Every day, I walk past a park on my way to work from the train station. It's a 5-minute walk, through a chain of parks called the "Greenway". The Greenway is new, replacing what was once an ugly interstate that cut right through downtown, obstructing harbor views and creating much noise. The 8-lane highway has been moved underground in the "Big Dig", and I have watched them transform a hideous pile of rubble into beautiful parks. I go out of my way to walk through them, so I can look at the flowers, shrubs, and trees as they blossom, grow, and beautify.
Unfortunately, these parks are being run over by Occupy Boston (OB), one of the branches of Occupy Wall Street. Dozens of tents are crammed into the park outside of South Station, displaying leftist signs and emitting a noxious odor. I have never seen any active acts of protest by these people, only the passive signs that I read as I walk past:
"Make love not GREED"
"America wants to work"
"Finance is pure evil"
"9/11 was an inside job"
And my absolute favorite: "Boycott student debt"
I initially laughed at them, not really understanding their overall message and goal. I figured they would be gone in a few days. This was in late September, and they are still there, even marching up the street just yesterday as a "Free Speech Protest". What baffles me most of all is the empathy they are getting not only from the media, but from everybody. Everyone seems to relate to the plight of the "99%", and the top news story for the last year has been unemployment. While it is unfortunate to be jobless, nobody seems willing to blame themselves: "It's the economy"; "It's the government"; "It's Wall Street and corporate greed"; "It's the baby-boomer generation" (side-note: dumbest article ever).
Since when is it not your own responsibility to find, and then keep, your job? Who's stopping you from starting your own business? Why is a job, along with healthcare, a perceived "unalienable" right?
I personally think that my generation, and the generation coming up, has been coddled. Look at the media we've been digesting for years: Most of the movies involve some youth trying to "find himself" or "follow his dreams", and features a bald, old, stern-looking white man who is holding him back, representing "The Man". Not to burst everyone's bubble here, but unless your dreams include reviewing large legal documents, writing mounds of code, working long hours for "The Man", or researching stocks (aka what most people consider "boring" jobs), you're going to need to give up on your dream and pursue something more marketable.
Case in point: I happen to work in a field (Information Technology) that is very marketable. This is not my dream. Besides being a professional athlete, my dream was to be a City Planner (instead of an architect), as growing up I loved maps and the flow of traffic and other related items. I even took a few geography classes at BYU. However, I did some research and found that: 1. Working for the government totally sucks; 2. It's very competitive and probably not nearly as enjoyable as, say, playing Sim City. So I decided to go into Information Systems, knowing that every business uses technology to run their business, therefore, there would always be a need. My dreams would be accomplished via video games, where the sole purpose of video games is to live in a fantasy world where you're playing in the NBA, designing cities, or conquering the world.
Now? I have a good job. Guess what? We're hiring. In fact, we need people so badly that we opened up around 50 positions nationwide last March, just in my small group full of data specialists. These spots have still not been filled. I know for a fact that other companies are hiring aggressively, looking for accountants, lawyers, IT consultants, systems analysts, etc. Jobs are out there for the hungry and qualified.
Let's look at a scenario where one of the unreasonable demands of OB were met: Let's say the government decided to create jobs and take away some of the "greed" on Wall Street by offering the OB positions where they would be the personal assistant of some fund manager, for example, for a percentage of the salary? They obviously wouldn't be qualified to research stocks, so being a personal assistant is the only thing they could do. This wouldn't work, though. The people in Tent City wouldn't be satisfied as a "Personal Assistant", especially not for a greedy fund manager. They are too principled for such nonsense. It's not their "dream" to work in such a capacity. They want to write
songs, craft sculptures, discuss politics, or research history. They wanted a first-class education that has taught them about the nuances of
17th-century French literature, but they don't want to work a boring job
to pay for it.
Why are they so quick to blame everyone else when it was their poor decisions that got them there in the first place? Information about salaries, job openings, tuition, and really ANYTHING has been at our fingertips for more than a decade. What were the OB thinking when they decided to pursue a degree in Philosophy at Northeastern University? I just googled "average tuition at northeastern" and clicked on the first link. The answer? 51K annually, right on the university's site. Then I googled "employment rate by major" and found that Philosophy was 9.6%, which was about average*, but noticed that "Architecture and Urban Planning" was a staggering 18.2%, so I'm glad I didn't pursue my City Planning dream. Of course, I don't know the validity of the survey, this is merely an example of how easy it is to get information. 2 minutes of research would save them a lifetime of debt with iffy job prospects. With this much information available, why is the government accountable for people's careers, student debt, or lack of a job? The difference between the OB and potential actors is that the actors at least realize it's a long-shot, so they work crappy jobs until they make it (and they also don't have mounds of debt, unless they went to Julliard).
*If you look at the percent of "Still in field by Major", Philosophy is at 36%, which is the LOWEST of all the majors, meaning: you can get a job as a Philosophy major, but it's not because of your major. It's probably because you went to Law school. This particular chart is probably the best indicator of the real-world value of a degree.
At what point do we need to just be realistic with ourselves? If I told you I still wanted to play in the NBA, you'd laugh me out of the room. But what about people who want to be Broadcast journalists? Their chances aren't much better.
Why must we do what we love, rather than learn to love what we do? I wasn't crazy about working with data, but I learned to enjoy certain aspects of it. I don't go home at night and work on data for fun, but I don't dread going to work. I work because I get paid, and I use that money to follow my dreams, which makes my time and motivation at work much better.
I'm like most of America, and think that getting jobs is not about waiting for the government to hand you one, it's about working hard, sending out applications, following leads, taking temp jobs, and doing what it takes to get a career you can be satisfied with. Melanie is a great example of this. She got a first-rate education at Boston College and a mountain of student debt. She graduated in Marketing, which is a "marketable" major (yuk-yuk), but also very competitive in the job market. She couldn't find a full-time job, so she took temp jobs to pay her rent and her loans. She did a great job at these places, and finally one of the temp positions turned into a full-time one. It took her 2 years of working temp jobs to get a full-time position. And you can ask her, those temp jobs weren't exactly thrilling.
A lot of the OB people think that firing an employee is a crime next to murder. That's just ridiculous. If someone doesn't see the value in me, I wouldn't want to work there. If I'm not adding any value to the company, then why should they keep me around? Companies should not be concerned about my self-esteem, only the overall morale of the work force. At my current job, we are always under observation, having to get constant performance feedback. Once a year, we get an annual rating, and if that rating is low, we need to look for a new job or be fired in a month or so. I like that I have to constantly be earning my position, because then it makes me feel good about my role here. If I lose my job, it's because they don't need me, or I don't deserve the job.
My theory on the high unemployment: Computers and systems have made every business much more efficient and effective. Data is available to make better decisions. However, it took some time for businesses to realize this. They didn't need Carol in Purchasing to file invoices since 2001, because they automated her job with computers and streamlined the process. However, they didn't lay her off until 2008 because they were doing so well, and why would they lay someone off when they were doing well? All of the sudden, the stock market took a dive, real estate crashed, etc., and businesses had to adapt. It was the perfect time to trim the fat, so Carol from Purchasing, along with others with similar roles, was let go. It was sad. But necessary for the long-term.
Now there are thousands of Carols from Purchasing on the streets, looking for jobs. "What are your skills, Carol?" "I'm real good at putting papers from stacks into folders." "I'm sorry, but that's not really a skill. My monkey can do that." Carol from Purchasing now realizes that she is obsolete, and she won't be able to get a job as high-paying as the one she held with the skills she has. Is this the government's fault? Maybe it's Wall Streets, after all, their greed caused the stock market crash! Or maybe Carol from Purchasing should have realized at some point that she's easily replaced and should learn a more marketable skill? The grim reality is that Carol from Purchasing will have to work in retail, restocking shelves or, if she's lucky, as a supervisor, probably making 30% of what she was before. It turns out that Carol from Purchasing is a single mom of 3 small children, one of which has diabetes. Seems unfair.
But look at it from this perspective: Maybe Carol from Purchasing has been overpaid for 7 years by 70% (if not 100%), practically stealing from the company. Has she never once thought to update her skillset? Did she really think that filing paper invoices was a lasting career choice? It sounds heartless in my made-up situation (even I'm starting to feel sorry for her), but how could she not try to protect herself? How could she not think ahead? Is the government responsible for every poor decision, whether active or passive, made by us?
I think most companies that survived the 2008 recession are in a decent place. Unemployment will take years to go down, because it has to do it organically. If companies aren't hiring, make your own company-necessity is the mother of invention. Unemployed college grads that aren't too busy whining will find ways to make money/products/sell services. Maybe they will start selling items on eBay, finding a niche and making some money. Maybe they will make a revolutionary widget that changes the way you think about pomegranates. Maybe they will start offering services on Craigslist, the epitome of the free market. I called an out-of-work licensed electrician off of Craig's list and paid him $400 for a day's worth of services. A few more days like that a month and he could be making enough to pay rent and feed his family. He didn't realize this, but his quote was half of what the established businesses were quoting me. Same with plumbers, plasterers, cleaning services, etc., that I've hired. I find almost all of my services on Craig's list for a fraction of the price. You're telling me that the OB can't clean a house? Maybe if they did it well, they'd pick up more clients. They'd charge more for doing such great work. They'd hire people to do the cleaning for them, making sure the quality didn't suffer and the clients didn't have issues. Pretty soon they have a well-run cleaning business and they don't even have to work anymore. Isn't that the American Dream?
Most of the people in OB wouldn't agree with me. That's fine, this is only one man's perspective. You can certainly have success, financial and otherwise, in other ways, but you can't count it as success if someone does it for you. Get your Liberal Arts degree. Get your dream job if you can. Pay off your student debt or default and kill your credit. Go camp in the park either way. But do it without the government's help. Otherwise, let's just stop with this "99%" nonsense and call you what you really are: A bunch of commies.
Thursday, December 1, 2011
Thursday, November 17, 2011
Mathlete of the Year
There's no way to write this post without sounding like I'm bragging ("Kent, that's not true! We all know you're the most humble guy in the world--you tell us all the time!"), so I'll just come right out and say it: I was the Utah State Math Champion for my 8th and 9th grade years.
Bragging about winning math competitions is similar to bragging about your comic book collection. Nobody's really that impressed, if anything, they think less of you. Of course, if it was an athletic achievement, like winning State back in '82, everybody would be impressed, but also think less of you for bragging about it. Nobody really thinks you're bragging if you admit to winning a math competition; it's more of a confession, like fessing up to owning all of the Star Trek seasons on DVD. What a nerd!
You'd think that my dear, sweet, loving wife would appreciate my math abilities more. She doesn't. She brings up my math trophies when we're all trying to one-up each other in hilarious stories. "Yeah, you should see Kent's math trophy collection! It's just a bunch of triangles!!!" "Bwaaaahahhahahahahahahahahah!!!" Or, if I try to impress someone with my stories of mathematical prowess, Melanie just touches me on the shoulder and says, "Kent, dearie, no one wants to hear about your stupid math contests. Now be a moose and freshen up my drink. Please don't ever talk to our guests again."
Nobody appreciates my genius. I shall now create a death ray and kill you all. I feel like Megamind.
Okay, that's not true. My brother Brian appreciates my genius. He was, after all, my mentor. It was 6th grade, and Brian was competing in something called "Mathcounts", a national association of math nerds who have contests to see who's the nerdiest. He was doing well, in fact, he won State in '92, but it was in math, not football. They flew him out to DC to compete at the national level. He won the national title, a huge scholarship, and went on to found Microsoft. You know him now as "William Gates".
Okay, that's not true, but he did win State, and it was '92. I was super jealous of him. Not that he won State, but that he got to fly on an airplane and stay in a hotel. I'd never flown on an airplane. The closest I'd been was watching my brothers leave on their missions in an airplane. I'd never stayed in a hotel. The nicest place I'd stayed at was a Motel 6, that time in Cheyenne when I got the spot on the floor next to the TV. I heard that at hotels you get your own bed!
I was super motivated to get that plane ride, so I asked Brian to show me the way of the math nerds. Brian was naturally good at nerdiness, it was a skill he'd been working on his entire life. He read encyclopedias for fun, had an obsession with statistics and whales (obvious correlation there), and was shrimpy and wore huge glasses, so he looked the part, too. Being a jock like Homer Simpson, my natural enemies were the nerds, and so I'd spent the better part of elementary school making fun of them. I had no idea that I would become one of them.
The first thing Brian did was to get me out of my 6th grade math class and into Pre-Algebra at the Jr High school. This would allow me to start Algebra in 7th grade and Geometry in 8th grade, which is key to winning Mathcounts, a competition for 7th and 8th graders only. Taking Algebra in 7th grade completely destroyed my social well-being. 7th graders had their lunch after 3rd period to reduce the beatings the 8th and 9th graders would dole out, since they had lunch after 4th period. Since Algebra, a class for 8th graders, was in 4th period, I had to eat with them. I knew absolutely no one in my lunch period except my brother Brian and my friend Baldwin.
Brian got me into the math club, I think it was called "ACE" or something nerdy. They met after school and did practice tests. This was disappointing. Staying after school to do more school? Jocks like me don't "do" school, we leave as soon as possible to play pick-up basketball and football games in the 'hood, and maybe even take off our shirts if some lovely ladies walk by.
Nonetheless, I went to the club meetings. I took the practice tests. I learned new concepts and practiced faster ways of solving problems. We did our first competition, which was some mail-in test. I did surprisingly well in it and I remember Brian being especially surprised at my success. "You're pretty smart for a dumb jock," he said. "Maybe you don't need to rely on your specimen of a body to get into college after all." I'm paraphrasing, it was a long time ago.
Later, it was time for the Mathcounts tryouts. Each school could only have 1 team of 4 nerds, and an alternate. I was hoping to make the team, but the nerds I was up against had awesome pedigrees:
1. Bryon Clark - he'd been shunning sports since elementary and was the worst softball player ever, so you knew that kid was crazy smart.
2. Bart Llewellyn - Mad uncoordinated and into all sorts of nerd stuff, like Star Trek and comics
3. Chuck Wood - Really, that's his name. Chuck "How Much Wood Could a Woodchuck if a Woodchuck Could Chuck" Wood. Uberdork, plus he was in my ward so I had to endure a few campouts with him.
4. Jason Maas - 8th grader, I didn't know him at all. Seemed nerdy enough.
5. Brett Gilbert - Only slightly nerdy. No glasses and followed sports, so there was no way he was making the team.
6. Michael Bateman - I'd been making fun of this kid my whole life, even beat him up once or twice in elementary. Now he was looking for payback, nerd-style.
7. A few other inconsequential nerds with thick glasses that were never heard from again. Maybe a girl or 2, as well, but everyone knows that the female brain is smaller, so they didn't have a shot. It's science.
I can't remember what I placed, but I made the team. It was me, Jason, Brett, and I think Bryon. As they called the members of the team, they deliberately called me last, as I was the controversial jock. There was a lot of heresay about affirmative action and my qualifications, but all unsubstantiated. I smiled smugly as I walked to the podium to take my place with the team. "Take that, nerds!" I thought.
We went to the region competition, which was Utah County and some remote neighboring ones. I took 2nd place to Jason, who turned out to be very smart, but of course he had a year on me. All of the regional winners got to go to a banquet in SLC, which featured a 3-course meal. The faculty advisory, Miss Price, must have thought my parents didn't feed me because I finished off everybody's leftovers at the table, including the salad and of course the dessert. I thought it was the best meal ever and didn't even care if I went to DC, this banquet was reward enough.
State was in March, I think. I was a nervous wreck. It was up in Sandy somewhere and super early in the morning. I took the tests and took 9th place, before the Countdown round. In the countdown round, they take the top 10 and then 10 goes head to head against 9, and the winner then goes head to head against 8, etc. The top 4 get to go to DC to represent Utah. I beat the 10th place dude, but then lost to the 8th place dude, and that was that. No State trophies for me. Jason didn't make it to the top 10, I believe.
