Welcome to 2008! I'm not really one to make New Year's resolutions, but I have been thinking about things I want to do this year. Mostly, I have a list of things I've wanted to do for a while that I never quite got around to. Over the past few weeks, I took some steps to get going on these. Here are a few things I want to do and the steps I've taken. (Blogging about them will also help create a little public accountability.)

Spend more time with the boys
I think the kids and I do quite a bit together already, but I think these are the prime years I have with them where they're old enough (7 and 10) to really participate and still don't mind hanging out with dad, so I want to double-down on our time together.

The kids have been bugging me to go camping beyond our backyard for some time, so I thought I'd start there. I haven't ever really camped (OK, we went once when I was two), so I've been dragging my feet a bit, but I really want to try it as well. I looked into camp sites last summer, but it was almost impossible to reserve one at that late date, and I didn't want to chance driving somewhere and not having a site. So, this week, I reserved a choice site at Deception Pass State Park (close enough to home that we can bail out if it sucks) in June. I'm pretty excited and will probably book a few more dates just in case we love it.

Incidentally, the Washington State Parks reservation system is pretty good. They show you the individual sites with descriptions and ratings of quality and privacy, have photo(s) of the site, and make it easy to see what dates are available. Good use of our tax dollars.

Work out more
As I've chronicled on this blog, I've been up and down with my working out. I definitely do best when I have scheduled events I'm working toward, so this morning (the first day of sign-ups), I signed up for the RSVP (Ride from Seattle to Vancouver and Party). It's a ride like the STP (Seattle-to-Portland) that I did two years ago. I tried to sign up last year, but I waited too long, and the ride sold out. I'll do the Chilly Hilly again in preparation too, but I'll probably skip STP. Good to have the goals on the calendar now. I may do another half marathon (probably Kirkland in May instead of Mercer Island in March).

Learn to play an instrument well
I took piano lessons on and off growing up (mostly off) but never really reached a level of reasonable competency. I've always wanted to play well, so I started piano lessons last month, taking the half hour before Andrew's lessons (can't skip my lesson without making him miss his). We also just had a little Yahama grand piano delivered yesterday. It's been fun playing again, and my instructor has me working on theory as well to better understand what's going on. This had added an interesting new dimension.

I thought about starting guitar instead (which I've also always wanted to play), but I'm much closer to competence on piano, so I figured that was wiser. (I also played clarinet for six years, but I don't have much interest in picking that up again. Not too many social opportunities for clarinet...)

Learn to speak another language to adult fluency
I grew up speaking Chinese at home, suffered through eleven years of Saturday morning Chinese school, took a year of Chinese in college. I also took four years of high school German (enough to get by as a tourist). However, I can't really do business or carry on adult conversations in either language. Since I'm closer to fluency in Chinese, I decided to build on that base. Although I'm basically illiterate in Chinese, I figured I'd start with my listening and vocabulary skills. I started listening to Chinese language podcasts. There are a few good ones, but my favorite so far is by a guy named Serge Melnyk (really). More on these later.

I have lots of other things I want to do, but I figured this is a good start. Hopefully, I can stick with these and build some good habits. What are your plans?

As I mentioned previously, I chaperoned Andrew's (10) fifth grade class for a four day, three night field trip to Islandwood, a 255 acre outdoor learning center on Bainbridge Island near Seattle. (Here's a link to the Live Maps view of Islandwood. You can also get a "bird's eye" view of the facility.)

I must admit, the trip was much more enjoyable than I expected. First, the facilities are incredibly nice; it's not like any camp I've ever been to. Islandwood was donated by Paul Brainerd (founder of Aldus Corporation) and has a donor role that's a who's who of the Seattle wealthy (apparently Steve Ballmer hosts the fund raising dinners at his house, for instance.) As a result, they appear to be incredibly well funded. The facility is constructed and operated as a demonstration of eco design principles and is LEED Gold certified. Everywhere you look, there's a sign saying how the toilets are saving water, how the counters were made from recycled yogurt containers, how the wood was recovered from state highway projects, etc. They even weighed all of the compostable and non-compostable food waste after each meal to teach the kids to take only what they need. (By the last meal, we only had three pounds of food waste for 100+ people. This is crazy low; apparently most Americans each waste four pounds of food per day.)

