Losing My Touch

As I walked into the kitchen to find Kim washing dishes, she gave me that look all dad’s immediately understand:

IT’S YOUR TURN TO TUCK THE KIDS INTO BED

I rounded up the three oldest as best I could which means I dragged one attached to my leg while one hung off my back while I carried one upside down into Luca’s room where I turned off the lights and began telling a scary story. image

I never know where the story is headed but it always includes the following:

  1. Gigantic hairy spiders
  2. A dark and haunted chimney
  3. Growling noises coming from under the bed
  4. A child who has to go the bathroom

I ended the story like I do all scary stories which the gigantic spider getting lose and chasing the kids around the house. Then I tickle each of the kids till they can’t stand it anymore.

I was quite proud of my impromptu scary story until Lincoln said, “Dad, that story needed more spiders because it wasn’t very scary”.

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Time for Kids: Now or Later?

A good portion of raising children involves making decisions today that we believe will pay dividends down the road. Such is the case with piano lessons, athletics or visits to the library. As in the case with piano practice, these activities occasionally take a little parental encouragement when your friends are playing jump-rope while you practice for a recital.  brettlincoln

I’ve often wondered if I’m making the right decision by pulling back at work today so that I can experience more of my children’s lives today. This is different than the approach my father took. His job required long hours and frequent nights and weekends away from our family. He did this so my mother could stay home and raise five children. The benefit of this approach is that he was able to retire from teaching after 30+ years well before he turned 60.  He’s now able to spend a lot of time with his grandchildren. Not only does he have the time but his health and younger age allow him to engage in many activities with his grandchildren.

But I have very few memories of spending time with my father until I reached high school. Most of my early memories of my father were centered baseball and basketball games he was able to attend. I don’t recall him going on field trips or helping me much with school work or getting to know many of my friends. My mom filled these roles so well that I didn’t notice my father’s absence until years later. But he provided for us financially and was there for the big events. I’m sure he understood this trade-off and felt the sacrifice was worth it. 

Maybe it’s the direction my career in technology has taken me. Or maybe it’s it’s the desire build a relationship with my kids before they are teenagers. Whatever the reason, I’ve decided to sacrifice my career now in order to spend time with my family. That means occasionally taking time off in order to spend a day at the Zoo with my daughter or stay home and build a blanket fort with Lincoln and Anna. It means calling in sick when Kim comes down with a bug and needs my help. It means putting my kids first and my work second. Or third or forth.

My boss understands where I place my priorities. He may not agree with my choices, but I believe he respects my decisions when it comes to family. But I’m not foolish to believe this hasn’t hurt my career. When my manager retires, my strongest competition for his job will come from a coworker who is the consummate company guy. He’s single and can dedicate 80 hours to the job if he wants. I won’t do that (at least not week and week out). If you were selecting someone for the job would you pick the family guy with a work/life balance or the person who will throw is heart and soul into the job with few outside distractions and the willingness to put work above all else?

I may be making the wrong choice because it means I won’t be able to retire as early as my father did. I will probably have to work into my 60’s before I retire. And even then, I probably won’t retire with his level of pension and benefits. I’ve quit jobs when they started to interfere with my family life. But I want to see my kids grow up. I don’t want the responsibility of raising our four kids rest solely on Kim.

But I’m realistic. I understand that Kim is the one who is home during the day. She’s the one that sees them off to school and is there to greet them when step off the bus. She changes more diapers, dispenses more medications, bandage more scrapes and wipes away more tears than I ever will.

But I don’t want our kids to grow up thinking dad’s job is to provide a paycheck while mom provides a shoulder cry on. It’s not an easy choice to balance out, but I’m trying my best to make it happen.

Reckless Abandon

As I sat in the theater waiting for The Dark Knight to begin alongside rows full of exuberant fans I was reminded how good the movie going experience can be. I once stood in line for six hours in order to purchase tickets to Jurassic Park. The experience of watching a sold-out show with a group of crazy fans has been a rare event for me. Fans were cheering and screaming throughout the movie. It was an experience that’s nearly impossible to duplicated outside the theater.

That’s what it felt like last night as two friends waited in line with a large group of Batman fans. As we walked into the theater we passed a fan wearing a full bat suit.  The line snaked its way down the lighted corridor. Strangers discussed the early reviews.  A number of movie goers had their picture taken with the guy in the bat suit. There was a buzz in the air, and I believe it had a lot to do with the performance of the late Heath Ledger.

There is a scene in The Dark Knight that perfectly captures Ledger’s mesmerizing performance. Many scenes with him include explosions, fireballs, and chase scenes. Chaos at its best. But this one scene reminded me of how I felt when I watched the scene in The Shawshank Redemption where Andy Dufresne (played by Tim Robbins) played Mozart for over the prison sound system. Interspersed between the violence resides this reflective, emotional moment where the actor and character meld into one. It’s transcends all other scenes. 

