuries-old, creepy cemetery, no?

The moral: When you have privacy trees all around your backyard, look to see what’s on the other side before bidding on the house. Goodness.

SpaceX successfully launched, deorbited and recovered their Dragon 9 spacecraft yesterday.

Pretty cool that a private company is getting in on the action. The first manned test of the system is going to be historic; that’s for sure.

Still feel like NASA should do the heavy lifting (pun intended) and lead the way, though. Had a conversation with David about it last weekend. With all the insecurity over American students’ aptitude in science and math and hand-wringing over the possibility that this generation will grow up less educated and less prepare to compete in the global economy than the previous, why shoot ourselves in the foot by axing one of the most inspirational creators of a desire to study science and math, namely, NASA’s manned space exploration efforts. How exactly does a “focus on low-Earth-orbit and private spaceflight ventures” dazzle students, capture their imagination and make them want to be astronauts and engineers? It doesn’t, and the loss of that perception of being the vanguard, both domestically and abroad, could have more far-reaching effects than some foresee.

1. Luke requested that I make him a couple of paper airplanes last night. I obliged and made him a “long” airplane before making him a “wide” airplane. The wide one flew better, as they usually do. After that I made him a paper popper. He’s loves them, but he’s continually amazed both by my ability to make them pop and frustrated by his own inability to do the same. He tried really hard last night, though, even going so far as to windmill his arm a few times before he brought it down in another futile attempt. He’ll get it.

2. Earlier that evening, before his sister went to bed, Luke pulled out her dress-up box, so he told me, to have a “rummage sale,” like he’s seen on Max & Ruby. Eventually he found the wings and halo from Penelope’s Halloween costume and put them on, dressing up as an angel. I was getting Pen ready for bed when I heard him announce, “I’m an angel!” and then, “Penelope, you’re a shepherd so you need to be scared of me.” I told Pen to act scared, which she did, then Luke came over to her and said, “Okay, let’s go see baby Jesus,” before leading her by the hand over to a pile of clean laundry, where baby Jesus “was.” It was very cute.

3. Penelope gets more expressive and creative by the day. Yesterday during her bath I peeked in to observe her playing with the dragon/alligator washcloth and mimicking a deep dragon voice as it interacted with the other bath toys. Her “robot voice” is something to behold as well, a monotone, “I am a robot. I am a robot.” And her pirate, “Arrrrgh!” is excellent as well.

4. We were in Chapel Hill all weekend for Paul and Carrie’s wedding, which was wonderful. We’re beyond happy for them and excited about the prospect of them moving closer than Juneau. David, Rachel and Catherine stayed at my parents’ house with Diane, Luke, Penelope and myself and we spent a lot of good time together. It was especially fun to watch Luke and Catherine interact. He loves her and is just excited to hang out with her, prance around her and “help out” his aunt Rachel. For her part, she seemed to welcome the attention and smile and laugh at him. Most 6-year-olds don’t have much time for their younger siblings, much less babies in the family, so it’s nice to see Luke enjoy interacting as much as he did.

Busy Thanksgiving weekend. We ate at Diane’s parents’ on Thursday (it was their turn this year) spent Friday and Saturday mulling around the apartment and setting up Christmas things, including the tree, and Sunday the major activity was re-visiting the Sedgewick house.

For that last part, Diane’s parents and siblings and their families were on hand to see the house and provide a few more pairs of eyes checking of potential issues (with additional experience as well). They liked the house a lot but pointed out some stuff that, while not game-changing, is definitely worth investigating. Luke and Pen ran around the house too, excited about the new experience. Luke understood in the implications better than his sister; for her it was just some new adventure with her extended family, which was fine. At the moment many things are happening at once: We’re “discovering” the house we’re interested in at the same time we’re realizing the gravity of the decision we’re about to make, the loan process moves forward, all sorts of variables enter the equation and we just want to make a wise decision, at the end of the day. It’s tough.

by the stars in the southern hemisphere
and he walked his days under african skies.
this is the story of how we begin to remember.
this is the powerful pulsing of love in the vein.
after the dream of falling and calling your name out,
these are the roots of rhythm and the roots of rhythm remain

I’ve got a lyric, some time here at work (it’s a slow day), but nothing to write about. Well, scratch that; I’ve got plenty to write about but nothing’s springing to mind at the moment.

