Exercise and How It Is Killing Me

People, I'm not saying this to brag, but I just did 113 pushups.

Not all at once. I did 20, and then 25, and then 20 more, and 20 more, and then twenty-eight bicep-murdering pushups. And then I collapsed on the carpet.

I've been doing this 100 pushup program - you know the one, where you work your way up gradually over a series of punishing weeks and you end up being able to do 100 pushups in a row and impressing all the ladies? Okay, that bit about the ladies wasn't anywhere in the description. But why else would a self-respecting man inflict himself to this kind of torture?

My arms are shaking. My hands are a little jittery from the exertion. I'm sure that, to my wife, it sounds like I'm being stabbed repeatedly.

You know that Shel Silverstein song where he says all these ridiculous things that happened to him, and then at the end, he says "And guess what happened next? I died!"

It feels like that.

All American

Last night, on July 4th, we seriously had this for dinner.

Hamburgers.

Potato salad.

Corn on the cob.

And watermelon.

I was not wearing a red-white-and-blue straw hat, but I might as well have been.

After the kid went to sleep, we made margaritas. We've been married almost nine years, but it's the first time we ever made margaritas at home. My wife and I both looked at the glass and said "there's a lot of booze in this!" (It was a combination of shock and appreciation.)

A note? Homemade margaritas are delicious. Mrs. B picked up a sack of key limes, so we had fresh squeezed lime juice. AWE-SOME.

McFeces

Looks like they've got some new shit on the menu at McDs.

I'm Still Here!!!

Hey!

I know, I haven't written in two months. And you probably haven't read this blog in two months, either. (Because, y'know, math.)

So I figure I need to do something striking to get your attention back.

So here's something striking. My son, Oliver?

Y'know, this kid?

He's turning six.

Yes, really. Six years old.

He's finishing kindergarten next month.

He's reading now. He reads up a storm. Sometimes, he gets out of bed and starts reading books, and two hours later, he's still sitting on the couch, tearing through book after book after book.

He's grown so much this year. Such a personality he has. He's witty and charming and mischievous (like his dad, I suppose. The mischievous part.)

He's big. My kid is getting big.

A Genuine Hero

One of Seattle's finest citizens, Irene Hull, has died.

A week to the day before her death, she attended her Communist Party club meeting in Seattle. Someone announced the Saint Patrick's Day rally in Olympia to protest budget cuts and to demand that the legislature "tax the rich." Hull spoke up: "I'll go if someone picks me up."

She was a tiny dynamo, two inches shy of five feet tall, barely over 100 pounds. She became a national labor heroine when the Seattle chapter of Jobs With Justice (JwJ) published a poster in 1995 of several enormous police officers arresting Irene Hull.

Lonnie Nelson, a Seattle JwJ leader and a member of Irene's CP club, recalled that day. "It was during a sit-in at Republican Party headquarters to protest their attacks on Medicare," Nelson said. "When the Seattle police told Irene to move, she told them, 'I'm going to go limp.'

"So they handcuffed all of us, hauled us out and put us on a transit bus and took us to the county jail," Nelson continued. "They had us in jail for hours. We sang union songs. We talked about standing up against the vicious Republican attack on Medicare. Through it all, Irene's big concern was my wrists aching from those tight handcuffs." Nelson laughed merrily at the memory.

I was privileged to get to know Irene when I was a community organizer. I took her to a couple of rallies and protests in Olympia. I sat with her at labor meetings and saw her at just about every protest I ever attended in the state of Washington. When I marched with 50,000 labor activists during the WTO protests, Irene Hull was there.

She was one of the most dedicated and selfless people I've ever known, and a genuine hero of mine. Without her, Seattle may be a quieter place, but it will surely be a sadder place.

Nisqually Earthquake - 10 Years Later

Ten years ago, there was this little earthquake that happened in the Puget Sound. Here's how I remembered it.

I was driving to work. I had one of those jobs where I showed up in the late morning and worked until about 9 or 10 at night. I worked in Pioneer Square in a sixth floor office.

So I was in Lake Forest Park, driving south. I was driving down the street when two things happened simultaneously.

The first thing was that my tires rumbled strangely on the road. I thought for a second that I had a flat, but changed my mind quickly. I figured there were tracks on the asphalt. Have you ever driven on a part of a road where someone drove when the asphalt was still wet, and there's tire impressions baked into the road? It felt like that - like I was driving in a groove.

The second thing that happened was that Steve Sher and his guest stopped in the middle of a conversation and said things like "whoa!" and "oh, this is just like California." If you skip to the 1.00 mark in this video, you'll hear exactly what it sounded like.

So I knew two things: there was an earthquake, and nobody knew how bad it was. Sher said something like "I hope everyone is safe. We'll let you know once we know more."

So I had a forty-minute drive downtown still, and I didn't have a cell phone. All I had was KUOW, and I kept waiting and waiting to hear reports of damage, destruction, fatalities. I had no idea what I was driving into. For all I knew, everyone at my office had been pulverized.

As I got near downtown, I saw the strangest sights. Entire crowds of people were standing outside of their skyscraper offices. Huge mobs of people, standing on the sidewalk or even on the street. It was a little surreal.

I pulled off the highway, drove toward Pioneer Square. As I went down Jackson Street, I saw this scene.

That was just four blocks from my office.

I got to my office, and I saw all of my co-workers standing on the sidewalk. Nobody was hurt. The worst damage that happened was a potted plant had tipped over and spilled some dirt onto the carpet. A restaurant in the first floor of our building had a nasty crack in one of its walls, but the building was still sound. We called off work for the day. I called this girl that had been seeing for a few months - who later became my fiance, who later became my wife. She was fine. It could have been much worse. But for a few minutes, I was convinced that I was going to drive downtown to see the smoking ruins of buildings. It was a weird feeling.

Seven months later, the World Trade Center collapsed, and it really started to feel like the world was spinning out of control.

Back to Your Cage

After the holiday is over, the balloons who could not find homes go sadly back to their kennels, doomed to wait until next year.

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Six Grownup Books for Kids

Oliver has books that I love reading to him. I probably love them more than he does. Oh, he loves them anyway, but there are parts of the book that just fly over his head. The language is just a bit too mature for children's ears. Or the books touch on themes - remorse, jealousy, sadness, longing - that he doesn't comprehend yet. Not yet. Not consciously.

I think it's entirely possible that he likes these books because they speak to him, the way songs in another language speak to me. Even if he doesn't understand everything that's being said, he knows that he's being told something important.

Anyway, these are the books that I secretly love to read him. I love the language. I love the moods and the emotions. I love that they feel real, honest; the way those formulaic books about Clifford and George and Franklin never do. They are written as literature, not as "kiddie books." The writer knew how to tell a story with engaging characters, compelling plot turns, and believable dialogue. Those are the books that I hope he still loves years from now.

Here are a few of my favorites.

• Amos and Boris - William Steig.

One night, in a phosphorescent sea, he marveled at the sight of some whales spouting luminous water; and later, lying on the deck of his boat gazing at the immense, starry sky, the tiny mouse Amos, a little speck of a living thing in the vast living universe, felt thoroughly akin to it all.

• Tillie and the Wall - Leo Lionni.

With a long, rusty nail they tried to make a hole to peep through. "It is only a question of patience!" said Tillie. But after working an entire morning they gave up, exhausted, without having made even a dent in the hard stone.

• He Was There from the Day We Moved In - Rhoda Levine/Edward Gorey.

