What will the future hold? Following hard on a trip to Japan and a Cozi board meeting, Jan spends a busy day and a half getting ready for Cozi’s annual all-company offsite meeting. For one portion of the day, Jan orchestrates a group discussion exploring people’s motivations for working at Cozi. Jan has fun creating folded paper “fortune tellers”. Along the lines of the standard grade school amusement, in this case the fortune tellers posit various company success/failure scenarios for people to consider.
Xin Nian Kuai Le! Chinese New Year was actually on Thursday, but today is the day Sabriya’s Saturday Chinese school is celebrating the day with a long music and culture program. We get there early to help set up. The program is somewhat disorganized, but it’s fun to watch Sabriya’s class all dressed up for their two song numbers.
Anya starts a short sequence of rock climbing classes that will run for several Sundays evenings. She’d seemed to miss the exercise of fall soccer, so we’re trying this as a physical activity.
Jan and Anya complete the computer game “Myst”. Jan and Angela had played the 2nd and 3rd of the five game Myst series, but we’d never played the original one from 1993 (nearly twenty years ago!). The game’s makers have re-released the game for iPhones and iPads, so Jan and Anya have been playing Myst on his iPad for the past couple of months. They’ve done this in place of their traditional pre-bedtime reading, which means they’ve only been playing for 20 or 30 minutes at a stretch, and some nights don’t play at all. The game’s groundbreaking graphics are somewhat dated now, but the gameplay itself has held up pretty well. It was fun making maps and keeping notes of numbers, patterns, and other cryptic information, and working together to solve the puzzles.
As an early birthday present for Angela, the whole family goes to see the Pacific Northwest Ballet’s performance of “Cinderella”. Jan arrives with Anya and Liya at Seattle Center with quite some time to spare, so the girls happily tear around the plaza before we settled down to lunch at Savor. There are tons of little girls in various princess costumes. The ballet is nice but long, and Bree doesn’t quite make it to the second intermission. Jan watches the last act on the lobby TV while Sabriya runs around.
Anya fans paper scraps across our floor and starts to run off.
Angela: Really? Really, Anya? Are you going to pick that up?
Anya: Oh, right.
Jan: It’s like living with an ape.
Busy girls. Anya has a playdate, Liya has a playdate, and Sabriya has a birthday party at Little Gym.
Sometimes Jan feels like he lives in a sorority house. Angela suggests naming the sorority Alpha Lambda Sigma (for the girls’ initials). Jan’s okay with having ΑΛΣ printed on sweatshirts, but says he will draw the line at ΑΛΣ shot glasses.
Angela turns 40! We have a nice little celebration at home. Jan’s working today, so in lieu of preparing a big dinner, he makes special arrangements with our friends at the nearby Madison Park Cafe to bring home some of their tasty cassoulet. (The girls get mac and cheese.)
The Fun They Had. Jan goes to Liya’s second grade classroom as the day’s Mystery Reader: a parent who reads a book to the students for 10-15 minutes while they have a morning snack. Jan’s selection was the science fiction short story, The Fun They Had by Isaac Asimov.
The writing is pretty wooden, but it’s fairly thought-provoking for a short piece. Asimov wrote the story in 1951, and Jan remembers reading it sometime in the mid-70s. At the time, the story’s content was still highly speculative. 35 years later, the notion of a “telebook” is a reality—although Asimov thought we might read books on a TV, with little idea that an e-book reader would actually be book-sized. The notion that students would submit homework via punch cards is hilarious, although the idea of widespread use of distance learning (preposterous in the 1950s) might well prove uncannily accurate. The kids all laugh at the idea of a teacherbot, but bemoan the possibility that someday their beloved books (and bookstores) might disappear.
For bonus irony, Jan reads the story to the kids using his iPad.
Someday I will get to drive…
During the girls’ mid-winter break, we head up to Whistler, BC, for a few days. The ride goes amazingly smoothly: no frequent rest stops, and no wait at the border. We play a card game which Jan’s mom gave the girls for the trip: a sort of car bingo game, where each card has something you’re supposed to spot outside the car. This turns out to be pretty fun. Some cards are easy (a “Green Car”, “Traffic Light”, etc.). Others are hard. On the pine-forested cliffs of the Sea-to-Sky Highway, it’s hard to find a “skyscraper”, for example.
