Television and Me

Tonight was a viewing night. We finished watching some cool Olympic events, Sasha went to bed and I launched Netflix. Three hours later, I'm posting a blog about it. Kind of odd to be making that kind of transition, when I should be sleeping, but I'll get there shortly. It's important to start with the last show I watched, an older anime called Fruits Basket. An imaginative show that in 20 minutes introduces the main character (a high school girl) and all the hardships she had endured to this point and how she meets a family that turns into zodiac animals when hugged. Yeah, it's strange, but I had read the manga and wanted to see how it was animated. And Fruits Basket is like nothing ever seen on American television. And I thought, "These are stories told in an awesome fashion that cannot be matched by what we produce here!" Especially since, prior to Fruits Basket, I watched the intro to an episode of Last Exile, another anime series that is a little older. But instead of high school girls, it's huge flying ships that battle and the couriers that fly messages and all sorts of crazy things. Amazing story that I had seen before, but I enjoyed the intro enough to watch it and get the taste. Again, nothing to match it in our part of the world. "If only we had stories like that!" I thought. Then I remembered what I had watched right after turning on Netflix. Not an animated show. Nothing that wasn't filmed here in the good 'ol North American continent. (I think they flim in Canada.) The SyFy show Warehouse 13. Season three just became available on Netflix, so I finally could view it. And it took a supreme act of willpower to have only watched two episodes. Warehouse 13 is a light modern science fiction show about items that gained supernatural powers due to the cultural significance of their owners. The first episode I watched started with Jimi Hendrix's guitar shooting out lightning and it went from there. I could have watched until the sun rose. This is not a kind of story I have seen in Japanese anime or manga. Very American and very cool. So as my mind went over this, the next question was how can I share this love of stories with the kids? I want them to get that same kind of thrill from a new story concept. To be able to appreciate all stories and enjoy telling them as well some day. Everything I watched tonight was too old for the kids. But all of those stories I saw and appreciated required knowledge of previous stories to make sense. And thus my plan is to keep going forward with what I do now. Read to them a lot. Bedtime involves books and that is something that Sasha and I will never change. Once those stories take root, be it the basic fairy tales, or the creatively silly Olivia books, Alya and Marcus will have the foundation to build an appreciation of latter books/shows/manga/graphic novels. And that will be cool to share with them. Be seeing you.

Let's Make Some Choices, Daddy

Originally when I came up with this concept I thought, "That would be fun to put on Facebook." Then I realized it would take far too many words and Facebook, as we all know, is not a good medium for the short attention span. So it's off to the slowly, rolling blog that amazingly still exists. In the past three hours I have made many choices that impacted my life, my children and my wife, but it was nothing new or unusual. More like a survival mechanism or a method of trying to get things done before it has gone too far. Tonight I have a sample of choices presented in the classic Good Idea/Bad Idea format. Let's take a look. Good Idea: Managed to feed all three of us on five dollars and fifty cents. Bad Idea: It was McDonalds. Good Idea: Refuse the option of getting happy meals for the kids. Bad Idea: Go along with McD's apple pie for dessert. Good Idea: Make sure the lawn is mowed since it was already past due. Bad Idea: Let the kids eat crap food (and fresh apples) while watching tv to stay out of trouble. Good Idea: Convince the kids to go outside after dinner and run around playing frisbee. Bad Idea: Still have to finish mowing the lawn while keeping an eye on them. Good Idea: Stay outside with them when the lawn is done and play together. Bad Idea: I don't think crawling under a moving tire swing is something to encourage a kid to do when retrieving a thrown frisbee. But I did it anyway. Sasha and I both have solo nights with the kids and that's not a bad thing. But the number of choices and decisions that are made on the fly in these situations are astounding. And each one builds on the next. Alya was brought to tears twice - she's the crier to Mommy & Daddy - and Marcus was only made truly upset once. And that is all to be expected. After all, I am their Daddy, not their buddy. But I was also barking the instructions for them to make that belly crawl under a moving tire swing. I think we all got a kick out of that. And then that final choice. Write this post up instead of doing dishes/making lunches/sorting laundry. But once in a while I have to make a choice for me too.

Living the Classic Life

Today, I took Alya and Marcus to the Midwest Gaming Classic over in Brookfield. First time for them, but my third visit. It's a fun show with lots of great classic video gaming.

This is a place for the oldest of the old school - with a few modern splashes - and is a veritable museum for those who started young.

Now the kids have been playing the original Super Mario Bros on the Wii, they have not seen the rest of the old stuff I've got sitting around. However, this was the best place to show my roots without digging through a pile to stuff.

First priority was pinball, as that is something they cannot experience at home, nor most places we go to play games. While both of them got a thrill out of playing pinball - and we tried at least six tables, if not more - Alya summed it up with "I liked the video one best." The video one was a screen built into a pinball cabinet. Obviously, the physical game did not appeal to them.

On the flip side, Pong went over well. They quickly adapted to the paddle controller and proceeded to play two games against each other. But they both like air hockey, so it wasn't too far of a stretch for them to get into it.