We didn't breathe for a whole minute. That dog just blinked. Then, slowly, he looked up with sad and patient eyes. Then, slowly, he looked up with sad and patient eyes. He blinked again, like he was giving it a second thought. Then he stood up, shook himself, and began to walk - like he was old and tired - toward the end of the garden.

• The Day I Swapped My Dad for Two Goldfish - Neil Gaiman/Dave McKean.

There was a little rabbit hutch there, and next to the rabbit hutch was a little run with chicken wire all around it. My dad sat on the grass, in the chicken wire run, reading his newspaper and eating a carrot. He looked a bit lonely, and he had grass all over his trousers.

• That Rabbit Belongs to Emily Brown - Cressida Cowell/Neal Layton.

A few months later, Emily Brown and Stanley were lying fast asleep in bed, dreaming of all the adventures they would have the next day, when there was absolutely no noise at all at the door, or the gate, or the window. Silently, in crept the Queen's Special Commandos... and they STOLE the rabbit that belonged to Emily Brown.

• Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day - Judith Viorst/Ray Cruz.

There were lima beans for dinner and I hate limas. There was kissing on TV and I hate kissing. My bath was too hot, I got soap in my eyes, my marble went down the drain, and I had to wear my railroad-train pajamas. I hate my railroad-train pajamas.

What are your favorite not-exactly-for-children kid's books?

Egypt

This post will almost certainly be irrelevant in twelve hours.

Hearing now that a) the Egyptian army is taking control of the country, and b) Mubarak will almost certainly be stepping down today.

I know almost nothing about Egypt, but from what I understand, Mubarak's been running the country with an iron fist for decades. So removing him from power would be a tremendous step forward. But is it enough?

If Egypt remains under a state of emergency, is anything really changing?

If the military takes command and it continues authoritarian rule, is this really a victory?

Is the goal merely driving Mubarak from power, or is true democracy the goal? What is victory in Egypt?

When will the protestors know that they have won?

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Groupon

Groupon fucked up.

I can't speculate why they did it. Maybe they were forced to quickly develop an ad after they found out LivingSocial was running one. Maybe they seriously thought the ad agency that developed Burger King's Subservient Chicken was the perfect outfit to promote their brand. I dunno.

What I know, however, is that as soon as that Tibet ad for Groupon ran, all hell broke loose on Twitter. I started seeing boycott talk within minutes. Instant outrage.

What happened? Well, if you believe Groupon, they wanted to do something that would promote their brand by mocking people who felt passionately about causes.

Er ... no, that's not right.

No, they wanted to mock themselves. Yeah, that's the ticket. So they did it by making fun of the disappearing rainforest, dying whales, and the suffering of the Tibetan people. Sure, that's a great way to mock yourself.

Well, here, you can read what Groupon's CEO said, in his defense:

Our ads highlight the often trivial nature of stuff on Groupon when juxtaposed against bigger world issues, making fun of Groupon. Why make fun of ourselves? Because it’s different – ads are traditionally about shameless self promotion, and we’ve always strived to have a more honest and respectful conversation with our customers. We would never have run these ads if we thought they trivialized the causes – even if we didn’t take them as seriously as we do, what type of company would go out of their way to be so antagonistic?

Got it? So, by trivializing the causes mentioned in the ads, they never meant to trivialize the causes. Sure, that makes sense.

Somehow, Groupon failed to notice that there are still a hell of a lot of us who take those "causes" seriously. I got very excited for a few seconds when the ad started, because I was so impressed that someone had managed to get a political ad running on the Super Bowl. And then Tim Hutton started talking about fish curry, and I realized I'd been tricked. And I got angry. A lot of us got angry.

Groupon has tried to defend themselves by noting that they started out as a "cause-based website," and therefore ... something. Therefore, they get why cause marketing is so important? Therefore, they never gave a fuck about those goddamn causes in the first place? It's hard to take them at their word when their own community forum has this lovely message from one of their staffers:

Cause-marketers bombard us with celebrity endorsements, emotional pleas and percentage-based models that passively generate donations without converting champions around the issue.

(I will note that there was a much more offensive version of this message posted earlier by someone named Patty H. That message said something about "manipulating people into giving." I should have taken a screenshot. That message has since been deleted.)

Hey, thanks for making all of us fundraisers in the nonprofit world look like assholes! I made my money for several years doing grassroots fundraising - oh, excuse me, bombarding people with emotional pleas.

Groupon also says that they're all about raising money for these important causes. That's why you saw a link to a major Tibetan NGO during the Tim Hutton ad. Oh, wait, you didn't. Whoopsie!

Groupon is getting slammed for these tasteless and heartless ads, and they deserve every bit of it. Look at their community forums. Every thread that tries to promote the "cause marketing" side of these ads is being bombarded by angry users and angry ex-users.

It is important to care about causes. The world changes when people stop thinking about their own lives and begin focusing on larger causes - like the Nazi holocaust, like the oppression of African Americans in this country, like the environment, like global warming. Groupon made a huge mistake in assuming that they could use serious causes as a backdrop for a cynical ad campaign.

So now they're apologizing. Fine. I'm not satisfied. I want to see some serious penance. Want to make up for this? Start running some serious prime-time ads promoting the people of Tibet, protection of the rainforest, and saving those whales that you don't seem to give a fuck about. Start writing your own checks to important causes, not just collecting donations while you rake in record profits. You want to show us that causes matter to you? Prove it.

Office Politics

This is the biggest company I've ever worked for. It's actually the first actual private company I've worked for in a decade - a sudden change from the nonprofit world. This is a real company with dozens and dozens of employees.

I'm used to small shops. In the past, I've been the one-person development team. I would write the fundraising appeal, walk it down to the printer, pick up the copies when they were done, print the mailing labels, fold and stuff the envelopes, take them to the post office, and enter the checks when they started rolling in. Here, I've got departments. There's a marketing department, a sales department, an IT department, an executive team, an events team, teams of people who do what I used to do by myself.

It's weird, people.

You would think it would be a relief to have a team of people to rely on, but it's the opposite. I'm not used to having other people taking on tasks. When I'm sending out a marketing email blast, I have four different people from three different teams that have to sign off on it. That's odd - I'm used to just writing the thing myself and sending it.

And then there's the office politics. When you work in a small office, everyone has to get along. You might have petty grievances, but everyone has to get along and fundamentally like each other - otherwise, you're doomed. Not the case at a big company. People have to work together, but they do not have to like each other.

So my team, the marketing team, is not thought of highly in the office. It's our job to protect the brand. We approve any writing that goes out from our company, and in my case, we monitor online discussions to see what people are saying about us. Everyone else in the office thinks they have better ideas than the marketing team, but it's not their job to come up with the ideas to raise our brand's profile and build new customers. It's our job. They can throw out ideas, but it's ultimately our job. So they resent us.

The IT team is generally seen as a bunch of know-it-alls who are notoriously dismissive of most new ideas for technology. So most people hate the IT team. They work with them, but people talk shit about the IT director behind his back.

It goes on like this. IT doesn't particularly like us, we're not particularly fond of the new products team even though we have to sell what they're creating. The events team gets a lot of flak. And the sales - yeesh. Everyone resents the sales team. Everyone thinks they can do a better job than the sales team. Everyone thinks the entire sales team should be gutted and replaced. (And I mean gutted literally. Think Wolverine.)