 

During the day, we broke up into field study groups of eight kids, two instructors (masters students in education), and an adult chaperone (e.g. me). We visited some of the various ecosystems within Islandwood such as the harbor/estuary, pond, and bog. We also did team building activities on their teams course. The instructors did a good job keeping it fun for the kids, using games and hands-on activities. I especially enjoyed the owl/mouse/seed game where they had the kids learn about the balance of nature. The kids were divided into owls, mice, and seeds. The seeds had to go plant themselves, a few seconds later the mice had to pair up with a seed, and then a few seconds later the owls would try to hunt the non-paired mice. There were some rules about what happened if you were caught, etc. and over a few rounds, you could see the mice numbers fall when there were too few seeds, etc. This was especially clear on the chart they created. Neat stuff and the kids had fun.

   

Another highlight for me and many of the kids was a night hike. We walked through the woods with no flashlights or other illumination. I was surprised how well I could see after a little while. We talked about night vision (rods and cones), listened to the forest (they did a blindfolded "trust walk" which was interesting), listened to some stories, and did the wintergreen Lifesaver trick (they really do spark when you bite them -- cool.)

The meals were good. Most of the food was made from scratch on site (e.g. they baked their own bread) and were very accommodating to the various food restrictions the kids had. The kids ate a lot and many gushed about how good the food was. I think many families don't cook much at home so the food really stood out for them.

We also lucked out and had good weather (read: it didn't rain or snow) the whole time. Given this was only a week after the massive rainstorm that hit the area the week before, I feel very fortunate indeed.

The kids were much better behaved than I expected. The Islandwood staff commented on that as well. The only real bummer was a few kids and a teacher in my dorm got sick (projectile vomiting, etc.) Other than this small outbreak of typhoid (not really typhoid) it was a great trip. I also really enjoyed getting to know Andrew's classmates better; I hear their names all the time, but I don't know many of the kids well. It was a great opportunity for me.

I highly recommend anyone who gets the chance to attend one of the programs at Islandwood.

Conversation from this evening:

Michael (7) [unprompted and with conviction]: "I'll never ever go to Cal [University of California at Berkeley]."

Me [very politically correctly and with a mostly straight face]: "Well, Michael, despite the rivalry with Stanford, Cal is a very good school. I'd be happy if you went to Cal."

Michael [adamantly]: "No way. I'm never ever going to Cal."

That's my boy. I'm so proud. Go Stanford! (Now, he just needs to study really hard, and I just need to save a small fortune...)

Last weekend, I took the boys to Robothon, a robot festival at the Seattle Center run by the Seattle Robotics Society. In addition to battle bots (you could pay $5 to pilot a battle bot!) and other cool exhibits, you could buy a robot kit for $40 and someone would help you build it.

The kit was a "Herbie the Mousebot" from Solarbotics. Herbie has two light sensitive eyes and will chase the brightest light around. His whiskers and tail are touch sensitive; if they hit anything, he'll turn around. The two little motors drive Herbie along pretty damn fast. Herbie also has a taillight, so multiple Herbies can chase each other around. I have another kit (and a newly purchased soldering iron) to build before I can test this out. (I guess technically we have a Horatio, the black mouse, and Harriet, the white mouse.)

I took about two hours to build the thing. I've somehow managed to avoid learning to solder until this point, but I've always wanted to learn, so I figured this was the time. The boys were pretty interested at first; Andrew helped me solder and assemble the kit, but they quickly moved to watch the robot sumo battles that a school group was having the corner (I wanted to see it too.) The moment of truth arrived when I put the nine volt battery it. It worked! The motors ran and the speeds varied with the light. Actually, one of the motors was stuck at first, but it was because the tires were on a little tight. Fortunately, I didn't have to do any real debugging. I noticed some of the other builders had to reflow some solder joints - non-trivial once the kit is together.

We tested Herbie in our dark living room. The robot scurried around the room, bumping into stuff, backing up and jetting off in other directions. We could get it to follow a flashlight beam pretty easily. When we weren't paying attention with the flashlight, Herbie ran into the kitchen since the light was on. Scared the hell out of Michelle. Michael (7) thought that was really great...

More important, I passed the "dad test". These are terrifying moments where you have to prove you're a competent dad to your kids. I know they'll soon realize I'm just another loser, but I'd like to delay that as long as possible.

