Summer '09

We've added a step to the morning routine to accommodate our varied summer schedules.
I've been taking Gwynyth to day care. I mean, "Summer Camp".
I drop her off before seven and head to work for a several hours, then pick her up in the afternoon.
She was hesitant at first, but grudgingly is accepting it.
"You guys said I always make friends and fine, I did, but that doesn't mean I like it." and "I made you a key ring and we had chicken nuggets for lunch -- But there was some boring stuff, too." and "The pancakes this morning were very small."
Brutal, isn't it? I'm a monster.
She is spending her days at a rollerskating rink. In other news, there are still rollerskating rinks.
So several hours a day, my daughter has wheels on her feet and no formal training.
Today is one of two "Water Days" a week, in which the children are given access to a Slip N' Slide, probably without a wheeled lead in but to be honest I didn't ask.
In short, if we can get through the summer without my leaving work to pick up my child at the Emergency Room, it will have been semi-miraculous.
I assume Fridays are archery and lawn darts day, followed by bleach-filled water gun fights.
When I freaked out a little yesterday Gwynyth tried to use reason on me. "Dad, how many wallets do you need? You don't even carry one because you are afraid it will make your butt look lumpy."
"All of them," I replied, "I need all of them."
Eventually, she will learn that trying to reason with me is futile, but until she does I will cherish these moments of childlike optimism.
We spend our afternoons in less-structured activity to wait for Shana to come home.
Gwynyth and I enjoy a good, solid, scheduled lack of structure. We thrive on it. She watches TV and I polish my wallet collection or look at kitten pictures on the internets.
And we wait.
And Shana works quite a bit longer during the day than I do, so we wait for a long time and try not to crowd her when she gets home, though our efforts are usually unsuccessful.
But this is our routine now.
We adapt. The ability to cope with boring afternoons and to dodge falling lawn darts are survival skills we have honed over the past two days to a razor point.
This afternoon I have to figure out how to get a bird feeder made from a pine cone and peanut butter into and out of my car without making a mess.
Life skills are what Summer Camp is for.