The lyrics are from Paul Simon’s strangely affecting “Under African Skies.” I’ve always liked the song. I love Simon’s lyrics in any context; he’s got a real flair for capturing moments and emotions with sparse collections of words that intersect the event being alluded to at oblique angles. The effect is to catch you slightly off guard, enough to want to unpack the lyrics, but they aren’t so abstract or off-putting that they drive you away. In other words, they’re accessible but profound, like good poetry.

I think a lot about how my writing tapered off somewhat after I got married, and about the brief, sporadic stints of heavy journaling I’ve had since then, and what that all means. The most obvious thing the situation reflects upon is my motivation to write in the first place. It’s not much of a stretch to make a connection between my frequent journaling in the past and my desire to meet someone I could be with. I always suppressed that connection, denied to myself that that’s why I wrote as much as I did, and tried to channel that motivation in support of subjects I really did think and care about, but I’d be lying if I said it wasn’t a factor at all. Fortunately, by the grace of God, I think I was able to “harness” the emotional élan that feeling of longing provided in service of more diverse topics than simply moping about being single, or posting a continual series of “sweet nothings” intended to attract a potential bride. It was buried deep down, again, to the point where I didn’t openly admit to myself it was a factor, but it certainly did “kick start” more than one philosophical or introspective essay.

And of course, once we’ve established that as a piece of the “motivational pie,” it follows that once I started dating and got married, the longing I felt was rightly satisfied in Diane, that particular emotional boost evaporated, and the net result was that my posts became less frequent.

I think there’s more to it than that, though. We’ve been married for four years now, been through a fair share of ups and downs with respect to our life situation and level of busyness, and my stints of frequent posting (most significantly the one at the end of ’08) belie the notion that the longing was a necessary component of those spates of activity.

Also, I can completely deny any connection between the frequent posting any the state of the emotional connection between Diane and me. In other words, it’s false logic to assume that because I post more since we’ve been married, the sense of longing has returned, driving some kind of need for self-expression unfulfilled by Diane. No—I am completely satisfied in her; she hears everything first, and what follows in here is no reflection whatsoever on the “state of our marriage,” or what-have-you.

More than anything, as mundane as it sounds, I honestly think it comes down to habit and practice. This has been borne out time and again throughout the roughly 10 years I’ve been blogging. Once I have some momentum under my belt, the lights come on the parts of my brain accustomed to expressing my thoughts in writing, at a certain speed, and the words just come. Simple as that. It’s incumbent upon me to keep it up.

It’s hard to wait for the house, whichever house we end up getting (hopefully the one we’ve had our eye on). Diane’s been busy virtually redecorating and remodeling the entire house. We’ve had lots of conversations about it. We share the anticipation of just “having all our ‘stuff’ in one box;” the feeling of being in the house and knowing that all our worldly possessions—kids, things, cars, memories, etc—are neatly tucked away in their “cubbies.” That contrasts with the current situation, with our neighbors downstairs and next door sharing our “box,” our cars in the parking lot 100ft away, the storage unit, and so on. We feel very sprawled out, as it were.

There are so many angles to consider. I know I’ll feel occasionally trapped or constrained by the psychological stability of being in a house, whether or not that stability is mirrored in our life situation at any given time. I mean, the one overarching emotion attendant most house purchases is one of putting down roots, anchoring your family to that spot for the purpose of providing them a foundation upon which to grow and change. Life happens; jobs are lost and won, tragedies, successes, but The House retains a sense of permanence. On the surface it feels like I’m knowingly restricting myself, but I’ve made enough decisions in my life to know that every one actually opens up a whole array of new possibilities invisible from this side of the choice. So that tempers the feeling a bit.

On a more fundamental level, though, why is it that I fear the loss of “options” inherent in making a choice? Why do I hoard my possibilities, as it were? I’ve written about this before, but never really asked myself why I (and others) do it. I’ve just made passing observations to the effect that “I’m feeling this way again,” like a spectator looking in on my own thought life. Do I fear I’ll make the wrong decision? Do I want to avoid the responsibility and hard work that necessarily follows from committing to a course of action and embarking on it? Is there something inherently attractive about being flexible, about having options available to me, like having money in my wallet?

