Talent show champs!

It seems like forever since I've been able to jot anything down here. We've had everything from Noah's and Gabriel's performance in Oliver! (I didn't direct this one; in fact, I was distinctly hands-off until the last week when I chipped in where I could), I just started a new leadership program (it's the beginning of another Master's program if I want it to be; we'll see how much the state is willing to pay for), and I'm completely buried at work. Suffice to say, my personal writing has been on hold.

However, I have to relate the kids' Talent Show experience from last night. Every year, Gabriel's school holds a talent show and, being an elementary school, it's usually pretty cute. Painful at times when magic shows and card tricks go awry, but you can never see too many first-graders tap dancing. No, really, I mean that.

This year, they invited siblings and other young members of the community to join in, though, and, of course, Gabriel's brothers couldn't be left out of the action. OK, well Stormy tried to be left out of the action because he's 13 and is utterly embarrassed by EVERYTHING, but he was ultimately drafted by Gabriel's Kindergarten teacher, who is remarkably persuasive.

Colby and I wrote a skit in which Colby played an angel, our neighbor played the devil, and both argued over Gabriel's immortal soul. Well, not his immortal soul, exactly; the devil tried to get him to steal a hamburger, but it was still pretty cute. Here's the script:

The Decision

The scene: Gabriel is sitting at a table eating lunch by himself. An angel and the devil walk in from opposite sides with trays of food and ask to sit with him. Gabriel politely answers yes and the scene unfolds.

Devil: Care if I join you?

Gabriel: Sure...go ahead.

Angel: Can I sit here?

Gabriel: Yeah, fine.

Devil (to Gabriel): So you done anything fun lately?

Gabriel: I played Animal Crossing...

Devil: No, I mean really fun...like mean fun...

Angel: Would you leave him alone? He's just a little kid.

Devil: Gotta start 'em young, I say...So how 'bout it, Gabriel? I know you must have done something naughty, right? Maybe told a little lie to your parents? Cheated on a test? Maybe grabbed an extra snack?

Gabriel: No I have never done any of those things

Angel: Of course he hasn't! His name is Gabriel, after all!

Devil: Ahh come one just one little lie...or something you might have done in Animal Crossing. That is a pretty great game. I bet I could find lots of ways to be naughty there.

Gabriel: Well...

Angel: Nothing...really...nothing at all...

Devil: Yes, what did you do Gabriel

Gabriel: Well, I pushed Mott around in animal crossing.

Angel: Well, that's not so bad, right? It's just a game... (looking nervous)

Devil: Well, it certainly doesn't sound very angelic. If he can push around a lion in a game, I bet he could do something naughty right here.

Angel: Come on now...Animal Crossing is rated E for everyone, although online interactions are not rated.

Devil: I'll tell you what, Gabe...how about you take the cheese off that cheeseburger there, and go tell the lunch lady that you should get the burger for free? It was missing the cheese, after all...

Angel: (looking horrified) That would lying! Gabriel, just eat your cheeseburger. It's tasty, isn't it? And it's a balanced, nutritious meal prepared by your hard-working lunch ladies!

Devil: Ahh, come on...he's already headed down a slippery slope in Animal Crossing...the least he should do is get a free burger!

(Gabriel looks back and forth as they talk, as if he is watching a tennis match)

Gabriel: Don't worry, don't worry...I'm a pure meat-eater! (he takes a big bite)

Angel: Don't you mean a peer mediator? You mean you can help us resolve our problems?

Gabriel: No, I mean I'm a pure meat eater! I'm eating pure meat!

Angel and Devil get up and walk away together, arguing about the best way to corrupt small children...voices fade as they walk away, leaving their trays behind them.

Gabriel, looking around sneakily, grabs the burgers off both the angel's and devil's tray, and puts them on his own. He gives a great big smile as he takes a big bite of one of his 3 burgers now.

Gabriel (leaping up with a flourish): Now that's how you get a free hamburger!

It was pretty impressive, actually. Gabriel's timing was impeccable (for a six-year old) and Colby may have finally found his voice.