But it was only 7th grade! I still had one more year. Miss Price created a special class for us, called "Math Excel" and about 10 nerdbags were invited to be in it. I was easily the coolest of the math nerds, which is like saying a restaurant is the healthiest of the fast-food chains, but nonetheless, still cool.
Math Excel was insane. We took all sorts of tests and did practice problems, discussing the fastest way to solve problems. It was all so nerdy, but I found it invigorating. This led me to challenge the very core of who I was. Was I really a nerd at heart? I'd been playing sports since I could walk, does this mean I've been fooling myself this whole time? Everyone knows you can't be smart AND athletic.
In the end, it paid off. I took 2nd at Regions again, this time Brett Gilbert was my nemesis who beat me. This was a surprise to me, as Brett's nerdiness was at limited capacity. It turns out, however, that he was ridiculously smart and had taken great strides in the Math Excel class. Bryon and Chuck made up the rest of our team that year, and we were hoping to take the school trophy, beating those douchebags from Butler Middle School who won it every year.
When State came around (after another delicious banquet), I was even more a nervous wreck. This was it, I'd been training all year for this, and it all comes down to this. We took the tests first off and I felt horrible about it. When they announced the top 10, I was praying I was in the top 5. Number 4 was called off: Some dude from Oak Canyon, Jeff Something, was 4th place. I was stoked about that because I knew Jeff Something from soccer, and he was a fellow jock. Us jocks were really breaking down barriers that year.
I was sure that I was in the top 10, and since I wasn't called yet, I figured I was in, but still was nervous. 3rd place: Kent Hansen! I was in! I was going to DC! I don't even care about the Countdown round, I'm in baby! 2nd place: Brett Gilbert. 1st place: Ashley Warner!
WHHHHHHHHHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAT!?!?!?!
A girl! No way! She must've been cheating! Or a Sederbergian nerd-bag. She stood up and acknowledged her awesomeness. It turns out that she was hot! A hot girl that wins a math competition? My world was turned upside-down. I questioned everything.
I was determined to not lose to a girl. Before, I didn't care about the Countdown round, but now, I had to beat Ashley. The Countdown round began. Darren Raggozine, the epitome of nerds, was 10th place, and he worked his way all the way down to a competition with Jeff Something. I was rooting hard for Jeff; I'd much rather hang out with Jeff than this Darren loser. But Darren won. He seemed invincible. Now I had to face him, or get the crappy 4th place, which doesn't even get a triangle trophy. They put the questions on an overhead projector and had buzzers in front of us. First one to answer correctly wins the point, best of 5 format.
I swept Darren, 3-0. Take that, nerd. I'll save the physical beatings for DC.
Then it was my good buddy Brett. I'd been facing off against him all year. I swept him, too. Turns out I'm a ruthless assassin.
Finally, it was Ashley. Her long legs were tantalizing. I'd been in the presence of such a beauty before, but never accompanied by any sign of intelligence. It was quite intimidating.
I got the first one right. She got the second one. I got the third. I got the fourth.
It was all over baby! I won it! HAGGGGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!! (crowd noises) UTAH STATE MATH CHAMPION!
I was so happy, so proud of myself. I went to church the next day and told my friends. They laughed at me. Nobody cared. I cried in the corner.
As it turned out, we lost by only a few points to Butler Middle School, even though both me and Brett placed in the top 3. Bryon placed 8th or something, I think. It turned out that Chuck scored terribly and cost us the title, which meant we had to go with the Butler teacher, instead of cool Miss Price. Stupid Butler! Here's the original story. It was obviously submitted by someone from Butler, because it failed to mention that while Ashley won the individual test score, I stomped her brains out in the Countdown round, which is like writing an article about the baseball season as if the Phillies won, because they had the best regular season record, instead of the Cardinals, which won the World Series.
Miss Price did end up going to DC with us, although I think she paid for it. The plane ride was everything I dreamed about. I had no idea what to bring, so I packed my ghetto blaster and a bunch of my tapes in my duffel bag. We stayed at a Sheraton somewhere near DC. Me and Brett shared a room, but then because Ashley was a GIRL, she got her own room and they brought in a cot and Mr. Darren Raggozine. He snored like a pig. It was okay, though, because I stayed up late and watched rated R movies on HBO. They kinda freaked me out, and I repented immediately.
Miss Price and the Butlerdoucher teacher pretended like we had a chance at nationals, so we got together a few times before to "practice". I couldn't care less about it. The prize for the top person was like a 20K scholarship or something, but that was so unlikely that I didn't even bother. The kids that win national do math problems for fun. I wasn't one of those kids. So we took the tests and I took 112th out of 224 kids, right smack-dab in the middle. The other Utahns, including that skank nice girl Ashley, did much worse than I, like they weren't even trying or something. We took 42nd out of 56, because the territories (like Puerto Rico and Virgin Islands) were invited, too.
KSL-5 came out and did a news story on us. They asked us a bunch of questions but I only remember one, since my answer showed up on the news. The question was, "Do you think you'll win?" I felt like a coach at NW Boondocks State, being asked if his team had a chance against Notre Dame. "Uhh...no way in fetchin' heck." What I actually said was "It's pretty darn tough, I don't think we'll win." The news story then said, "It turned out to be tougher than that, as they took 42nd place!" Then it cut away to the anchors talking. "What a bunch of losers. Disgrace to our state. Isn't that right, Karen?" "Yes, they certainly don't look very smart. Only one of the kids had glasses, and that girl looked too pretty to be using her brain."
So, we lost. Badly. I didn't care at all. The food was delicious, we got to tour the city, and ride a plane. I even made friends with Ashley by the end, and we made out in her room (just kidding!).
You may recall that I said I was the Utah math champion in 9th grade, as well. Well, there is an official Utah State Math Contest which is run by various universities every year. The rewards weren't as cool, but there were nice banquets involved. You can see the results here, and you can see that I won the Weighted Scores for the Junior Exam (grades 7-9), and took 2nd in the unweighted scores, which no one cares about. You can also see that I won the 1994 unweighted score title, which counted more at the time. You can also see my nemesis Darren (I've been spelling his name wrong on purpose), my buddy Brett, and my brother Kurt in the Junior Exam Results. My mentor Brian, also showed up in the top 4 for the Senior Exam. The state math competition wasn't as exciting as Mathcounts.
I gave up participating in most math contests in high school, mostly for the reason that I had nothing left to prove and the prizes weren't that great. I had a Pre-Calculus class as a sophomore which really sucked all of my math enjoyment out. I was pretty sure that I was going to be a DJ at that point. However, finding myself as an IT consultant working with massive amounts of data, it turns out I was a nerd all along. Time to embrace it, finally.
Bragging about winning math competitions is similar to bragging about your comic book collection. Nobody's really that impressed, if anything, they think less of you. Of course, if it was an athletic achievement, like winning State back in '82, everybody would be impressed, but also think less of you for bragging about it. Nobody really thinks you're bragging if you admit to winning a math competition; it's more of a confession, like fessing up to owning all of the Star Trek seasons on DVD. What a nerd!
You'd think that my dear, sweet, loving wife would appreciate my math abilities more. She doesn't. She brings up my math trophies when we're all trying to one-up each other in hilarious stories. "Yeah, you should see Kent's math trophy collection! It's just a bunch of triangles!!!" "Bwaaaahahhahahahahahahahahah!!!" Or, if I try to impress someone with my stories of mathematical prowess, Melanie just touches me on the shoulder and says, "Kent, dearie, no one wants to hear about your stupid math contests. Now be a moose and freshen up my drink. Please don't ever talk to our guests again."
Nobody appreciates my genius. I shall now create a death ray and kill you all. I feel like Megamind.
Okay, that's not true. My brother Brian appreciates my genius. He was, after all, my mentor. It was 6th grade, and Brian was competing in something called "Mathcounts", a national association of math nerds who have contests to see who's the nerdiest. He was doing well, in fact, he won State in '92, but it was in math, not football. They flew him out to DC to compete at the national level. He won the national title, a huge scholarship, and went on to found Microsoft. You know him now as "William Gates".
Okay, that's not true, but he did win State, and it was '92. I was super jealous of him. Not that he won State, but that he got to fly on an airplane and stay in a hotel. I'd never flown on an airplane. The closest I'd been was watching my brothers leave on their missions in an airplane. I'd never stayed in a hotel. The nicest place I'd stayed at was a Motel 6, that time in Cheyenne when I got the spot on the floor next to the TV. I heard that at hotels you get your own bed!
I was super motivated to get that plane ride, so I asked Brian to show me the way of the math nerds. Brian was naturally good at nerdiness, it was a skill he'd been working on his entire life. He read encyclopedias for fun, had an obsession with statistics and whales (obvious correlation there), and was shrimpy and wore huge glasses, so he looked the part, too. Being a jock like Homer Simpson, my natural enemies were the nerds, and so I'd spent the better part of elementary school making fun of them. I had no idea that I would become one of them.
The first thing Brian did was to get me out of my 6th grade math class and into Pre-Algebra at the Jr High school. This would allow me to start Algebra in 7th grade and Geometry in 8th grade, which is key to winning Mathcounts, a competition for 7th and 8th graders only. Taking Algebra in 7th grade completely destroyed my social well-being. 7th graders had their lunch after 3rd period to reduce the beatings the 8th and 9th graders would dole out, since they had lunch after 4th period. Since Algebra, a class for 8th graders, was in 4th period, I had to eat with them. I knew absolutely no one in my lunch period except my brother Brian and my friend Baldwin.
Brian got me into the math club, I think it was called "ACE" or something nerdy. They met after school and did practice tests. This was disappointing. Staying after school to do more school? Jocks like me don't "do" school, we leave as soon as possible to play pick-up basketball and football games in the 'hood, and maybe even take off our shirts if some lovely ladies walk by.
Nonetheless, I went to the club meetings. I took the practice tests. I learned new concepts and practiced faster ways of solving problems. We did our first competition, which was some mail-in test. I did surprisingly well in it and I remember Brian being especially surprised at my success. "You're pretty smart for a dumb jock," he said. "Maybe you don't need to rely on your specimen of a body to get into college after all." I'm paraphrasing, it was a long time ago.
Later, it was time for the Mathcounts tryouts. Each school could only have 1 team of 4 nerds, and an alternate. I was hoping to make the team, but the nerds I was up against had awesome pedigrees:
1. Bryon Clark - he'd been shunning sports since elementary and was the worst softball player ever, so you knew that kid was crazy smart.
2. Bart Llewellyn - Mad uncoordinated and into all sorts of nerd stuff, like Star Trek and comics
3. Chuck Wood - Really, that's his name. Chuck "How Much Wood Could a Woodchuck if a Woodchuck Could Chuck" Wood. Uberdork, plus he was in my ward so I had to endure a few campouts with him.
4. Jason Maas - 8th grader, I didn't know him at all. Seemed nerdy enough.
5. Brett Gilbert - Only slightly nerdy. No glasses and followed sports, so there was no way he was making the team.
6. Michael Bateman - I'd been making fun of this kid my whole life, even beat him up once or twice in elementary. Now he was looking for payback, nerd-style.
7. A few other inconsequential nerds with thick glasses that were never heard from again. Maybe a girl or 2, as well, but everyone knows that the female brain is smaller, so they didn't have a shot. It's science.
I can't remember what I placed, but I made the team. It was me, Jason, Brett, and I think Bryon. As they called the members of the team, they deliberately called me last, as I was the controversial jock. There was a lot of heresay about affirmative action and my qualifications, but all unsubstantiated. I smiled smugly as I walked to the podium to take my place with the team. "Take that, nerds!" I thought.
We went to the region competition, which was Utah County and some remote neighboring ones. I took 2nd place to Jason, who turned out to be very smart, but of course he had a year on me. All of the regional winners got to go to a banquet in SLC, which featured a 3-course meal. The faculty advisory, Miss Price, must have thought my parents didn't feed me because I finished off everybody's leftovers at the table, including the salad and of course the dessert. I thought it was the best meal ever and didn't even care if I went to DC, this banquet was reward enough.
State was in March, I think. I was a nervous wreck. It was up in Sandy somewhere and super early in the morning. I took the tests and took 9th place, before the Countdown round. In the countdown round, they take the top 10 and then 10 goes head to head against 9, and the winner then goes head to head against 8, etc. The top 4 get to go to DC to represent Utah. I beat the 10th place dude, but then lost to the 8th place dude, and that was that. No State trophies for me. Jason didn't make it to the top 10, I believe.
But it was only 7th grade! I still had one more year. Miss Price created a special class for us, called "Math Excel" and about 10 nerdbags were invited to be in it. I was easily the coolest of the math nerds, which is like saying a restaurant is the healthiest of the fast-food chains, but nonetheless, still cool.
Math Excel was insane. We took all sorts of tests and did practice problems, discussing the fastest way to solve problems. It was all so nerdy, but I found it invigorating. This led me to challenge the very core of who I was. Was I really a nerd at heart? I'd been playing sports since I could walk, does this mean I've been fooling myself this whole time? Everyone knows you can't be smart AND athletic.
In the end, it paid off. I took 2nd at Regions again, this time Brett Gilbert was my nemesis who beat me. This was a surprise to me, as Brett's nerdiness was at limited capacity. It turns out, however, that he was ridiculously smart and had taken great strides in the Math Excel class. Bryon and Chuck made up the rest of our team that year, and we were hoping to take the school trophy, beating those douchebags from Butler Middle School who won it every year.
When State came around (after another delicious banquet), I was even more a nervous wreck. This was it, I'd been training all year for this, and it all comes down to this. We took the tests first off and I felt horrible about it. When they announced the top 10, I was praying I was in the top 5. Number 4 was called off: Some dude from Oak Canyon, Jeff Something, was 4th place. I was stoked about that because I knew Jeff Something from soccer, and he was a fellow jock. Us jocks were really breaking down barriers that year.
I was sure that I was in the top 10, and since I wasn't called yet, I figured I was in, but still was nervous. 3rd place: Kent Hansen! I was in! I was going to DC! I don't even care about the Countdown round, I'm in baby! 2nd place: Brett Gilbert. 1st place: Ashley Warner!
WHHHHHHHHHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAT!?!?!?!
A girl! No way! She must've been cheating! Or a Sederbergian nerd-bag. She stood up and acknowledged her awesomeness. It turns out that she was hot! A hot girl that wins a math competition? My world was turned upside-down. I questioned everything.
I was determined to not lose to a girl. Before, I didn't care about the Countdown round, but now, I had to beat Ashley. The Countdown round began. Darren Raggozine, the epitome of nerds, was 10th place, and he worked his way all the way down to a competition with Jeff Something. I was rooting hard for Jeff; I'd much rather hang out with Jeff than this Darren loser. But Darren won. He seemed invincible. Now I had to face him, or get the crappy 4th place, which doesn't even get a triangle trophy. They put the questions on an overhead projector and had buzzers in front of us. First one to answer correctly wins the point, best of 5 format.
I swept Darren, 3-0. Take that, nerd. I'll save the physical beatings for DC.
Then it was my good buddy Brett. I'd been facing off against him all year. I swept him, too. Turns out I'm a ruthless assassin.
Finally, it was Ashley. Her long legs were tantalizing. I'd been in the presence of such a beauty before, but never accompanied by any sign of intelligence. It was quite intimidating.
I got the first one right. She got the second one. I got the third. I got the fourth.
It was all over baby! I won it! HAGGGGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!! (crowd noises) UTAH STATE MATH CHAMPION!
I was so happy, so proud of myself. I went to church the next day and told my friends. They laughed at me. Nobody cared. I cried in the corner.