As soon as I consider those explanations, though, I remember there’s never been a time when I’ve actually been paralyzed by too many choices. A decision had to be made, and by the grace of God I made a decision and embraced the effects of that decision. So come to think of it, maybe the “fear” of the loss of possibilities isn’t a fear at all, but simply an acknowledgment that at certain points in my life, there are more possibilities immediately before me than at others, like a child looking out a car window at the myriad of fast food restaurants that border the main drag of some small town. When the time comes, the choice will be made and I’ll step through it. Does this mean I’m a passive agent of my choices, as if such a thing were possible? No—I take responsibility for them; I consider them and want to make wise ones, but at the end of the day I really, truly believe that the Lord is working everything together for His glory and our good as believers. Regardless of the “surface quality” of the choice’s outcome, good or bad, our good is being more conformed to the image of His Son. That’s the bedrock.

I’m really angry right now. I just finished watching the trailers to the upcoming Narnia movie, Voyage of the Dawn Treader, and I’m beyond incensed at what they’ve done to the story in adapting it to the film. From the Wikipedia synopsis:

On their quest to find the Seven Lost Lords of Narnia the crew of the Dawn Treader come across several strange and exotic places. With the help of Lilliandil, the half-star, and Aslan, the great lion, Edmund, Lucy, Eustace, and Caspian find themselves on their greatest adventure yet in order to save Narnia from a threatening green mist that has taken the form of the White Witch.

“Threatening green mist?” “Lilliandil?” What the heck? The first is nowhere to be found anywhere in the book, and Ramandu’s daughter (the half-star) doesn’t come onto the scene until the last chapter, and then only as a minor character (Caspian’s eventual bride). What the heck have they done to my story? VotDT is my favorite of the books (The Silver Chair and The Last Battle a close second and third) and this kind of plot alteration, nay, dumbing-down, is completely inexcusable. Of course I know why they have to do it; they have to shoehorn some kind of “doomsday” plot arc into a story that essentially amounts to a loose series of vignettes that illustrate various aspects of Lewis’ theology, but even so, it’s supremely disappointing. Do they not think people would sit through a more faithful adaptation of the book’s plot? Are we that stupid? Easily bored? I would hope not…

At this point I don’t even know if I’ll go see it. I mean, I will, but it’s got a heck of a deficit of anticipation to overcome at this point.

We checked out the house this morning, and I’m pleased to report that we liked it very much. There were no “gotchas” or hidden surprises. In fact, two aspects of the house surprised us very much compared to the pictures: the size of the basement/den and the size of the back yard. The basement is finished in wood paneling and l-shaped and is just huge—perfect for entertaining, kids playing or just hanging out after they go to bed. And the back yard just keeps going and going and going. We decided the tall cypress pines lining two sides of the yard create an optical illusion that make the yard appear smaller than it is. But you could practically play baseball back there. The kids’ swing set would get lost.

The structure of the house appear solid. There were two small cracks in the painted walls upstairs, but absolutely none in the brick veneer or the cinder blocks visible in the garage. The waterproofing seems to be well-done also. The living quarters are nice; pretty standard. The appliances and decor is definitely out-of-date, which is our only guess for why the house has been on the market as long as it has (a year), considering the price, location and condition of the house. It’s weird.

I particularly like the way the house is situated on the lot; it’s essentially the highest lot on the cul-de-sac and the drainage is excellent. The two-car garage is nice and big and ready for me and my tools (that place is going to be organized), and the structure of the house—very important—appears solid. So we’ll see. Can’t really start talking money until early next month. It has been, and will continue to be, hard to wait.

We’re looking at a house on Saturday morning. It’s the one Diane and I have had our eye on for quite some time. We’ve driven by it numerous times, checked out the backyard, peered in the garage door windows, etc. On paper, it looks like it could be a perfect fit for us. Good lot, not to expensive, big enough, established neighborhood, basement + two-car garage, and so on. We’re not strictly in a position to start talking money until early next month, but we do want to see how it looks in “real life” so we can get an immediate jump on it when the money does come in.