Not to be outdone, Noah joined a bunch of teachers, moms, and, ultimately, all 3 of his brothers, for a Zoomba dancing performance. Zoomba is not so easy to explain, but it's the latest quasi-aerobic dancing exercise craze to sweep the nation (or at least the middle of nowhere New England). Although Colby danced pretty hard, Gabriel was just cute because six-year olds doing Zoomba are inherently cute, and Stormy was worth a chuckle with his stony face, Noah let it all hang out. Even if his chemistry grade keeps him out of Harvard, the boy has a future in Zoomba.

Of course, none of them was crowned Talent Show Champion because that level of competition isn't politically correct. However, between the skit and Zoomba, I think they pretty well swept the show.

My kid gave me ringworm

It was the little guy. He seems remarkably sweet and innocent. I could see Stormy giving me ringworm...He's not too big on the whole personal hygiene thing, but Gabriel likes to be spotless. It all started with a little rash that looked innocuous enough. Probably just a bit of dermatitis or eczema, I thought. Then it started to spread.

For those of you with multiple kids, you'll know that the more kids you have, the more cavalier you tend to become with illnesses. By kid number four, there's very little you haven't seen. You've been barfed on, teeth have been lost, dog food has been consumed in vast quantities (but not by the dog), falls have been survived from higher and higher locations. You get the idea. My wife is fond of saying that your first kid is like your best china, your second kid is Corel Ware, your third is Chinette, and your fourth is a napkin held as you eat over the kitchen sink.

The point being that we didn't exactly rush to the doctor when kid #4 got a rash. This isn't the sort of thing you get fussed about if it isn't accompanied by anaphylaxis. Once some hydrocortisone didn't take care of it, though, we decided to take him to the doctor.

She diagnosed him with ringworm. Really? Apparently, just one of the lesions had the ringlike structure of dead skin associated with ringworm, but the other bumps and such were ringworm, too. Did you know that ringworm is caused by the same fungus responsible for jock itch and athlete's foot? It's not actually caused by a worm. It's also highly contagious. That's fun, huh?

So a few days later when the back of my leg started to burn and itch, I was suspicious. Trying not to look like a dog chasing his tale, I tried to see what was on the back of my leg. As I spun around, I caught glimpses of a couple of red lesions, not unlike those on Gabriel's belly.

My kid had given me ringworm. There was a fungus amongus and it stinks. It didn't help when a friend of mine said, "Ringworm? He's got ringworm? That's the biggest pain in the ass. Make sure you put cream on it every day...it can take months to go away!"

Great. So now I've seen ringworm too. Noah was itching last night before bed. I have to wonder if it's just his mild case of hypochondria or if Gabriel infected him too. The little rugrat.

Why don't you just read Dad's Twitter feed?

The other day, I came home from work and started telling my wife a story (she'd asked how my day went) of a particularly irritating event. Noah walked in and said, "We know, we know," and finished the story.

A bit of background is necessary here, by the way. My wife and I have taken to setting the kitchen timer for 10 minutes after we all get home so that we can recap the day, exchange information as needed, and otherwise have a few minutes of uninterrupted conversation. Such conversation is generally not easy to come by in our house, so it's a valued commodity.

He turned to my wife and said, "Why don't you just read Dad's Twitter feed? Then you two wouldn't have to set the timer every day." It's not a bad point, actually, but, of course, he missed the part where I actually like talking to my wife. She's the only one in the family who doesn't read my Twitter feed or my blogs, though.

My mom, a regular reader of my Tweets and blogs, gets far more information from them than from our occasional phone calls. While my wife always tells me I should call her more, I always respond that I don't need to. She reads my Twitter feed, after all.

Dinosaurs! And werewolves. And some more dinosaurs.

Gabriel has a vivid imagination. Really vivid. Maybe it's because he has three older brothers who pull his leg all the time, or because he's already been in a couple of Noah's plays (bit parts, mind you, but enough for him to talk about them incessantly). Maybe it's because he reads a lot or simply because we don't discourage it. He is six, after all. How long do kids get to believe in whatever makes them happy?

Last year, he got into some fairly heated debates with some very down-to-earth girls in his Kindergarten class. He insisted that dinosaurs were real and that he had, in fact, hatched dinosaur eggs in our backyard. I tried a gentle scientific approach, explaining that we had found dinosaur fossils, so we knew that they were real, but hadn't lived on Earth for a long time.

He wasn't having any of it. Every slightly rounded rock that he found was a potential dinosaur egg. Of course it didn't help that Colby kept stealing the "eggs" and telling him that they must have hatched.

