PAgent’s Progress

I’m terribly sorry, but I’ve been somewhat disjointed as of late, and you’re going to have to suffer through a bit of stream-of-consciousness.

High-Definition Television is the greatest thing EVER. Between the crisp detail of the image, the size of the image, and the wide aspect ratio, this is what television should look like. This has been one giant step toward the future that I was promised, when robots would attend to our every need, we would have flying cars, and holographic screens in our homes. OK, it isn’t holographic, but it’s the next best thing to it.

We watched a hi-def special on cave diving in the Florida panhandle, and it was simply stunningly beautiful. It was as close as I ever want or need to get to being 160 feet underwater in a limestone cave.

Why is pop music such crap right now? I listen to a particular radio station in the morning because I like the personalities. Unfortunately they interrupt the playful banter occasionally to play music. God, it’s awful. Four-chord progressions, vapid lyrics, slurred pronunciation, typically all in the same song. Why do people listen to this crap?

It seems to me that every other generation has to suffer awful music. The 60’s was all about rock and roll, and the fusion of folk with rock. Then came disco. The 80’s was the influx of electronica, the influence of punk, and the emergence of New Wave. Then came Tiffany and Debbie Gibson. Grunge and alternative rock was gritty and had some real emotion in it. Now we have Kelly Clarkson, and songs with choruses like this:

Well somebody told me
You had a boyfriend
Who looks like a girlfriend
That I had in February of last year
It’s not confidential
I’ve got potential

What the hell does that mean?!? I think I’m turning into an old man. Damn kids and their Gawdawful music.

I’ve been listening to excerpts from the journals of Lewis and Clark on CD. It’s been unexpectedly interesting. First of all, when these guys weren’t sick, they were in some kind of wicked good shape. After sailing upstream all day, they’d go for a 12 or 20 mile hike to survey the area, then get up in the morning and do it again. Nearly every day involved walking distances that would cripple me in short order. And this doesn’t even consider the portages, the poling, etc. The physical effort required to complete their expedition was Herculean.

Secondly, something that comes through their writing is a sense that these were men who wanted to do the right thing at all times, in all their efforts. Although many of their comments regarding the natives of the areas they passed through can now seem racist, or at least intolerant, I think we need to view them through the lens of their own experience. I think their own words show that they were basically good, honest men. This first push through the northwest territory could have gone very badly indeed, if different men had been charged with this expedition.

I am particularly enjoying the sections recounting the winter layover of the expedition time at Fort Clatsop, near the mouth of the Columbia River. They spend a great deal of time complaining of the constant rain. It’s good to know that some things haven’t changed, at least. This morning’s edition of The Oregonian noted that this has been the wettest January in three decades. We’ve had nearly 10 inches of rain in Portland, the most since January 1970, when 11.81 inches fell. But wait, there’s more! Forecasters expect up to another inch or more today, as another strong storm arrives.

I will never dry out.

I need to start riding my bike to work again. However, in addition to the everpresent precipitation, there is another factor at work here: Sunrise and Sunset Times in Portland in February. Riding in the rain AND the dark just sounds like a recipe for disaster on my bike. I’ll have to evaluate day by day when I feel like I can start riding in.

When will my children want to sleep with their bedroom doors closed? I can understand as little ones they wanted to be able to see a little extra light. My daughter, in particular, had real problems with a dark room and usually had a night light that could function equally well as a navigation beacon. The wife and I leave our bedroom door ajar, partly because that way we can hear it if any of them is throwing up, having a nightmare, or falling out of bed. We also keep the door ajar because our house has settled in such a way that quite a few of the doors don’t quite close properly. I have sanded and planed our bedroom door until you can actually close it, but it requires a bit of effort to do so, so we usually leave it ajar. Maybe as the wife and I grow more and more hard of hearing, and turn the Home Theater sound higher and higher in the evenings, the kids will be forced to close their doors in order to get to some sleep. But I doubt it.

I am looking forward to watching Seattle play in the Superbowl this weekend. I still don’t quite believe that they’re even playing in the game, much less hoping they’ll win it. I’m trying to keep my expectations pleasantly low.

Today was Pinewood Derby Day. The local assisted living center, where we sang Christmas carols, kindly hosted the event.

The boy’s derby car was done. And I have to admit, it looked pretty sweet:

The design was 100% the boy’s, and the color scheme was 100% the boy’s. I probably did too much of the actual woodwork, and I tidied up his paint job a bit. Number 90 looked a bit more professional than even some of the older boy’s cars, which made me feel a bit guilty. But in my defense, I’m not really ready for the boy to be using edged tools, and we’ve never done this before. It was hard for me to know exactly where to draw the line between ‘helping’ and ‘building’.

I know I didn’t worry enough about the weight of the car. It’s allowed to be up to five ounces. Which meant that everyone that was under five ounces was screwing lead weights, strapping pocket change, and taping batteries to their derby cars to bring the total weight up. We came in at 4.3 ounces and I was just happy we were under the weight limit. It didn’t really occur to me to try and get it closer to the maximum weight.

The ramp was longer than I expected, much longer.

We had heard that this ramp had been in the troop for untold ages, and was periodically refurbished when needed. It had a pretty slick timing system, though, with photocell detectors in each lane.

In the trial run, the boy’s car came in second. In the first heat, he came in second, but the timer malfunctioned, so it didn’t count. In each of the real heats, he came in third. They were all close, though, and I think that if I had taken the trouble to put another half-ounce of lead on his car, he might have won a couple of them.