But at our best, we lay down the swords and work well together. I just had a meeting last week - the IT, marketing and sales teams were all in the same room together. And we were bonding well. We laughed at each other's jokes. We enthused over each other's ideas. It happens. At the best of times, we appreciate each other's ideas and we genuinely like working with the other teams.

But at the worst ... well, I've used the term "trench warfare" more than once.

I like it better when we get along. I love the people we work with, on all sides. I am always impressed by the dedication and passion of my co-workers. But the trench warfare gets to me sometimes. I start getting into the backbiting, the closed-door smack talking, the petty grievances. Anger is addictive. It's fun, to be perfectly honest. In a childish sort of way, it's fun to compile a list of the things you hate about your co-workers. But it's not healthy, and it's no way to run a company.

Mistaken Monster

I have vivid dreams these days, thanks to anti-anxiety medicine. Last night was a typically wild affair. I won't bore you with the details (there's nothing so pointless as trying to explain a dream to another person), but at one point, there was a monster who I was trying and failing not to disturb. His bed somehow got tipped over, he fell down, and I was convinced that he was about to kill me. So I ran. I ran in one direction and then another and kept looking back to see if he was behind me. I never saw him again.

In the dream, I assumed that I had lost him. But maybe there's another solution. Maybe the monster wasn't after me at all. Maybe I assumed that he was going to kill me, and maybe he was just going to find another bed.

The monster might not be trying to kill me. All scary things are not necessarily out to get me. I'm going to use that as my message for the day.

I've had some difficult interactions with co-workers today, so I'm going to use this to reframe the way I work with them. They're not necessarily trying to kill me - maybe I don't need to run and hide from them. Maybe I'll do better if I don't assume they're trying to murder me.

My New Year's Resolution

I will write next year.

I will take, at a minimum, fifteen minutes every day to write. Not at work, not while watching Oliver, not while watching tv. I am going to isolate myself and write for at least fifteen minutes every day.

The wisdom I've always heard is that if you want to be a writer, write. If you don't write, you can't call yourself a writer. I haven't been taking that seriously.

I wrote sporadically. I do it when I think of it. Sometimes, inspiration hits me. Or sometimes, there's a news story that I can't resist commenting on. But it's not a habit anymore. It hasn't been for a while.

I write, sure. I write tweets. I write on Facebook. I write as part of my job, which I love. But posts - long, prosaic, thoughtful posts - I haven't been doing this kind of writing very much this year.

I need to get back into fiction writing again, too. I have a novel in my basement that I started writing in college, in 1991. I think of the characters often. After 9/11, I thought I had the inspiration to start writing again, but it never lasted.

But I'm not going to set goals of finishing the novel, or x number of posts per month, or x amount of short stories. 15 minutes a day. That's the goal. That is the resolution.

The West Wing - Big Block of Retweets Day

I don't know when this all started, but one day I noticed that somebody I follow on Twitter had retweeted President Jed Bartlet. Y'know, the president from the West Wing.

Then I saw that President Bartlet was trading remarks with Leo McGarry's Ghost.

As I found one, I found another. Everybody from the West Wing is on Twitter, y'all. I mean, seriously, everybody. Here's the list of everyone I've found so far.

President Bartlet
President Santos
Toby Ziegler
Josh Lyman
Donna Moss
CJ Cregg
Leo McGarry
GlenAllen Walken
Lord John Marbury
Will Bailey
Sam Seaborn

There are more. There must be dozens of West Wing accounts. Who is maintaining these things? Whoever's posting for each character has them down pat - Bartlet is scholarly and irritable, Josh playful and pugnacious, Lord Marbury is ... well, Lord Marbury. It's amazing fun to see them all interacting with each other, having conversations just like the good old days. One of my favorite discoveries of 2010.

P.S. I just noticed, when tagging this post, that I have not ever tagged a post with "Twitter" before. How strange is that!

Not Failing

A month or so ago, I posted in my misery about the tough time my son was having in kindergarten. Since I posted that, I meant to post an update and let you know how he's been doing.

First, we started visiting a therapist with Oliver. The therapist is someone who's experienced working with kids, and who understands childhood anxiety really well. She's been wonderful with O, and he's grown to trust her very quickly. She's pretty certain that he's being dogged by anxiety, and has really worked on teaching strategies for dealing with it himself.

So we had a meeting. Both of us were there. Both of his teachers. (He is in two different classrooms during the day, so he has two different teachers who share responsibility.) The special ed teacher, the nurse, the PE teacher, the school psychologist, the principal, and a bunch of people I can't even remember. It was stunning to see so many people focused on our little guy.

We also had our therapist with us. And she was a godsend, people. Every time one of the people would start suggesting something that sounded off-base - hinting at autism or ADD or other scary stuff - our therapist pulled the conversation back to his anxiety.

In a lot of ways, it was reassuring for us to see that the teachers really didn't know Oliver. We told them that for years, we'd go to playdates and the other parents would tell us what a nice, sweet little boy Oliver was. He wasn't a hitter. He didn't spit at other kids. He didn't start fights. This was about him being overwhelmed in a new environment.

So the teachers have been working, since that day, to make the environment more welcoming for him, and to find ways to reward him for positive behavior. He has a little chart every day that the teachers fill out, so we know how he did during the day. Each part of the day has its own section, so we can see if he has more difficulty in the morning or in the afternoon.

The teachers have moved him closer during class, too. And this little change has made a world of difference. O was getting mischievous when he didn't know what was going on during class and when nobody seemed to be paying attention to him. So that little change of proximity has eliminated most of that issue.

He's blossoming in school now. He's always been smart - we saw his report card, and he's showing great progress in reading and in math. He can count and do simple math in Spanish and in English. He is reading now - short words, short sentences. But he's so proud to be reading, and he loves to show us how well he's doing. He's happier in school, and I know the teachers are happier now to see Oliver doing well. This is what we were hoping to see, and thank goodness everybody's been working together to get him to this point.

Clifford's Really Awful Soundtrack

Have you seen Clifford's Really Big Movie?

(I will remind you that I have Netflix and a five-year-old, so our house has been victimized by that movie multiple times.)

The movie itself isn't too bad, but the music is absolutely atrocious. I think they commissioned two songs for the movie. The music is mindless, the lyrics are insipid, and you hear them during the entire movie because they play them OVER and OVER and OVER AGAIN all through the movie. They have slow sad versions, they have fast happy versions, they have instrumental versions. It's a lot like what they did with Simon and Garfunkel's music for the Graduate, except in this case the results are horrible.

Runner

My wife has a sister who used to run marathons. Years ago, I asked Mrs. B if she ever ran, and she looked at me as if the question was "so, have you ever done any Satanic rituals?"

"No," she said with disdain. No, I'm not one of those people. One of those runner people.

My wife is now one of those runner people. Three days a week, she straps on her fancy runner shoes and goes running five or six miles along Alki Beach. She went for a run this morning, when it was 28 degrees outside. She said she ran an extra mile, just because it was so clear and beautiful outside.

Yep, she's definitely one of those people.

Part of her motivation is restlessness. Specifically, the elliptical machine we have in our office drives her crazy. The idea of running for 30 minutes indoors, staring at the wall, is unbearable to her. So much so that, sometime around April, she announced she was going to start running outdoors.

And she's done it, bless her heart. She started out slow - there was a training program she picked up for non-runners that she followed. So at the beginning, it was like 2 minutes of running, 8 minutes of walking. She's now doing 11 minutes of running with a one-minute walking break. Some days, she just runs the whole distance.