Whistler, Day One. It’s cold here. Not just the normal winter sort of cold you get up in the mountains—there’s some sort of Arctic blast coming down from northern Canada that has even the locals talking about the temperature.
We drop Bree off for her first day of ski school. Anya and Liya had learned at the same ski school, and generally liked it, so we have hopes Bree will as well. She’s not altogether happy with being dropped off, however.
Since Angela’s knee is still recovering from surgery at the beginning of January, her plan is to spend the few days we’re here getting ready for the class she’ll TA during spring semester. That leaves Jan to ski with Anya and Liya. We head up the main Whistler gondola and ride it all the way to the top. As soon as we step outside, the cold hits us. The weather report says 90 kph winds; the wind chill brings the temperature to -26C (-15F). We gamely snap into our skis and head down, but it’s hard going. It’s head-achingly cold, and each time we come over a rise on the ski run, a blast of wind hits us. At the midstation, Jan asks the girls if they want to get back up on the gondola for another run—or head back down to the village for hot cocoa. The vote is unanimous: In favor of Arctic wind: 0; in favor of hot cocoa: 3.
We check our skis for the day, and get the promised hot cocoa at Moguls. Angela meets up with us, and the four of us spend the rest of the day walking around the village. We shop for balaclavas for the girls so they’ll be warmer when we try skiing again tomorrow. (It takes us a while to remember that a “balaclava” is headgear, and “baklava” is a dessert made with honey and nuts.) We pick Bree up from ski school. Apparently, the school kids spent most of their day indoors too.
Dinner at night is Korean barbecue at Celadon. Anya and Liya have a great time grilling their own food.
Whistler, Day Two. Bree doesn’t want to go to ski school again, and the drop-off is somewhat heart-wrenching. Jan skis again with Anya and Liya. Today’s weather is a bit warmer, so we have a good day on Whistler. It’s still cold enough that we use only the gondola to ride up. It’s fun to watch Anya and Liya on skis now. Liya’s not using poles yet, but she’s quiet fast.
Angela, for her part, takes a break from studying to get a massage. We all meet up at 3:15 to pick Bree up from ski school. Per Bree’s request, Angela has brought Bree’s favorite Lambie. Bree is delighted to see everyone, including Lambie. The five of us have another round of hot chocolate at Lift Coffee, which the girls assert has better hot chocolate.
In the evening, a babysitter arrives to watch the girls while Jan and Angela go out for dinner at Araxi. After dinner it’s too cold to walk around the village, so we spend the remainder of our date night in a warm bookstore.
Whistler, Day Three. Bree’s last drop-off at ski school is still not exactly smooth. She keeps moaning the words, “But Daddy…!” At least this time there are no tears. Jan takes Anya and Liya skiing on Blackcomb. The weather continues to warm up, and there’s a bit of snow. After lunch, we ride the Peak 2 Peak gondola across the valley to Whistler to finish the afternoon there. Jan picks up Bree. Her instructor, Katy, indicates that Bree was “a completely different kid today” and very chatty. Before Jan returns Bree’s rental skis, Bree walks around on snow in her skis, and laughs when Jan pulls or pushes her along. Dinner is at Crepe Montagne for cheese fondue, which isn’t bad (although we have to say ours is better). Everyone’s exhausted and turns in very early.
Drive back home. It’s been snowing for hours when we wake up, and continues to snow all morning. Bree has great fun playing in the snow outside the rental condo. She pushes her booted feet into a snowbank, then pulls them out. She tries poking her gloved hands in. Finally she pushes her head (with hat) into the snowbank.
We pack up and join a line of cars moving slowly south. We play the car bingo card game some more. Anya complains that she’s gotten a “Convertible” card, and is unlikely to spot anyone driving a convertible in this snowstorm. It takes us well over an hour just to reach the town of Squamish, so we have lunch there; normally we’d be in Vancouver by now. Further south, the weather turns to pelting rain. At least the border crossing turns out to be mercifully short.