Anyway, Herbie is really very cool. There are a lot of other cool robot things going on for kids in Seattle including First Lego League and Junior First Lego League that I may need to check out for the boys.

Well, I finally got rid of my little brother Ives two weeks ago. After 35 (almost 36) years, he finally found someone who can put up with him long enough to marry him. All jokes aside, Aimee is a wonderful woman with great family and friends. My brother seems very content now and is lucky to have her. I just hope Aimee knows what she's getting...

Aimee and Ives had the wedding in Evanston, a suburb just north of Chicago and the home of Northwestern University. This was the first time I'd been to Evanston. It's a cute town, right on Lake Michigan. I see now why my Northwestern alumni friends really like it there. We stayed at the Hotel Orrington, which was centrally located, so we could walk everywhere.

The rehearsal and the wedding were very nice. My brother has a habit of getting teary on days ending in y and was a mess at my wedding so long ago. Of course, his wedding was no exception. At the rehearsal dinner, he choked up while handing out gifts, but I do give him and Aimee credit for holding it together during the ceremony itself (although it looked like they came close to losing it.)

As the best man, I gave a short toast (4 min, 30 seconds as timed by my friends - I had a reputation for overly-long toasts. Under five minutes is OK...) I was doing fine through the toast, working without notes and was almost done when out of nowhere, my throat constricted and I couldn't speak. I had a a terrified thought that I might dissolve into a teary mess and wouldn't be able to finish, but I pulled it together and got through it. I honestly hadn't seen or felt the surge of emotion coming. Wild.

After my toast, our fraternity brothers (Ives and I were both Kappa Alpha at Stanford) sang Kappa Alpha Rose to Aimee, a tradition at KA weddings. Aimee was a good sport about it, even though she doesn't have the "wealth of golden hair" described in the song (we did change the "eyes of blue" to "eyes of brown" in the song though.) Despite the fact most of us haven't sung the song for 10+ years, it didn't sound terrible (I sent the words to everyone ahead of time as a refresher.)

The boys looked really good in their black suits. Andrew (10) was the ring bearer, and Michael (7) was an "honor guard" along with another little boy. Michael wanted to carry ninja swords to help protect the ring, but Ives wisely demurred.

The weekend was especially fun for me because I got a chance to see tons of family and friends. We had almost all of our cousins, aunts, and uncles from both sides. It's been a long time since I'd seen most of them, and this was the first time I'd met my cousin Alice's husband and daughter. I also went out with my cousin Gary for beers, which was a new experience since the last time I saw him he was still way underage.

Ives and I have a lot of friends in common since we were both in the same fraternity at Stanford (Kappa Alpha) and both worked at Microsoft, plus one of Ives' friends from high school came out. As a result, I knew almost all of his out-of-town guests and had a great time catching up with them all.

Anyway, I wish Aimee and Ives well. I'm looking forward to having nephews and/or nieces soon...

Last night the boys and I watched The Sandlot: Heading Home, the third of the Sandlot movies about different generations of neighborhood kids learning about baseball and life on their sand lot ball field (this description makes the movies sound like they have way more merit than they really do.)

The basic (and not very subtle) message of the story is to do what you love and to value friendship above all else and things will work out fine. After the movie, I asked the guys what the moral of the story is.

Andrew (10): "I dunno."

Michael (7): "Always wear a cup when playing baseball."

Well, I guess that was an important lesson from the movie too.

The boys and I went to the Olympia Harbor Days today and went out on the Lady Washington for a battle sail. The Lady Washington is a tall ship sailing vessel, a replica of the original Lady Washington that traded for furs in the Northwest in the late 18th century; she was recently named the official Tall Ship Ambassador for the State of Washington (nice to see the state legislature really working hard...) She's was also the Interceptor in Pirates of the Caribbean and in Star Trek: Generations. She often sails with her companion, the Hawaiian Chieftain, another replica tall ship, as she did today. During a battle sail, the two ships maneuver for position and shoot blanks at each other with their cannons.