My favorite scene in Dark Knight takes place after a fantastic cat and mouse chase scene. Eventually, the Joker steals a police car and we see Ledger hang his head outside the car like we’ve all done as kids. His shabby hair dandles in the wind and his face paint appears more ominous than ever. He’s taking it all in. All the destruction. All the chaos. It’s Gotham City on his terms and he’s enjoying every minute of it.

I loved it. I won’t forget it.

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The Good Night High Five

A few months ago Anna Lynn decided that the goodnight hug and kiss wasn’t enough. So each week she’d add another action for Kim and I to perform. Now, each evening she has to give us all of the following:

  1. Goodnight Hug
  2. Goodnight Kiss
  3. Goodnight Smell
  4. Goodnight High Five
  5. Goodnight Indian Burn

When I tucked her in this evening she told me that she’d added one more to the routine: The Goodnight Lick. Huh?

annafield

But I’m on to her. I suspect her ploy is to keep adding items thereby postponing bedtime. But she’s such a cutie that I enjoy spending the extra time with her. She brings a bundle of joyous energy to our home

And she gives one mean Indian Burn!

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Root “Bear” Floats

Kim put the kids in the bathtub tonight right after they ran through the sprinklers which I don’t understand but have been married long enough not to question. Once they have splashed most of the water onto the bathroom floor my job is to remove each kid from the tub and take care of two tasks:

  1. Clean Ears
  2. Apply Lotion

Just give me a Q-tip and stand back because I know how to clean the kids ears without popping an eardrum. Not yet at least. But I’m a rookie when it comes to #2. So tonight I pressed 4 pumps full of lotion on each kids stomach and legs and let them rub it around until their knees and hands had absorbed 99% of the lotion.

I’m still learning.

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Once I can catch three bare naked kids and coax them into pajamas we go through this ritual of pulling out toothbrushes and seeing how much toothpaste we can squirt into the sink without a drop hitting the brush. I’m not sure how clean the kids teeth are but our sink is pearly white and at a low risk for gingivitis. The kids toothpaste (with princess on the label) smells more like candy to me anyway. I’d have better luck asking each kid to open their mouth like a baby bird while I shoot the gel directly onto their teeth.

But it’s all worth it. The tub full of Polly Pockets. The bathroom counter finger painted in lotion and the sink if full of pink princess gel with sparkles disguised as toothpaste. When our kids are older I’ll probably look back and miss these crazy times. We laugh a lot together and that helps make up for some of the challenging times.

As I tucked the kids into bed and closed the door to their room I noticed the following sign on Luca and Anna’s door. Luca must have written it sometime today. It made me smile.

knocksign

Keeping the Bar Low at Verizon

Kim’s cell phone stopped working today so I decided to visit the local Verizon store to replace it. As I pulled into the store I noticed it was closed. A sign on the front door gave the address of the new store. No phone. No directions. No, “located across the street from…”

I called Verizon’s 411 service to get the phone number and was given the old address and and a number which I called. A recording told me that number (given to me by Verizon!) had been disconnected and was being serviced by another number. But it didn’t make any attempt to connect me. Maybe someone at Verizon HQ should notify Verizon 411 when they relocate and change phone numbers?

It was just after 5:30 pm when I finally reached a lady at the new store. I asked for directions from the old store – “just keep going for about a mile” and store hours – “only open till 8 pm tonight”. At the time I thought it was strange should tell me they were open till 8 pm in a tone I understood to mean, “We are near closing so try us again tomorrow”. I should have listened to my gut given what happened next. image

I entered the brand spanking new Verizon store and signed into a computer which put me 4th in line. It was now 6 pm. I walked around the store checking out phones for a while and continued to look for my name on the monitor. I waited and waited. I was next in line but it didn’t matter because the guy ahead of me was changing his mind every few minutes. There were only three employees in the store. One worked on billing issues. One worked on technical support issues and the lady I waited for was handling new phone sales.

I gather there were about a dozen customers in the store just standing around. One Verizon employee (She wore a fancy shirt so I assume she’s the manager) stepped to the middle of the store and said, “All of you should go online to Verizon.com and submit a suggestion to get a chair or a couch so you can sit down”. Nobody knew what to say. It was odd and very uncomfortable. Why should the customers have to complain in order to get a chair? I’d been waiting so long I needed a bed more than a chair.

My name was finally called at 7:15 pm. A lady brought up my account on the computer. I asked her to show me some phones which she did. For about 30 seconds before she was called to the service desk to handle a problem. The employee who called her over came over to me and asked if he could answer any questions. I told him the same thing I told the first lady and he showed me a few phones. By this time I was worn out. I didn’t feel like renewing my contract for another two years so I left the store 90 minutes later without a new phone.