As it turned out, we lost by only a few points to Butler Middle School, even though both me and Brett placed in the top 3. Bryon placed 8th or something, I think. It turned out that Chuck scored terribly and cost us the title, which meant we had to go with the Butler teacher, instead of cool Miss Price. Stupid Butler! Here's the original story. It was obviously submitted by someone from Butler, because it failed to mention that while Ashley won the individual test score, I stomped her brains out in the Countdown round, which is like writing an article about the baseball season as if the Phillies won, because they had the best regular season record, instead of the Cardinals, which won the World Series.
Miss Price did end up going to DC with us, although I think she paid for it. The plane ride was everything I dreamed about. I had no idea what to bring, so I packed my ghetto blaster and a bunch of my tapes in my duffel bag. We stayed at a Sheraton somewhere near DC. Me and Brett shared a room, but then because Ashley was a GIRL, she got her own room and they brought in a cot and Mr. Darren Raggozine. He snored like a pig. It was okay, though, because I stayed up late and watched rated R movies on HBO. They kinda freaked me out, and I repented immediately.
Miss Price and the Butler
KSL-5 came out and did a news story on us. They asked us a bunch of questions but I only remember one, since my answer showed up on the news. The question was, "Do you think you'll win?" I felt like a coach at NW Boondocks State, being asked if his team had a chance against Notre Dame. "Uhh...no way in fetchin' heck." What I actually said was "It's pretty darn tough, I don't think we'll win." The news story then said, "It turned out to be tougher than that, as they took 42nd place!" Then it cut away to the anchors talking. "What a bunch of losers. Disgrace to our state. Isn't that right, Karen?" "Yes, they certainly don't look very smart. Only one of the kids had glasses, and that girl looked too pretty to be using her brain."
So, we lost. Badly. I didn't care at all. The food was delicious, we got to tour the city, and ride a plane. I even made friends with Ashley by the end, and we made out in her room (just kidding!).
You may recall that I said I was the Utah math champion in 9th grade, as well. Well, there is an official Utah State Math Contest which is run by various universities every year. The rewards weren't as cool, but there were nice banquets involved. You can see the results here, and you can see that I won the Weighted Scores for the Junior Exam (grades 7-9), and took 2nd in the unweighted scores, which no one cares about. You can also see that I won the 1994 unweighted score title, which counted more at the time. You can also see my nemesis Darren (I've been spelling his name wrong on purpose), my buddy Brett, and my brother Kurt in the Junior Exam Results. My mentor Brian, also showed up in the top 4 for the Senior Exam. The state math competition wasn't as exciting as Mathcounts.
I gave up participating in most math contests in high school, mostly for the reason that I had nothing left to prove and the prizes weren't that great. I had a Pre-Calculus class as a sophomore which really sucked all of my math enjoyment out. I was pretty sure that I was going to be a DJ at that point. However, finding myself as an IT consultant working with massive amounts of data, it turns out I was a nerd all along. Time to embrace it, finally.
Sunday, November 6, 2011
There is no charge for awesomeness...or attractiveness
It's been a while since I've proved my awesomeness, leading some to question it. How dare they!?!?! Anyway, our firepit area in the back was a big fat mess, usually muddy with weeds as tall as me. It was time for an upgrade, so I went to work.
Here are the before pictures:
As you can see, it's just a big area full of weeds. If you look closely, there are some big logs and a pile of sticks in there where the fire pit is.
I decided to make the area 10x16. First, I dug 6 holes for posts. 1 in each corner, and 2 in the middle of the long side. Then I "planted" the 4x4 posts in the ground, and secured 2x10s to them.
In most areas, I had to dig a trench to get the 2x10 across to the other post and keep it level. I tried to dig the holes about 20" deep, but some areas were really rocky so I only got them like 15". I wanted the top of the posts to be 2" below the top of the 2x10.
When finished, I had a well-defined boundary that was level, which is key. This whole process was the hardest part. It took me 2 Saturdays of back-breaking shoveling. If you haven't noticed, I'm pretty out of shape and so this required a long recovery time for my body.
Once the perimeter was level and secure, I dug up the center area, tossing dirt from the higher areas to the lower areas, and also digging a 4' hole in the middle for the fire pit.
Next, I built the ring, using old broken bricks from my brick-path days. Then I used whole bricks for the top row to make it pretty on top. I decided to not use any sort of mortar, because that would be way too much work.
The final step was to put crushed stone in the gaps. That was pretty easy. I think it looks pretty good. The overall cost was a little under 400 bucks and about 30 man hours.
Now, for the final before/after:
Here are the before pictures:
As you can see, it's just a big area full of weeds. If you look closely, there are some big logs and a pile of sticks in there where the fire pit is.
I decided to make the area 10x16. First, I dug 6 holes for posts. 1 in each corner, and 2 in the middle of the long side. Then I "planted" the 4x4 posts in the ground, and secured 2x10s to them.
You can't see the posts here, but the 2x10s are attached to them.
The next step was to fill the area with sand. I got a cubic yard of coarse sand delivered and spread it in a couple of hours.
Then, I got large stepping stones from a quarry in Hingham. 700 pounds' worth, which barely fit in the Jeep. Melanie told me where to put the stones. We turned out to be a little short of stone, so we used large stones from our yard to fill in the gaps.
The final step was to put crushed stone in the gaps. That was pretty easy. I think it looks pretty good. The overall cost was a little under 400 bucks and about 30 man hours.
Now, for the final before/after:
Saturday, October 22, 2011
Happy birthday to Melanie!
My wife is awesome. Have I told you this? It's true-she's awesome. How awesome is she? Let me count the ways:
1. She is a great mother. She always gets up in the middle of the night to comfort Hendrik, allowing me to get my VERY necessary beauty sleep.
2. She is an exceptional cook. Part of her being a great cook is her ability to take the "hard truth" about some of the things I don't like, which means she doesn't make that same meal in the future, which would mean I would pretend to like it again. I love her homemade pizza the most. She also tries new recipes regularly, which is great.
3. She is a diligent employee. Melanie's work situation isn't as good as it once was, with a lot of political battles with the higher-ups leading to discontent and other various dramatic situations. However, she plugs away, always making sure her work gets done, even if it means going to bed at 3:45 AM to get up the next morning at 5:30. Not really sure how she does it, actually. She will get promoted to BFO this year, pending the higher-ups getting their act together and finally putting the paperwork through. (Note: BFO stands for "Budget Fiscal Officer", not "Best Friend of the Organization", which is what it should be) If I ever become unemployable, which gets more and more likely with each day, she could easily carry the financial burden of our family, especially with my expensive habits like Laffy Taffy. As it stands right now, she makes more than double!
4. She is super attractive. People walk up to her all the time and ask, "Are you a supermodel? And why are you with this schmuck (pointing to me)?" To which she answers, "Yes, and he's my slave."
5. She is a great listener. I think. I just assume she's listening to my long, drawn-out soliloquies.
6. She makes up for my lack of _______. When we meet a nice couple, I usually say things that make the couple hate us, but then she cleans up the mess with her dynamic personality and we're all BFFs after that.
7. She's selfless. Mel never worries about her own comfort, just that everybody else is happy. She organized this fundraiser for MS and was able to raise over 5K this year, after around 3K last year.
8. She's very intelligent. She's only made one wrong decision, although it was a big one.
9. She's faithful. Most Sunday mornings involve a certain amount of kicking and screaming, but never from her.
10. She's athletic. Once, she beat me in a game of H-O-R-S-E, as well as in bowling. She can also kick my trash in any foot race longer than 10 ft.
11. She allows me to watch all sorts of sports. As long as her Nook is fully charged, she can sit through 10 hours of football next to me.
12. She is awesome at folding laundry. As much as I've tried to replicate her garment-folding methods, they still end up bulky and tilty. She folds them as if they were going on the shelf in the Gap.
13. She is the least judgmental person I have ever met. When I told her I murdered 23 people when I was in college, she just said, "We can work on that!"
14. She's always game for whatever. I drag her on all my little expeditions and she takes it like a champ, even if it involves camping in the mud.
15. She's a great writer. Just 3 years ago, she wrote a blog post!
16. She hates scary movies and all of that kind of trash. I also hate that trash, so we just stay away.
17. She doesn't spend hardly any money on clothes. We'll go shopping for her, and we'll end up spending more money on me than her. Most people reading this would assume it's because I'm such a cheapskate, but I swear it's not the case. She's very picky about what she buys, and never buys stuff that just sits in the closet.
18. She's hilarious. Her humor is very subtle but clever. Unless she's making fun of me, then it's pretty obvious and low-brow.
19. She doesn't follow the crowd. She likes what she likes, but not because someone told her to like it. She even likes the movie "No Reservations", which NOBODY likes.
20. She's sensitive, but not weepy. She's very stingy about her tears, she won't give them to just anybody.
21. She's selfless. She's not happy unless everybody else is happy. The past 2 years, she's put together a fundraiser for Multiple Sclerosis (MS), as her good work friend Theresa has it. She spends months getting companies to donate items for her auction, including some Red Sox items that are signed by the players. This year, she even got David Ortiz to sign a game-worn jersey for the auction. Last year I believe she raised somewhere around $3,500 and this year it was something north of $5,000. I'm very proud of her generosity.
I wrote 21 items because it's her 21st birthday. So everybody wish Mel a happy 20th and let's hope the next 21 years are as productive as the first!
1. She is a great mother. She always gets up in the middle of the night to comfort Hendrik, allowing me to get my VERY necessary beauty sleep.
2. She is an exceptional cook. Part of her being a great cook is her ability to take the "hard truth" about some of the things I don't like, which means she doesn't make that same meal in the future, which would mean I would pretend to like it again. I love her homemade pizza the most. She also tries new recipes regularly, which is great.
3. She is a diligent employee. Melanie's work situation isn't as good as it once was, with a lot of political battles with the higher-ups leading to discontent and other various dramatic situations. However, she plugs away, always making sure her work gets done, even if it means going to bed at 3:45 AM to get up the next morning at 5:30. Not really sure how she does it, actually. She will get promoted to BFO this year, pending the higher-ups getting their act together and finally putting the paperwork through. (Note: BFO stands for "Budget Fiscal Officer", not "Best Friend of the Organization", which is what it should be) If I ever become unemployable, which gets more and more likely with each day, she could easily carry the financial burden of our family, especially with my expensive habits like Laffy Taffy. As it stands right now, she makes more than double!
4. She is super attractive. People walk up to her all the time and ask, "Are you a supermodel? And why are you with this schmuck (pointing to me)?" To which she answers, "Yes, and he's my slave."
5. She is a great listener. I think. I just assume she's listening to my long, drawn-out soliloquies.
6. She makes up for my lack of _______. When we meet a nice couple, I usually say things that make the couple hate us, but then she cleans up the mess with her dynamic personality and we're all BFFs after that.
7. She's selfless. Mel never worries about her own comfort, just that everybody else is happy. She organized this fundraiser for MS and was able to raise over 5K this year, after around 3K last year.
8. She's very intelligent. She's only made one wrong decision, although it was a big one.
9. She's faithful. Most Sunday mornings involve a certain amount of kicking and screaming, but never from her.
10. She's athletic. Once, she beat me in a game of H-O-R-S-E, as well as in bowling. She can also kick my trash in any foot race longer than 10 ft.
11. She allows me to watch all sorts of sports. As long as her Nook is fully charged, she can sit through 10 hours of football next to me.
12. She is awesome at folding laundry. As much as I've tried to replicate her garment-folding methods, they still end up bulky and tilty. She folds them as if they were going on the shelf in the Gap.
13. She is the least judgmental person I have ever met. When I told her I murdered 23 people when I was in college, she just said, "We can work on that!"
14. She's always game for whatever. I drag her on all my little expeditions and she takes it like a champ, even if it involves camping in the mud.
15. She's a great writer. Just 3 years ago, she wrote a blog post!
16. She hates scary movies and all of that kind of trash. I also hate that trash, so we just stay away.
17. She doesn't spend hardly any money on clothes. We'll go shopping for her, and we'll end up spending more money on me than her. Most people reading this would assume it's because I'm such a cheapskate, but I swear it's not the case. She's very picky about what she buys, and never buys stuff that just sits in the closet.
18. She's hilarious. Her humor is very subtle but clever. Unless she's making fun of me, then it's pretty obvious and low-brow.
19. She doesn't follow the crowd. She likes what she likes, but not because someone told her to like it. She even likes the movie "No Reservations", which NOBODY likes.
20. She's sensitive, but not weepy. She's very stingy about her tears, she won't give them to just anybody.
21. She's selfless. She's not happy unless everybody else is happy. The past 2 years, she's put together a fundraiser for Multiple Sclerosis (MS), as her good work friend Theresa has it. She spends months getting companies to donate items for her auction, including some Red Sox items that are signed by the players. This year, she even got David Ortiz to sign a game-worn jersey for the auction. Last year I believe she raised somewhere around $3,500 and this year it was something north of $5,000. I'm very proud of her generosity.
I wrote 21 items because it's her 21st birthday. So everybody wish Mel a happy 20th and let's hope the next 21 years are as productive as the first!
Thursday, September 15, 2011
This is a true story. Pretty much.
We sat on the beach that day. It was sunny and the waves were monsters. All of the sudden, a man dressed in a black cloak and a three-cornered hat galloped by on his horse. "The hurricane cometh! Gather ye children! The hurricane cometh! Get ye hence!" After the horseman passed, the lifeguard raise his arms as if to gather us from both sides. We left our umbrellas, blankets, and sand castles and gathered round.
"Alas, 'tis true. Yarrrrr, there's a great storm a-brewin'," said the lifeguard. "Nary a soul shall survive! Pack up yer steeds and carriages 'fore Irene come! She will show no mercy, not to no one! Yarrrr!" The lifeguard paused, perhaps thinking of a former companion lost to such a storm. "Mandatory evacuation for all non-residents by Friday at 5. No dilly-dallyin', no procrasinatin', no general tomfoolery! This here's serious!" He looked us all in the eye, somehow simultaneously. His long, ragged, sun-bleached blonde hair flapped in the wind like a flag of surrender. "Now git, I say!"
We scattered. Umbrellas, blankets packed up with haste! Sand castles demolished with enthusiasm! Nothing left behind!
Back at the beach house, we turned on the television. The Important Newscaster forecasted our doom: "Irene is coming at a furrrrrrious rate! It is a Category 26 Billion! It will kill us all! Repent now before it's too late!"
We changed the channel, but it was no different: "You'll need 5,000 gallons of water. 36 days' supply of food. If you are in a coastal state, or bordering a state that borders a coastal state, or ANYWHERE EAST OF THE MISSISSIPP--you must dig yourself a shelter and eat prunes until October. That is the only way to stay alive!"
We were far from home, 8 hours in good traffic. First, we needed to evacuate Ocean City, then we needed to go home and evacuate our home. The dreaded double evacuation--we'll be packing for days!
We left Friday morning. Along the way, roadside preachers sang our doom. "The hurrrrrrrricane cometh! It's too late!" Cars pulled over along the way, the drivers too panic-stricken to go on. They lay in the ditches, in the medians, moaning and grumbling. "If only I would've saved more water…" said one of them. The air felt heavy with rain and desperation. It truly was Hurricarmageddon.
We arrived home. It was hot, muggy. The rains had not arrived. It was eerily quiet. The stores were all out of prunes and plywood-the 2 essentials. I started to dig a shelter, but it was no use: survival wasn't worth this much work! We filled up our biggest cup with water. "This will need to last a month," I calculated, "so everybody gets 17 drops a day. 5 for breakfast, 5 for lunch, 5 for dinner, and 2 for a special treat after you've done your chores." We all hesitantly agreed and waited for the apocalypse.
The rains came on Saturday. It poured furiously most of the day. I chopped up our living room couch to fashion a canoe before I realized there was very little wood in the couch. I did the same thing to the loveseat before deciding that modern-day furniture does not have nearly enough wood for a canoe. Frantic for a boat, I dragged the dining room table out to the yard for a raft and sat on it, waiting for the floods to come. By 5 PM, the table was very wet, but not afloat. By 9, it was still very wet, and still very not afloat. We decided to go inside and wait out the storm upstairs. Hendrik had first watch. That was a poor plan, as he didn't even wake up Melanie for her turn and we slept through the night.