 

The Chieftain appeared to hold all the cards. They are a little bigger, a little faster, and better armed. (Chieftain carries four three pound deck guns to Lady's two three pound deck guns and two one pound swivel guns aft.) What's more, today, she had the weather gage (she was upwind of  us), which is normally a huge advantage in sail combat. Once we motored out into Budd Inlet and raised sail, Chieftain fired a shot to signal the start of hostilities and then bore down on us. As she drew near (slowly in the light winds), we unleashed a salvo from our deck gun and swivel gun. Chieftain was unable to respond since she doesn't carry any guns that face forward. We tried to tack repeatedly, but in the shifty, light winds we had difficulty (never really tacking). As we flopped around, we blasted Chieftain several more times. Chieftain never got a clean shot at us and resorted to firing at the pleasure boats that were watching the battle. (It's OK by me to sink a few Bayliners.) According to the captain, they typically try to keep the fights pretty even otherwise the passengers on one ship get bummed, but today, I declare us to be the clear winner.

 

The ship itself was cool. I've been on tons of tall ships before, but I've never sailed on one. It was neat to see how all the stuff works and how much harder it is to do everything than on a modern sailboat. They definitely have a hard time pointing (sailing upwind) and tacking. The crew was nice and seemed to know what they were doing; they have a mix of volunteers and paid crew. I'm seriously considering doing their two week volunteer training where you live onboard for two weeks and learn the ropes (literally). They do an evaluation, and if you pass, you can be a long term volunteer with them. It would be very fun.

Unfortunately, the boys didn't love it. Michael (7) for all his swagger, doesn't really like loud noises, so the cannon fire wasn't a hit with him. Andrew (10) had a better time but somehow got it in his mind that he was going to help with the cannons and be allowed to go aloft, so he was a little disappointed. However, he is game to go on their week-long family expeditions they do in the San Juan Islands every year. I'd love to do that with him next summer.

One a side note, this is the first time I've really done anything in Olympia (which is the state capitol.) It's pretty small and a bit worn out, but the area by the water front looks very fun.

Earlier this summer, the boys and I picked up a mess of PVC pipe and made marshmallow guns. Once you assemble the guns, you put a mini marshmallow in by the mouthpiece and then blow the marshmallow out. The marshmallow will negotiate all the turns in the gun and exit the muzzle - kind of cool really. The marshmallows melt in the rain, so clean-up isn't difficult either.

  

We got the initial instructions from Instructables. We used 1/2" (internal diameter) PVC pipe and cut the pipe into a few standard lengths (we used 3" and 7") for flexibility in recombining the pieces. Instead of the recommended hacksaw, we used a pipe cutter. This was easier and safer for the kids, didn't require a vice or bench, and produced cleaner cuts. This was the first time I've bought PVC; turns out you can only buy it in 10 foot lengths, so you'll have plenty. There was a hacksaw near where the PVC was in Home Depot so you can cut the long pieces down into something that fits in your car. (I got nervous when I saw the PVC initially...)

We didn't glue the pieces together (friction worked fine) so the boys were able to build all kinds of variants. They quickly learned that while the idea of a multi-barreled gun was attractive, dividing your limited lung power n-ways reduced the power.

The whole thing was super successful and very fun. We've since made water guns hooked up a hose and have been trying (unsuccessfully so far) to build a gun powered by compressed air (I've added a tire valve to a 2 liter bottle and pressured it with a bike pump.)

It's worth noting that I'm deadly with a four-foot section of straight pipe. I can hit the kids anywhere in the backyard with a marshmallow while sitting on the deck. Don't mess with Dad.

 

Of course, if it's worth doing, it's worth over-doing. Check out these crazy marshmallow guns...

Michelle and I were joking about moving to China today. Michael (7) started getting concerned about the idea and asked if we were really moving. He was getting a little teary and crunched himself on the floor.

Michelle: [craftily] "Well, you know you could have your own servant."
Michael: [gleefully] "Really? My own servant?"
Michelle: "Yes, maybe two."
Michael: [big smile] "Sweet. Let's go."

Michael (6) was reading a kids' science book this evening and saw an experiment he wanted to try. Basically, you fill up a plastic pop or water bottle, put the cap on it, and then poke a hole in the side near the bottom. If you open the lid, the water comes out (obviously). There's some more on the how much further the water shoots out when the bottle is more full, water pressure, blah blah, etc.

Without me saying anything, Michael eyeballs the rig for a second, puts, his lips around the hole, opens the top, and drinks the water out quickly. He was a little messy about it, but certainly less than most of our old pledges.

I figured he'd get to this one day, but six is a little young to be shotgunning even water. Precocious kid...