Beyond that, there was lots of bouncing around from console to machine to old school controllers. Alya spent a lot of time with the Atari Jaguar playing first Rayman (which was still gorgeous to look at) then a little Tempest 2000. Marcus was playing a Super Nintendo game called Megaracer, which was much more basic, but Alya eventually joined in to play.

Super Smash Bros (Wii) was another Marcus favorite - but anytime you have characters fighting, he digs right in. Meanwhile, Alya watched a guy playing Mario Sunshine (Game Cube) and she really wanted to take it for a spin.

The cool thing was watching what games captured the kids attention. If there was fighting or shooting, Marcus was interested. Platforming and adventure, Alya. Which leads to their picks of the show.

Marcus was extremely excited playing the classic shooter by the Japanese studio Treasure, called Gunstar Heroes (Sega Genesis). The boy was bouncing up and down blowing robots up left and right and caught up in a gleeful rapture. Alya played for a bit, but then the siren call of Sonic CD (Sega Genesis CD) right next to it and soon she was sending that blue hedgehog around at warp speed, clearing levels like nobody's business.

So instead of buying anything at the convention, we came away with two games to get downloading this week. Games they selected and fell in love with - something I can relate to very well myself. Yeah, I'm a video game dad and I'm happy to share it with the kids.

So if you're in the Milwaukee area in March and want to take a stroll down memory lane, I would suggest going over to the Midwest Gaming Classic. It's a fun time, the games are free, and sharing those memories with others can rekindle a joy.

Be seeing you.

The Plague's got me!

Ugh, I hate being sick.

Aside from a few hypochondriacs, most people don't like being sick. You're tired, weak, nose running, coughing all over the place. And gods help you if the digestive system gets hit. Eww.

Often I'm a little under the weather. Surely some of it has to do with carrying a little more than my fair share of weight around, in addition to the lack of exercise and sedentary job. But through out the sniffles and coughs I usually am missing one thing. The fever.

I don't know how many times I've asked Sasha to feel my head and she says all good. Then I grab the thermometer and it agrees with her assessment. Until this past Thursday.

99.7

Friday morning

101.3

Saturday morning

100.2

How annoying! I feel like utter crap, just want to sleep all day long and don't even have the desire to play games. [gasp!]

However, I have discovered several good ploys to be "active" with the kids, without having to spend much energy. But still, this sucks.

It makes me extra grateful for Sasha (who's currently spending a little, much deserved, time out of the house with out the kids) for taking care of them and me as well.

No, I am not getting pampered. But she has cleaned up my dishes and is primary on the kids these past couple of days. And that is the miracle of family.

We all need a support system, and a family does all of that. Sometimes I feel that we Americans push kids out of the house too quickly. Or worst yet, absolve them of responsibilities that we might have had ourselves.

In the past days of snow, Marcus has often come out to help me shovel. He grabs his kids size, long-handled spade and goes to town. I leave him a patch to work on while I clear the rest of the driveway. It's fun and something to do with his dad and I really enjoy it, too.

And then later I went over to my mom's place to uncover her car, which was rather buried on the east side of Milwaukee. Something I haven't done nearly enough, but it was very satisfying to help her out.

It's the family support system, and sometime it really works well.

Now I'm going to go off and fight sleep a little longer.

Be seeing you,

Jon

Life - Oh precious life

A friend recently posted on Facebook the question, "If you could go back and do it all over, what would you change? And you can't say you'd change nothing!" That friend does not have children, and children make a hard stop in one's timeline. I would never, ever want to go back to a time before Marcus was born.

Because I do not want to even conceive of him never being a part of my life. And three years is not much time to find an item to change. And whenever you think something is a good idea to make different, the movies always tell you there are consequences.

The 1998 movie, Sliding Doors, stars Gwyneth Paltrow and shows how whether she catches a train or not lead her life in two entirely different directions. Who knows how often that happens in the real world, but we've all stood on the cusp of those decisions.

- My father could have died in a studio fire where he lived, if he had been there the night it burned to the ground. I would completely lost contact with that side of the family if he hadn't dodged that one.

- I could have stayed in Minneapolis, after a impulse to leave Milwaukee struck me. Nearly happened, but fate and my complete lack of planning brought me back. (Special thanks to C.R. for telling me to buy a round trip bus ticket.)

And the big winner is:
When I graduated college, I took the lazy route. After seeing my good friend sending out hundreds of resumes trying to find the right job, I decided to take a week off, then go to Manpower and get working right away while I tried to find a "good" job.

They hired me on the spot to work for them, and that's the week I started working with Sasha.

If I had decided to pursue a radio/TV job, or traveled to Japan to teach English, I would have lost so much. I cannot begin to consider any past choices beyond something like, "I should never have bought that Balterspace CD."

And while I don't think it would have had an impact on the rest of my life, fixing the mistake of my 2nd worst impulse buy ever, would have robbed me of a kind of fun story.

