First day of school

See? I told you I was behind...

Fiona is off to first grade, and Aiden is off to preschool for the first time.

The traditional picture on the front porch, each in their favorite outfits.

Both schools are in easy walking distance.

I'm amazed that they bothered to put any vegetation in front of this sign before the first day. I assure you, we weren't the only people telling this particular story with cameras.

At the classroom door, it was very easy to see the difference between Fiona's and Aiden's personalities. Fiona got to the doorway, and froze:

Fiona's hesitation at the door was just long enough to capture this perfectly.

Then, she immediately started seeking structure: "Where's my desk? Where do I put my lunch? Where do I put my backpack? Where...." ...is a high, semi-panicky voice.

Mrs. Burgher was unfazed.

As we left, she was immersing herself in the experience as fast as she could.

Then, it was time to walk the two blocks to Aiden's preschool.

And then there were three. Plus Daddy's shadow.

We got to Aiden's classroom, and he walked right in. Right past the teacher. Right to the toys. Adjustment? What's there to adjust to?

Oh, this looks like fun...

Tomorrow, I'll be posting photos from their high school graduations. Hyperbole, yes, but then, consider: Fiona is seven. Somewhere between a third and a half of her time in our nest is already gone. Better enjoy it while it lasts!

More than we'll ever need

We did a new thing this year: we adopted some apple trees from a community apple orchard. We paid a small fee (about 20 apples' worth, if you're buying them at the store), did some pruning, and stepped back to let rain and shine do their thing.

In early Fall, we got the call that our apples were ready.

These are organic apples — not the waxed-up, pesticide-soaked supermodels that you'd find at the grocery store. Your first reaction might be that they weren't any good... but oh, they were, they were.

Deborah asked for a basket for her birthday, spcifically for harvesting things.

The kids enthusiastically picked the low-hanging fruit...

...while Risanna munched.

Pretty soon, the allure of a climbable tree plus the lack of low-hanging fruit led to the logical solution.

I lost count at 360 apples. The Zipper proved very handy, as not only could we move things around, but it could drive on the grass, and provided a handy place to climb on to get upper branches.

The apples needed to be cleaned up, but looked great with a little washing...

Beautiful apples.

They did need to be cut up to get the worm holes out. For all the apples we had, this took days.

After several hours of cooking and a trip trough a food mill, we ended up with more than 20 quarts of really good applesauce.

My Auspicious Career as an Author

I got an email this afternoon informing me that a piece I wrote, Shush will be run on the Drabblecast later this week.

My first published story. All 100 words of it. No money (Even at the "good" rate of $0.03 per word, that's... $3), but still, I'm happy about it. One story submitted, one story accepted; that's a pretty good ratio.

They also asked for a bio. Something to read on the show to introduce the author.

A bio? About me? Golly. How do I sum up all the stuff I do, and still come out brief, interesting, and maybe even humble? (I have a lot to be humble about. Take that as you will.) All I knew was that I didn't want to end it, as so many authors do, by telling people that they live in "X" town with a wife and three cats. Clichés aside, I'd need two more cats.

Here's what I came up with:

By day, Andy pushes pixels and corrals commas as a graphic artist and webmaster for Eisenbrauns, an academic publisher specializing in the ancient Near East. Drabblecast listeners may remember Andy and/or Eisenbrauns from Drabblecast #109, with the Babylon Battle of the Bands Bbardle. Or... you might not—go give it a listen. It's a great story, and an awesome song.

By night, Andy is a husband and father, with three children under the age of seven, and says that treehouses are worth every penny and drop of sweat you put into them.

Andy's other published works include You Know You're an MK When..., a book he co-wrote and published with his then-girlfriend (now wife) about the idiosyncracies of life as the children of missionaries. Between the two of them, they've lived in five different countries, but call Winona Lake, Indiana, "home" ...for now.

Did I succeed? Dunno. You tell me.

I ♥ ME (AKA Vacation, Part 6)

There's a lot to be said for New England, particularly its smallness. Doing something a few states over is quite a drive when you're out west; in New England, it's just a fact of daily living. So I figured that if I was going to be up here where the states were small, I might as well collect one that I'd never been to before: Maine. We left the rest of the family with my in-laws, and headed out for a nice romantic adventure, just Deborah and I, on the motorcycle.

OK, so we were total tourists. We went up coastal Route 1. We saw lighthouses, even if they were just off in the distance. We ate lobster. We understood why people like lobster. We flirted with each other shamelessly. We got lost on the way home, but we found ourselves again.