My experience tells me that AT&T, Sprint and T-Mobile are no better. The customer service bar is set so low when it comes to cell service that I can’t believe I still put up with any of them and I’m beginning to question whether or not I genuinely need a cell phone. I can’t think of another company I give $2000 a year too that treats me so poorly.

The Foot in the Door Technique

Luca: Can I have a whole pack of gum?

Me: No

Luca: Can I have a whole box of Tic Tacs?

Me: No

Luca: Can I have 4 pieces of gum?

Me: No

Luca: 4 Tic Tacs?

Me: No

Luca: Can I have one piece of gum and one Tic Tac?

Me: No

Luca: Can I have one Tic Tac if I promise not to tell Lincoln or Anna?

Me: Oh, alright!

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What Are Your Reasons for Upgrading to Vista?

I’ve been running Vista on my work laptop and home workstation for a few months now and the experience has been substantially better since SP1 was released, although doesn’t it deserve a better product page than this confusing page.  For a minute I thought Microsoft was selling laptops!

The upgrade to Vista from XP was painful. In fact, Microsoft should be ashamed for suggesting customers should attempt to upgrade XP machines to Vista. From my experience, the only way to install Vista is to do a fresh install which, for most people, means wiping the XP installation. Because I’m moving more of my work online (Blog, Gmail, Flickr, etc) I have fewer programs to reinstall and fewer files to backup.

So if you’re considering upgrading to Vista, here’s my take on why it’s been worthwhile:

SEARCH. SEARCH. SEARCH.

Vista’s best feature is the massively improved SEARCH. I can’t overstate how well it works. I use it dozens of times each day and it never fails me. XP search is so terrible that I installed Google Desktop which was an improvement, but is nowhere near as slick as Vista search. The best thing I can say about Vista search is that it just works. Windows users who have trouble organizing documents will find this a Godsend because every file is now only a few clicks away.

And that’s it. That’s the only substantial reason to upgrade to Vista. But search is such a helpful and oft used feature that it makes the upgrade worthwhile. Oh sure, there are other, less significant reasons to upgrade such as:

  1. Aero Interface – Vista is better looking than XP if that matters to you. It mattered to me for about 2 days.
  2. Photo and Music – If I drag a picture or mp3 to the desktop, Vista displays a thumbnail of the picture or album.
  3. Windows Update – I don’t know why but it works better on Vista and I don’t have to launch IE to run it.
  4. More Backup Options – If you’re running higher end versions of Vista (Enterprise, Ultimate) Vista offers a slick computer or file backup. Microsoft should stop the absurdity and put this feature into every version of Windows.

A word of warning: Vista demands newer hardware and runs best on when paired with a fast CPU like an Intel Core Duo or Quad. And even then, don’t expect much more than a small performance increase if any compared to XP. But Vista is stable doesn’t get in the way of things once you turn UAC off.

A few of my friends are going to be shocked, but I have to admit that Vista is growing on me each day. I wish it I could rip out all the features I never use (Movie Maker, Paint, Sound Recorder, Wordpad, etc) and only install a bare bones Vista. But overall, it’s a welcome upgrade to XP.

Plus, it runs Firefox just fine.

Why did you upgrade to Vista? Or are you going to wait for Windows 7 or move to the Mac?

Grandpa Nordquist

It’s been a lot of fun having my dad in town for a few days. One topic my dad and I always discuss for hours is sports. We’ll talk about how the Utah Jazz are doing or how the season might turn out for the Seattle Seahawks. It’s something we have in common and something we enjoy sharing with each other. javalin

We also talk a lot my grandpa Nordquist who passed away a few years ago. He loved athletics and stared in basketball, football, tennis and track while attending Westminster College and the University of Utah in the 1930’s. He passed on his love of sports to my father who become a coach and a teacher for over 30 years. 

When my father’s mom passed away a few months ago, my dad came upon a number of photo albums, some of which contained pictures few in our family have ever seen. Most pictures taken of my grandfather depict him him running or throwing a ball. I knew he was an excellent athlete but I had no idea his skills were so diverse. I don’t know many athletes footballtoday who play soccer and throw the javelin.

I spent last night going through these pictures and it brought back a lot of fun memories of the times I spent listening to my grandpa tell stories of his athletic career. He’d recount plays from the last Utah vs. BYU football game. Or he’d tell me about the latest drama surrounding the Jazz when the team was coached by Frank Layden. Some weeks he thought Rick Majerus was a saint and other times he’d call for his firing. I didn’t care which sport we talked about because his passion for them was infectious making it all interesting.

I’d give about anything to sit on the back porch of his old red brick home and chat with him and my dad about the Utes are going to torch BYU in the “Holy War”.