She's run a few 5Ks. She recently ran the Jingle Bell run in Seattle, when it was pouring rain and the wind was howling. She crossed the finish line soaked from head to toe, but jubilant. We were waiting at the finish line for her. (I wish I could say we stood outside the whole time, but we spent most of the time in a coffee shop, watching people's umbrellas blow inside out.)

She's going to be running a half-marathon in June. I'm so proud of her for keeping it up, three days a week, week after week after week. She didn't start running until this year, in her forties. We were in Oregon recently, visiting in-laws, and she asked me to drive her to a nearby town so she could do her Sunday run. It's what she does now. She has her running playlists, her little runner's cap, her armband for her iPod, a group of other women who run with her. My wife is a runner now.

10 New Year's Resolutions I Will Not Be Making

1. Give up caffeine.
2. Begin using "sock it to me!" as my new catchphrase.
3. Give Glenn Beck the benefit of the doubt.
4. Master the Moog synthesizer.
5. Find out what this Brazilian wax thing is all about.
6. Get that eyebrow piercing I've always wanted.
7. Launch a rave club in my basement.
8. Find out if I really need to shower more than once a week.
9. Launch a Tumblr blog, because Blogger is so totally 2005.
10. Shave all the hair off my body and begin dressing in black suits and hats.

Sunrise in Seattle

It's freaking cold outside.

Hard to complain when it looks like this, though.

One of the most breathtaking sunrises I've seen in Seattle. I used to think that the best sunrises and sunsets happened in Colorado, where I lived for several years. But Seattle's had some beautiful ones, this year especially.

I should add that it's also hard to complain when I'm inside a warm toasty house. Mrs. B is out running in the 28-degree weather. More on that later.

Brace Yourselves

I don't know if I can do this, but I've been given a challenge.

The charming and witty Adria Richards is holding a contest for bloggers. The challenge: write 25 blog posts in 24 hours.

There are prizes and stuff, but really, the contest is about getting busy. Too often, I-and most bloggers I know-have lots of ideas floating in our heads that we never write down. With Facebook, Twitter, instant messaging, chatroulette, etc., we've lost that instinct to take our ideas immediately from inspiration to blog post. I want that spark back. Thanks, Adria, for a clever way to reactivate the blog.

If I get stuck, I see Adria is keeping a running list of her own blog post ideas. I might steal some of those. We'll see how quickly the well runs dry. (Although I don't do the work she does, and I'm not nearly the social media butterfly she is, so maybe that idea won't help.)

It's already 7:19, so I've missed a few hours. (Darn sleep.) One down, 24 to do. Yikes.

Jesus Has a Birthday, or, Three Magi of Very Little Brain

Jesus sighed.

"Pathetic," he sighed. "That's what it is. Pathetic."

He rolled over to the other side of the manger.

"Just as I suspected," he muttered to himself. "Straw. Just the same as the other side." He sneezed from the hay dust, and glumly rolled back to the first side. "But nobody minds. Nobody cares. Pathetic, that's what it is."

There was a shimmering noise outside the stable, and the angel Gabriel peeked in.

"Good morning, O Lord," said Gabriel.

"Good morning, Gabriel," said Jesus. "If it is a good morning," he said. "Which I doubt," said he.

"Why, what's the matter?"

"Nothing, Gabriel, nothing. We can't all, and some of us don't. That's all there is to it."

"Can't all what?" said Gabriel, rubbing his nose.

"Gaiety. Song-and-dance. Hallelujah and all that."

"Oh," said Gabriel. He thought for a long time and then began singing softly to himself.

"Angels we have heard on high,

Sweetly singing o'er the plains.

And the mountains in reply,

echoing their sweet refrains."

"That's right," said Jesus. "Sing. Rum-pa-pum-pum. Here we go gathering Nuts and May. Enjoy yourself."

"I am," beamed Gabriel.

"Some can," said Jesus.

"Why, what's the matter, My Lord?"

"Is anything the matter?"

"You seem so sad, O lord."

"Sad? Why in heaven should I be sad? It's my birthday, Gabriel. The happiest day of the year."

"Your birthday?" said Gabriel in great surprise.

Jesus rolled his eyes, trying to resist explaining that he wasn't anywhere the night before, and how he was here, and so that meant he was born, and so this was his birth day. Gabriel sometimes could be so ... so ... well, he could be sometimes.

"Yes, it's my birthday, Gabriel. Can't you see? Look at this festive decor. Look at all the presents waiting for me." He waved a tiny hand from side to side. "Look at the birthday cake. Candles and pink sugar."

Gabriel looked - first to the left and then to the right.

"Presents, O Lord? Cake?"

"Can't you see them?"

"No," said Gabriel.

"Neither can I," said Jesus. Gabriel stared at him blankly.

"Joke," he explained. "Ha ha."

Gabriel scratched his head.

"Well, a great happy birthday to you, O Lord and Savior. Many happy returns of the day!"

"And many happy returns to you, Gabriel."

"Oh. But it isn't my birthday."

"No, it's mine."

"Yes. And many happy ..." Gabriel paused, unsure where to go next, and decided to step out of the stable before he became more confused. Jesus was alone again in the manger.

"Pathetic," he said again.

~ ~ ~

Melchior ran towards Jerusalem, excited. In his hands he clutched a vessel containing a large amount of myrrh.

"Oh, won't he be so happy?" Melchior thought excitedly. He had never met the Lord before - Jesus had only just been born - but he would love myrrh. Myrrh was such a soothing balm, and had so many uses. What would he wish to do with so much myrrh? He thought. Maybe he would burn it for the wonderful fragrance. Maybe it would be used as a balm to soothe His Holy skin. He wondered if he, Melchior, would be allowed to rub it onto His skin. And he thought about this, and about myrrh, and how sweet it smelled, and of a time when his own mother had rubbed his back and arms with myrrh. And running along, and thinking how pleased Jesus would be, he didn't look where he was going ... and suddenly he put his foot in a hole and fell down flat on his face.

SPLAT!!!!???***

Melchior lay there, wondering what had happened. At first he thought a great wind had blown him off his feet, and then he wondered what part of the world he had ended up in. He would have to find the star again to get his bearings again. But no, wait, here was the star, in the Eastern sky just as it was before. Unless he had been blown clear to the moon and was looking down onto the star from the moon. He wondered how he would ever get down from the moon and see the Lord again.

And then he stood up and saw that he was still in the same land where he started.

"Well, that's funny," he thought. "I wonder what happened? And where's all my myrrh? And why is the vessel filled up with sand now?"

He raised it to his nose to smell it. It smelled of myrrh. Myrrh-scented sand.

"Oh dear," said Melchior. "Oh dear, oh dearie dearie dear! Well, it's too late now. I can't go back, and I haven't any more myrrh, and perhaps Jesus doesn't like myrrh so very much."

He walked on, rather sadly now, and down he came to the stable where Jesus was, and he called out to him.

"Good morning, O Lord," said Melchior.

"Good morning, Melchior," said Jesus. "If it is a good morning," he said. "Which I doubt," said he. "Not that it matters," he said.

"Many happy returns of the day," said Melchior.

Jesus raised his head and stared at Melchior.

"Just say that again," he said.

"Many happy returns of the day."

"Meaning me?"

"Of course, O Lord."

"My birthday?"

"Yes," said Melchior.

"Me having a real birthday?"

"Yes, my Lord, and I've brought you a present."