When I woke up, I looked at my digital clock. 7 AM. How are we still alive?!?! How is this clock still working?! I looked outside, it was still raining, but no wind. The table outside was still very wet. I scolded Hendrik for not waking up Melanie and we went downstairs to watch TV and fret. Melanie had first Fret Watch, since Hendrik didn't wake her up. Church was cancelled, due to our impending doom. TV, thankfully, had not been cancelled. Perhaps they were all located in storm-free country, if that even exists.
The winds came right on schedule at 10 AM. They huffed and they puffed, and they blew some branches down. Small ones, medium ones, big ones. Our early afternoon viewing of "Tangled" was interrupted several times by flickers of power. This hurricarmageddon was very inconvenient! I went outside to yell at it, but it didn't listen, it only got stronger.
The rains stopped around 3 PM. There was no flooding in our area. Just a very wet table. It was just as well, since it had been my turn to clean the table for the past 2 months, and I led the league in Avoiding Duty. I deemed it sufficiently clean and dragged it back inside.
We all gathered in the living room and celebrated the successful weathering of the storm. There was no need for all of those precautions. What ridiculous weathercasters and newspeople! Their fear-mongering was all for ratings! It was all a conspiracy by the prune and plywood sales reps! We laughed and laughed at how superior we were. We thumped our chests and roared. We were very prideful then.
But then, tragedy struck. At precisely 3:34 PM, the power went out. For good. This time, there was no foolin' around. This was fine, we could manage a small outage. We barely use electricity anyway. We dusted off our books and relearned how to read.
"Gree…green…egg…eggs…an…and…h…ham" read Melanie. She was a very advanced reader for her age. I picked up a Richard Scarry book to look at the pictures. Hendrik practiced his animal sounds. It was all very 1913.
When it got too dark to look at the pictures, I went over to turn on the lamp. It didn't work! Well, the lightbulb may have burnt out, I'll try another light. No luck! I went through the entire house, and not one light worked. What a coincidence that the same day that the electricity goes out the lights all burn out! Mel found a flashlight and turned it on. Phew! At least that didn't burn out.
Our gas stove also worked. We cooked water and pasta. The water tasted funny, but the pasta was delicious. When it got completely dark, we went to bed. It was 7:30 according to my phone. When we wake up tomorrow, everything will be back to normal.
Just as I suspected, everything was back to normal. The house was completely lit up the next morning, and it didn't matter that our light bulbs were all burnt out. The TV still wouldn't turn on and there was no hot water, but other than that, it was back to normal. The fridge was warm and the meat in the freezer was bad, but everything else was the same. The dishwasher wouldn't turn on and I had to heat water on the stove to do the dishes, but besides that, things hadn't changed. I dropped Hendrik off at day care and went to work, as Mel had left an hour before. We knew that when we came home everything would work.
When we returned, the house was dark and nothing worked. Without light, there was nothing to do. All our frozen dinners were ruined, so there was nothing to eat. The microwave wouldn't even pop the corn, and the oven wouldn't heat the fish sticks.
We started to go crazy. Hendrik ran around in circles like a mad-man. Mel lay under the table, scratching at the tile and singing lullabies. I climbed on the roof and howled at the moon. This was the end. We had lost our minds. Irene had taken away our light, our food, our entertainment, and our sanity.
Our family was in disarray. Hendrik left to live with the wolves. Melanie became a recluse, living in a fort of empty chick-flick DVD cases. I couldn't string together a coherent sentence. We had become animals.
On the roof, I heard the growl of what must have been a great beast. It came from multiple directions. We were animals now, I thought, and we would have to defend our herd like wildebeests in the bush. I assumed these great beasts were coming for us, but the constant growls did not grow nearer. I crawled back inside and approached Melanie's fort.
"Who goes there?!" demanded she.
"Husband. Want. Talk," said I. It took a while, due to my diminishing linguistic abilities, but we planned our attack on these growling beasts across the road from us. Melanie had retained the ability to walk on her hind legs, while I was forced to use all fours. We crossed the dark street, into the neighboring human's automobile shelter. The growling was louder now, we were close. My heightened sense of smell picked up the stench of fuel. This beast possibly was feeding on lawn-mowers and other gas-driven equipment. He must have horrendous teeth, sharp as a Cutco knife! We stalked around the shelter and saw the beast. It had a metallic shell and wasn't as big as I imagined. It moaned and growled somethin' terrible and constant. That's when we noticed the human's shelter had light.
Melanie pointed to the window. "Look, Ken-wah!" She called me Ken-wah now, I wasn't sure why, but it felt right. "Light!"
"Light?" I stepped out of the shadows and into the rectangle of light on the grass. I saw inside the human shelter. There was indeed a light and I looked directly at it.
Mel tackled me. "Don't look directly into it! It will destroy your brain!" We put trash lids on our head to protect us from the brain-eating light. However, we couldn't resist watching how the humans inside the glass lived. Inside, there was a flat box with moving pictures. The male sat on a couch watching it with his mouth agape. The female sat under the light and read a collection of papers with writing on them. I got too close to the glass and the trash can hit it. The female saw us creeping outside and called to the male, who picked up a shotgun and headed to the door. We scattered, Melanie on her hind legs, me on all fours. Melanie was much faster than me and hid behind a tree. I was in the rectangle of light when the male human fired his gun at me. It struck me in the leg and I thought I was a goner. Melanie came back for me, pulling me back into the bush, licking my wound and comforting me.
We went back into our own shelter for the rest of the night. Melanie retreated to her fort, and I slept on the roof. The metallic beasts growled through the night, and it was truly a junglescape.
The next morning, I was back in human form. The daylight gave me strength and intelligence. Humans weren't meant to live in the dark. I told a cold shower, dressed, and went to work.
When we returned that evening, the electricity was back! We turned on all the lights, we cranked the A/C down to 50 degrees, we plugged in the space heaters. We turned on the TV and stereo, putting it to maximum volume. We ran the washer and dryer with no clothes, the dishwasher with no dishes. The generators around the neighborhood were all turned off. Our next-door neighbor's flood light that they never turn off and shines directly into our room was back on. After 2 solid days of no electricity, we were back in paradise. We slept soundly that night, with all the lights on. It was a relief to be back in modern society.
"Alas, 'tis true. Yarrrrr, there's a great storm a-brewin'," said the lifeguard. "Nary a soul shall survive! Pack up yer steeds and carriages 'fore Irene come! She will show no mercy, not to no one! Yarrrr!" The lifeguard paused, perhaps thinking of a former companion lost to such a storm. "Mandatory evacuation for all non-residents by Friday at 5. No dilly-dallyin', no procrasinatin', no general tomfoolery! This here's serious!" He looked us all in the eye, somehow simultaneously. His long, ragged, sun-bleached blonde hair flapped in the wind like a flag of surrender. "Now git, I say!"
We scattered. Umbrellas, blankets packed up with haste! Sand castles demolished with enthusiasm! Nothing left behind!
Back at the beach house, we turned on the television. The Important Newscaster forecasted our doom: "Irene is coming at a furrrrrrious rate! It is a Category 26 Billion! It will kill us all! Repent now before it's too late!"
We changed the channel, but it was no different: "You'll need 5,000 gallons of water. 36 days' supply of food. If you are in a coastal state, or bordering a state that borders a coastal state, or ANYWHERE EAST OF THE MISSISSIPP--you must dig yourself a shelter and eat prunes until October. That is the only way to stay alive!"
We were far from home, 8 hours in good traffic. First, we needed to evacuate Ocean City, then we needed to go home and evacuate our home. The dreaded double evacuation--we'll be packing for days!
We left Friday morning. Along the way, roadside preachers sang our doom. "The hurrrrrrrricane cometh! It's too late!" Cars pulled over along the way, the drivers too panic-stricken to go on. They lay in the ditches, in the medians, moaning and grumbling. "If only I would've saved more water…" said one of them. The air felt heavy with rain and desperation. It truly was Hurricarmageddon.
We arrived home. It was hot, muggy. The rains had not arrived. It was eerily quiet. The stores were all out of prunes and plywood-the 2 essentials. I started to dig a shelter, but it was no use: survival wasn't worth this much work! We filled up our biggest cup with water. "This will need to last a month," I calculated, "so everybody gets 17 drops a day. 5 for breakfast, 5 for lunch, 5 for dinner, and 2 for a special treat after you've done your chores." We all hesitantly agreed and waited for the apocalypse.
The rains came on Saturday. It poured furiously most of the day. I chopped up our living room couch to fashion a canoe before I realized there was very little wood in the couch. I did the same thing to the loveseat before deciding that modern-day furniture does not have nearly enough wood for a canoe. Frantic for a boat, I dragged the dining room table out to the yard for a raft and sat on it, waiting for the floods to come. By 5 PM, the table was very wet, but not afloat. By 9, it was still very wet, and still very not afloat. We decided to go inside and wait out the storm upstairs. Hendrik had first watch. That was a poor plan, as he didn't even wake up Melanie for her turn and we slept through the night.
When I woke up, I looked at my digital clock. 7 AM. How are we still alive?!?! How is this clock still working?! I looked outside, it was still raining, but no wind. The table outside was still very wet. I scolded Hendrik for not waking up Melanie and we went downstairs to watch TV and fret. Melanie had first Fret Watch, since Hendrik didn't wake her up. Church was cancelled, due to our impending doom. TV, thankfully, had not been cancelled. Perhaps they were all located in storm-free country, if that even exists.
The winds came right on schedule at 10 AM. They huffed and they puffed, and they blew some branches down. Small ones, medium ones, big ones. Our early afternoon viewing of "Tangled" was interrupted several times by flickers of power. This hurricarmageddon was very inconvenient! I went outside to yell at it, but it didn't listen, it only got stronger.
The rains stopped around 3 PM. There was no flooding in our area. Just a very wet table. It was just as well, since it had been my turn to clean the table for the past 2 months, and I led the league in Avoiding Duty. I deemed it sufficiently clean and dragged it back inside.
We all gathered in the living room and celebrated the successful weathering of the storm. There was no need for all of those precautions. What ridiculous weathercasters and newspeople! Their fear-mongering was all for ratings! It was all a conspiracy by the prune and plywood sales reps! We laughed and laughed at how superior we were. We thumped our chests and roared. We were very prideful then.
But then, tragedy struck. At precisely 3:34 PM, the power went out. For good. This time, there was no foolin' around. This was fine, we could manage a small outage. We barely use electricity anyway. We dusted off our books and relearned how to read.
"Gree…green…egg…eggs…an…and…h…ham" read Melanie. She was a very advanced reader for her age. I picked up a Richard Scarry book to look at the pictures. Hendrik practiced his animal sounds. It was all very 1913.
When it got too dark to look at the pictures, I went over to turn on the lamp. It didn't work! Well, the lightbulb may have burnt out, I'll try another light. No luck! I went through the entire house, and not one light worked. What a coincidence that the same day that the electricity goes out the lights all burn out! Mel found a flashlight and turned it on. Phew! At least that didn't burn out.
Our gas stove also worked. We cooked water and pasta. The water tasted funny, but the pasta was delicious. When it got completely dark, we went to bed. It was 7:30 according to my phone. When we wake up tomorrow, everything will be back to normal.
Just as I suspected, everything was back to normal. The house was completely lit up the next morning, and it didn't matter that our light bulbs were all burnt out. The TV still wouldn't turn on and there was no hot water, but other than that, it was back to normal. The fridge was warm and the meat in the freezer was bad, but everything else was the same. The dishwasher wouldn't turn on and I had to heat water on the stove to do the dishes, but besides that, things hadn't changed. I dropped Hendrik off at day care and went to work, as Mel had left an hour before. We knew that when we came home everything would work.
When we returned, the house was dark and nothing worked. Without light, there was nothing to do. All our frozen dinners were ruined, so there was nothing to eat. The microwave wouldn't even pop the corn, and the oven wouldn't heat the fish sticks.
We started to go crazy. Hendrik ran around in circles like a mad-man. Mel lay under the table, scratching at the tile and singing lullabies. I climbed on the roof and howled at the moon. This was the end. We had lost our minds. Irene had taken away our light, our food, our entertainment, and our sanity.
Our family was in disarray. Hendrik left to live with the wolves. Melanie became a recluse, living in a fort of empty chick-flick DVD cases. I couldn't string together a coherent sentence. We had become animals.
On the roof, I heard the growl of what must have been a great beast. It came from multiple directions. We were animals now, I thought, and we would have to defend our herd like wildebeests in the bush. I assumed these great beasts were coming for us, but the constant growls did not grow nearer. I crawled back inside and approached Melanie's fort.
"Who goes there?!" demanded she.
"Husband. Want. Talk," said I. It took a while, due to my diminishing linguistic abilities, but we planned our attack on these growling beasts across the road from us. Melanie had retained the ability to walk on her hind legs, while I was forced to use all fours. We crossed the dark street, into the neighboring human's automobile shelter. The growling was louder now, we were close. My heightened sense of smell picked up the stench of fuel. This beast possibly was feeding on lawn-mowers and other gas-driven equipment. He must have horrendous teeth, sharp as a Cutco knife! We stalked around the shelter and saw the beast. It had a metallic shell and wasn't as big as I imagined. It moaned and growled somethin' terrible and constant. That's when we noticed the human's shelter had light.
Melanie pointed to the window. "Look, Ken-wah!" She called me Ken-wah now, I wasn't sure why, but it felt right. "Light!"
"Light?" I stepped out of the shadows and into the rectangle of light on the grass. I saw inside the human shelter. There was indeed a light and I looked directly at it.
Mel tackled me. "Don't look directly into it! It will destroy your brain!" We put trash lids on our head to protect us from the brain-eating light. However, we couldn't resist watching how the humans inside the glass lived. Inside, there was a flat box with moving pictures. The male sat on a couch watching it with his mouth agape. The female sat under the light and read a collection of papers with writing on them. I got too close to the glass and the trash can hit it. The female saw us creeping outside and called to the male, who picked up a shotgun and headed to the door. We scattered, Melanie on her hind legs, me on all fours. Melanie was much faster than me and hid behind a tree. I was in the rectangle of light when the male human fired his gun at me. It struck me in the leg and I thought I was a goner. Melanie came back for me, pulling me back into the bush, licking my wound and comforting me.
We went back into our own shelter for the rest of the night. Melanie retreated to her fort, and I slept on the roof. The metallic beasts growled through the night, and it was truly a junglescape.
The next morning, I was back in human form. The daylight gave me strength and intelligence. Humans weren't meant to live in the dark. I told a cold shower, dressed, and went to work.
When we returned that evening, the electricity was back! We turned on all the lights, we cranked the A/C down to 50 degrees, we plugged in the space heaters. We turned on the TV and stereo, putting it to maximum volume. We ran the washer and dryer with no clothes, the dishwasher with no dishes. The generators around the neighborhood were all turned off. Our next-door neighbor's flood light that they never turn off and shines directly into our room was back on. After 2 solid days of no electricity, we were back in paradise. We slept soundly that night, with all the lights on. It was a relief to be back in modern society.
Tuesday, August 30, 2011
I hate kids
But not yours. Yours are great.
To be honest, the title of this post is more a gimmick than a fact. I'm resorting to gimmicks nowadays to keep people interested. You probably saw this title and thought, "The nerve! What a jerk! But now I have to figure out why he hates kids." And here you are reading, to which I say, "Ha, I tricked you! Please don't click away…"
So, I don't hate kids. Especially not yours. Yours are great. Of course I love my own son, and also love my thousands of nephews and nieces. I like my friends' kids in differing amounts, depending on the friend and the kid, but I certainly don't dislike any of them. I would say that my love for little children of all kinds has gone up tremendously since I've been a parent. I'll see a baby in the grocery store and smile, whereas before there's no way I would be caught DEAD smiling in a grocery store.