This year, Gabriel played a werewolf cub who bit Noah (the leading man, I might add) in our high school's production of The Werewolf's Curse. It wasn't long after that he woke up with a sore arm. I told him that he had probably just slept wrong, but Colby (what is it with Colby?) told him that he was a werewolf and had bitten his arm the night before.

Guess what Gabriel told his class during their next "sharing" (a modern and somewhat dissatisfying take on show-and-tell without the show-and)? He let them know that during the next full moon he would be transforming into a werewolf. According to his teacher, he was deadpan serious. Needless to say, she moved to the next sharing quickly (although she was remarkably cool about informing us and even gave us suggestions on how to keep him from being upset when he didn't transform).

For two weeks, we heard about nothing besides werewolves. He Googled werewolves. He watched the calendar for the next full moon. He considered who he might bite when he did transform (some bullying second-graders were tops on his list). When the day of the full moon came, we were scrambling to give him an out.

Some serious Googling turned up a blog post about how some werewolves don't actually transform, but instead just feel differently during the full moon. Another post suggested that it could take years to fully transform. Although it was a bit disturbing that adult bloggers were giving as much thought to werewolves as my 6-year old, we ran with it.

Colby actually wrote a post himself suggesting that if a werewolf didn't eat a pile of vegetables that he wouldn't transform. Since Gabriel hates vegetables, this seemed like a fine approach.

By the time the moon rose that night, Gabriel was pretty well convinced that if he did transform at all, it would probably just be into a cub or something vaguely furry and grumpy. Dodged that silver bullet, so to speak.

More recently, he carried on quite a conversation with his tooth fairy. We stick with the story that there are many tooth fairies, explaining why some of his friends might get more per tooth than he does. A rash of lost teeth led to several visits and Noah couldn't help but leave him a note from his tooth fairy. Gabriel wrote back (of course) and ended up corresponding via under-pillow mail for several nights. Finally, the tooth fairy wrote that he was headed to Jamaica for a vacation, so he wouldn't be able to stay in touch for a while.

Now, however, we're back to dinosaurs. For him, these beasts still roam the Earth (somewhere). He found more round rocks yesterday on a walk and brought them home to hatch them. They sat on a pillow, covered with a small blanket until Noah snagged them and hid them before we went out for the evening.

When we came home, we had to do a complete check of the house to ensure that the hatched dinosaurs had escaped and weren't waiting for us. Since they obviously escaped, Gabriel asked me to call Animal Control and alert them. He's quite persuasive, so I ended up having a 3 minute Bob Newhart-style one-sided conversation with "Animal Control" on my Blackberry.

The kid was nervous, but he's a glutton for punishment. He made me read a chapter of Jurassic Park for our bedtime story.

When it comes down to it, though, we all value his brilliant imagination so much, we just can't bear to sit him down and have the talk yet. He'll figure it out. For now, he certainly gives us stories to tell and the wonder in his eyes makes any extra work well worth the effort.

Missing my blog

I haven't written anything on this blog in too many days. Life and work have gotten the best of me and I'm still so bloody far behind I can't even see straight. Oh well...in between thesis work and appointments for the rest of the week, I have some funny stories to relate. Talk to y'all soon :)

Epic ice fishing FAIL

Image by Odalaigh via Flickr - Not a New Englander.

I went ice fishing for the first time yesterday. People here in New England think that ice fishing is a good time. Ice fishing, as the name suggests, involves fishing through ice. This, of course, implies that it must be cold enough to freeze a large body of water to adequate depth to support people.

I have been assured by experienced ice-fisherpeople that a mere 2 inches of ice can support a person, but this winter has been cold enough that our lake of choice (the site of an entire ice fishing derby) had about 8 inches of ice on top of it, penetrable only with a gas-powered auger. I don't own an auger, gas-powered or otherwise, but fortunately, many avid ice-fisherpeople in our area do and they were happy to make holes in the ice for us.

Chainsaws work too, by the way, but no self-respecting, pragmatic New Englander would think of using a chainsaw when, not only will the saw get wet, but inexpensive tools are available to make holes of the perfect size and shape without risk to limb or saw. Chainsaws are for cutting wood, not ice, or so I'm told.