I’m excited but cautious. This is the biggest purchase we’ll ever make, and I want to do it wisely. Fundamentally, it’s a risk for our family, and while I don’t want to totally minimize the risk (since that would mean staying where we are), I want to understand every aspect of what we’re getting into, every pending decision, and anticipate things before they arise. I’m hopeful things will go smoothly when they do, since we’re not the only ones who want this process to move forward (the realtor and seller will be “pulling” on their end as much as we “push” on ours). Also, as much as I like the house we’re going to look at, I’m instinctively a little wary of getting attached to the first house we looked at. It just feels like we’re not considering all our options, when other options could end up being even better for our family than this one. But then I remember two things: Diane’s been actively looking for houses on ListingBook for quite some time now, and the realtor probably won’t be able to do more than she will in terms of looking for a good house. Yes, there are “stashes” of houses in various states of foreclosure tucked away on bank lists, not on ListingBook, but I don’t think we’ll be overlooking very much if we decline to thumb through those. Sometimes the first one really is “it.”

We’ll see. Lord willing, soon we’ll be moving out of our large, subdivided box into a smaller, homogeneous box!

Well, I caught the bug too. The infamous 36-hour stomach bug that waylaid our kids, that is. It ran its course yesterday; I was pretty useless at work and very, very glad to come home to Diane and the kids. D made her vaunted broccoli chicken casserole (which I didn’t eat then but had a generous helping of leftovers for lunch today) and made a “spot” for me on the couch after we’d put the boy and girl in their spots for the night. A good night’s sleep, bland foods, sipping ginger ale and easing back into the normal food routine and all is right with the world again.

Wonderful anniversary weekend. We dropped the kids off with Mom and Dad on Friday evening and spent Friday and Saturday nights in a hotel; just a mini-getaway for the two of us. No plans, few expectations other than just time together, something we’ve needed for a while. We visited the NC Art Museum, did a little shopping but otherwise just laid low until it was time to reclaim the children on Sunday morning. Mom and Dad and the kids had a good time too. They planted flowers on Saturday morning, helped a family friend celebrate a birthday that evening and took Grandpa to the airport at the crack of dawn Sunday morning. Luke had some “readjusting” to do, coupled with the letdown from the end of a fun weekend, but Monday morning everybody was chipper again. Diane even had her best night of sleep in months, a real stunner.

Homeward.

Today is Diane’s and my fourth wedding anniversary. My perception of how the time has passed is kind of contradictory; on one hand, the years run together and it feels very short, but then I place a four-year span of time up against other periods in my life, and I realize how long it is in actuality.

It’s been an amazing adventure so far, and I see no reason for that quality to change. For all our talk and wistful thinking about changing circumstances, locations, vocations and externals, anyone who’s ever been involved in their family will tell you just the day-to-day provides sufficient joys and sorrows to trump any shift in life situation. Do we not venture out because we’re intimidated by the unknown? Perhaps. But more often than not, I think it’s because the immediacy of the emotions experienced in being married and raising children far outweighs any tenuous longing for new surroundings that might flit across our mind. Family is the substance of life; circumstances are just the trappings.

And I love her voice. I just got off the phone with her; my daily lunch time phone call. I could listen to that voice forever—I would camp outside in mid-January to hear her read the phone book. I would endure considerable distress for pleasure of hearing her talk about anything. Macroeconomics. Loop quantum gravity. The Peloponnesian War. Absolutely anything. And I get to go home to her in four hours. And then comes our weekend mini-getaway. I can’t wait.

I’ve been halfway back on the astronomy / space exploration kick lately. After stargazing at the beach, and with the recent string of clear nights here, I’ve had to give myself a refresher in constellations (the H. A. Rey diagrams being the only ones acceptable, natch). There were too many regions of the sky I couldn’t “connect the dots” to resemble something I knew. It was distressing, a bit like staring at a picture of a friend and just not being able to remember their name, but having it on the “tip of your brain” the whole time. I’m very eager to have a house with a yard I can pull the telescope out into. It’s been in storage for the past couple of years. Who knows, maybe eventually I’ll get a motorized mount and some photography gear. Then we’ll really be in business.