So what is this post about if I like kids so much, you ask? It's about the biggest surprise of my parenthood: I had no idea how hard it is to like, or even tolerate, kids that are idiots. I'm talking about the jerk at the playground who's climbing backwards up the slide, running everywhere at full-tilt, knocking 1 year-olds over, making all sort of noise, and just in general being outright obnoxious and ruining everybody's day. I'm also talking about the little brats that are obviously never being told no at their houses, and act like entitled nobility. I had NO idea how hard it was to not hate these kids, their parents, and everyone who says they like that kid.
Let's go through some examples:
1. Whitman playground, early spring-time: Hendrik has been walking for a couple of months and is still pretty wobbly. We start him off at the little kid section, with the small slide and the big red tube, which he loves to climb in. He's having a dandy time when these 8 year old boys come sprinting over from the big kid side, knocking Hendrik over and acting like drunken fools. Hendrik isn't hurt much, but the rage inside me grows quickly. I feel myself turning into the Hulk. I keep a watchful eye on the idiot kid to make sure he doesn't inflict more damage. Later, while Hendrik is playing in the tube, this kid climbs on top of the tube, kicking it, and being loud. He wasn't doing anything bad to Hench, but I'd had enough. I tapped his leg to get his attention and told him to go back to the big kid side and not be such a tool. I can't remember this part that well, but I didn't really touch him (although I really wanted to smack him), and I definitely gave him some sort of old-guy lecture. He looked sufficiently scared and whimpered off to the other side. Mission accomplished!
Later, I began to feel bad. I mean, besides knocking Hendrik over, what else did he do wrong? I decided to let it go and resolved to be nicer to other kids, especially the ones that are idiots, because they probably need the most love.
2. Braintree mall, a few weeks later: We discovered that this mall had an awesome play area very close to the food court. It was designed for pretty small kids, with various tubes to crawl in and what-not. It had a tree-house type theme, similar to the University Mall's play area in Orem. However, unlike the Uni Mall, the play area was totally enclosed, meaning there was no easy escape for wanderers like Hendu.
Mel was shopping for whatever women shop for, and I was in charge of the boy. When we arrived at the play area, it was overrun by chumplings. Chumplings are native to mall play areas, and are a very invasive species unless controlled. These chumplings were especially wild, not unlike a monkey house at the zoo, except monkey houses have less poo-flinging. The chumplings were zooming around at 40 mph, swinging from the branches of the tree, diving through the small tubes, and causing massive commotion. I was hesitant to allow Hench to play around these chumplings for a few reasons: A) He'd get trampled to his death; 2) He'd get knocked over violently; or D) He'd get bitten by one of the chumplings and turn into one of them. I was pretty weary from following him around all creation and keeping him away from escalators, which he loves to no end, so I decided I'd take that risk. H started playing like usual, going into the tubes first. Just then, some smaller chumpling swooped down from the tree and pushed Hendrik right out of the tube so he could go through it. I was on the other side of the tube, waiting for my son to come through, so the chumpling came right at me. I grabbed him on both arms and was foaming at the mouth, I was so angry. "Watch where you're going, ya little runt!" I yelled, saliva flailing from my lips, steam shooting out of my ears. The kid gave me a quivering look and I realized he probably thought I was going to murder him. I let him go and tended to my screaming boy, who needed a good chunk of cuddle time before he was back at it. Later, I sat on the edge of the play area and watched the offending chumpling at work. He didn't change his routine, he continued to run around with the cautiousness of a bull. I identified his parents and judged them for a while. What irresponsible parents! I would NEVER have a child as rambunctious as him!
Then I started to feel bad again. Deep in my heart, I had some serious hatred for that kid and some lite hatred for his parents. What right did I have to hate them? They're probably just regular parents doing the best they can, and he's just a boy who likes to play. Soon enough, I thought, Hendrik will be a chumpling and I'll be glad that he's having fun like a little boy should. If a few toddlers are knocked down in the process, so be it. So, after about 3 months, I let it go.
3. Our house, sometime after that: From February 2010 to April 2011, Hendrik and another boy were watched by a babysitter, first at the other boy's house, and then at ours. It was fun watching them grow up together, learn things together, etc. A bonus was that the other kid was black, and we were secretly proud of the fact that our kid had a black friend, much sooner than I ever did (it still hasn't happened). However, after this kid turned 1, he turned into a nightmare. He had a nasty hitting habit, and was just violent in general. He was very mobile and coordinated. He was constantly knocking Hendrik down with his aggressiveness, even though he wasn't doing it maliciously. It really irked me, especially that it happened every day.
When I would work from home, I'd take a break every so often and play with Hendrik. Of course, the other little boy would want to play with me, too, but, frankly, I wasn't that interested in him. I'd pick up Hendu, tickle him, throw him around on our bed, etc, and all the while the other kid would just watch from the side, trying to get involved. Occasionally I would throw him a bone and chuck him around, but that was more to just chuck him than to play with him. I'd do that for about .5 seconds and realize that I had zero willingness to play with this kid who was always beating up on Hendrik, especially because any time spent playing with him meant less time playing with H. I felt bad about not playing with him, but I just couldn't bring myself to do it.
In April, the babysitter took a full-time job and the other little kid disappeared, which is when Liesl came and watched Hendrik. Since then, I only see the other kid at church and I've found that I like him again. He seems to be calm at nursery, and they play with each other relatively nicely, from what I can see.
4. July: There's this little girl that we know who's right at Hendrik's age. She's on the spoiled side, and by that I mean there doesn't seem to be an end to the toys she has. This is great for Hendrik, who has a much, much smaller collection of toys. However, this girl gets possessive and acts like a mother hen who's feeling threatened by a wolf every time he tries to get near the toys or near her. Hendrik is a pretty social kid for the most part, and likes to give hugs to little girls that he knows. This little girl is obviously much too good for Hendrik, and on this particular occasion pushed him away. That wasn't a big deal, but as Hendrik walked away she ran at him just to smack him right on the forehead, pretty much the toddler's version of a punch to the face. It was pretty cold-blooded and malicious, and I'd never seen any kid of that age act with so much violent intent towards another kid. I was totally shocked and angry. Her mom was right there and took action, but I was so angry about it that I couldn't stop thinking about how much I hated that girl. Even as I write this, I still feel the same way. Give me another 3 months, and I may be over it.
5. July/August, at the beach: Hendrik likes to approach other kids at the beach and tries to play with them. Some kids ignore him and he moves on. Occasionally, he will find a kindred spirit, usually a 4 or 5 year old, who loves to play with Hendrik just as much as Hendrik wants to play with him. There was this little boy who did that, played with him for almost an hour, as they played in the waves and sand. It was the greatest thing ever. I thanked his parents for his kid's willingness to play and asked them if he was for rent ("Rent a brother", not to be confused with "Rent a brotha"-totally different business). I wanted to give the kid a big hug and a present. I mention this as a contrast to stories 1-4 above, to show that when a kid is good to mine, I'm totally in love with them.
As you can see, I've got a lot of ground to cover. I have to figure out a way to stop hating kids. It's just so hard when most kids are so obnoxious. But not yours. Yours are great.
To be honest, the title of this post is more a gimmick than a fact. I'm resorting to gimmicks nowadays to keep people interested. You probably saw this title and thought, "The nerve! What a jerk! But now I have to figure out why he hates kids." And here you are reading, to which I say, "Ha, I tricked you! Please don't click away…"
So, I don't hate kids. Especially not yours. Yours are great. Of course I love my own son, and also love my thousands of nephews and nieces. I like my friends' kids in differing amounts, depending on the friend and the kid, but I certainly don't dislike any of them. I would say that my love for little children of all kinds has gone up tremendously since I've been a parent. I'll see a baby in the grocery store and smile, whereas before there's no way I would be caught DEAD smiling in a grocery store.
So what is this post about if I like kids so much, you ask? It's about the biggest surprise of my parenthood: I had no idea how hard it is to like, or even tolerate, kids that are idiots. I'm talking about the jerk at the playground who's climbing backwards up the slide, running everywhere at full-tilt, knocking 1 year-olds over, making all sort of noise, and just in general being outright obnoxious and ruining everybody's day. I'm also talking about the little brats that are obviously never being told no at their houses, and act like entitled nobility. I had NO idea how hard it was to not hate these kids, their parents, and everyone who says they like that kid.
Let's go through some examples:
1. Whitman playground, early spring-time: Hendrik has been walking for a couple of months and is still pretty wobbly. We start him off at the little kid section, with the small slide and the big red tube, which he loves to climb in. He's having a dandy time when these 8 year old boys come sprinting over from the big kid side, knocking Hendrik over and acting like drunken fools. Hendrik isn't hurt much, but the rage inside me grows quickly. I feel myself turning into the Hulk. I keep a watchful eye on the idiot kid to make sure he doesn't inflict more damage. Later, while Hendrik is playing in the tube, this kid climbs on top of the tube, kicking it, and being loud. He wasn't doing anything bad to Hench, but I'd had enough. I tapped his leg to get his attention and told him to go back to the big kid side and not be such a tool. I can't remember this part that well, but I didn't really touch him (although I really wanted to smack him), and I definitely gave him some sort of old-guy lecture. He looked sufficiently scared and whimpered off to the other side. Mission accomplished!
Later, I began to feel bad. I mean, besides knocking Hendrik over, what else did he do wrong? I decided to let it go and resolved to be nicer to other kids, especially the ones that are idiots, because they probably need the most love.
2. Braintree mall, a few weeks later: We discovered that this mall had an awesome play area very close to the food court. It was designed for pretty small kids, with various tubes to crawl in and what-not. It had a tree-house type theme, similar to the University Mall's play area in Orem. However, unlike the Uni Mall, the play area was totally enclosed, meaning there was no easy escape for wanderers like Hendu.
Mel was shopping for whatever women shop for, and I was in charge of the boy. When we arrived at the play area, it was overrun by chumplings. Chumplings are native to mall play areas, and are a very invasive species unless controlled. These chumplings were especially wild, not unlike a monkey house at the zoo, except monkey houses have less poo-flinging. The chumplings were zooming around at 40 mph, swinging from the branches of the tree, diving through the small tubes, and causing massive commotion. I was hesitant to allow Hench to play around these chumplings for a few reasons: A) He'd get trampled to his death; 2) He'd get knocked over violently; or D) He'd get bitten by one of the chumplings and turn into one of them. I was pretty weary from following him around all creation and keeping him away from escalators, which he loves to no end, so I decided I'd take that risk. H started playing like usual, going into the tubes first. Just then, some smaller chumpling swooped down from the tree and pushed Hendrik right out of the tube so he could go through it. I was on the other side of the tube, waiting for my son to come through, so the chumpling came right at me. I grabbed him on both arms and was foaming at the mouth, I was so angry. "Watch where you're going, ya little runt!" I yelled, saliva flailing from my lips, steam shooting out of my ears. The kid gave me a quivering look and I realized he probably thought I was going to murder him. I let him go and tended to my screaming boy, who needed a good chunk of cuddle time before he was back at it. Later, I sat on the edge of the play area and watched the offending chumpling at work. He didn't change his routine, he continued to run around with the cautiousness of a bull. I identified his parents and judged them for a while. What irresponsible parents! I would NEVER have a child as rambunctious as him!
Then I started to feel bad again. Deep in my heart, I had some serious hatred for that kid and some lite hatred for his parents. What right did I have to hate them? They're probably just regular parents doing the best they can, and he's just a boy who likes to play. Soon enough, I thought, Hendrik will be a chumpling and I'll be glad that he's having fun like a little boy should. If a few toddlers are knocked down in the process, so be it. So, after about 3 months, I let it go.
3. Our house, sometime after that: From February 2010 to April 2011, Hendrik and another boy were watched by a babysitter, first at the other boy's house, and then at ours. It was fun watching them grow up together, learn things together, etc. A bonus was that the other kid was black, and we were secretly proud of the fact that our kid had a black friend, much sooner than I ever did (it still hasn't happened). However, after this kid turned 1, he turned into a nightmare. He had a nasty hitting habit, and was just violent in general. He was very mobile and coordinated. He was constantly knocking Hendrik down with his aggressiveness, even though he wasn't doing it maliciously. It really irked me, especially that it happened every day.
When I would work from home, I'd take a break every so often and play with Hendrik. Of course, the other little boy would want to play with me, too, but, frankly, I wasn't that interested in him. I'd pick up Hendu, tickle him, throw him around on our bed, etc, and all the while the other kid would just watch from the side, trying to get involved. Occasionally I would throw him a bone and chuck him around, but that was more to just chuck him than to play with him. I'd do that for about .5 seconds and realize that I had zero willingness to play with this kid who was always beating up on Hendrik, especially because any time spent playing with him meant less time playing with H. I felt bad about not playing with him, but I just couldn't bring myself to do it.
In April, the babysitter took a full-time job and the other little kid disappeared, which is when Liesl came and watched Hendrik. Since then, I only see the other kid at church and I've found that I like him again. He seems to be calm at nursery, and they play with each other relatively nicely, from what I can see.
4. July: There's this little girl that we know who's right at Hendrik's age. She's on the spoiled side, and by that I mean there doesn't seem to be an end to the toys she has. This is great for Hendrik, who has a much, much smaller collection of toys. However, this girl gets possessive and acts like a mother hen who's feeling threatened by a wolf every time he tries to get near the toys or near her. Hendrik is a pretty social kid for the most part, and likes to give hugs to little girls that he knows. This little girl is obviously much too good for Hendrik, and on this particular occasion pushed him away. That wasn't a big deal, but as Hendrik walked away she ran at him just to smack him right on the forehead, pretty much the toddler's version of a punch to the face. It was pretty cold-blooded and malicious, and I'd never seen any kid of that age act with so much violent intent towards another kid. I was totally shocked and angry. Her mom was right there and took action, but I was so angry about it that I couldn't stop thinking about how much I hated that girl. Even as I write this, I still feel the same way. Give me another 3 months, and I may be over it.
5. July/August, at the beach: Hendrik likes to approach other kids at the beach and tries to play with them. Some kids ignore him and he moves on. Occasionally, he will find a kindred spirit, usually a 4 or 5 year old, who loves to play with Hendrik just as much as Hendrik wants to play with him. There was this little boy who did that, played with him for almost an hour, as they played in the waves and sand. It was the greatest thing ever. I thanked his parents for his kid's willingness to play and asked them if he was for rent ("Rent a brother", not to be confused with "Rent a brotha"-totally different business). I wanted to give the kid a big hug and a present. I mention this as a contrast to stories 1-4 above, to show that when a kid is good to mine, I'm totally in love with them.
As you can see, I've got a lot of ground to cover. I have to figure out a way to stop hating kids. It's just so hard when most kids are so obnoxious. But not yours. Yours are great.
Tuesday, July 19, 2011
The Art of Flying
What is it about flying that sucks the life out of us? At the beginning of the month, our little collective made the seasonal trip to The Promised Land. Due to my wife's Irrational Boss Who Overstates the Importance of Work, we couldn't get tickets at a reasonable price without a stopover at JFK. This is the story of that trip:
I have a theory. When people step into the world of air travel, they typically leave behind any goodwill towards men. It's every dude for hisself here, starting at the check-in lines all the way to the baggage claim at the Final Destination. Perhaps this could be a metaphor. Perhaps not. Anyway, every process along the way seems to decrease our Happiness Meter by a few points. To illustrate, I shall take you through the trip to Utah, giving you some insight into our personal happiness meters. We'll start out at the max of 100, since 100 is "I'm happy that I have a week off of work and am going to see my beloved family" and 0 is "I've watched way too many episodes of 'Handy Manny' to retain any semblance of sanity".