I Broke My Own Rule

I've done the unthinkable, internetz.
Gwynyth is fascinated by our family history. She asks questions about it quite often and there is only so much I've been able to tell her.
One story I have never told here has managed to make the list of her "introduction go-to" stories when she meets new people.
She loves the story of John Pass who, together with John Stow, founded the Liberty Bell.
It is a fabulously patriotic story on the surface and so the surface is about as far as Gwynyth goes on that one.
The truth is a little more fun for me.
Once upon a time, in 1751, the Philadelphia Assembly ordered a bell for the State House from the Whitechapel Bell Foundry in London.
I assume it was an Amazon Deal of the Day kind of thing, and that the Whitechapel Bell Foundry has moved into making those doorbells you can program MP3s into, because this bell cracked as it was being hung up for the very first time. Since the returns policy at Whitechapel Bell Foundry included the possibility that the broken bell would be eaten by sea serpents and wind up at the bottom of the Atlantic due to witch activity, the Philadelphia Assembly asked Pass and Stow to fix it. And by "asked" I mean "paid", and that part is important.
Pass and Stow fixed the bell by melting it and then mixing copper into the metal at a rate which increased the strength of the bell quite a bit. Unfortunately, it also made the bell sound horrible.
To be fair, Pass and Stow were not bell-making guys. Why compete with the Whitechapel Bell Foundry monopoly at a time when people still couldn't get their horses shod through Ebay?
But they offered to try again at fixing the bell.
And by "offered" I mean "demanded money". And by "money" I mean as much as ten times the original quoted amount.
The Philadelphia Assembly paid it, Pass and Stow restored the original metal ratio and the bell didn't crack again until well after the warranty had expired.
This began, as I tell my daughter and management, our family's history of doing consulting work for the government. "If you aren't part of the solution, there is probably good money to be made in prolonging the problem" is actually on our family crest in Latin. Or at least the family crest I designed myself with crayons I borrowed from Gwynyth. And by "borrowed" I mean "rented", since she is her father's daughter.
Gwynyth is less interested in Nathaniel Holloway Pass, who was granted land in North Carolina by the King of England in the 1740's for helping put down an insurrection of the "savages" and later distinguished himself (alongside his son) fighting off our British overlords during the revolution kind of like Mel Gibson in "The Patriot" only he was probably less drunk (and since it was before World War II there was no Holocaust to deny yet).
Anyway, before all that the Pass family seems to have been all over Europe so tracing the history is hard even with Google.
What I did discover was that John Pass came to Philadelphia by way of Canada (since beavers don't need metal work done, I assume). Before that, he was in Ireland. And he studied metalwork from a master smith in Malta (and presumably the art of creative billing in Sicily).
The name Pass is an Americanization of either "Pasce" from the region in France or "Pace" from the Latin for "Peace".
Wait! I was going to explain about the rule I broke. Here it is:
I wanted to know more about Maltese history, since there is a connection there and either name origin could be placed there prior to the whole North Carolina/Canada/Ireland/England era.
So I picked up a book with neither dragons nor laser swords and a read it.
"The Religion" by Tim Willocks tells the story of the Siege of Malta in 1565. It is historical fiction, well outside my literary comfort zone.
The knights were holed up on a tiny island in the Mediterranean and attacked by thousands and thousands of Muslim troops for months. I find it not unbelievable that one of these knights (or a native of Malta) would choose the name "Peace" after that siege ended. There is still debate today about whether or not the knights had been "asking for it", I, for one, think the answer is "prolly".
The story was fascinating, but even as I read it knowing logically where my genetic heritage was likely to be, I found myself drawn to the Jewish characters in the story. There were several, since Jewish people participated on both sides of the conflict in every possible role from slave to Military Advisor.
Of course I would find this interesting personally, but I doubted there was any reason to suspect there to be a genetic connection there.
Until I found someone online who had been at this Pass family research far longer than me.
She put forth the theory in 2003 (which is about as recent as this theory gets) that the name Pass is an abbreviation used by Jewish settlers to disguise their heritage in England prior to 1657 (when Cromwell decided letting Jews back into England would be good for the economy). I doubt I could make that up.
So, the Pass family could have been in Malta as natives, pilgrims, slaves, or knights and they could have come there from any country in Europe, western Asia or north Africa or been there during the construction of the Ġgantija temples (the oldest stone structures on the planet) during the Neolithic age (c. 3600-2500 BCE).
It would have made things much easier for me (and Google) if ancient people had taken a break from dying of various plagues to just jot down some freaking records.
If they had, I'd be a lot farther into my research into what Darth Vader was doing between "Shadows of the Empire" and "Return of the Jedi".

Sunday Post

I just went to Target.
We were out of cat food and diet cola. The absence of these things will cause yelling later, so I opted to avoid the trauma.
I wheeled the cart to the back of the store and wandered through the Star Wars toys.
Then I visited the cat food area and grabbed a crate of the mixed poultry formula preferred by those animals in our household who eat this canned junk.
I meandered through the DVD section looking for Buffy the Vampire Slayer Seasons 3-7. I was disappointed in the fact that they were, as always, nowhere to be found.
The Coke branded stuff was still priced at four for twelve dollars. There was only one Coke Zero, so I made up the rest in Cherry Coke Zero and Diet Coke.
On my way out, I noticed that the weird techno-awesome mechanical corkscrews were on sale, so I grabbed one and thrust it into the cart.
One aisle over, I noticed a bag of Doritos. Two flavors in one! Zesty Taco and Chipotle Ranch! Since Shana uses chips as a tranquilizer, I grabbed a bag of those, too.
In front of the register there was a cold bottle of Mountain Dew Game Fuel Horde Red (with a blast of Citrus Cherry Flavor). Into the cart it went as I pulled up to the register.
I watched my items move across the scanner from the corner of my eye as I navigated the menu on the card reader. As I was loading the last twelve pack into the cart, I noticed that my well-worn World of Warcraft weekend shirt was covered in cat fur from an earlier nap-related encounter with the cats. Three of them, to be specific.
The teenager held the receipt out to me and I took it.
I looked again at the assortment of items in the cart, the state of my shirt, the fact that my just-cut hair looks like I've been sleeping all day in the reflection off the drink cooler, and back to the Doritos, bottle opener, diet cola, and cat food in my cart. Items I had willingly purchased, all at once.
"My wife is very pretty," I told the check out girl, "And my daughter is reasonably well-adjusted. Most of the cats aren't even mine. The chips aren't even for me."
"Do you want this Mountain Dew Game Fuel right now, or should I put it in the bag?"
"I'll take it," I told her, beaten.