Regarding the cancellation of the Constellation program, I’m bummed, obviously, and slightly confused to boot. We’re actively surrendering our lead in space exploration to developing nations and stand to lose a great deal of prestige as a country. We’re axing programs that could jump start development of a lot of new technology. And on an emotional note, we’re just losing the vision that made kids (and grownups) excited about exploration, the new, the unknown, the adventure. Sure, it’s expensive, and I know not everyone will go with me, but like the library, the space program is an organization that requires pooled resources, and it’s one I would consider supporting with my tax money. I don’t have any objections to my money going there.

And that kind of touches on what has me a little confused, namely, the President’s redirection of NASA’s resources and focus away from Constellation toward supporting LEO missions and privately-funded, commercial space launch technology. The more “market-based” approach favored by the administration seems to fly in the face of their definite preference for central control and bureaucracy. You’d think they would be in favor of a stronger, more dictatorial NASA, to the detriment of private space ventures, but they’re not. That said, it bears mentioning that there are tenuous parallels between the more decentralized approach favored by the President and the Soviet space program. The Soviet Union’s regime gave it the will to mobilize vast amounts of national resources; it promoted competition between various design firms in hopes a better design would emerge, but failed to realize the amount of focus needed for a moon shot, focus the central command structure of NASA gave the American space program. So I suppose if there’s one thing we can anticipate from Constellation’s demise, it’s a lack of direction in the years to come, direction which is badly needed to maintain our exploratory lead.

Recent musical discovery: Sleigh Bells. Diane and I have really been enjoying their rock-techno-melody-turned-up-to-eleven sound. One reviewer made the observation that it’s like they took the best riffs and sequences of rock songs we really love and made whole songs out of them, and it feels true. The juxtaposition of the distortion-laden crunch and ethereal female vocals is done really well, and the lyrics demonstrate a level of detachment and acerbic commentary on the state of pop culture rare for music with such potential to be popular. It feels less like a guilty pleasure and more like music with actual artistic merit. Diane made the comment that a lot of it is actually quite beautiful in the purity of its expression, and I’m inclined to agree.

My coworker Charlie pointed me to a podcast of a concert they performed at, and I listened to a few of their songs this past spring, and enjoyed them. However, since then, they’ve come out with a full-length album, and hearing their sound further fleshed out has just made me more of a fan.

You can listen to some of their music here. My favorites are “Tell ‘Em,” “Infinity Guitars,” “Rill Rill,” “Crown on the Ground” and “Treats.”

Pen was throw-up sick last time and a couple of times this morning. We think she just ate something that didn’t agree with her; other than the incidents, she’s more or less completely herself—physical, chatty, mischievous and very, very pink. Still, we didn’t want to take her to church, so it’s been a lazy Sunday morning at home, watching TV, dabbling with Legos and coloring, reading here and there. The time change (obviously) caught the kids off-guard too; they were up at 5:30. Sigh.

Four day week this week. We’re leaving Friday for Mom and Dad in Chapel Hill; they’re watching the kids for two whole nights to give Diane and I a chance to spend some time alone for our fourth (!) anniversary. No expectations, no pressure, just a free evening, night, day, night and then morning. It’s going to be wonderful.

I voted in the midterms yesterday. First time I’ve voted in a non-presidential election. Diane early voted on Saturday, and I was going to go this morning but I had to take Luke to school, so I decided to go after work.

It ended up being a good decision, I think. I went for a run this morning and saw people lining up outside the Clemmons Civic Center at 6 a.m., but when I went at 7 p.m., a half-hour before the polls closed, there were only two people ahead of me in line and I didn’t even get to peek at the magazine I’d brought to read. I had printed out a “cheat sheet” for the non-partisan races, and between that and the handout from the conservative gentleman stationed near the entrance to the polling place, I was well-informed, I think. In and out in 15 minutes.

With regard to the election results, I’m pleased but cautious. I told Diane that the disappointment felt by some conservatives over certain “key” races is in large part due to overexpectation. As big as the movement was, the fact that it wasn’t a complete and utter wipeout motivates us to stay engaged and hold the newly-elected candidates feet to the fire. It keeps us from getting complacent. I think I most happy about the pickups in governorships and state legislatures, though. That’s where it all starts; that’s where up-and-coming conservative leaders learn the ropes. Change trickles up, I’m convinced.