We step into the airport, luggage in hand. We're toting a large suitcase, a duffel bag, a car seat, a largish stroller (which is toting Hendrik), Liesl (kid sister) and a YM, age 15. The YM's name is Samir, and he is going to EFY in Provo, and we are his escorts. I won't list their happiness totals, as I don't really know them as well as my wife and kid.
Happiness Meter:
Me - 100
Mel - 100
Hendrik - 100
We try to check in at JetBlue. The computers are ridiculously slow. Hendrik starts to get impatient. Waiting for 5 seconds for a screen to refresh is like 5 minutes with an impatient toddler, and like 50 minutes with an impatient toddler in an airport. The screen asks us for some sort of Redress Number. Not only do I not know what a Redress Number is, I've never even heard of it, and furthermore, is it even a word? I think JetBlue is making stuff up now. I ignore it and power my way through the screens and print out the boarding passes.
Liesl is not having much luck. They won't allow her to search by destination, only by confirmation number and blood type. We fake a few numbers and power through it, but it's taking forever. Hendrik has had it by now and is demanding a rewrite of his Airport Contract. We are all frazzled, except for Samir, who has a completely blank stare on his face.
I leave Liesl to press the final 2 buttons and get her boarding passes to get in line to check our bags. Mel has taken H out of his prison and is wrestling him near the security gates. Liesl shows up a minute later with her boarding pass. Singular. We are going on 2 flights, and there should be a baggage claim ticket, I tell Liesl. She runs back to get the other documents before some pervert steals them and flies in her spot! Thankfully, there are only 5 other people in the entire airport, and they are in front of us in line.
Happiness Meter:
Me - 85
Mel - 90
Hendrik - 0
Even though the sign says "Baggage Check Only", most people in front of us are occupying the clerk's time with standard check-ins, with no baggage in sight. When we finally approach the bench, I ask the clerk if people try to check in here, and she laughs in my face, meaning "Yes, of COURSE they do!" Melanie requests that they put our car seat in a plastic bag, and the scholarly baggage dude behind her eloquently states "We ain't got no plastic bags." The clerk pretends to find one herself while the baggage dude chucks the car seat with no great care into the mysterious section of the airport that bags disappear into and reappear out of. Melanie is incensed.
Happiness Meter:
Me - 75
Mel - 50
Hendrik - 100
We head over to the little slice of Communist Russia most people call "The Security Check". They strip us down under watch of machine guns and dobermans, loading us onto cattle cars headed for Siberia. We spend days on these cars, urinating in the corner and picking lice out of our neighbor's hair for food. Wait, no, that was the first few chapters of "The Long Walk". But frighteningly similar to the indignation of TSA. We grab 20 bins, putting an individual item in each. I made the rookie mistake of leaving my keys in my pocket as I went through the new-fangled security thingee where you put your arms up like you're frozen in the upward motion of a jumping jack. That little nugget of forgetfulness won me a free lecture from the overweight TSA woman and an intimate pat-down by her man friend, aptly named "Pat". After my "moment" with Pat, I continue my streak of forgetfulness, leaving the keys behind as we hastily redress (maybe this is related to the "redress number"? No?) and escape from Siberia towards our gate.
Happiness Meter:
Me - 55
Mel - 45
Hendrik - 0
On the way to the gate, we see a play area, perfect for Hendrik. Mel and company (Liesl, Samir), continue to the gate while I stay behind with Hendrik. At the play area, there is a small family consisting of a speck of a human mother in her 40's, and 2 adolescents sitting practically on her lap. The male adolescent has a thick Harold Potter book open, rivaling him in thickness, reading aloud as the other 2 listen. He'll read a few pages and then stop, and they discuss in a Slavic language, even though he's reading in English. What appears to be another member of their family is a 3-year-old, possibly 4, blonde girl, running around from toy to toy, pushing Hendrik off of each one. Hendrik takes it pretty well, but I want to give the girl the spanking of her lifetime. I refrain, holding to my feelings of superior parenting as my small victory over the Tiny Slavic Family. Meanwhile, the rest of the crew arrives at the gate and relaxes.
Happiness Meter:
Me - 50
Mel - 50
Hendrik - 1,000,000,000,000
It's time to board on our small flight to NYC. I remember that I forgot my keys, so I run back to security, where they actually have it placed to the side, labeled as to what time it was lost and my description ("white male, 2:30 PM"). I am pleasantly surprised at this. I hustle back to board just in time. The plane is small, only 2 seats on each side. Liesl sits behind us, Samir across from us, and Mel and I have a row to ourselves with Hendrik. H finds the tray enchanting, unlocking it, letting it fall, and then putting it back up. He is running on all cylinders now, nowhere close to a nap. It's 3:30 in the afternoon. The flight goes pretty well, except for the constant wrestling match with Hench. We finally pacify him with his heroin: Toy Story 3. He is calm as a Single Ward's sacrament meeting.
Happiness Meter:
Me - 50
Mel - 50
Hendrik - 100
We land in NYC. It's 5 PM and our flight to Utah isn't until 8:30. We find an overpriced grill in the food area. Hendrik eats almost my entire 7-dollar hamburger, which is ironic considering he barely touches the hamburgers we make for him at home. We take turns chasing him around the terminal. I get a craving for Corn Nuts and look in all the shops for them. No luck. I had to settle for trail mix. 7:30 PM comes around and we're sick of waiting and chasing Hendrik. We put on Toy Story 3, hoping that it will relax him and get him ready for sleep right at 8:30. However, the flight is delayed. We don't end up boarding until 10 PM, and by then, all the passengers have descended into Apocalypse Mode. Allow me to explain, I don't mind. Apocalypse Mode is when people have ceased to care about anyone's survival or well-being except their own. There is no help with strollers or bags. There is the constant grumbling when a little child is around. There is the accusing looks, which pretty much say, "Your kid better be SILENT on this trip or I will KEEL you!" It takes hold of me, too. I start muscling my way to the front of the boarding line, using Hendrik as the reason to board first. "Small child here! We got dibs on boarding!" It doesn't matter, though, since Dibs are not honored in Apocalypse Mode. We only board when we get to the front of the line, and that only happens after I clear out a few Asians.
Happiness Meter:
Me - 20
Mel - 25
Hendrik - 50
We board the plane. Since we are late, the attendants make sure everyone is ready for take-off: no electronics, no trays down, no bathroom breaks, no General Tomfoolery. We are to sit still and prepare for take-off! However, there is one problem. We aren't moving. We sit on the plane, ready to go, but we don't even pull away from the gate. This goes on for 30-45 minutes. It felt like 30 days. I was losing it. Hendrik was losing it. Mel was keeping it together.
Happiness Meter:
Me - 1
Mel - 20
Hendrik - 0
We finally get moving and take-off. We're in the air! Hendrik falls asleep and we're watching TV. Life is slightly better.
Happiness Meter:
Me - 2
Mel - 21
Hendrik - 100
The flight goes okay. I get exactly 3 minutes and 28 seconds of sleep. Melanie appears to get more, and Hendrik still more. Hendrik is out pretty well until about 90 minutes left, when he wakes up super crabby and won't go back to sleep. We put on Toy Story 3 on my computer, since the DVD player ran out of batteries because the plane was delayed. My computer runs out of batteries with 30 minutes left. It's a battle of endurance as we try every trick in the book to keep him still/quiet. He doesn't have a tantrum so it's a small victory, but he does whine a lot, so we get lots of annoyed looks. We're almost there.
Happiness Meter:
Me - negative 5
Mel - 10
Hendrik - negative 1 billion
We land at SLC at 1 AM local time. It's 3 AM in Boston, and we left the house nearly 14 hours ago. My brother Bruce is ready to pick us up and drive us to his house. All that's left is to get our bags. We get to the claim and wait. And wait. Hendrik has had it, he wants to escape to the street and get himself runneth overed. I chase him around the terminal, inside and outside, bringing him back to the baggage claim every few minutes. Still no bags. My inner patience (which already runs pretty low), is completely on "E", so I just hate everything by now. I hate JetBlue, I hate the SLC airport, I hate JFK (both the person and the airport), I hate it all. WHERE ARE MY FREAKING BAGS!?!?!??!
Happiness Meter:
Me - negative infinity
Mel - 1
Hendrik - 0
The bags finally come. We load it all into Bruce's van and escape from the airport. We are all very tired. Forsooth.
Happiness Meter:
Me - 0
Mel - 0
Hendrik - 0
I have a theory. When people step into the world of air travel, they typically leave behind any goodwill towards men. It's every dude for hisself here, starting at the check-in lines all the way to the baggage claim at the Final Destination. Perhaps this could be a metaphor. Perhaps not. Anyway, every process along the way seems to decrease our Happiness Meter by a few points. To illustrate, I shall take you through the trip to Utah, giving you some insight into our personal happiness meters. We'll start out at the max of 100, since 100 is "I'm happy that I have a week off of work and am going to see my beloved family" and 0 is "I've watched way too many episodes of 'Handy Manny' to retain any semblance of sanity".
We step into the airport, luggage in hand. We're toting a large suitcase, a duffel bag, a car seat, a largish stroller (which is toting Hendrik), Liesl (kid sister) and a YM, age 15. The YM's name is Samir, and he is going to EFY in Provo, and we are his escorts. I won't list their happiness totals, as I don't really know them as well as my wife and kid.
Happiness Meter:
Me - 100
Mel - 100
Hendrik - 100
We try to check in at JetBlue. The computers are ridiculously slow. Hendrik starts to get impatient. Waiting for 5 seconds for a screen to refresh is like 5 minutes with an impatient toddler, and like 50 minutes with an impatient toddler in an airport. The screen asks us for some sort of Redress Number. Not only do I not know what a Redress Number is, I've never even heard of it, and furthermore, is it even a word? I think JetBlue is making stuff up now. I ignore it and power my way through the screens and print out the boarding passes.
Liesl is not having much luck. They won't allow her to search by destination, only by confirmation number and blood type. We fake a few numbers and power through it, but it's taking forever. Hendrik has had it by now and is demanding a rewrite of his Airport Contract. We are all frazzled, except for Samir, who has a completely blank stare on his face.
I leave Liesl to press the final 2 buttons and get her boarding passes to get in line to check our bags. Mel has taken H out of his prison and is wrestling him near the security gates. Liesl shows up a minute later with her boarding pass. Singular. We are going on 2 flights, and there should be a baggage claim ticket, I tell Liesl. She runs back to get the other documents before some pervert steals them and flies in her spot! Thankfully, there are only 5 other people in the entire airport, and they are in front of us in line.
Happiness Meter:
Me - 85
Mel - 90
Hendrik - 0
Even though the sign says "Baggage Check Only", most people in front of us are occupying the clerk's time with standard check-ins, with no baggage in sight. When we finally approach the bench, I ask the clerk if people try to check in here, and she laughs in my face, meaning "Yes, of COURSE they do!" Melanie requests that they put our car seat in a plastic bag, and the scholarly baggage dude behind her eloquently states "We ain't got no plastic bags." The clerk pretends to find one herself while the baggage dude chucks the car seat with no great care into the mysterious section of the airport that bags disappear into and reappear out of. Melanie is incensed.
Happiness Meter:
Me - 75
Mel - 50
Hendrik - 100
We head over to the little slice of Communist Russia most people call "The Security Check". They strip us down under watch of machine guns and dobermans, loading us onto cattle cars headed for Siberia. We spend days on these cars, urinating in the corner and picking lice out of our neighbor's hair for food. Wait, no, that was the first few chapters of "The Long Walk". But frighteningly similar to the indignation of TSA. We grab 20 bins, putting an individual item in each. I made the rookie mistake of leaving my keys in my pocket as I went through the new-fangled security thingee where you put your arms up like you're frozen in the upward motion of a jumping jack. That little nugget of forgetfulness won me a free lecture from the overweight TSA woman and an intimate pat-down by her man friend, aptly named "Pat". After my "moment" with Pat, I continue my streak of forgetfulness, leaving the keys behind as we hastily redress (maybe this is related to the "redress number"? No?) and escape from Siberia towards our gate.
Happiness Meter:
Me - 55
Mel - 45
Hendrik - 0
On the way to the gate, we see a play area, perfect for Hendrik. Mel and company (Liesl, Samir), continue to the gate while I stay behind with Hendrik. At the play area, there is a small family consisting of a speck of a human mother in her 40's, and 2 adolescents sitting practically on her lap. The male adolescent has a thick Harold Potter book open, rivaling him in thickness, reading aloud as the other 2 listen. He'll read a few pages and then stop, and they discuss in a Slavic language, even though he's reading in English. What appears to be another member of their family is a 3-year-old, possibly 4, blonde girl, running around from toy to toy, pushing Hendrik off of each one. Hendrik takes it pretty well, but I want to give the girl the spanking of her lifetime. I refrain, holding to my feelings of superior parenting as my small victory over the Tiny Slavic Family. Meanwhile, the rest of the crew arrives at the gate and relaxes.
Happiness Meter:
Me - 50
Mel - 50
Hendrik - 1,000,000,000,000
It's time to board on our small flight to NYC. I remember that I forgot my keys, so I run back to security, where they actually have it placed to the side, labeled as to what time it was lost and my description ("white male, 2:30 PM"). I am pleasantly surprised at this. I hustle back to board just in time. The plane is small, only 2 seats on each side. Liesl sits behind us, Samir across from us, and Mel and I have a row to ourselves with Hendrik. H finds the tray enchanting, unlocking it, letting it fall, and then putting it back up. He is running on all cylinders now, nowhere close to a nap. It's 3:30 in the afternoon. The flight goes pretty well, except for the constant wrestling match with Hench. We finally pacify him with his heroin: Toy Story 3. He is calm as a Single Ward's sacrament meeting.
Happiness Meter:
Me - 50
Mel - 50
Hendrik - 100
We land in NYC. It's 5 PM and our flight to Utah isn't until 8:30. We find an overpriced grill in the food area. Hendrik eats almost my entire 7-dollar hamburger, which is ironic considering he barely touches the hamburgers we make for him at home. We take turns chasing him around the terminal. I get a craving for Corn Nuts and look in all the shops for them. No luck. I had to settle for trail mix. 7:30 PM comes around and we're sick of waiting and chasing Hendrik. We put on Toy Story 3, hoping that it will relax him and get him ready for sleep right at 8:30. However, the flight is delayed. We don't end up boarding until 10 PM, and by then, all the passengers have descended into Apocalypse Mode. Allow me to explain, I don't mind. Apocalypse Mode is when people have ceased to care about anyone's survival or well-being except their own. There is no help with strollers or bags. There is the constant grumbling when a little child is around. There is the accusing looks, which pretty much say, "Your kid better be SILENT on this trip or I will KEEL you!" It takes hold of me, too. I start muscling my way to the front of the boarding line, using Hendrik as the reason to board first. "Small child here! We got dibs on boarding!" It doesn't matter, though, since Dibs are not honored in Apocalypse Mode. We only board when we get to the front of the line, and that only happens after I clear out a few Asians.
Happiness Meter:
Me - 20
Mel - 25
Hendrik - 50
We board the plane. Since we are late, the attendants make sure everyone is ready for take-off: no electronics, no trays down, no bathroom breaks, no General Tomfoolery. We are to sit still and prepare for take-off! However, there is one problem. We aren't moving. We sit on the plane, ready to go, but we don't even pull away from the gate. This goes on for 30-45 minutes. It felt like 30 days. I was losing it. Hendrik was losing it. Mel was keeping it together.
Happiness Meter:
Me - 1
Mel - 20
Hendrik - 0
We finally get moving and take-off. We're in the air! Hendrik falls asleep and we're watching TV. Life is slightly better.
