On a night like this…

…the moon is almost as big as a streetlight.

Imaginastics

Today was the last day of Margo’s Imaginastics class. She was absolutely in her element, and we had a blast watching her unabashed delight.

You really shoulda been there. I’m glad I was. It was the kind of afternoon that makes quitting my last job and taking a position close to home seem completely worthwhile.

Let’s see about this photo upload…mostly, I took video, and the in-phone editing tool is just as awesome as it looks in the commercials. But this app doesn’t seem to allow video upload, or I’m not doing somehing right. So here’s a couple of photos from the after-class crazy time.

There’s an app for this?

I may not have mentioned that a month or two ago, I caved into Em’s legitimate, persistent suggestion that our cell phones were old and cracked and unreliable and so on…and that my work/home balance would be greatly served by an iPhone.

Yesterday it occurred to me that there’s probably a free WordPress app (I refuse to pay for any additional capability on this thing, since I’m not even close to utilizing the zillion features that you get for ‘free’).

And so, here I sit on the El with no excuse for not posting something. Consider this a test.

Next up, I’ll try some pix and video of today’s main event.

Namesake

Today I met a three-day-old twin boy who belongs to two joyous and grateful parents.

Unlike me, he will not know much solitude in his childhood.

Like me, he will be doted on by parents who waited and hoped for some time before having children.

Unlike me, he will grow up amid the smells of dogs and espresso beans.

Like me, he is named Lucas.

I don’t really have any words to explain or describe this, other than these:

J. and D., I am honored to be a part of this boy’s life.  May God bless him and his brother with friends like you.

Toot on, son

Have I mentioned that I’m tutoring a college student in Spanish? Oddly enough, I’m unabashedly teaching to the test. It’s an entirely mercenary venture. He pays me to teach the thing I most love to teach, with the goal of not learning any more than absolutely necessary.

And yet, if I don’t teach him enough, he won’t pass his placement test, so he’ll have to take a class or two of Spanish that he’d rather not have to take (instead of something more in line with his primary areas of study)…and he’ll have wasted the money he’s using to buy my time.

It’s a grand exercise in capitalism, really. I hope it works.

So, what about you? What do you love to teach or explain? Would you do it for a little extra money if you had the chance? What about if you *knew* that the person you were teaching had no desire to retain anything you were teaching? Who is the true purist — the tutor who teaches a subject passionately, regardless of his audience or its motivation, or the tutor who will only teach in an atmosphere of proper respect for the subject?

Broadsided

In honor of my recent commenter, lifelong cousin, and consistent birthday-gift-giver, I must offer here a shout-out about Broadsided.  (Broadsided’s current issue features art by her husband, Gabe, and a couple of years ago, they featured her own work.)  But while Broadsided has chosen work by people I personally know, love, and admire, that’s not the coolest thing about it.  I am completely taken by the whole  idea from two completely different perspectives…

First, it’s another step in publishing technology:  if I happen to corner you at a party, I am wont to ramble on excitedly about the pros and cons of the Interwebs as a publishing medium.  Broadsided, methinks, gets it all spot-on.  It relies on local support for distributed, donated, public, hard-copy publishing.  I believe the word the cool kids are using is ‘crowdsourcing’, a neologism I happen to love…but because the results are posted any/everywhere, instead of only on hipsters’ chests, it’s also got an element of graffiti to it, which might fit under a larger umbrella of  something you might call ‘guerrilla publishing’.  [Thanks again to the Spanish, by the way, for the use of the word guerrilla, not to mention their quixotic, crowdsourced, unarmed resistance to a certain tiny French megalomaniac.]

Second, I think they have a great approach to word/image pairing:  in the pre-computer era, illustrations were often side projects, mere decorations to enhance the attractiveness (or sale price) of the physical published object.  Not so with certain genres of children’s books, of course–but those are far more expensive per page to produce, and they are designed for a very specialized market and/or purpose.  Don’t get me wrong:  I love reg’lar ol’ unillustrated prose, and I love children’s books.  But in the computer age, you’d have to be living completely ‘off the grid’ to miss the fact that composition tools, publishing capabilities, and even design philosophy have developed to encourage an integral relationship between word and image.  And there’s some really fascinating stuff going on there–for example, at Broadsided.

So, what exactly is it?  It’s four steps:

1. A writer submits an original short piece.
2. An artist calls ‘dibs’ and creates an original page design for that piece.
3. Broadsided publishes (that is, ‘makes public’) a new resulting word/image pairing each month on their website.
4. You print it out and post it wherever you think people would/could/should have the opportunity to see/read/enjoy it.

So, then…get thee to an inkjet.

Go outside, Chicagoans!

Chicagoans, if you’re reading this, I hope you’re near a window or outside on a fancy phone.  This is what Fall is supposed to be.  This is the kind of day that pays us back for enduring the winters up here.  The sun and the leaves won’t actually wash away the bad economy or H1N1 or anything else that’s stressing you out, and it won’t conclusively prove the existence of God or otherwise clarify the meaning of life, but if you’re not basking in the glory of the gift of this day, I hope you have a good reason.  (For my money, football on TV, or any TV at all, is not a sufficiently good reason.  Take your own ball, or your favorite book, or your dearly beloved and go outside.)

That is all.

Rain, rain, back again (and here to stay)

Apparently we’re due for about seven days straight of this October mess.   I’ve got a hot date tonight with a beautiful lady (if you haven’t seen her lately, by the way, she’s growing her hair out and it looks terrific!), so I’d rather not start the day with vaqueros empapados.  I think I’ll bike walk drive to work today.

(Also, two days of this with no water yet in the basement is a very good sign.)

Anyway, in small talk the last few days, I’ve noticed that one topic comes up a lot is how much we do or do not check the weather.  I am, by default, not a weather-checker.  I like to think that I’m cultivating contentment with whatever comes my way, preventing worry, and remembering that the rain falls on the righteous and the unrighteous; but if I’m honest with myself, it’s also a luxury (symptom?) of being a city mouse.

What about you?  Is a weather forecast part of your regular daily/weekly habit?  When you check the weather, are you thinking about how (in)dependent we are vis-á-vis Mother Nature…not to mention the technology we have to protect us from her?

Take a moment to imagine how much everything would be different (and was) without ways to see what’s “written on the wind”–and even read ahead.

Whew!

We have a new nephew, Ray, as of Saturday afternoon.  He came two weeks early, breaking the pattern set by his five overcooked siblings, but that was not the only surprise he had up his sleeve.  He also surprised everyone with a frightening and potentially life-threatening labor/delivery.  Thanks to some Providential timing/logistics for getting to the hospital, and a postpartum blood transfusion for his mom, everybody’s doing fine.

[Some details removed for the sake of privacy and the weak-stomached.]

Ray is the first boy born into the family since early 2002, leaving Rique alone among six girls in the younger cohort of cousins.  He gives us some hope that Rique will have a playmate who shares his preference for cars over dress-up, and balances the genders at 7 to 7 overall.

Rique and I are excited to meet him (although Rique doesn’t know it yet).

A fish story (chapter 1): Death and fishes

We discovered last night that Ella had died.  The beagle may or may not be a suspect.  Let the record reflect, however, that her breath has smelled fishy lately (literally), she was caught drinking out of the fishbowl this morning, and when Em moved the bowl she followed along, prancing, as if Em was holding a treat.

I missed the “burial” this morning, but I don’t doubt there will be others.  We’ve decided to give each girl one ’second chance’ fish.  I’m kinda rooting for Ella’s successor to be named Enna.  However, there’s really no great place for the pattern to go from there.  Owa?  Peeah?  No thanks.