Jesus rolled to the other side. "I must hear that in the other ear," he said. "Now then."

"A present," said Melchior very loudly.

"Meaning me again?"

"Yes."

"My birthday still?"

"Yes, and I brought you myrrh."

"Myrrh, you say?" said Jesus. "You did say myrrh? That lovely stuff that smells so nice, and that you rub all over and it makes you feel nice. Gaiety, tra la la, here we are and there we are?"

"Yes, my Lord. But I'm afraid- I'm very sorry, my Lord - but when I was running along to bring it to you, I fell down."

"Dear, dear, how unlucky! You ran too fast, I suspect. You didn't hurt yourself, dear Melchior?"

"No, but I - I - oh, my Lord Jesus, I spoiled the myrrh!"

There was a very long silence.

"My myrrh?" said Jesus at last.

Melchior nodded. He handed Jesus the vessel, which was filled with sand.

"Here it is. With - many happy returns of the day."

"Is this it?" said Jesus, a little surprised.

Melchior nodded.

"Thank you, Melchior," said Jesus. "Well, well." He sniffed a bit at the sand. "My favorite," he said to himself sadly. "Well, well."

Caspar and Balthasar stood now at the door of the stable, and Caspar called out, "Many happy returns of the day!"

"Thank you, I'm having them," said Jesus.

Balthasar called out, "Many happy returns of the day!"

Jesus didn't say thank you this time, so Balthasar started again. "Many happy returns..." Then he remembered he had already said that, and stopped himself.

"I've brought you a little present," they both said at once.

"I've had it," said Jesus, looking at his vessel of myrrh-scented sand.

Balthasar handed Jesus a lovely gold urn. "It's a Useful Golden Pot," said Balthasar. "Here it is. And it's got 'A Very Happy Birthday to the Child King' written on it. That's what all that carving is. And it's for putting things in. There!"

When Jesus saw the pot, he became quite excited.

"Why!" he said. "I believe my myrrh will just fit into that pot."

"Myrrh?" said Balthasar, confused. "Oh, no, myrrh is too sticky and gummy, and it needs a special type of pot. What you do with myrrh is, you take the myrrh-"

"Not mine," said Jesus proudly. "Look, Melchior!"

And as Melchior looked sorrowfully round, Melchior picked up the sandy myrrh and poured it in a great long stream into the golden urn.

"So it does!" said Balthasar. "It goes in!"

"So it does!" said Melchior. "And it comes out!"

Caspar, who was standing at the door with handfuls of frankincense in his hands, said nothing.

"Doesn't it?" said Jesus. "It goes in and out like anything."

"I'm very glad," said Balthasar," that I thought of giving you a Useful Pot to put things in."

"I'm very glad," said Melchior happily, "that I thought of giving you Something to put in a Useful Pot."

Caspar, having nothing to say, placed his frankincense at the foot of Jesus' manager and continued looking like someone who cannot think of anything to say.

Jesus didn't say anything at all. He was pouring the sand into the golden urn, and back into its vessel, and back again, as happy as could be...

Three Questions in My Head

A few days ago, my son and I were sitting at the kitchen table, eating breakfast. He turned to me.

"Daddy, I have three questions in my head right now."

"All right," I said, bracing myself. Questions about monsters? Volcanos? The sun? God?

"How many hours are in a day; how many minutes are in a day; and how many seconds are in a day?"

Math. He had math questions in his head.

This is a boy who is made of me. I loved numbers when I was a kid. Loved clean multiplication, loved the spiraling Fibonacci numbers, loved adding huge numbers in my head, loved doing squares and cubes. 1, 4, 9, 16, 25, 36. 1, 8, 27, 64, 125, 216. 13² is 169. No mystery, no guesswork. It is what it is.

I still use math to go to sleep. I count squares, sometimes. Usually, my mind starts getting fuzzy around 17² (289), and I fall asleep before 20² (400).

I pulled out a sheet of paper and a pen and showed him how I calculated the numbers. The answers, before your own child asks you, are 24 hours, 1440 minutes, and 86,400 seconds in a day.

Failing?

I've never felt more lost as a parent.

When my son started school, I expected that certain behaviors might become an issue. He's a very shy kid. He withdraws when he doesn't understand something. I expected that, if anything, he'd be the kid who stood on the wall, waiting for someone to invite him to play with them.

This is not what has happened. He's been hitting. He's gone to the principal's office a few times. We've had meetings with his teachers.

I don't know what's happening. I think there are several phases in parenthood where a dad just goes, I don't know what's happening with this kid. Right now is one of those phases.

I think a lot of it is anxiety, and it's anxiety that manifests by him acting out against other kids. Which is a crappy way to act out, I admit, but it's coming from anxiety, not him being a maniac serial killer.

He's still our sweet little boy. He still skips down the sidewalk, he still sings to himself in his bedroom, he still has little conversations with his stuffed animals when we're not looking.

But at school, he's a wilder, more out of control little boy. Is it us? Is it something happening at school? Is it the sudden shift, from a daycare he attended for years to a new school with all new friends? Are we failing as parents, or is his school failing him? Or is it some third option? Not sure.

But it's bewildering, and it's frustrating as hell. I hate the feeling that each day, something's going to happen. I pray each morning - yes, I say a prayer to the Lord above - that he has a good day. A good day right now means he keeps his hands to himself, he doesn't hit other kids, doesn't kick them, doesn't trip them in the hallway. I wanted to be hearing about the books he was reading, the kids he was befriending, the awesome things he was learning. Instead, the reports I'm getting are about which kid hit him first and how he responded. I hate this. I know someday we will move past this period, and we will look back at this as ancient history. I want that moment to be today. I want this to be over.

Pumpkin Season

Age 2.

Age 4.

Age 5.

Happy Halloween, dear readers.

Shootings and Questions

A man was shot and killed last night in downtown Seattle. It happened on 2nd and Pike, a block away from the Pike Place Market.

Why?

Was it a drug deal gone bad? We think of episodes of the Wire. Was alcohol involved? Was it a gang thing?

Why did this happen in our peaceful city?

Was it some kind of fight? Did they know each other? Was it an argument over a girl, a car, a football game?

How can this be not about me, but about the victim and the shooter? We don't want to believe we live in a city where random shootings just happen. Random violence is terrifying. The universe must have a plan. Things must happen for a reason.

Why did he get shot? Was he in the wrong place at the wrong time? 2nd and Pike isn't the most savory part of town. There are lots of shady characters hanging around there. Maybe he deserved it.

Maybe it was his fault.

Maybe this has nothing to do with me, with our city, with our society. Maybe this was all about him.

I know I'm not the only one who has these thoughts flooding into his head. It's ugly, but that's the way we think, in a civil society. We want to have a reason for violence that makes it about The Other, about something else. Because the alternative - that violence happens suddenly, inexplicably, unpredictably - is too terrifying to bear.

The Job that I Have

I've been working. I have a job, ladies and gentlemen.

I've been working for ... um ... weeks, actually. Sorry I haven't mentioned it.

I haven't posted it because I haven't been able to figure out how to talk about it here. I'm working in communications for a very large and well-known employer here in the Pacific Northwest. I can't say more than that, and seriously, I cannot say more than that. If I go a step over that vague comment, you will know where I work, how to find me, and where my business Twitter account can be found.

And I will get in a lot of trouble if that happens.

So I hope you will forgive me if I don't share much detail. But I can say this about the job: I love it.