Happiness Meter:
Me - 2
Mel - 21
Hendrik - 100
The flight goes okay. I get exactly 3 minutes and 28 seconds of sleep. Melanie appears to get more, and Hendrik still more. Hendrik is out pretty well until about 90 minutes left, when he wakes up super crabby and won't go back to sleep. We put on Toy Story 3 on my computer, since the DVD player ran out of batteries because the plane was delayed. My computer runs out of batteries with 30 minutes left. It's a battle of endurance as we try every trick in the book to keep him still/quiet. He doesn't have a tantrum so it's a small victory, but he does whine a lot, so we get lots of annoyed looks. We're almost there.
Happiness Meter:
Me - negative 5
Mel - 10
Hendrik - negative 1 billion
We land at SLC at 1 AM local time. It's 3 AM in Boston, and we left the house nearly 14 hours ago. My brother Bruce is ready to pick us up and drive us to his house. All that's left is to get our bags. We get to the claim and wait. And wait. Hendrik has had it, he wants to escape to the street and get himself runneth overed. I chase him around the terminal, inside and outside, bringing him back to the baggage claim every few minutes. Still no bags. My inner patience (which already runs pretty low), is completely on "E", so I just hate everything by now. I hate JetBlue, I hate the SLC airport, I hate JFK (both the person and the airport), I hate it all. WHERE ARE MY FREAKING BAGS!?!?!??!
Happiness Meter:
Me - negative infinity
Mel - 1
Hendrik - 0
The bags finally come. We load it all into Bruce's van and escape from the airport. We are all very tired. Forsooth.
Happiness Meter:
Me - 0
Mel - 0
Hendrik - 0
Sunday, June 26, 2011
Oh So Special
Meet Special Agent Oso. The. Unique. Stuffed. Bear. He's on a special assignment to help a kid somewhere. With help from you, there's nothing he can't do. He's Oh So Special.
I've watched Oso so many times that I feel the compelling need to let you into the world of mind-numbing kid's television. We DVR a few shows that we put on for Hendrik when he's whiny (5% of the time), tired (2% of the time), or his parents don't feel like parenting (93% of the time). The shows we watch are as follows, in order of Hendrik's favorite to least favorite:
1. Sesame Street
2. Special Agent Oso
3. Chuggington
4. Jack's Big Music Show
5. Curious George
6. Super Why
7. Handy Manny
8. Yo Gabba Gabba (we stopped recording this for reasons of our sanity)
I've taken these shows and ordered them from most tolerable to driving-me-absolutely-bonkers:
1. Curious George - No annoying songs, not formulaic, I only despise that stupid wiener dog. I envy the Man in the Yellow Hat's wardrobe (and property! A condo in the city? A house in the country? All on a semi-competent biologist's salary, too!), and I like the black kid who calls George "city kid".
2. Jack's Big Music Show - Lots of songs, but very low on the annoying factor. I also prefer muppets to cartoons.
3. Super Why - Formulaic, but low-key and not that annoying. Except Super Red is kind of a skank.
4. Sesame Street - If Sesame Street had more old-school stuff and not these incredibly-long sketches that are super boring, then I'd rank it #1. I despise Abby's Flying Fairy School and just hate anything involving the super whiny monster Telly. Grover is still pretty cool, and Cookie Monster is awesome. Elmo gets a ton of air-time and I've gotten used to the fact that he speaks like Ricky Henderson (always in the 3rd person), plus it's hard to totally hate something your child absolutely adores.
5. Chuggington - The kid trains just piss me off in general, and the song gets stuck in my head for centuries (Chuuuuuuuuuuggington. Chugga-chugga-chugga-chugga-chuggington). The kid trains always blatantly disobey the rules, get in trouble, and then don't even get in trouble for it! Where's the stern lecture? Where's the grounding? Where's the back of the hand or belt on the backside!?!?!
6. Special Agent Oso - See this entire blog post, but not as annoying as…
7. Handy Manny - Handy Manny is not so annoying as it is INCREDIBLY BORING. 15 minutes to change a light fixture? And when is Manny gonna hook up with Kelly? There's not much to like with Handy Manny. The tools are either incredibly stupid ("I'm a hammer!") or huge wusses (see: Rusty, Monkey Wrench). The next store over features Mr. Lopart, your prototypical Chester Molester, who scores 11 out of 10 on the Creepy Factor. He owns a candy shop (red flag, anyone?), has a cat as a best friend, and is just the most unlikeable character ever. It baffles me how this show ever got on the air. We never watch it anymore.
8. Yo Gabba Gabba - I like this show, aside from the fact that I feel like I'm on drugs when I'm watching it. You have to be in the mood to watch this, and I've never been in that mood. When my buddy (who had kids at the time) was visiting us a couple years ago, he convinced me to turn on "Yo Gabba" to see how awesome it was. There were no kids in the room, and I had no idea what Yo Gabba was at the time. We turned it on and watched it for like 5 minutes and my brain turned to mush and I collapsed to the floor.
So there you have it. Now let's get back to Oso.
This show is about a yellow bear that works for a stupendously inefficient global spy network with a seemingly bottomless budget. He gets called by his boss "Mr. Dos" to help kids with everyday tasks in 3 Special Steps. The show is very formulaic, and always starts with Oso trying to complete some ridiculously easy training exercise, like covering his spy car with a car cover. Oso always screws up the exercise, sometimes causing major damage to his spy plane/car/submarine/spaceship while almost killing everybody within 10 miles. He always screws up because he can't listen to more than one instruction at once. The animals in charge of him are Wolfy (a wolf), and Dotty (a dot--J/K LOL!--she's a cat).
Wolfy, Dotty, and Oso get plasteredBoth Wolfy and Dotty are extremely patient, considering Oso almost kills them every day. After he ruins his exercise, he gets a call from Mr. Dos to help a kid who is in dire need, for example:
a. A kid can't tie his own shoes
b. A kid can't figure out how to throw a Frisbee
c. A kid needs to perform CPR on his dying father (haha-just kidding! Oso's only teaching essential life skills here)
So Oso takes his talking helicopter halfway across the world in a matter of seconds (from what I can tell, their headquarters is in Norway). This heli is called "Whirlybird" who also is the worst character of ALL TIME (worse than Lopart), and who also hates Oso so much that he's always trying to kill Oso by twisting his words ("What's that, Oso? You said you wanted to die today?" "No, I said I'd like some pie today! Whirrrrleeeee!!!") and dropping him 1000 feet to a certain death, which Oso usually avoids by luckily falling into a pillow-soft pine tree and into the family's kitchen, ruining everything, which could be the title of the show: "Oso Ruins Everything".
Once Oso meets the kid, who of course recognizes this bear whose company has been stalking him this entire time, and they commence solving the perplexing dilemma using the 3 Special Steps. It goes without saying that every single problem can be solved with exactly 3 steps, no more, no less. Sometimes, if it's something easy, like throwing a Frisbee, they really have to stretch out the steps:
1. Pick up the Frisbee
2. Inspect it for asbestos
3. Throw the Frisbee
Sometimes, it's a harder task, like baking a cake, so they squeeze everything in one step:
1. Find the cake mix
2. Preheat the oven
3. Ask your mom to do everything else while you watch the tube
Even though the steps are spelled out for Oso, he usually struggles with even the simplest of concepts. In fact, usually the kid has to show Oso how to figure something out, which makes me wonder about Oso's qualifications as a task mentor. Paw Pilot, this annoying talking-head character that lives in Oso's PED, usually has to give Oso some special tip. I'm always hoping she'll say this: "Here's a tip, Oso: Use your #$*& brain!"
Oso is usually on a pretty tight deadline. Paw Pilot will give him an exact amount of time to complete the task, usually in seconds: "Hurry up, Oso, Ashley's dad will come in the door to inspect her cake in 8 seconds! Also, he has a gun! And a short temper!"
This is when Oso gets frantic (potential show name: "Oso Gets Frantic") and starts ruining everything again and they have to start over. However, Paw Pilot is an extremely slow counter, and the 8 seconds usually translate to what feels like 37 hours. They succeed in the end, the dad puts his gun away (although he's slightly tempted to go bear hunting), and everybody's happy. The family usually invites Oso to stay ("Yes, we'd love to have a smelly, stupid bear who never listens stay at our house indefinitely!"), but he declines (family breathes huge sigh of relief) so he can finish his training exercise, which he never should've screwed up in the first place.
Once Oso successfully completes his training exercise, Wolfy howls, "Outstanding, Oso! Owwwwwstanding!" with much zeal. Sometimes, Wolfy or Dotty will even give him a present for completing the task. One episode, Oso put together a puzzle for his training exercise and they gave him a TRAIN. Not a toy train, an actual train with a French accent whose name is Rapid (pronounced "Ra-PEED"). I'm always a little curious about what Oso's compensation package includes, and how much insurance his spy agency needs to cover all the damage he causes.
The most irritating thing about the whole show is the title of each episode, which is always a play off of a James Bond movie title. They even make a mind-numbing song out of it which Paw Pilot sings in the middle of each episode. If you recall, the James Bond titles don't make much sense as it is, so you can imagine how horrible these songs are. Some examples of titles are:
A View to a Frisbee
Hopscotch is Forever
Octo-puzzle
Hide Another Day
Live and Let Dry
For Show and Tell Only
All in all, Special Agent Oso is a brilliant show with complex plots, stunning cinematography, deep character development, and should be a force to reckon with at this year's Academy Awards. I give it 5 out of 5 stars. A must-see! 2 thumbs up! The feel-good story of the year! If you only watch one show this year, make it "Special Agent Oso"!
Friday, May 27, 2011
Tip your blogger
We went on a horseback riding excursion on our recent trip to Hawaii. I'll let you take a couple moments to reflect on how awesome that last sentence makes us sound. Okay, that's enough. Now that you're filled with envy/hatred/awe, you're in the proper frame of mind to read this post.
Anyway, the excursion was 85 bucks per rider. Our beloved little boy was not with us, so that added up to a whopping 170 bucks. That may not sound like much to you, but we've been known to stretch 170 dollars into a week's worth of groceries, an extravagant trip to Costco, 5 mortgage payments, and a medium box of toothpicks. The excursion was into a remote valley called Waipi'o that has various waterfalls, farms, and was supposed to be very pretty. It was indeed pretty, and we enjoyed the valley, thank you very much. The guide was decent, at best, trying to be funny (the nerve!) all the time and wouldn't really give me a straight answer to my questions very often. I felt like I was annoying him with all my questions, which, if you're a tour guide, is not the feeling you want to be giving your tourists. Frankly, I don't care if you're annoyed with my questions, I paid a lot of money to be on this trip and I'm going to ask them anyway! He probably shouldn't be a tour guide if he doesn't like dealing with tourists.
At the end of the tour he made a few more canned jokes and then gave us a tip spiel, adding that "the customary 15%" was expected. His tip spiel was longer than ordinary, and it reminded me of the Simpsons bit where a park ranger gives a bland explanation about something and then enthusiastically thrusts his tip jar out, shaking it, with a big smile.
I don't like where this tipping culture is heading. Almost every store I go into has a tip jar next to the cash register. Most people just toss their change in there, but I pay with credit cards usually, and even if it's a cash-only place, I like to hoard my money like so many Genghis Khans (oh, it's "horde", you say?). You're probably thinking, "Tipping is optional, Kent, so just re-LAX!" Well, I'm here to suggest that tipping is no longer optional, and is now a Guilt Charge. If you don't want to feel guilty for not tipping, you tip. If you're fine with the guilt, then you don't have to tip. You're paying either with cash money or with emotional distress.
I would like to consider myself a guilt-free non-tipper, but I survived on tips for around 6 years of my life, so I can't. First, I was a pizza delivery boy, and then I was a server at TGI Friday's (flair!). So, therefore, I have the guilt and feel obligated to not only tip, but tip WELL.
I think some occupations certainly deserve a tip, especially because they are paid barely anything without tips. My base pay as a server was $2.15/hr. My paychecks were so worthless that I never picked them up until my boss broke into my car and stuffed them into my glove box. My base was a bit more as a delivery dude, up to $5.50/hr until I got promoted to manager, when I made a whopping 6 bones/hr.
The 15% rule should only apply to servers. The amount of work they're doing for the table, bringing out drinks, taking the order, cleaning up dirty dishes, etc, is certainly worth about 15% of the bill, especially considering their base pay, which essentially implies that the server works more for his customers than for the restaurant. I can't think of any other occupation where the provided service is worth 15%. As a delivery boy, I kept stats on my deliveries, and my average tip was $1.50, and my average delivery was about $15. Although I always wanted more than that, I can be a little more objective now that I'm a deliveree instead of a deliverer, and I say that the service provided is worth about 10% of the price.
What about valet parking, bellhops, and maids? I've always been iffy on this, and they say that you should tip 2-3 clams per bag, and I really have no idea what to pay the valet or the maid. If I'm on the company's dime, I'm much more generous than the norm, getting all my money back when I fill out my expense reports (filed under "sundry"). On my own dime, a few factors come into play: Did they have a good attitude? I don't feel compelled to give a tip to some surly bellhop; How many singles do I have in my wallet? I hate getting change just for a tip; How much money have I spent already on this trip (i.e. am I feeling rich or poor)? How essential was the service? How messy was my room?
I usually tip valets about 3 bucks for getting my car. For a few months back in 2007, I parked in a valet parking lot across the street from my building, as they were having a deal on parking. Because I was paying 200-ish bucks a month to park there, I didn't ever tip the valets. I was mostly fine with this, however, I did see other monthly parkers tipping, but I got over it.
I tip the bellhops about 2 bucks a bag, for a max of 5 bucks for lots of bags. In February 2010, we went to this "all-expenses included" resort in northern NH for a ski trip when Hench was 4 months old, and we had all sorts of junk with us. The bellhops were very helpful and I gave them 5 bucks or so and felt that they deserved it. However, when we got our final bill, there was a 15% Gratuity Charge tacked on the final bill, and the gratuity charge was over 100 bucks! Because it was an all-inclusive resort, every meal was in this pretty fancy ballroom with menus, servers and ushers and the lot. I also had to wear a sport coat to dinner, which totally sucked because who wants to pack a sport coat on a ski trip? You already have to pack enough winter equipment as it is. Anyway, did I get 100 bucks' worth of service there? Not even close. The most valuable thing I got was the help from the bellmen and I already tipped them. We only had 4 meals in the ballroom, and 3 of those meals were buffets with no need for servers, whose only responsibility was to provide drinks, which didn't come until 20 minutes after we sat down and finished our meal. I really could write a novelette about how much of a rip-off this place was.
I don't tip the maids unless we made some egregious mess, or if we hadn't spent much money on the trip (this is theoretical- hasn't happened so far). Once, on the company dime, I left a 20 accidentally on the shelf and the maid took it, thinking it was the tip. I figure that covers me for the rest of my life.
I certainly don't feel obligated to leave anything in a tip jar. Somehow people feel justified in putting a tip jar out and somehow deserving extra money for doing their job. The way I understand it, a tip is to reward someone for giving exceptional service. It's hard to give exceptional service while ringing up my sandwich for 6 bucks and taking my money.
I am a notoriously bad tipper when it comes to taxis. I hate taxis with a violent passion, and every time I have to take a cab, I can feel my lifespan getting shorter by the month. Cab drivers are the absolute worst drivers. The reason why they are so horrible is because they are from crazy countries that pretty much have anarchy on the streets. The worst country I've been to is Egypt, where crossing a street requires an arm and a leg and a hope and a prayer. After each and every cab ride, I feel dirty, violated, and nauseous. Dirty because the back of cabs are next to outhouse toilets in filthiness. Violated because I paid 40 bucks to go 3 miles across the harbor to the airport in a smelly car. Nauseous because the drivers don't know the meaning of the word "gradual". I have 2 memorable cab stories:
1. In 2007, I took a cab from the airport on a Sunday afternoon to my apartment in Somerville. I got a Bulgarian cab driver who deliberately took me on the worst, round-about route. Once I saw him going to the wrong freeway, I asked what he was doing and he said he was taking the best way. We argued the entire way home, about 20 minutes, him insisting that it was the best route, me angry that he was running up the meter and taking minutes away from my precious Sunday. I was on the company dime, so I didn't care about the fare, but it was the principle. The guy turned off the meter to "appease" me, even though I would've just appreciated it if he admitted he was trying to dupe me. At the end, he asked me how much it usually cost, I said 45 bucks and I gave him 40. He was livid, but I just grabbed my stuff and got out of there before he punched me. He would've beaten the crap out of me, too.