I've never had any luck fishing. I caught a minnow once with my uncles when I was a little kid, but that was only luck as I speared the poor little guy, swimming through some grass. I caught a fish at a trout farm, too, but that counts even less than catching the minnow.

However, I've inherited various fishing poles and tackle over the years and give fishing a shot in some form or another every summer with the kids. Gabriel especially likes the idea of fishing and begs regularly to go. We still never catch anything. Not one to give up, though, I broke out the rods and tackle at 7:00 Saturday morning, rounded up the kids, bundled up the wife, took a thermos of coffee, and headed to the lake.

As we all piled out of the car and grabbed our fishing poles, I had to wonder why people were chuckling. We weren't dressed in the survival gear everyone else seemed to be wearing, but I thought we looked respectable enough. I didn't think my fishing reputation preceded me, but we do live in an area where a lot of people are pretty good at living off the land, so maybe I just had the look of an unsuccessful fisherman.

It wasn't until our friend Jason (who was helping run the fishing derby and had invited us down) came over to us and said that we wouldn't need our rods that I really became confused. Were we going to spear the fish? Break out the unused chainsaws and rip them to shreds? Jason said that he and his dad had plenty of equipment for us.

"You can use those poles if you really want, but they're a little long. Most poles are only about this long," he said, holding his hands about a foot apart. The light went on then, as I imagined trying to get my line into a 6 inch hole 7 feet away from me and I quickly put the poles back in the car.

This was about the time that the real genius of ice fishing (despite the 25 degree temperature on the lake with bitter winds blowing off the ice that really made me question the advisability of our family adventure) became apparent. Most people, it turns out, don't even bother with poles at all. They simply use "tip-ups." Tip-ups are slick little spring-loaded flags that sit over your holes, dangling your bait in the water; when a fish grabs the bait, the flag pops up, you grab the line, and you've got yourself a fish!

This seemed like the answer for me: fishing that even I couldn't screw up. The fish just come to you! People were sitting in lawn chairs on the ice, sitting inside tents, building campfires (yes, on the ice) and cooking on portable grills, while their tip-ups sat over their holes. This could actually be a lot of fun if it wasn't so frickin' cold. It took me about 15 seconds to realize why everyone else looked like they were ready to climb K2.

Within an hour, Noah had snot icicles on then end of his nose. Fortunately, ice fishing is not the sort of sport enjoyed by the average high school girl, so he didn't have to worry about picking up a date on the ice, but he was over it. Luckily for him, the lake happens to be behind the high school, so as the snot icicle grew longer, I took pity on him and let him hang out in my office. The heat is broken in there currently and runs constantly, no matter what the thermostat setting, so said snot icicle thawed quickly at 80 degrees.

Within 2 hours, all of my hot coffee was gone and we hadn't caught a single fish. Flags were popping around us, but none of our three holes managed to produce anything more than ice that Gabriel kept scooping out with a special ladle (also, apparently, invented for the sole purpose of scooping ice from fishing holes created by augers invented for the sole purpose of making holes for fishing through ice).

Someone had made a giant Vat-O'-Clam Chowder. I've never eaten clam chowder at 9:30 in the morning before, but it was incredible. I'm still undecided whether it was genuinely good or I was just so bloody cold that anything capable of warming me from the inside out was a gift from God. I think it was a little bit of both.

We were pushing three hours and I had to get back to the house to meet with a couple of contractors. No, really, this wasn't just an excuse to get the hell off the frozen lake and thaw out in front of my pellet stove at home. Really. I swear.

Colby decided to stay and man our holes since several of his friends were there. The rest of us got in the car as fast as we could, tacitly agreeing that our next fishing trip would be in the spring. Late spring.

One particular point of interest on our way to the car: Gabriel and I both needed a bathroom break, so we hit the porta-potty. This particular porta-potty had one of the little urinals attached to the side, making, thankfully, for some very speedy cold-weather peeing. The bottom of the urinal, though, was filled with salt, placed there to keep the urine from freezing. I thought that was a nice touch.

I came back to get Colby a couple hours later, fully expecting to have a tasty bass or trout for dinner waiting. I shouldn't have been surprised, however, when he informed me that we hadn't caught anything. Not a single fish.