I feel like this is the job that I've been working my way towards for the past decade. I'm writing. I'm doing a lot of writing, in a lot of formats. I'm working with the media. I'm building online communities. I'm at the vortex of a very large virtual community, and it's an amazing experience. All the organizing, all the fundraising, all of the odd roles I've been taking on all these years. It all had been leading to this.

I'm exactly where I want to be.

I am so deliriously happy that I feel like dancing every day. People, this is a wonderful job. And that's what I can say: that, after the difficult jobs and the weird bosses and the firings and the layoffs, I have found something that is very close to my dream job. It can happen.

The Wrong Direction

I started about a year ago, when I was weighing in around 220 lbs. I started using the LoseIt app to count calories and I started exercising regularly. I pledged to lose at least thirty pounds.

I lost about 40 pounds in nine months, and it's an amazing change for me. I feel healthier, I look better. I have more stamina than before. I can run for several blocks without feeling winded or having to reach for my albuterol inhaler.

At my best, about a month ago, I weighed in at 177 pounds - 43 pounds lost.

But things have started slipping lately. I've gotten lazier about tracking calories in LoseIt. Exercise has become more sporadic. There are reasons - mostly, it's harder to find time to exercise since I started the new job. But it's not just about being busy. It's just easier to not pay attention.

Last weekend, we went down to Portland. I ate four doughnuts - four! - from Voodoo Doughnuts and then had a fat burrito for lunch. I didn't track my calories that day.

I've been busy, but mostly, I've been lazy. I let the momentum slip, and it's starting to show. I weighed in this morning at 182. After a steady downward slope for nine months, I'm sliding in the wrong direction. I'm starting to notice my stomach again. I don't like that feeling, the feeling I had when I was heavier. I don't want to feel that way again.

So I ran for 30 minutes on the elliptical today. I'm going to go back and track everything I ate in LoseIt today. Everything - whether or not I'm over my calories for the say. I'm getting myself back on track. I refuse to let nine months of progress go down the tubes just because it's easier to be lazy than to be good.

The Thinking Place

I'm just going to make a quick observation here about the ... um ... image of Gnomedex that was left burned into all the brains of the attendees.

This is the official t-shirt that was provided to everyone who attended Gnomedex 10 this weekend in Seattle:

And here is the scene that became the most indelible (in the sense of "please, god, let this image be taken out of my brain!") image of Gnomedex:

All I've got to say is that when Jinx taps into the zeitgeist of the moment, they seriously tap into some motherfucking zeitgeist.

Idiot on a Motorcycle

I tried to figure out what was wrong with him afterward. Was he drunk? Hopped up on meth? Then I figured, nah, he was probably just buzzing on adrenalin and his own epic stupidity. He was just another angry douchebag on a motorcycle, and he had just tried to challenge me to a fight outside the grocery store where I had gone to pick up pull-ups for my son.

We ran out of pull-ups. I hopped into our boring little middle-class suburbia vehicle, so I could drive to our boring middle-class grocery store ten blocks away from our house and get pull-ups for my kid.

I turned onto a busy street, and yeah, maybe I swung into the street just a bit too quickly. I saw a motorcycle behind a van in the right lane and he seemed like he was following just a bit too closely. The rider was wearing shorts and a t-shirt and sneakers. (He looked remarkably like the guy in the picture above.)

I was in the left lane, they were in the right. I had to make a right-hand turn to get to the grocery store, so I did that instant calculation that you do in your head all the time: okay, these guys are probably going to speed up a little bit, and I'll just swing in behind them when that happens, or else I'll cut in when they slow down.

The van slowed down to make a right turn. I saw my opportunity. I started to move into the right lane - carefully, cautiously, using my turn signal appropriately - and was shocked to find the motorcycle roaring up behind me on my right. He was flying. I slowed down just fast enough to avoid sideswiping him, and then I beeped my horn at him.

It was an unconscious decision to honk the horn. It was one of those things you do without thinking. Someone does something stupid, you punctuate it with a beep on the horn. "Hey, I'm just going to make an observation here that you just did an asshole thing." Seattle people don't tend to use their horns very often, but I'm not from here, so I'll beep at any idiot who rubs me the wrong way.

It was just that fast: I turned on my blinker, I started to move, and then zip, brake, beep. It was a half-second sequence. And then the guy did something that I couldn't understand at first. He stopped his bike in the middle of the lane - forcing me to stop - cut the motor, and kicked down the kickstand. And then he started walking toward me, shouting and waving his fists.

I didn't get out. Hell, I didn't even roll down my window. I'm not stupid. (Plus, I had the air conditioning on.) So I don't know what he was saying, but I could guess. "Come on! Let's go! You wanna throw down?! Come on, bring it, motherfucker!"

I refused to bring it. I raised my open palms at him, which is the international code for "no thank you, I will decline your offer to throw down." At least, I hoped he read it that way. I was also communicating a second message: to wit, "are you out of your fucking mind?!"

A guy in the other lane had also stopped by now and he started to get out of his car, preparing to break up the fight. The fight didn't happen. Dude shouted for another few seconds and then got back on his crotch rocket and took off. It was absolutely bizarre.

I went into the store, shaken, looking over my shoulder to make sure he didn't come back to chase me down. And I bought the stupid pull-ups and drove home, still on edge.

Afterward, I tried to think about whether I had done something wrong. Did I cut him off somewhere else, in the six blocks before this incident happened? Was I being unsafe? But no. This was all on Crotch Rocket boy. If I learned nothing from the movie The Kids Are All Right, it's that guys who ride motorcycles are generally douchebags who do things without thinking.

It was scary, though, whatever the reason. It was a trivial moment that instantly escalated into violence. Or, would-be violence. One moment, I'm a normal dad running the most boring of errands. The next moment, someone's threatening to punch my lights out. I hate shit like that.

Duck!

We were reading one of Oliver's old lift-the-flap board books this morning. We turned to a picture of a cow, and I asked Oliver what kind of animal it was.

"Duck!"

I look at him, baffled. "That's a duck?"

"No. The duck that people do."

I stared him, still confused.

He stood up and then did an exaggerated bow, bending his shoulders down to waist level.

"See? Duck!"

I looked at the picture again, and sure enough, the cow was ducking down in a doorway.

The Things He Says (Five Year Old Edition)

When Oliver was younger, I loved posting about the new words he would say or the funny little phrases he would come out with. Now that he's older, his language acquisition moves so quickly that it's hard to keep up.

He still picks up new words, but usually, he surprises us by learning entire new parts of speech. Take conjunctions. Lately, he's been experimenting with the word "anyway." He uses it correctly as a verbal punctuation, to change the direction of a conversation that he's bored with. "Anyway, what are you going to get me for breakfast?" Neither of us taught him that - he just picked it up.

Right now, what I'm most impressed with is his talents as a storyteller. I'm amazed at his ability to create and wild careening stories just off the top of his head. One time, we were driving home from someplace and Oliver was falling asleep. Often, when he's tired I will tell him the story can try to keep him awake. This time, I decided to ask him tell me a story, just to see what would happen.

He began telling this crazy roller coaster of a story. I can't remember everything that was in it, but at one point, I remember there were polar bears building rockets so they could fly to Mars. The story lasted for 15 or 20 minutes and kept changing direction - adding new characters, changing scenes, shifting the landscape. And every time he changed the story dramatically, he would insert a giddy "all of a sudden..."