2. In 2008, I was in Manhattan and had to catch the Delta shuttle at La Guardia. I wasn't in a huge rush, but that didn't matter to the cabbie. He drove like an absolute mad man, honking at everybody, flipping off pedestrians and grandmas, driving over sidewalks, on shoulders, etc, using the F-word with each breath, and just being that crazy driver that everybody sees and rolls their eyes at. I was embarrassed to be in the back, as if this was somehow my fault. Also, I was about to puke. I didn't want to leave him a tip, but I was scared of the repercussions if I didn't, so I did. Once again, company dime. This is the part where that annoying person who lived in NYC for 6 months laughs and says, "Oh you silly non-New Yorker, all cabbies are like that!" My retort is that I've been on enough cab rides in that city to know that's not true.
So what is my general rule for cabs? I rarely take them when I'm paying, but my hatred is so deep that I am a lousy tipper regardless of who's ultimately paying for it. For a 40 dollar ride to the airport from downtown, I tip 5 bucks max. For an 80-dollar ride to Whitman, I pay 5 bucks again. I just can't give these cabs a good tip, even though cabbies are notoriously confrontive about bad tippers.
What about guides, though? I took a 6-day trek through the Himalayas in Nepal with a porter and a guide. The whole package, all-inclusive, was 100 bucks for all 6 days. The porter took my pack, the guide kept me company, and all I had to do was carry my day-pack and hike. I was still a poor student at the time, but I believe I gave them the equivalent of 20 bucks each at the end. I read somewhere that the average yearly salary of a Nepali was 150 bucks, so I was feeling pretty good about myself after that. They certainly deserved it, doing all that work, and they didn't even ask for a tip, although the company I booked it with suggested that I tip my guide and porter. Which is exactly the way it should be, because I have no idea what these guys are getting paid. I'm pretty sure the company guy said, "Make sure you tip these guys, because we're not paying them jack."
I've been on a couple Boston Duck tours here. There's about 20-30 people on the ride, and the price is 25 bucks, and I believe I gave the guide 2 bucks, and felt fine with that. Also, when I did it, I just handed it straight to him, not doing the "secret tip handshake" with the bills tucked in my thumb fold like a drug exchange.
Which leads me to the horseback excursion. First of all, we weren't feeling rich at all. Hawaii is DARNED expensive, and this excursion wasn't cheap. Secondly, the guide did a decent job with the information/jokes, but his overall demeanor was condescending and arrogant. Thirdly, there was this other native dude that was his helper, and that guy was much nicer and friendlier. Fourthly, the guide didn't really DO anything except point and talk. He just sat on his horse, brought up the rear, and said factoids every 5 minutes or so. And finally, his last tip spiel was way too forthcoming, and it was apparent to me that he was mailing it in. As we got out of the van at the end, back at the ranch, I noticed the other horsebackers were giving the secret tip handshake with the guide, with what appeared to be twenties. I had left my wallet in the car, so I had to go back to it to get some cash. We only had about 20 bucks, but I gave Mel 12 bucks to give to the guide. I didn't want to give it to him myself because I didn't like him. When Mel gave it to him, she handed him the money like a normal exchange, but he quickly shook her hand in the process and stealthily took the money, leaving Mel with an ounce of cocaine in her hand to finish the transaction.
All in all, our tip amounted to 7%, less than half of his suggestion. And you know what? I still felt like I was ripped off. I am generally known to my friends as a cheapskate (although my family thinks I spend money like the Kardashians), but I think I'm a fine tipper. I just don't feel like giving money to people when I didn't get any value from it. I would've been fine giving him only 5 bucks, as I felt that's how much value I received from his services, but the other 7 bucks were for the Guilt Charge. I would've preferred that the company either baked his tip into the price or suggested giving him a tip via credit card, making it obvious that we should be leaving a tip, and sparing us the awkwardness of the transaction. The company also had a misleading sign out front that said something like "Tip your horse, pet your guide" which I thought could be meaning that we weren't expected to tip the guide.
Despite that, the horseback excursion was quite fun, one of the highlights of the trip, the others being seeing the volcano glow at night and the black sand beach. The Waipi'o Valley was stunning and riding the horses through the jungle and through rivers was fun, and I would recommend it. Just bring some cash for your guide.
Now, it's customary to tip your blogger 15% of your monthly internet bill. I accept Paypal, checks in the mail, and stomps on the head.
Anyway, the excursion was 85 bucks per rider. Our beloved little boy was not with us, so that added up to a whopping 170 bucks. That may not sound like much to you, but we've been known to stretch 170 dollars into a week's worth of groceries, an extravagant trip to Costco, 5 mortgage payments, and a medium box of toothpicks. The excursion was into a remote valley called Waipi'o that has various waterfalls, farms, and was supposed to be very pretty. It was indeed pretty, and we enjoyed the valley, thank you very much. The guide was decent, at best, trying to be funny (the nerve!) all the time and wouldn't really give me a straight answer to my questions very often. I felt like I was annoying him with all my questions, which, if you're a tour guide, is not the feeling you want to be giving your tourists. Frankly, I don't care if you're annoyed with my questions, I paid a lot of money to be on this trip and I'm going to ask them anyway! He probably shouldn't be a tour guide if he doesn't like dealing with tourists.
At the end of the tour he made a few more canned jokes and then gave us a tip spiel, adding that "the customary 15%" was expected. His tip spiel was longer than ordinary, and it reminded me of the Simpsons bit where a park ranger gives a bland explanation about something and then enthusiastically thrusts his tip jar out, shaking it, with a big smile.
I don't like where this tipping culture is heading. Almost every store I go into has a tip jar next to the cash register. Most people just toss their change in there, but I pay with credit cards usually, and even if it's a cash-only place, I like to hoard my money like so many Genghis Khans (oh, it's "horde", you say?). You're probably thinking, "Tipping is optional, Kent, so just re-LAX!" Well, I'm here to suggest that tipping is no longer optional, and is now a Guilt Charge. If you don't want to feel guilty for not tipping, you tip. If you're fine with the guilt, then you don't have to tip. You're paying either with cash money or with emotional distress.
I would like to consider myself a guilt-free non-tipper, but I survived on tips for around 6 years of my life, so I can't. First, I was a pizza delivery boy, and then I was a server at TGI Friday's (flair!). So, therefore, I have the guilt and feel obligated to not only tip, but tip WELL.
I think some occupations certainly deserve a tip, especially because they are paid barely anything without tips. My base pay as a server was $2.15/hr. My paychecks were so worthless that I never picked them up until my boss broke into my car and stuffed them into my glove box. My base was a bit more as a delivery dude, up to $5.50/hr until I got promoted to manager, when I made a whopping 6 bones/hr.
The 15% rule should only apply to servers. The amount of work they're doing for the table, bringing out drinks, taking the order, cleaning up dirty dishes, etc, is certainly worth about 15% of the bill, especially considering their base pay, which essentially implies that the server works more for his customers than for the restaurant. I can't think of any other occupation where the provided service is worth 15%. As a delivery boy, I kept stats on my deliveries, and my average tip was $1.50, and my average delivery was about $15. Although I always wanted more than that, I can be a little more objective now that I'm a deliveree instead of a deliverer, and I say that the service provided is worth about 10% of the price.
What about valet parking, bellhops, and maids? I've always been iffy on this, and they say that you should tip 2-3 clams per bag, and I really have no idea what to pay the valet or the maid. If I'm on the company's dime, I'm much more generous than the norm, getting all my money back when I fill out my expense reports (filed under "sundry"). On my own dime, a few factors come into play: Did they have a good attitude? I don't feel compelled to give a tip to some surly bellhop; How many singles do I have in my wallet? I hate getting change just for a tip; How much money have I spent already on this trip (i.e. am I feeling rich or poor)? How essential was the service? How messy was my room?
I usually tip valets about 3 bucks for getting my car. For a few months back in 2007, I parked in a valet parking lot across the street from my building, as they were having a deal on parking. Because I was paying 200-ish bucks a month to park there, I didn't ever tip the valets. I was mostly fine with this, however, I did see other monthly parkers tipping, but I got over it.
I tip the bellhops about 2 bucks a bag, for a max of 5 bucks for lots of bags. In February 2010, we went to this "all-expenses included" resort in northern NH for a ski trip when Hench was 4 months old, and we had all sorts of junk with us. The bellhops were very helpful and I gave them 5 bucks or so and felt that they deserved it. However, when we got our final bill, there was a 15% Gratuity Charge tacked on the final bill, and the gratuity charge was over 100 bucks! Because it was an all-inclusive resort, every meal was in this pretty fancy ballroom with menus, servers and ushers and the lot. I also had to wear a sport coat to dinner, which totally sucked because who wants to pack a sport coat on a ski trip? You already have to pack enough winter equipment as it is. Anyway, did I get 100 bucks' worth of service there? Not even close. The most valuable thing I got was the help from the bellmen and I already tipped them. We only had 4 meals in the ballroom, and 3 of those meals were buffets with no need for servers, whose only responsibility was to provide drinks, which didn't come until 20 minutes after we sat down and finished our meal. I really could write a novelette about how much of a rip-off this place was.
I don't tip the maids unless we made some egregious mess, or if we hadn't spent much money on the trip (this is theoretical- hasn't happened so far). Once, on the company dime, I left a 20 accidentally on the shelf and the maid took it, thinking it was the tip. I figure that covers me for the rest of my life.
I certainly don't feel obligated to leave anything in a tip jar. Somehow people feel justified in putting a tip jar out and somehow deserving extra money for doing their job. The way I understand it, a tip is to reward someone for giving exceptional service. It's hard to give exceptional service while ringing up my sandwich for 6 bucks and taking my money.
I am a notoriously bad tipper when it comes to taxis. I hate taxis with a violent passion, and every time I have to take a cab, I can feel my lifespan getting shorter by the month. Cab drivers are the absolute worst drivers. The reason why they are so horrible is because they are from crazy countries that pretty much have anarchy on the streets. The worst country I've been to is Egypt, where crossing a street requires an arm and a leg and a hope and a prayer. After each and every cab ride, I feel dirty, violated, and nauseous. Dirty because the back of cabs are next to outhouse toilets in filthiness. Violated because I paid 40 bucks to go 3 miles across the harbor to the airport in a smelly car. Nauseous because the drivers don't know the meaning of the word "gradual". I have 2 memorable cab stories:
1. In 2007, I took a cab from the airport on a Sunday afternoon to my apartment in Somerville. I got a Bulgarian cab driver who deliberately took me on the worst, round-about route. Once I saw him going to the wrong freeway, I asked what he was doing and he said he was taking the best way. We argued the entire way home, about 20 minutes, him insisting that it was the best route, me angry that he was running up the meter and taking minutes away from my precious Sunday. I was on the company dime, so I didn't care about the fare, but it was the principle. The guy turned off the meter to "appease" me, even though I would've just appreciated it if he admitted he was trying to dupe me. At the end, he asked me how much it usually cost, I said 45 bucks and I gave him 40. He was livid, but I just grabbed my stuff and got out of there before he punched me. He would've beaten the crap out of me, too.
2. In 2008, I was in Manhattan and had to catch the Delta shuttle at La Guardia. I wasn't in a huge rush, but that didn't matter to the cabbie. He drove like an absolute mad man, honking at everybody, flipping off pedestrians and grandmas, driving over sidewalks, on shoulders, etc, using the F-word with each breath, and just being that crazy driver that everybody sees and rolls their eyes at. I was embarrassed to be in the back, as if this was somehow my fault. Also, I was about to puke. I didn't want to leave him a tip, but I was scared of the repercussions if I didn't, so I did. Once again, company dime. This is the part where that annoying person who lived in NYC for 6 months laughs and says, "Oh you silly non-New Yorker, all cabbies are like that!" My retort is that I've been on enough cab rides in that city to know that's not true.
So what is my general rule for cabs? I rarely take them when I'm paying, but my hatred is so deep that I am a lousy tipper regardless of who's ultimately paying for it. For a 40 dollar ride to the airport from downtown, I tip 5 bucks max. For an 80-dollar ride to Whitman, I pay 5 bucks again. I just can't give these cabs a good tip, even though cabbies are notoriously confrontive about bad tippers.
What about guides, though? I took a 6-day trek through the Himalayas in Nepal with a porter and a guide. The whole package, all-inclusive, was 100 bucks for all 6 days. The porter took my pack, the guide kept me company, and all I had to do was carry my day-pack and hike. I was still a poor student at the time, but I believe I gave them the equivalent of 20 bucks each at the end. I read somewhere that the average yearly salary of a Nepali was 150 bucks, so I was feeling pretty good about myself after that. They certainly deserved it, doing all that work, and they didn't even ask for a tip, although the company I booked it with suggested that I tip my guide and porter. Which is exactly the way it should be, because I have no idea what these guys are getting paid. I'm pretty sure the company guy said, "Make sure you tip these guys, because we're not paying them jack."
I've been on a couple Boston Duck tours here. There's about 20-30 people on the ride, and the price is 25 bucks, and I believe I gave the guide 2 bucks, and felt fine with that. Also, when I did it, I just handed it straight to him, not doing the "secret tip handshake" with the bills tucked in my thumb fold like a drug exchange.
Which leads me to the horseback excursion. First of all, we weren't feeling rich at all. Hawaii is DARNED expensive, and this excursion wasn't cheap. Secondly, the guide did a decent job with the information/jokes, but his overall demeanor was condescending and arrogant. Thirdly, there was this other native dude that was his helper, and that guy was much nicer and friendlier. Fourthly, the guide didn't really DO anything except point and talk. He just sat on his horse, brought up the rear, and said factoids every 5 minutes or so. And finally, his last tip spiel was way too forthcoming, and it was apparent to me that he was mailing it in. As we got out of the van at the end, back at the ranch, I noticed the other horsebackers were giving the secret tip handshake with the guide, with what appeared to be twenties. I had left my wallet in the car, so I had to go back to it to get some cash. We only had about 20 bucks, but I gave Mel 12 bucks to give to the guide. I didn't want to give it to him myself because I didn't like him. When Mel gave it to him, she handed him the money like a normal exchange, but he quickly shook her hand in the process and stealthily took the money, leaving Mel with an ounce of cocaine in her hand to finish the transaction.
All in all, our tip amounted to 7%, less than half of his suggestion. And you know what? I still felt like I was ripped off. I am generally known to my friends as a cheapskate (although my family thinks I spend money like the Kardashians), but I think I'm a fine tipper. I just don't feel like giving money to people when I didn't get any value from it. I would've been fine giving him only 5 bucks, as I felt that's how much value I received from his services, but the other 7 bucks were for the Guilt Charge. I would've preferred that the company either baked his tip into the price or suggested giving him a tip via credit card, making it obvious that we should be leaving a tip, and sparing us the awkwardness of the transaction. The company also had a misleading sign out front that said something like "Tip your horse, pet your guide" which I thought could be meaning that we weren't expected to tip the guide.
Despite that, the horseback excursion was quite fun, one of the highlights of the trip, the others being seeing the volcano glow at night and the black sand beach. The Waipi'o Valley was stunning and riding the horses through the jungle and through rivers was fun, and I would recommend it. Just bring some cash for your guide.
Now, it's customary to tip your blogger 15% of your monthly internet bill. I accept Paypal, checks in the mail, and stomps on the head.
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