I think I may leave ice fishing to the heartier New Englanders. Gabriel, however, is already planning our next expedition, this time involving canoes, the minute the ice thaws this spring.

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Music wars

My kids have, well, eclectic tastes in music. This is being pretty diplomatic, especially for Stormy, who has taken to listening to complete emo crap lately.

I know I used to drive my parents nuts with my music, too. Master of Puppets is made to be listed to at full volume, obviously, but I don't think this was obvious to my mother every morning for a year before school. I don't think she was relieved when I switched to the Use Your Illusions double album set either, especially since I skipped the more folksy songs.

So I try to have some degree of understanding. It's pretty bloody hard to be understanding when Stormy is singing along massively out of key with some new awful band called JetLag Gemini.

I single out Stormy because his music is the least tolerable. At least, however, somehow I've gotten him into thrash. We were both banging our heads to Machine Head's latest on the way home today, so there are brief reprieves from the torture.

There are no such reprieves with Colby. He, like me, can't carry a tune in a bucket. Imagine an asthmatic rhinoceros singing showtunes and you have Colby. He has a habit of memorizing bits of songs that Noah and Gabriel listen to (we'll get to those jokers in a minute) and then bursting into song. His other favorite pastime? Using lines from musicals to carry on a conversation.

"How was your day, Colby?"

"Disappointing."

"Really, why?"

"The caterine company laid me off."

"Colby, stop quoting Avenue Q! Seriously, how was your day?"

"(singing) I lay...in bed...all day long...feeling...melancholy..."

"Arghhh! Never mind..."

You think I'm kidding. Try talking to the kid. It might not be so bad if he knew more than 3 lines from every song.

Of course, his sparse knowledge of Broadway musicals is a direct result of his oldest and youngest brothers' obsession with modern showtunes. Fortunately, we're not talking Hello Dolly or South Pacific here. Gabriel has memorized most of the songs from Avenue Q, Spamalot, and Evil Dead (the musical); he's working on The Wedding Singer.

Gabriel's biggest disappointment of 2008, besides not being able to get his favorite female classmate under the mistletoe, was missing Spamalot when Noah and I saw it Hartford. And, promise not to tell my wife, but he was thrilled when I put the entire Evil Dead Original Cast Recording on his iPod. It includes his favorite song, "What the Fuck was That?" He knows not to sing that one out in public, but every time it finishes, he smiles from earbud to earbud and says, "I just love that song." I have to admit that it is pretty catchy.

I'm not sure which is more YouTube-able. That or listening to him sing "If You Were Gay" with Noah. Gabriel always insists on singing the part of Nicki (Avenue Q's moral equivalent of Sesame Street's Ernie). This is OK, though, because Noah has completely mastered Rod (a flamboyantly gay and closeted parody of Bert).

Noah has three things on his Zune. Musicals, Weird Al, and The Presidents of the United States of America. His musicals go a little deeper though. The Drowsy Chaperone (but only because it has Sutton Foster in it) and [Title of Show] frequently make it onto his playlist.

And then there's me. I was in my glory the other night at a Metallica concert (thanks to Laura and Jason for thinking of me when they had an extra ticket!), banging my head the whole time, and finally, belatedly, discovering Machine Head (and, in fact, rediscovering the entire modern thrash genre).

It's not all metal for me. Sometimes I'll break out some industrial goodness like Nine Inch Nails or the Prodigy. When I really need to get work done, out comes hard trance or hard house, the bass thumping in time to my typing.

We won't even talk about my lovely Luddite. I have just one word for you and then I can't bear to say any more: country.

We use our headphones a lot.

Frickin' Groundhog!

I'm one of the few people in my sleepy little town who isn't a hunter. The first time I saw men walking down my road, shotguns over their shoulders, the former city slicker in me let out a little whimper of terror. Now we all just wear orange during hunting season...One adapts quickly to seeing strange things in rural New England.

Regardless, I think I could find it in my tree-hugging, fuzzy little heart to blow the brains out of Puxatony Phil. I'd give him something to be scared of. Something far worse than the poor grammar embodied in that last sentence or his chubby little shadow. I'd go full Clint Eastwood on his ass. "Do you feel lucky? Well do ya, Groundhog?" Just what could a .44 Magnum do to a groundhog? Hmmmm?