Bite me.

The Horse Knows the Way (AKA Vacation, part 4)

Theoretically, one of our main activities that we had planned was horseback riding lessons. In practice, it only took up an hour or two per day, but it was fun, and we all learned quite a bit.

Each lesson started with about half an hour of learning to take care of the horses, a process that felt a lot like fine woodworking. You start off by rubbing the horse down with a hard rubber sanding block er, curry brush, going over their fur in circles. (It's really quite surprising home much hair and dirt comes off when you do this!) Then, you follow up with a stiff scrub brush, and finally a soft one. Mentally, I was thinking sandpaper grits, and figured a nice coat of lacquer was next...

Aiden, you get the bottom part of the horse. I'll get the top.

Paul and Deborah learn how to clean out a horse's hoof. Most of the hoof is hard, but you have to be gentle with the "frog" in the center.

See? Look at that beautiful grain. Wouldn't that make a pretty coffee table?

With the exception of Risanna, everyone in the family got in some riding time. Aiden was a bit young to really reach the stirrups or control the horse, but we gave him a little ride around the ring a few times before he headed home with Grandma Renaud for a snack and a nap.

How many people does it take to give one boy a ride on a horse? Three, apparently: one to lead the horse, and one on each side to catch him in case he falls off.

Fiona, by contrast, was roughly the same age that our trainers, Lindsay and Julia, started riding, and they taught her accordingly.

What is it with young girls and horses, anyway?

While Fiona was off on Nellie (whoa, Nellie!) I was at the other end with a feisty horse named Bubbles. It took some getting used to, but I apparently caught on very quickly. I was puzzled by their amazement; all I can figure all the motorcycling I've done helped somehow. Mostly, I followed the a few simple principles of driving any vehicle:

1. Trust the vehicle.
2. Look where you want to go.
3. Give subtle, but firm inputs.
4. When in doubt, accelerate.

Apparently, this works on horses as much as it does on their mechanical brethren — and works fairly well in the rest of life, as well.

Lindsay: "Are you sore at all? Do you need a break?"
Me: "Nah, I'm fine"
Lindsay (surprised): "Really?"
Me: "Well, I just rode here from Indiana on a motorcycle. I'm sorta used to it..."

A great deal of credit, of course, goes to our quiet trainer, Lindsay Labrie, who, I learned much later, is a three-time world champion in the very things we were learning. If her assistant's mother hadn't mentioned it, I might not have known.

When Fiona's and my time was up, Paul and Deborah came out to have a turn. Paul in particular made a point of listening to all the instruction I was given, and trying to do those things from the beginning.

Paul looked right at home on a horse.

Deborah, a little less so at first, but improved greatly as the week went on.

Later in the week, we also went on a trail ride, at a different stable, and discovered how much of a difference the horse makes. Previously, trail rides were the only kind of riding I'd done. I got a semi-retired Belgian draft horse ("Sandy") that resolutely knew the way, and walked in it. After scarcely a week, I missed the control that I'd learned with the other horses — a lot of what I'd learned apparently applied to Bubbles, who responded right away to subtle cues... not this horse! One trains the horse as much as the rider, I suppose...

Anyway, we had fun. it wasn't cheap, but we all felt like we accomplished something!

To Fly

For some time now, my aunt Martha has been acting suspiciously — going off to spend some time "with a friend," several times per week, studying, and hinting at a surprise activity that was greatly dependent on the weather, but that wouldn't require sunscreen. There were some suspicious posts on Twitter regarding flying. Of course, that's a lot of secret to keep under wraps when you're staying with my parents. Deborah and I were in on it, though, and so I took a break from work, and we took the kids out to Warsaw's tiny regional airport.

Warsaw isn't ready for commercial flights yet. You drive in the gate, and it's assumed that you know where you're going, and that you know which areas are for cars, and which areas are for planes. The fieldhouse looked most accessible, and we eventually found someone who could confirm that this was the place to wait for incoming friends. There isn't even a control tower, let alone boarding gates. There wasn't the cold, clinical separation of modern airports — here, if you got any closer to aviation, you'd lose a finger.

The airport waiting area, VIP lounge.

So we sat out on the picnic benches in the bright, hot sun, and watched the skies. And, sure enough, after about 20 minutes, a small Piper descended from the heavens, touched down, taxied, and parked right by the fieldhouse. The lone door popped open, the flight instructor, my parents ("the surprised") and my aunt hopped out for a mini-family reunion on the lawn.