Mrs. B professes that she hates telling him stories, but she's managed to come up with her own special character for stories. He's called Fluffy the Cloud. She can put Fluffy in any situation - visiting Mt. Rainier, swimming in the ocean, fighting off bad guys with the help of Superman and Flash. He begs to have her tell him Fluffy stories, and he even offers to help her with the stories. "Mommy, I'll tell the middle and the end part, and you can tell the beginning part."

He is so much fun to listen to right now. He creates imaginary conversations with everything-with the stuffed animals, with his action figures, with blankets and pillows. I've even seen them start conversations with pieces of toast while he's eating his breakfast.

And he's still such a ridiculously affectionate little boy. Sometimes, I overhear his crazy little conversations between his stuffed animals or robots or whatever he's using, and I'll hear one say to the other, "I love you." The other one says back, "I love you too," and suddenly they're hugging each other.

Super Why is Awful

It's the worst children's show on television. Yes, and I know Barney is still being aired regularly. Super Why is worse. It's horrible. It's an affront to thinking parents and a shameful way to introduce children to classic literature.

Super Why is one of those shows that sprang up in the wake of Dora the Explorer and Blue's Clues. (Apparently, it's produced by the team that created Blue's Clues.) It's purportedly educational and supposedly encourages literacy - the characters talk directly to their audience and tell them to point out letters and read words and stuff like that. That's fine. A lot of shows do that, and that's not a problem. Here's the issue, though. They're murdering the classics of children's literature - the Brothers Grimm, Mother Goose, Hans Christian Andersen, the stories we all remember when we were children.

They tell the stories, which is nice, I suppose. But they ruin them by retooling the morals!! They twist the fucking things around so that the moral of the story - the whole POINT of the story - is either wrong or watered down to some namby-pamby inoffensive platitude.

Example 1: they took on Hansel and Gretel in one episode. Once you sort through all the "point to the A!" crap, basically, they told the story of Hansel and Gretel. They went into the forest, they saw a witch's house made of candy, they started eating it. The witch came out and got angry. And then they revealed the "message" of the story - they should have asked permission first. Yes, sure, when you encounter a witch in the forest who wants to eat your cherubic German flesh, you should ask permission before eating her evil candy house.

That's not the goddamn story! The story is that the children are starving, the witch is evil and wants to eat them, she traps them with her candy house as bait, and they throw her in the oven and then take her gold back to their father and they never go hungry again. The moral is that witches are evil!!!!! (Of course, I mean fairy-tale witches, not any actual practical Wiccans or witches who may be reading this. Characters in fairy tales bear no relation to the real thing in real life, and I mean that referring to witches, wizards, bears, children, queens. Nothing is real in fairy tales.) It's not about asking permission. It's about many things - beware of strangers, stick together in difficult circumstances, never trust a candy house. It's not about "please, may I?"

Example 2: This was the one that finally set me off. They did "The Boy Who Cried Wolf" recently. It might be an old episode - I just saw it recently, along with Oliver. Same thing - blah blah blah read these letters, blah blah blah what's the magic word, blah blah blah let's solve the mystery! Kid keeps crying wolf, parents don't believe him, finally kid gets in trouble and parents don't believe him. Right? And the moral is - don't lie to your parents and they'll believe you when you need them. That's the moral that you and I remember from our childhood. That's the point of the story. "Crying wolf" = "lying."

Except these pinheads decided the moral of the story was "parents should believe their children." "Oh, we should have believed you," his parents lament at the end of the episode. No, they shouldn't have! The message is that telling lies will get you in trouble! This is one of those classic fables that has a scary consequence at the end - the wolf eats all the kid's sheep. There are even some versions where the kid gets eaten, too. Fables are scary for a reason.

Look, no one wants to see their kid get eaten or baked by a witch, but the heart of these fables is in the telling. By screwing around with the message of these fables, they're completely undermining their ability to educate kids. I read classic stories and fables to my kid all the time, and I'll even tell them to him as a bedtime story. I want him to remember the message behind them. Fables are for teaching morals and rules of behavior. If you want to teach someone their letters, fine. Use pointless and imaginary stories like Dora does. Don't fuck with classic stories for no good reason.

I hate Super Why. I stopped recording it on our Tivo, and I change the channel every time it comes on. I don't ever want Oliver to tell me that I got some story wrong because he heard it differently on Super Why. Stupid anti-literature show. Stupid brain-crippling piece of crap. Don't let your kid watch this show. It's horrible.

Temporarily Permanent

Still at the temp job.

It's not bad, really. It's honest work. I stay busy every day, and despite all the smack I said in a previous post about my boss, she's not actually too bad. She respects my work and makes a point of telling me I'm doing a good job.

The biggest strain, really has been financial. I've been working since late May, and I just got my first paycheck a couple of days ago. Originally, I was promised a paycheck by the second week of June. It didn't happen. We had to wait for some other company to pay our invoices before we got our paychecks, and for some reason, they couldn't be bothered to get those checks to us. Every day, I'd ask, and every day, I'd hear that there was no word when the
paycheck would arrive. It got pretty tense for a while. We were literally running out of money. Mrs. B was putting off bills, which we both hate to do. But I finally got a check, and that makes us both breathe easier.

Even though I'm "working," I'm still filing for unemployment. Filing, not collecting, because I work too much each week to collect UI benefits. I thought the job would end last week, but it looks like it's been extended for the foreseeable future. I'm earning more than I did at my last job (though working more hours and getting no fringe benefits). And I'm still sending out resumes every week. So it's odd - working, yet unemployed. Working and yet looking. I can work here as long as I want the job, at least through the end of the year. My life could be a lot worse, I suppose.

Revenge of the Lawn

I just looked at my lawn and said to myself, "I wonder why it doesn't look better."

I live in a rental home. I have never planted grass seed on my lawn. I have never fertilized it. I have clover growing wild in my lawn. Moss. Patches of thistle. Plants that I can't even recognize. It looks like a well-trimmed vacant lot.

I'm also mowing my lawn with dull blades. My lawnmower desperately needs to have the blades resharpened. Right now, it's not mowing so much as blunt force trauma. The grass grows long and crazy and points in four different directions, and there are some stretches where the mower didn't have any effect at all and the grass is just laying down, five inches long and silently mocking me.

I wonder why it doesn't look better, I thought to myself. And then I burst out laughing.

Temping It Out

Oh my gawd, dear readers. I hope I land a real job soon, because the temp job I'm doing now is stressing me the hell out.

I'm working for a few weeks for a friend, partly as a favor and partly for the money. She's not the most organized person in the world, so I get a lot of late-night phone calls and emails at 2 in the morning. The last week has been a little weird, what with not knowing what my day is going to be like until I show up in the office. It's fine for a temp job, but the level of expectation my friend has is starting to bug me.

I'm looking for a permanent job, of course. And my friend knows this, and she's been saying the right things about how my search for a permanent job has to take priority. (It really has to. In order to stay eligible for unemployment, I need to be available every day for job interviews or jobs. So legally, a permanent job has to be my priority.) But she's been talking out of both sides of her mouth - simultaneously saying that she wants to give me the time to look for a permanent job, AND that she needs me available at a moment's notice to do anything that pops into her head.

She called me today at 1 pm to see if I could do a shitload of paperwork today. That afternoon. In the next two hours.

I was with my kid, in a toy store.