I shouldn't really be angry with Phil. He is, after all, merely a puppet of meteorologists who decided that we'd be having 6 more weeks of winter. Thanks, guys. The permafrost in my freaking yard and the snow once again falling from the sky weren't enough of a clue. Now you had to completely validate it with a bloody groundhog.

Do you realize that February 2nd actually marks only the halfway point of winter anyway? Ancient pagans celebrated the day as a time to start thinking about planting crops and a time when animals got up from hibernation for a quick pee break. Yay for the pagans!

I, on the other hand, have 6 more weeks of stopping leaks in my roof and breaking ice dams. I'd love to think about planting my garden, but the groundhogs would probably just eat all the damn vegetables anyway.

What did we ever do before coffee?

One has to wonder if life was even worth living. Seriously. I love my kids and my wife is great, but coffee...ahhhhhh. I bring this up because of a caffeine deprivation incident this morning. It's almost too painful to recall, but I think blogging about it might be cathartic.

We were, as usual running late for church this morning. We'd gotten out of the habit of going since our church switched to a 9:00 service and it's in the next town. However, the priest really came through for us when my wife's grandfather passed away a few months ago and it inspired us to make the effort.

That being said, I skipped a shower so that I'd have time to make myself a pot of coffee in my new Paula Deen Percolator. I know that perced coffee isn't as good for you as drip coffee, but this bad boy makes the most amazing 8 cups of coffee you've ever had. Here's a link to a review of the pot on walmart.com (I bought mine on clearance in the store). The person who wrote the review is an idiot who has obviously never used a percolator before. Ignore her review, find the pot cheap, and begin a journey into glorious, rich coffee.

The key, by the way, which this miserable excuse for a Walmart shopper has obviously not discovered, is to use a coarse grind with a percolator. RTFM, baby. Or just ask someone with half a clue.

I seem to have wandered off-topic, haven't I? Must be the Machine Head in the background - they always get me fired up. That, and stupid people who don't know how to make freakin' coffee.

So back to this morning. I poured my still-boiling coffee into a travel thermos. It's a slick little deal I got for Christmas with a great little pour top, stainless steel liner so I'm not drinking plastic, and a lid that acts as a nicely-sized cup. As we're zipping down our road, bumping over the ice and potholes, I asked my wife to pour me a cup. I could almost taste it. I knew it would be hot, but that was OK. 9:00am is pretty late for my first cup of coffee.

"It's not pouring," she said. I glanced over, horrified at this obstacle to a beautiful, pre-sermon cup of coffee and wondering just what the hell she might be talking about. Yet there she was, holding the thermos upside-down with the pour spout open and no life-giving coffee emerging from said spout. She was awfully nonchalant about this particular development, I thought. The priest is pretty engaging, but without coffee, Metallica could have been singing the sermon and I'm not sure I could stay conscious.

"Try it again," I encouraged her as calmly as I could, realizing that either the heat of the coffee must have either created a vacuum or my caffeine-deprived brain must have hallucinated her first unsuccessful attempt to pour me a cup of coffee.

Panic began to set in when her second attempt proved the vacuum theory. Again, trying to remain calm, I suggested that she just unscrew the top, bypassing the handy pour spout and releasing the vacuum. In her mind, her refusal due to particularly bumpy road conditions and a light-colored mauve blouse was completely reasonable. Right.

OK, time for Plan B. I dropped them off at the front door of the church, citing our lateness and the lack of parking spots. I drove around the block, finding a parkind spot and immediately poured a cup of that delicious brew. All it took was an extra twist of the screw top to release the vacuum. However, as I had already noted, the coffee was boiling when I poured it and it hadn't cooled substantially during the drive. That, of course, is the point of a thermos: to keep things hot. Damn our modern understanding of thermodynamics!

Fortunately, it was 20 degrees outside this morning, so all I had to do was let it sit in the car for 10 minutes and it would be gulpable. I walked into church as quietly as I could, joining my wife in the back and plotting just how I would get out to gulp down said cup of coffee.

I could claim the need for a bathroom break, but she knew I'd gone just before we left. Besides, the church door was incredibly squeaky due to the temperatures. There was no way to leave subtly and the priest had eyes like a hawk. I was in this for the whole hour. If only they gave us coffee during communion.

