The “Zen Traffic” game. When you’re stuck in traffic anywhere, rather than stewing, play the Zen Traffic game: look around and find the most interesting thing you can see that you normally would not see because you’d be zooming along. This can be played solo or with fellow passengers.
Recently Jan and Liya were stuck coming home in the annoying late afternoon traffic that backs up through the Arboretum. Instead of letting this bother them, they played Zen Traffic — and noticed an otherwise invisible door in the fence at the north corner of the Japanese Garden. We’ve driven past there a million times and never even seen it. So getting stuck in traffic can — if you expend some effort — can be viewed as a small opportunity.
Anya and Liya’s school holds their annual Spring Concert. Liya’s class sings “Would You Like to Swing on a Star?”, as well as an instrumental piece.
Anya’s 4th grade takes their turn at the Spring Concert.
This evening Jan and Bree are on their own for dinner, and Jan lets Bree pick where to eat. Eschewing her normal favorites, Bree picks the semi-fancy Italian restaurant Cafe Parco, just a block or so from our house. She dresses for the occasion, choosing a nice summer dress and a pink headband. She fidgets a bit throughout the meal, and occasionally gets out of her chair, but when reminded that it was she who had picked the fancy restaurant, she climbs back in her seat again.
Anya, Liya, and Jan are learning Morse code. Anya started learning with her friend Jane as a way to pass messages during class, like WWII prisoners in a war movie. Jan found a fun little iPhone app that lets two people send and receive Morse code, beeps and all. We’re slowly getting better and sending and receiving individual letters. One of Anya’s first messages to Jan included one of Anya’s vocabulary words for the week: “Can we read [a book] now, I beseech you.” Which actually sounds pretty telegraph-like.
Jan buys an ancient telegraph relay on eBay. It’s probably from an old railroad line telegraph station, and easily a hundred years old. It will become the first piece of the forthcoming Miksovsky Electric Telegraph Company trunk line, which is envisioned carrying messages between Anya and Liya’s bedroom and Jan’s home office.
Liya’s class holds the 3rd grade’s annual trial of Gretel, the girl in the story of Hansel and Gretel who pushes the witch into the oven. A necessary act of self defense, or was it 2nd degree murder? Liya’s part of the Defense team (shown here striking a serious pose). The jury deliberated for a surprisingly long time, and ultimately could not agree on a verdict, letting Gretel off with a hung jury.
Sabriya’s ballet class
At the same time Jan is trying to purchase and wire up old telegraph equipment, he’s also trying to upgrade our home network from DSL to cable. Our DSL modem was on the bleeding edge some 15 years ago when we first got it — for the original DSL hook-up, the telephone carrier had to upgrade the equipment connecting Madison Park to the closest phone switching station. Now DSL is poky compared to the speeds we could get on cable, but Jan’s postponed an upgrade for several years because he was certain it’s going to be a huge pain.
And, in fact, the upgrade turns out to be exactly as much of a huge pain as Jan had projected. Jan plugs in the new cable modem and it — quite naturally — fails to work. Drawing on long experience, Jan goes down to the garage, where the cable modem sits, and sets up a small customer-service-call station: a comfy camp chair, a little table, a cup of hot tea, and an iPad with a new book on it. He can then make the call to Comcast customer service and spend the inevitable hour being handed from one customer service representative to another in perfect comfort.
Interestingly, one can find entire web communities dedicated to collecting and operating antique telegraph equipment. It somehow seems unlikely that, a hundred years from now, there will be a similar community dedicated to collecting and operating antique cable modems.
Anya and Liya have developed a breakfast habit of reciting a health pitch on the back of the Cheerios box. They’ve read this so many times, they like to say it in unison in their best advertising voice:
“What makes your heart beat a little faster? Passion. For something you love to do. And whatever you love to do, you’ll need a healthy heart to do it. Whole grain oats, like those in Cheerios cereal, can help do something good for your heart: lower cholesterol. Love you heart so you can do what you love!”
This has prompted a number of mini-lectures on the limitations of what breakfast cereal, and a fixation on nutrient content thereof, can do to improve your health.
Anya and Liya discover half the Internet in five minutes. A while back the girls were using the kitchen laptop, and they thought of searching on the Internet for pictures of themselves. A few minutes later, they had the idea that they could use the same tool to search for pictures of their friends. Some of the resulting pictures showed topless women. So in the space of five minutes, the girls have learned that the Internet is good for narcissism, stalking, and porn. All that remains is for them to discover flame wars, casual video games, and cat photos with silly sayings on them, and their Internet education will be complete.
Mother’s Day high tea at The Fairmont
Bike to School Day! Jan joins Liya for the 6+ mile ride from our house. Last year we started north of the Arboretum, but this year Jan works a route to and through the Arboretum that avoids the very busy and tight main road through the park. After a week of warm weather, it turns out to be really cold this morning! Liya keeps rubbing her hands whenever we stop. She does great, though, and we make it to school with just enough time for Liya to fill out a Walk/Bike/Carpool to School Week raffle ticket before she has to run into to class. Way to go, Liya!
Jan takes Liya and Bree on the family-friendly hike to Lower Falls at Wallace Falls State Park. (Anya, who tends to complain these days about hikes, is away for the weekend with Angela.) Liya does great and Bree, after dragging a bit on the hike up, fairly scampers on the way back down.
Seattle has fantastic municipal recycling and composting programs. Even as our family and its needs have grown over the past ten years, we’ve continually reduced the amount of stuff we throw out that’s destined for a landfill. Years ago, we would fill two cans of garbage each week, and a few years ago were able to reduce that to one. Recently noticed the sole remaining 32-gallon garbage can was rarely full, so this month we downgraded even that to a mini 20-gallon can.
This morning Anya is, as usual, the first in the car to go to school. She shouts for Jan and Liya to hurry up when Liya takes a long time to put on her shoes.
When we got to school, Anya suddenly says, “Oh! Um… Daddy? I forgot to put on shoes.”
She walks into school in bare feet. Angela has to swing by later to drop off a pair of shoes.