Once great-aunts and grandparents had been properly climbed on, we got back to flying.

Fiona and Deborah got to go up first, while my parents and I stayed and chatted. Amidst the discussion of the surprise, and other matters, my mother told me a heart-rending tale of my Uncle John, who was, at that time, about the age Aiden is now, and got to go up in a plane... except that he couldn't see out the windows. He never knew that they'd left the ground. It was just a bumpy, noisy ride for him.

So, when I went up with Aiden, one of the first things I made sure was that he could see out, and see the ground. While we were circling the Island, I actually unbuckled him and brought him over to my window to point out things I thought he should see. (To my frustration, Aiden denies seeing much more than than clouds and, if pressed, a few roads. I'm still puzzling over that one. Maybe he didn't understand what he was seeing...?)

MacDonald Island, from the air. Before we left, we stuck a 100-foot arrow over our house so that we could spot it from high up.

After bravely clutching my arm for much of the flight, Aiden said he wanted to go down, so we did.

Possibly the most interesting part for me was actually being able to see through the windshield during the landing, and compare the things I was seeing and feeling — what the runway looked like on approach, the rotation of the plane in a gust of cross-wind, the long pause between entering the ground-effect cushion and when the wheels actually touched down — and compare my gut reactions to what actually happened, and got us on the ground safely. I have a much greater appreciation for the calm, bravery, and training that it takes to stick a landing in a shifting breeze.

I've told Deborah on numerous occasions that I'm planning on getting my pilot's license when I'm 40 — I figure it'll take that long (a) for her to get used to the idea, and (b) for us to be in a financial situation where that's feasible. Now I'm wondering why I put the goal so far off...

The Ol' Shoulder (Part 2)

Pricey. Hahaha. What a wonderful gift for understatement. The hospital called me a few days before my appointment to do the pre-registration, and mentioned the actual price: $2500. Ulp. My insurance contracted with the hospital to knock the price down to $1700, and then mentioned a 10% discount if I paid the whole thing up front. Um, yeah, I'll... consider that. I kicked myself once again for not having done this last year, when our deductible had already been met.

The day arrived, and I felt claustrophobic just thinking about the procedure. I was fairly sure I could survive that long in the machine, but the idea of that confined a space made me nervous. I wondered if I could get nitrous oxide, like at the dentist. I hastily wrote back to the alarmed Twitter and Facebook crowds who didn't think my status update was an adequate explanation, and headed out the door to my appointment.

While I was checking in, about thirty firefighters trooped out. "What was that about?" I asked. "Oh, they're just learning about MRIs." I went back to my paperwork for a minute as that processed. "Wait, why do firefighters need to know about MRIs?" The clerk smiled. "I asked the same question. It's in case they needed to do an evacuation, and a firefighter went in there with a fireaxe... it would fly out of their hands and into the machine. And if someone was in the machine, that... would be very bad." Flying axes. I got the picture. (A little digging on-line came up with the MRI safety video that they probably got to watch. Turns out there's more to be aware of than just the magnet.)

While I was on the phone with the bank, trying to arrange my finances, two intense, wiry, black-scrubbed guys kept poking their heads around the corner. "Yes, this is your four o'clock" the clerk assured them. "They're just impatient," she explained to me with a tone of amusement and affection.

Finances arranged, I got to go back into a waiting room where I was quizzed about anything that might make my MRI experience unfortunate. No, no pacemaker, no implants, no screws, I'm not pregnant. I had to stop and think about the question of having metal in my eye. I've made my share of sparks on a bench grinder, and... well, had I gotten some in my eye? I couldn't remember any specks that got in that I couldn't get out. When they offered to to an orbital X-ray, I figured I'd remember something that big, and said we were safe. I hoped I was right.

I made a metal note to always wear eye protection from then on out, in case I ever had to have another MRI.

Next stop was a locker room, where I was lightened of anything metal. My ring and the rivets on my jeans were allowed, but everything else had to go in the locker. No wallet, no keys, no camera, nothing electronic that I wouldn't want erased. We passed from there through two enormous doors with larger-than-life warnings about strong magnetic fields.

There was a room within a room; the outside one was dark and purposeful with glowing computer screens, enormous stacks of music CDs, and a stereo; the inside one, light and restful, with the smooth curves of the MRI machine trying to relax you. The pretty blue fluorescent skylights didn't quite set off the menacing bulk of the machine, but they were a nice touch.