At every hallelujah, I thought "hallelujah for coffee!" I was pretty proud of myself for staying conscious, though. All in all, I made it through pretty well. Like I said, it's lucky that he gives a good sermon. It's also lucky that he made it quick today.

For some reason, though, as we were all filing out, my wife thought it would be a great time to have a conversation with Noah, trapping me in the pew. We were in the back row, for crying out loud! I was so close to that cup of coffee, thwarted again by my lovely Luddite. She's lucky she's so good looking.

The coffee was cold by the time we got to the car, but that was OK. All the better to drink you quickly and pour another cup, my dear. Do you think anyone would notice if I started carrying coffee in a hip flask? Or one of those hydration backpacks?

My kid really likes me

Noah, my generally snarky 16-year old, just got himself an account on ZDNet and gave me a thumbs up on a blog post. ZDNet has this weird system by which registered users can rate a post worthwhile (thumbs up) or not (thumbs down). Usually unless I write some sort of Mac Users are big Girly Men post, I'm pretty even on my thumbs up and thumbs down.

H0wever, my post today on a day in the life of my Classmate got some extra thumbs-downs. I can't imagine why as it was pretty benign, but to give my numbers a boost, he climbed the ZDNet comment wall and gave me a thumbs up. I'm now at -4, thanks to him.

How nice is that? It was quite the father-son bonding moment. Maybe tomorrow I'll teach him to drive a stick shift.

What is a Luddite?

My mom sent me an email yesterday asking me what a Luddite was, since she'd recently discovered this blog via my Twitter feed. To my wife's horror, my mom definitely keeps tabs on my life more via Twitter and by reading my ZDNet blog than by me actually corresponding with her. Of course, that's why she's a Luddite.

To answer my m0m's question, I gave her the current meaning of the word (someone who eschews the use of technology, sometimes because they believe it is damaging to our lives, but often because it's easier to reject something they don't understand) and then turned to Wikipedia for the historical meaning.

I had first heard of Luddites reading The Difference Engine (still reading it, by the way - it's among the several books that was set aside briefly so I could just blast through Slash), but I could hardly tell my mom to go check out this great piece of historical fiction about the Industrial Revolution in 19th century Britain. She looks at my Twitter feed because I don't call her enough and she lives in Seattle, not because she's anywhere near as geeky as I am.

Fortunately, Wikipedia had a picture of a Luddite worth sharing:
Nice looking guy, huh? Quite the fashion plate. It figures that they were largely textile manufacturers. Here's the important chunks of the Wikipedia definition:

The Luddites were a social movement of British textile artisans in the early nineteenth century who protested—often by destroying mechanized looms—against the changes produced by the Industrial Revolution, which they felt were leaving them without work.

The Luddite movement, which began in 1811, took its name from the fictive Ned Ludd [that's Ned in the picture]. For a short time the movement was so strong that it clashed in battles with the British Army. Measures taken by the government included a mass trial at York in 1812 that resulted in many executions and penal transportation.

Isn't Wikipedia great? I'm just glad my wife doesn't look like old Ned there.

Coraline

Gabriel loves to read, but sometimes I have to remind myself that he's only 6. We had been reading Coraline together (a brilliant book, directed at children, but worth a read at any age), but it got pretty scary, so we took a break.

He's taken up reading it again himself, so last night when I asked him what was happening in the chapter, he said, "She's in a closet."

"Why?" I asked.

"I don't know."

"Did her other mother put her there?"

"I think so..."

We went back and forth for a bit and, while he has no trouble telling me about what is happening in the Junie B. Jones books he reads, I think Neil Gaiman might be a little above his comprehension level. I guess we'll need to see the movie after we finish reading that one together.

On another Gaiman note, though, he just won the Newbery Medal for the Graveyard Book. Another kids' book on my list of must reads. He's on Twitter, by the way, but doesn't update nearly often enough.

Two words: Hand Sanitizer

I spent the day at one of our elementary schools rolling out a few pieces of software and really getting their mobile labs fully utilized. Of course, this meant spending the entire day in an elementary school. Elementary school is Old English for petri dish. Not only were there miniature people surrounding me today, but they were all coughing, sneezing, and picking their noses on the computers with which I was helping them.

The teachers had asked me before about the best way to clean the laptops before. Suddenly I understood why.