How did he take it? Well, I think he would have been okay with second, but coming in dead last every time bummed him out pretty badly. Fortunately, every kid got an award of some kind (part of the feel-good self-esteem liberal agenda) so number 90 was awarded “Best Design” among the Tiger Cubs. This made the boy very happy, but not as happy as the little laminated ‘Pinewood Derby’ driver’s license with his picture on it. THAT made him really happy.

The folks in the assisted-living center enjoyed having an entire pack of hyperactive kids in uniform running around their dining room. Most of them stayed and watched every single heat. Some of them may not have understood what was going on, but the noise and the kids seemed to make them happy.

So, what have I learned? I learned that I need to let him do more of the construction, even if it scares me. I learned that I need to worry about weight. I learned that when you let the six-year-olds go first, they don’t have to sit and be patient before their heats, but that the long wait after their heats is murder (“Byron! Do NOT jump over the track during a heat!” “Kevin! Sit DOWN!”). And I learned that I really enjoy making little wooden cars.

Interesting.

I love this GIF. I stole it from FrokeOut at LinkFilter this evening.

At girl scout meetings, the girls sometimes act out. They chat among themselves. They interrupt the leader. They crack jokes at inappropriate times. Mostly, it is my daughter doing these things.

Cub scouts are not like girl scouts. Cub scouts are little balls of hyperactive disobedience. They can’t sit still, they can’t keep quiet, they can’t even exert the willpower to stop throwing a balloon into the air for two minutes. Oy vey.

Well, I survived the den meeting, and we continue to prep the boy’s rocket car for Saturday’s Pinewood Derby. It got a coat of sanding sealer tonight. And I filed and sanded the regulation axles (nails) to decrease rolling resistance. Again, I’m not hoping for earth-shattering performance, I just want it to roll in a straight line. I think we’re on track to finish up by race time Saturday afternoon.

We took the kids out for Thai tonight. Dinner was quite tasty. We’re very lucky that the kids are budding gourmets. The girl likes shrimp phad thai, while the boy eats sticky rice and lemongrass pork skewers. The wife had dungeness crab phad thai, a seasonal special. I had a ‘Thai chicken pot pie’, an interesting take on comfort food that’s basically a chunky thai chicken curry in puff pastry. It was good. Not as good as the drunken noodles I usually get, but good.

And after dinner we stepped out into the Beaverton round, into the cold, dark rain. Damn, I’m getting tired of winter. Oh, for the days when you can actually DO something after dinner, other than scurry back inside like a startled possum. Two days of sunshine was not nearly enough.

I know, bitch, bitch, bitch. Rain makes the trees happy. I should be content.

Please note that I have revised the ‘Links’ section in the left column. All of the blogs and other sites listed there are fascinating, well-written, and thought-provoking. Or they belong to people to whom I owe money. In any event, they are listed for your edification, so go get edified.

Tonight I am accompanying my son to his Tiger Cub den meeting. This is the last meeting before the Pinewood Derby this weekend. His car is slowly coming together. Last night I glued the jet engines in place. Yes, I should have screwed them down, and I have nightmares of them popping off right before the race. Nevertheless, I couldn’t think of a foolproof way to do it, and when I told my son I should screw them down he said “then they will look funny”. So, we will just see how well ‘Gorilla Glue’ lives up to its name.

Tonight, if we have time, we should apply ‘Sanding Sealer’, and do a final sanding with fine sandpaper. Then I can finally turn the boy loose with paints. While he’s painting I can smooth the ‘axles’ a bit. Although I have done almost all the woodworking, the design is 100% his. He knew exactly what he wanted, after we viewed some Derby cars online.

And he wanted Big Jet Engines. He’s such a boy. I love him to death.

If I have one concern, it is that he will take this too seriously. If you do a search for “Pinewood Derby Car” online, you will in short order discover that some folks take this race way too seriously. There’s a winning at all costs mentality, with tips for increasing the aerodynamics, decreasing the rolling resistance, and lead weights for sale to get up to the legal weight limit. Honestly, I would hope that winning wouldn’t be the primary reason to participate. I think the boy and I are having a good time just building the car. I’m hoping it will roll unassisted down the ramp, but other than that I’m trying not to have any expectations at all. I just hope nothing happens to make him feel bad about how the race goes.

We’ve had sunshine two days in a row. I feel like a reptile that has crawled up out of a dark, dank cave and into the sun. I keep marvelling at the sky. “Look at that! It’s blue! Have you ever seen anything like it?” If this keeps up, the ground might actually dry out.

So Seattle is going to the Super Bowl.

I heard this from a trio of flying pigs who had been unable to land in Hell due to icy conditions at the airfield. But seriously.

I’m not much of a football fan. Seattle is the only team I ever really cared about. I used to watch the Seahawks during the (relative) glory days of ‘Ground Chuck’, Zorn-passes-to-Largent, and Curt Warner zigzagging up the field. But then I went to Illinois, and frankly, over the next twenty years, I didn’t have much reason to get excited again, so I stopped watching football entirely.

This latest winning streak caught me by surprise. Seattle? In an NFC Championship game? This must be some kind of joke.

But there they were, in their dark blue uniforms with an ever-so-minimal pinstripe of Seahawk green, beating up on Carolina. I watched the game in glorious high-definition, and it was a pleasure to see them playing so well. It was a beautiful thing.

And now I find myself in the unexpected and utterly unfamiliar position of being excited about the Super Bowl. And NOT just because of the commercials.

How odd.

My kids asked me what a ’sequel’ was the other day. Without even thinking about it, I said “A sequel is the really bad movie that comes after a really good one.”

Call me Nostradamus.

Unnecessary Sequel Watch at Too Pretty For Math.