We went to the trunk-or-treat at Centergrove again this year for Halloween. We hadn’t been since 2007, when Penelope was tiny and wearing her “I Love My Mummy” suit and fell asleep on Grandma.

This year it was a lot of fun. Grandpa and Nana came up and participated, and we loved that they were there. Inspired partly by his recent field trip to a Clemmons fire station, Luke dressed up as a fireman, and Penelope was an angel, complete with robe (made by Grandma), wings and halo. She was absolutely lovely. Luke had a good time investigating the fire truck that showed up, and Pen went on an inflatable slide-type thing, which she greatly enjoyed. We ate chicken stew and chili and lined up for the trunk or treat around 6:30. The kids got a decent amount of candy (not too much) but by the end they were obviously dazed by the sights, sounds and general commotion. We took them back home and they conked out immediately.

Happy birthday to Paul!

Luke started his first year of public school recently. Where to start? Let’s just say academically, we had no doubts he’d excel—he’s always been smart and fully able to apply his mind to understand the matter at hand. His social skills, being underdeveloped like they are, have been a source of concern. I have to say, though, that after taking him to a Halloween party thrown by one of the class moms and witnessing Luke playing and interacting completely normally with a little boy his age (Evan), we’ve been less concerned. It was truly refreshing to see him chase Evan around the playground and to watch Evan chase him and converse.

He did have some particular challenges the first couple of weeks. He would come home and tell us the most outrageous things the teacher had supposedly said to him, like threatening gruesome punishments for disobeying and the like. Those have thankfully tapered off. Luke did torment a couple of the girls in his class, too, trying to put glue in their hair and spitting on them, etc, not out of any malicious intent so much as to just provoke some kind of response. But every report we’re hearing now from school indicates he’s making a lot of progress socially.

He really likes school and looks forward to going every day. I drop him off in the mornings on my way to work, and he’s always chatty and excited. He looks expectantly over my shoulder when I crouch in front of him and tell him I love him before “releasing” him into his class. And he’s learned so much, too—his drawing skills have exploded and he’s been writing continuously and asking questions about words and language. He’s got to figure it all out.

Went to Tanglewood for Penelope’s third birthday party. We located a table near the kids’ (and our) favorite playground and turned them loose while we set up. All four of the grandparents, one set of great-grandparents, and four of the aunts and uncles were in attendance. We had strawberry cupcakes just like her first birthday, and she received some dress-up clothes, a game and some other odds and ends. Near the end of the party Luke and Granddad, and Pen, Grandpa and myself took paddle boat rides. Luke and Pen both loved being out on the water.

Luke had a good time too, though I did have to “manage” him like I do most birthday parties. He’s just got an insatiable desire to be in the middle of everything. I suppose that’s a normal kid desire that needs to be tempered; the perceived need to be the center of attention, especially with relatives around, whose attention you’d like to have and around whom you feel more entitled to behave just as you feel. We’ve been doing more “imagine how you’d feel if you were X and they treated you a certain way” exercises, but I’m doubtful they’ve taken hold. Just have to do our best to be patient, consistent and persistent.

Beach 2010 report: Great, great trip. The kids were the real “winners.” We all were, but they in particular had the time of their lives. They both utterly, completely and totally love the beach. Luke has so much to do on the beach: splashing in the water, drawing in the sand, making sand castles, digging holes, looking at seashells, chasing gulls, etc. And Penelope loves it too—it’s well-nigh impossible to keep her out of the water. She even went wave jumping with me a couple of times and was reluctant to return to the sand.

We stayed in a house a few rows back from the beach this year. My parents rented the house and Gran and Jonathan and Leslie joined us, with Uncle Mike, Aunt Lucy and Danusa coming for the latter half of the week there. We had a private pool, which was nice especially for Pen (she loved that too). All the couples cooked at least one night; Diane and I made a Mediterranean meal that went over very well. Luke and I flew kites on the hawk’s nest on the roof and I tried to stargaze from there but couldn’t make out too much. There was supposed to be a meteor shower early in the week, and while I saw a few, no one else caught very many of them. It was kind of underwhelming that way.

All in all, it was a great trip. I’m so happy both kids like the beach as much as they do. They could just camp out there for hours and hours and be totally content, provided they were fed, sunscreened and occupied.