Then, after school, I talked with the teachers about the best headphones to get for the kids. Thinking of size and economy, I asked if the younger kids were all capable of wearing earbuds. One of the Kindergarten teachers looked at me and asked, "Have you seen the insides of their ears?"

We won't be ordering them earbuds. I was so happy to watch my wife clean Gabriel's ears in her normally thorough and efficient manner after his bath tonight. I will also be taking extra hand sanitizer with me tomorrow when I go back for day two of the innoculation...I mean, the rollout.

I have to get Classmates into our schools

I'll be writing a series of reviews on the convertible Intel Classmate this week. For right now, though, I'm sitting with Gabriel as he goes to sleep after reading a chapter of Coraline (he saw a preview today at Inkheart that said to read it before he saw it, so he decided to get back to it after taking a week's break). I'm actually typing this post on the mini-tablet and am really impressed.

I just did the handwriting recognition training and the little machine can even read my atrocious chicken scratch. So far, all I've really played with is ArtRage 2 - it's so cool that I can't wait to show our elementary art teacher.

This thing seriously kicks ass. Be blogging more tonight on ZDNet about it!

Don't you mean S-E-X?

Colby, ever tactful, mentioned sex in front of our youngest today. He was thoughtful enough to spell it, forgetting that Gabriel has become a remarkably good reader and speller for a first-grader. To mix things up a bit, my lovely Luddite made a vain attempt at spelling in Pig Latin to further the discussion. The next time she referred to E-X-S, Gabriel said, "Don't you mean S-E-X?"

Out of the mouths of babes, right?

An easy Sunday afternoon at home

If I can just get my family out the freakin' door. We just went shopping, did the church thing, and now they're getting ready to go to a movie (Slum Dog Millionaire and/or Inkheart). However, until they're gone, I can't get a damn thing done. If my darling Luddite could figure out the new vacuum (not even a Dyson...It's just a cheap-assed Target special), I could have at least finished this sentence uninterrupted. Of course, at the moment she seems to be in nesting mode, so everything needs to be cleaner and more orderly than usual. I'm hoping that she's just ovulating. Otherwise, I'll have bigger issues getting things done.

Here's my to do list:

• Figure out why the new tablet Classmate PC that Intel sent me to review seems to have a non-functional keyboard
• Replace our main family desktop with a mini-desktop that Acer sent me to review
• Apply for graduation (I still need to finish my Master's thesis, but I really have to get all the bureaucracy taken care of to make sure that I'm done in May).
• Organize my whole bloody office to make room for a giant family photography project and easier study space for the kids
• Write two blogs for tomorrow
• Finish a cell phone policy for the school district.

On the bright side, I just bought a Paula Dean percolator yesterday. There's nothing like percolated coffee to infuse you with caffeine.

Welcome!

Hi all...Welcome to my new blog, 5 Geeks and a Luddite. For regular readers of my ZDNet Education blog, it shouldn't be surprising that my wife is the Luddite and my four boys and I are, to varying degrees, the geeks. Bear in mind that I use the term geek in only the most positive sense. And we still love our little Luddite.

As I was relating a story the other day about one of my kids, though, I realized that it was pretty funny. In fact, it was blog-worthy. I write a couple posts a day for ZDNet, but only tend to peripherally talk about my family. My family, however, is pretty wacky.

So here goes: a personal blog centered around my family and my crazy life, as well as a grand experiment to see if I can actually generate some page views writing what amounts to a column.

By way of introduction, I'm Chris Dawson. My mom and wife will tell you that it's Christopher, but they're the only ones who call me that, along with a few close friends who picked up the bad habit from my wife. I'm the Director of Technology for a small school district in rural northern Massachusetts.

My wife, the lovely Luddite, is a stay-at-home mom when she isn't working at our local post office (it's right next door since we live in a tiny little town). Her name is Dawn.

Then there's the four other geeks: Gabriel is 6 and was tearful last night because Dawn wouldn't let him make a Twitter account. Stormy is 13, listens to terrible music, and lives by his new iPod Touch. The Touch actually brought him over to the dark side of geekdom; welcome, Stormy. Colby is 15 and a master of all things console. Noah is 16 and a big drama geek.

So that's us. Check back for stories, thoughts, irritations, and everything that goes into raising a family of six in the digital age.