No Casual Jeans

The plastic cap protector thingy on the bottle of chocolate milk I got with my lunch said "PULL TAB AND TEAR AROUND" -- so I did.

Within five minutes I was out of breath, I had chocolate milk stains on my pants and I was banned from the cafeteria for life (which, to be honest, was not listed as a possibility in the employee handbook).

More importantly, it is our 11th wedding anniversary.
I still have trouble believing that, as does anyone who has ever met either Shana or myself, separately or at once.
We've come a long way from charging diapers on a Discover card to have enough money for food to our new home with kitchen amenities which force constant decisions on what take-out to get (My vote? Burritos.) and our army of poisonous spider minions.
We've geographically come a long way. A time zone, even.
And I still think I'm the luckiest guy in the world.
The traditional gift for the eleventh anniversary is Flan, with the contemporary one being Jell-O. At least according to the Food Network website which tracks these things.
I went a different direction, but I hope it works anyway.
Happy Anniversary, Shana!

Mercenary Work

The word came down this morning that overtime is no longer approved for my group. Since I tend to do a lot of my work under cover of darkness and in buildings devoid of witnesses (as any good tech ninja does), this means I have two choices:

1. Work enough to get my job done, meet all my obligations and cause no harm to befall my employer. My billing for time halts at 40 hours (generally sometime mid-morning on Thursday) but I continue working for the following two days and into the weekend.

2. Drop everything when my desktop clock has ticked off 40 hours and flee the building, leaving meetings in mid-babble, not responding to emails and shutting off my phone, and ignoring an ever-growing mound of things undone.

Anyone care to guess which option I have chosen?
Since option one is the revenue equivalent of swallowing a live spider for me, this should be just about the easiest pop quiz ever.
Nonetheless, please slip your answers under the door and I'll return your grades Thursday afternoon, from home.

What We Don't Say

Shana left the house super early this morning to attend a shooting at a high school.
Well, she's doing senior portraits.
But there was a lot of talk during orientation about not referring to the photography session as a "shooting" and to not discuss "shooting kids at a high school", which I find an amazingly hysterical use of orientation time.
I've also not been helping since I tend to ask questions like,"So, did you shoot a bunch of kids in the face today?" and "Was the school shooting everything you always dreamed it would be?"
Walking into a school gymnasium with duffel bags filled with equipment and then shooting kids is the way Shana will be spending her day.
My job sucks.

Not To Spread Panic . . .

. . . But I've been doing a little research into this whole deadly-spiders-under-the-house thing.
The general response at work has been along the lines of "calm down" and "I really think booking a hotel room is a little overkill" and "I'm sure that you can't actually hear them through the floor" and "why are you breathing like that?", but seriously, there are many spiders living under my house right now.
The whole substructure of the Pr3++yG33kyTh1ng Worldwide Headquarters and Remote Poisonous Creature Research Center and Panic Distribution Hub is crawling with tiny spiders which skitter around looking for human flesh to melt.
My panic is entirely justified. If there is a level of panic which qualifies as "reasonable" then that is what I have.
It isn't like they don't bite people.
It isn't like the natural habitat in the display for the animal at the Houston Museum of Natural Science isn't a boot.
Had I not developed the habit from living in scorpion country of banging my soles together before putting on my shoes I would no doubt already be dead.
As horrible as these little beasts are, they are no Phoneutria nigriventer, to be sure, but if it were you can be certain I'd have already attempted to enact my "OMG KILL IT! KILL IT WITH FIRE!" plan.
That spider regularly travels in bunches of bananas (to which I am thankfully allergic), is released in the gardens at London hospitals and cannot be killed by freezing, boiling or microwaving. It is uncertain that they can be killed at all in fact and probably exist as immortal, remorseless killing machines who want to feed on our pre-digested internal workings. (citation needed)
Even the brown recluse is resistant to pesticide fogs as the spider tends to cling to the corners of the woodwork. Killing the prey insects and starving them out is also impossible, as recent studies show that the brown recluse prefers to dine on dead insects, anyway. Fogging creates a buffet for them, an act of kindness which is returned by the delivery of oozing wounds.
I'm not sure I'm that into the whole "infinite splendor of nature" business, to be honest. Normally, I'm a live-and-let-live kind of geek.
I should not be pricing gas cans, volume discounts on liquid soap, and bundles of rags on the internets, yet that is what I find myself doing with a good bit of my evenings lately.
The sink in the kitchen works splendidly, though.