I am not a physically imposing person. Once, in junior high, my mother was asked by a friend's mother what my "sport" was. Her answer, "I guess chess."
I now bike alot in the spring, but that's about it. I have in the past played soccer with my fellow programmers over lunch, but I am horrible at it. I cannot pass or dribble or shoot properly. I stay back on defense and watch it whiz past me into the goal. Usually but someone barely breaking a sweat.
I am sub-optimal at golf and bowling too--two sports that are supposedly not difficult for middle-aged men.
Our family went bowling Sunday with another family who adopted with us from Vietnam. We now both have three kids. The adults bowled in one lane and 4/6ths of the kids bowled in the next lane over. We got one of the few 6 pound balls in the place for them.
It was obviously a non-competitive venue, but I had a personal goal for the afternoon. I wanted to beat my last score in golf. If you think that would be easy for anyone, then you haven't seen me bowl or play golf. The last time I played golf, I shot a 117. That counts every swing, even when I missed the ball or when it just moved a few feet. I am horrible, but I play honestly.
I had never bowled over 117, so it was stretch goal for me. My wife insisted that my two-year-old bowl with me as she wasn't bowling with the school-age kids. Claire "helped" me go to the line and release the ball. It took 25 seconds for the ball to make it down the lane, before it knocked down 3 pins. This was good for Claire, but at that rate I had no chance to reach my goal. We then decided that Claire would play when it was Chris's turn. Chris didn't care what her scored would be. I will acknowledge that she is a better person.
For most of the other frames, I bowled for myself. It was a squeaker, but with a spare in frame 10, I ended up with a final score of 120! Yeehaw!
I know my athletic ability sounds pathetic, but wait: the complete truth is worse.
That 117 golf score was for JUST NINE HOLES. I. Am. Truly. Bad.
Feel better? You can continue reading when you are done laughing.
The bowling score of 120 was with the gutter bumpers in place.
At least, I'm honest.
Gary Brolsma is a 19-year-old pudgy geek with glasses. He can also lip synch to a Romania pop tune. Sitting at his computer desk, he captured a video of himself on a webcam singing Dragostea Din Tei while waving his arms and making faces. It is now on the Internet courtesy of a friend. Millions have seen it. So Gary is now famous. Except he, being a self-conscious 19-year-old pudgy geek with glasses, doesn't want to be famous.
Having read the article, I had see first hand how bad it was. And yes, it is funny and embarrassing.
As the techno music played through my laptop's speakers, Claire came running over to see what was going on. She stuck her face in front of the LCD and yelled "Daddy singing! Daddy singing!"
Today I bought a new car. I have been researching a new car for a half a year and finally settled on an Acura TL. After hitting Edmunds.com and CarsDirect.com, I pretty much new the typical selling price for the car. There is a forum website of owners that helped quite a bit too. In the dead of winter, with the dealer's lot overflowing, and my wife's permission, I figured now would be good time to strike. I sent a short e-mail last night saying how much I was willing to pay, and in the morning the Internet Sale Manager e-mailed said sure. A few hours later I showed up at the dealership and wrote a check. Amazingly easy.
The car is too nice for me to transfer the Sierra Club window cling from my old car. The new car passed the first grader test. My girls love it as it reminds them of their grandmother's car. (I'm not sure that is a good thing for my ego.) I went and got a rubberized tray to go under my youngest's car seat as I don't want it to scratch the leather. (I dred Claire scuffing up the back of the driver's seat when I take her to daycare next week.)
The hardest part was deciding on a color. It was a process of elimination:
White: Too Boring.
Silver: Too "Buick"y.
Black: Wife hated my last black car.
Gold: Wife's current car is gold.
Blue: Wife's last car was blue.
Green: My current car is green.
Grey: Perhaps
Red: YES!
And, if you read this blog a year ago, most importantly it matches my wife's vaccuum cleaner.
Katie has been asking about her birthmother a lot lately. A couple nights each week she has been going to bed in tears. She tells us that in the middle of some nights she will stare out her window, look at the stars, and think about her. When she asks why her birthmother gave her up, we don’t have anything truly comforting to say. Marissa has a picture of her Vietnamese birthmother on the dresser. Katie has nothing. One night the only thing that would comfort Katie was for Chris to dig up a picture of Maoming orphanage director holding her. On a handful of nights, Katie has held the picture under the nightlight and slept on the floor next to it.
She does not like it when Chris goes on rare weekend trips with her mother either. I had a business trip overnight Thursday and Katie was upset that I was going even for just one night. Subconsciously it was another opportunity for a parent to leave her.
Katie had her "special day" at school Wednesday. Each week over the school year a child in her class has one. For each special day, a different child is singled out for adoration. She has been looking forward to her special day for weeks and in a little way, it has been a distraction from her recent concerns. She got to have her family visit her at school and have lunch (McDonalds!) with her. She also got to choose a handful of close friends to join her. For her fifteen minutes in the spotlight before lunch, Katie excused herself from the classroom and came back in a shiny, bright red and gold Chinese outfit for the occasion (Her idea!) before introducing her relatives. Marissa, Chris, the grandmothers and I had all written a note or poem on why she is special to us and we all read them aloud to her classmates.
I ended up going last. I had six clipart mini-posters to the share. The last one had hearts and said "Katie grew in her mom and dad’s heart instead of her tummy."
China's quarter century old One Child law still isn't working out.
In addition to abandonment, families are increasingly using prenatal scan to determine the sex of the fetus and aborting it if it is female. The government used to ignore this problem, but now it is a criminal offense to have a gender selective abortion. They were previously banned, but bribes to doctors took care of that inconvenience.
As a consequence "fertility" rates are now dropping and now the population is rapidly aging. Males already outnumber Females 6 to 5 and the ratio is getting worse. For newborns it is 4 to 3. In schools it is 3 to 2.
China has attempted to soften the one-child law: Parents are allowed to have a second child if their first was a girl, if they are college educated, or if they are part of a declining minority. Anything to avoid abandoned girls and aborted fetuses. Revoke the one-child law? Can't do that.
Since it is all related to patriarchal society, with birthmothers always seeming to blame pressure from their mother-in-law, China is now trying a form of affirmative action in 24 cities. Elderly people in some rural areas (where the problem is the worst) are receiving pensions if they had only one child or only have daughters.
A representative from the Family Planning Commission said this was intended to give monetary value to girls. Apparently it is not obvious that daughters are worth anything.
Ironically when we adopted our girls, we had to agree not sell our daughters.
An unusual thing happened this weekend. As a last minute thing, we got a babysitter and Chris and I went out to catch a movie. Chris selected the movie and I didn’t grimace at the choice. We actually both enjoyed it. That never happens.
We saw In Good Company. It is the story of a middle-aged man with a handful of daughters whose company is in the throes of a merger and a management reshuffling that causes him to be demoted. Poor business ensues and there are layoffs. I could relate because I’ve been through six layoffs at my company.
But for my boss and another friend, it hit even closer. Today, they and 14 others became part of the company’s seventh disposal activity.