In my life I've made a lot of choices, 40 years of existence will do that to most everyone. And I would never change a single thing before the birth of Marcus. Things are too fragile to mess with that at all.

Be seeing you,

Jon

Force of Will

One of the things that really strikes me as a parent is how precious "alone time" is. I love my video games, my scifi/geek movies, my gaming stuff, but I love my family more - so they take priority and that is right.

But when I get those couple of hours, man do I want to sink my teeth into some PS3 game that's been sitting around for a while and lose hours to it. If there's an active book, it gets devoured in the wee-hours in the space of a week, two if it's really big.

But then there are moments when the two come together. And those are great.

Marcus loves swordfighting. So getting that 20 minutes of running around the house with Nerf swords is a proud papa-geek moment. Especially watching him learn/imitate "moves" like spinning around for no good reason and grabbing my blade so he can swing away freely. Pure awesome.

Alya may not like the fighting, but she loves the story. Tonight the three of us watched Star Wars Episode One - The Phantom Menance. (Sasha was off at the annual xmas cookie exchange.) Marcus was not interested for most of the middle of the movie. But he got a kick out of the good action sequences. Alya paid attention throughout most of the movie. She wanted to know who Anakin was (they've both watched a lot of Clone Wars) and thought that Obi Wan looked funny. And Queen Amidala confused her so much, that I paused the movie to try and explain what was going on. She really wanted to know what was going on.

My squirrel is also the one who like to play Peggle on the computer - but wants someone in the room with her. Alya really "gets" computers and can use a mouse and a touch pad with great ease. Marcus, well he was kind of hitting the keys a lot today, just to try and get something to happen. The two of them may play like a couple of peas in a pod, but they are quite different.

And each day they impress me more.

Be seeing you,

Jon

Late Night Ramblin'

I'm going to open with what should be the closing. Because it's the most important thing about this post.

Typical BSer house evening ends with me moving Alya out of our bed and into hers. Tonight, when that happened, she woke up a bit to check she had the correct woobie in the bed (bear, not pink) and I confirmed that it was indeed the correct one. Satisfied, she curled up and went back to sleep as I placed the important stuffed animals next to her. As I walked out I said, "Good night, Squirrel." and closed the door.

Often I don't speak when putting either kid in bed, but Alya had already pulled a response on woobie, so I knew it wouldn't hurt the sleep process.

That little verbalization choked me up a bit because I'm thinking that to them both every night, and eventually I won't be tucking these small ones into bed. And they mean the world to me. Everything else I've done, does not come to this level.

Which leaves the question, "What next?"

---

I started reading The Player of Games by Ian M. Banks a day ago. The main character is a game player. Like someone who is a professional chess player, only with as many games as he likes and that's all he does. Only he's at a crisis point because he's bored. What's next in his path because he has played and beaten just about everything.

Meanwhile, my world of games has been odd. My board games are getting dustier. Magic cards are floating around all over the place, but a change would be needed to really hone my skills on that one. I have many miniature games in foam trays, needing assembly, paint and a chance to fight on the battlefield. But there's no gaming passion. Nothing that pulls my attention constantly like a mongrel on a bone.

While sitting on the basement step, I couldn't help but see my stack of Japanese language instruction loaded on a shelf. It defines me, but the motivation is no longer present. Perhaps I should be clearing that all off and resign that goal for now. Like the guitar in the close, learning either would be a major growth undertaking, but both are also previous paths that were never finished.

---

The final item of the evening - a year book from Pius XI High School. 1988 to be precise.

At Manpower I walk through the building and know about 1/4 to 1/3 of the people. Not personally, but recognize them either through my own times there or through Sasha's work.

That ratio is much lower in my yearbook. Then again my class had well over 400 students in it and I was never a true social butterfly.

Things that kept cropping up in the words written by others, "I didn't really know you until this year." "You're funny and strange." "Sorry I hit you in the head with a pen." Okay, that last one not so much. Some of the words written triggered a small bit of sadness. Relationships unexplored. Relationships explored and ruined at a latter time. Friendships that were acquired a little too late in the game to be able to maintain. Or distances, written by one as "We are going our separate ways in search of... A PARTY", creating that gulf making the connect difficult to maintain.

But no regret.

High school (and soon college) is half a life away for me now. While knowing where people are today (thank Facebook) is neat, that's over 20 years ago. I've got too much future going on to keep living in the past. (Although a few ghosts do loom from time to time.)

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There's a song out now called, "Home" by Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros that has really grabbed my ears. I was playing it for the kids on the drive to their daycare, and during the speaking portion (listen to the song, it's that good) I talked to Alya and Marcus about what was happening that day and night and how I love them both so very much.

The line from the song that sticks is, "Home is where ever I'm with you." So when I went to Manpower Saturday where Sasha was putting in extra hours, Alya told her, "I'm happy to be home." Sasha was a little puzzled and asked if home was Manpower. "No, home is when we're all together."

That's my squirrel.

And that's my "What's next?" for the next 20 years of my life.

Be seeing you,

Jon