Yesterday, she told me that she would be dealing with this very stack of paperwork herself. But today it got tossed in my lap, and when I said I couldn't do it, I got the passive-aggressive guilt trip about not being available. The kind of thing that happens with nonprofit work. "What do you mean you don't want to drop everything for the job? Don't you care about the work? Don't you care about THE MOVEMENT?!"

I have a bunch of job interviews next week, and she's sweating me that one of the interviews is on a day when things are going to be frantic at the office. I need a damn job, not some temporary stopgap bullshit! I do not get paid enough to be at this person's beck and call like a genie in a fucking bottle.

Never work for friends. Never, ever take a job because somebody's a friend and you want to do them a favor. Jeezus Christ on a pogo stick.

Pink Slip

For the second time in two years, I found myself cleaning out my desk this week.

Seriously. Again.

The first time, I was completely stunned. I didn't see it coming at all. I thought I was actually making good progress and was looking forward to discussing next year's goals, and instead, I was turning in my keys.

But this time...

This time, I smelled it coming. I had a really lousy week the previous week, and I knew my boss wasn't happy with me. I expected that we would have a stern conversation sometime this week. But when I walked in, and the head honcho was also sitting there, I knew things were going down.

I've definitely had some issues at work. A couple of deadlines that I was chasing pretty furiously. I was seeing this week as the week when I would prove my worth again, demonstrate again that I was the person they wanted in this position. They were taking a chance hiring me, and I wanted so badly to prove that the gamble was worth it. It WAS worth it - I learned a tremendous amount, I did some fantastic work, and I'm proud of what I did.

But I slipped. I let my anxiety and my fear of failure get the best of me, started getting sloppy on collecting information. Deadlines started creeping closer and closer. I started fibbing to my supervisor about where I was on projects. There's a thing that happens when you start falling behind and the workload never stops. You keep thinking you'll get to a spot where you can catch up, some quiet week. You think you'll work a few evenings, maybe some time on the weekend to catch up. You keep thinking that you'll catch up sometime down the road, and then the end of the road happens.

Could I have stopped this? Maybe. Did I see this coming in time? I don't think so. By the time I sensed trouble, it was already too late. Maybe I should have visited the therapist more often. Maybe I should have worked more on the weekend. Maybe ... maybe ... maybe ...

And then again, maybe it was inevitable. I was being brought in as an entry-level employee, doing way advanced-level work. Every fundraising job right now is being expected to overperform in a terrible economy; there's less money out there, but we're all being to find every available dollar. I was brought in as a rookie who was expected to perform like a ten-year veteran, and when I couldn't keep up with the frantic pace being set, I got the axe. Was it my fault for not being able to keep running, or their fault for pushing me too hard?

It doesn't matter now. What matters now is moving on. I've got to move onto another job, and this job search is going to be a little more complicated than the last one. But I'm feeling oddly relieved by this. Sure, I'm back on unemployment, and sure, I hate having to start the search process all over again. But maybe it's time to find a job that's actually at my level. This might be a genuine case where the last job wasn't a good fit, and I can use this to really find something that really matches where I'm at.

I'm feeling good about this, people. Really. If I got through the last search in the dead of the recession, I can get through this one.

Mumbleberry Pie

I quite enjoyed this NY Times article on the National. It's a great piece on a band filled with literate, brilliant, and obviously strong-willed individuals. The tension between them explains quite a bit about the music they create.

The National Agenda

Also, it contains two of the best quotes I've ever seen in the Times on any subject.

This, describing the process of perfecting a new song:

“Lemonworld,” for instance, had by now sustained upwards of 80 takes followed by upwards of 80 onslaughts of derision. Versions of the song had been fragged for being really annoying, really bombastic, really boring, really cheesy, too destabilized, really meatball, really saccharine, too sludgefest, too Dave Matthews swank and too all-fancy razzle-dazzle. At one point, Bryan worried aloud, “We’re throwing the baby out with the bath water,” to which Matt replied, “What is the baby?”

And then this description of the lead vocalist, Matt Berninger:

Over the years, Matt has accumulated a flock of snide nicknames from his band mates, including the Dark Lord, the Naysayer, Mumbleberry Pie, Mr. Knee Jerk, Mr. Sony Headphones and the Echo Chamber.

Jesus and the Silver Surfer

My son and I are hanging out in the office, watching Fantastic Four trailers on YouTube. (What?)

He sees the Silver Surfer appear onscreen. He asks if anyone knows who he is, and I say he doesn't.

"Except him?" Oliver asks.

I look at him, confused.

"Does he know himself?"

"Yes, I guess he does know himself." My son, the philosopher.

~~~

A few minutes later, he asks me if the Silver Surfer can die. I answer that I don't think he can.

"I hope he can't. I hope he's like Jesus."

Yes, that's the conversation we had on Easter: whether the Silver Surfer can rise from the dead like Jesus.

The Truth about Me

I've been living a double life, and it's time to end it.

I've been hiding my identity for years, using a pseudonym.  Most of you know that Sky Bluesky is not my real name.  Parts of the life I describe on this blog are real, and some of them are fabricated to make it harder to identify me.  I have wanted for years to tell the truth about who I am, but I had to wait until the right time when my words could no longer be used against me. I've said things on this blog that could make my professional life very difficult.

But it's time to end the mystery.  It's time for me to tell the world who I really am.  So on this day, April 1, 2010, I am removing the veil.

My name is Greg Nickels.

Yes, that Greg Nickels.  The former mayor of Seattle.  

As you can imagine, leading this double life has been extremely stressful, but it's also been a delightful creative exercise.  I have had the opportunity to craft a new life, a new family, and speak candidly through the voice of another.

• Obviously, the son I have created, Oliver, is a fabrication.  I have two wonderful children, Jacob and Carey, and I have used my memories of their youth to create the fanciful adventures of my "son" Oliver.  

• As I said, parts of my story were true.  I do live in west Seattle, as some of you know.  One of the most difficult moments in my pseudonymous life was the snowstorm in 2008, when my office was pilloried for reacting slowly to the dramatic snowfall.  Many jokes were made about whether my own neighborhood would be plowed out when so many other roads in Seattle were impassable.  I heard you, loud and clear.  I wrote about it, jokingly, but it hurt my heart that I had failed the city so badly. 

• Some of you may doubt that this is truly former Mayor Nickels, but I want you to ask yourselves:  why did Sky Bluesky never opine about the recent mayoral race in Seattle?  I couldn't, you see.  Not only were my hands tied legally, but by speaking at all about that race, it would have tipped my hand.  So I was forced to remain quiet, even though I very definitely had a favorite candidate.

• I am, in fact, a tremendous fan of Wilco.  I have had Jeff Tweedy over to my house twice, and he is a charming and decent fellow.  He took the name of his last album from my pseudonym.  We had a good laugh about that.  

• Everything about the weight loss is true, with the exception of the actual numbers.  I have been fighting my weight for years, but I feel I have finally gotten the upper hand on this.

• One more thing:  Sky Bluesky was not my original choice for my pseudonym.  As a play on my last name, I was tempted to call myself Henny Penny.  (See how clever that is?  Penny - Nickels?  Get it?)  I asked my deputy Mayor, Tim Ceis (the only member of my staff who knew about this blog) and he told me in no uncertain terms that it was not only a terrible name, but it was a lame joke.  Ah well.  

In the future, I look forward to sharing my thoughts here on the political landscape of Seattle and the country, as well as continuing to blog about my favorite music, odd stories that cross my mind, and the wonderful meals that my wife Sharon prepares.  Godspeed.

Sincerely,

Greg