"So, what would you like to listen to?" I hadn't been expecting that question. One look at the two guys and their towering collection of CDs made me think that Styx and 'Stones figured heavily into their musical heritage, but I managed to find a token Third Day album that I'd never heard among their collection, and chose that.

They slipped a coil over my shoulder that looked like a football shoulder pad, and strapped me down with pieces of shaped foam, stretchy fabric, and a blanket. "You have to be totally still for the whole test, and you may as well be comfortable. You'll be in there for about half an hour." I took serious stock of any pressure points, adjusted my pillow, and they slid me into the machine.

At this point, I have to stop and include a photo, because Deborah complains if I have an entire screen of text without a picture.

There wasn't much to say for the view. I was facing up, and I could see bits of the room in my peripheral vision, but the net effect was of staring at a blank wall, or the side of an old beige computer. A bulky set of hearing protectors/headphones were slipped on, and I got a squeeze ball to alert them if something wasn't right. They left.

The music started. At first, I thought it was just the way the album started — vague, echoey, and muffled. Then I realized it was the headphones. Good grief, I thought, a multi-million dollar machine, and they can't put in a decent set of headphones? Then I remembered: I was lying underneath an enormous magnet. Normal headphones wouldn't work here; the sound was being piped in, literally, like the old stethoscope-style headphones they used to have on airplanes. I settled back and listened to the words as the machine fired up.

Well I won't pretend to know what you're thinking
And I can't begin to know what you're going through
And I won't deny the pain that you're feeling
But I'm gonna try and give a little hope to you
Just remember what I told you
There's so much your living for

There's a light at the end of this tunnel
There's a light at the end of this tunnel for you
For you

How appropriate. And I appreciated that hadn't stuffed me into a tunnel with a closed MRI. I couldn't see out of it, but someone was taking my pain seriously, and trying to find answers.

Meanwhile, there was definitely something going on in the massive structure above me. Whirs, clicks, bumps, ratcheting sounds. And then the loud ones: Braaap, braap, braap, braap, braap, like a school fire drill, and then, over there, a rat-tat-tat-tat-tat-tat-tat-tat-tat that reminded me of playing video games on an 8086, back when they were called "IBM clones." Some of the frequencies made my left eyelid twitch, and I couldn't figure out if it was the sound itself, or the things the machine was doing to every atom in my body. My eye started to burn a bit, and I wondered if I should squeeze the bulb. I wondered for long enough that I decided it must be OK, given that I was still wondering, and nothing worse had happened.

I was also starting to really appreciate how much body-related imagery Third Day put into their lyrics:

This is the body
This is the blood
Broken and poured out
For all of us

Hah, I thought to myself, I can just imagine the guys in there, looking at the screens, saying, "This is the body, and this is the blood, and see, here is where it's broken..."

After quite some time, and a few interruptions in the music to tell me I was doing great, just a little while longer, I was done. They slid me out and unwrapped me, and I was very glad I'd taken the time to make sure I was comfortable. I got to see some of the images (which looked like black-and-white photos of steaks; somehow this was uncomfortable — humans aren't used to thinking of themselves as being made of meat) and zoom up and down my shoulder in tiny sliced cross-sections. They said they weren't allowed to interpret the images, but that didn't stop me from drawing some tentative conclusions of my own — namely, that I hadn't seen anything obviously wrong.

As we were getting ready to head back to the locker area, I asked them how strong the magnet was in layman's terms. "Bigger than the ones they'd pick up cars with," said one technician. The other smiled knowingly, and pressed the locker key back into my hand with a firm instruction that I was not to let go of it. We walked back into the magnet room, and he placed my clenched fist into the machine. It was incredible: the tiny key writhed in my hand and twisted painfully against me as I crossed unseen magnetic boundaries. It took considerable strength to twist it around. Not to be outdone, the first technician then removed his shoe, and indicating that it had a few small staples in it, stuck it to the underside of the magnet, where it wobbled improbably, end over end, dancing about on it's own. "That's 0.7 Tesla," he told me, "some of the 4 Tesla machines, they've got videos of them levitating mice." What I'd been playing with wasn't even one Tesla. Whatever Nikola Tesla got up to, he certainly didn't have a wimpy unit of measurement named after him!

Fun and games (and a lot of very cool technical explanations that I mostly followed) done, we made arrangements for the results to be sent to the doctor within a day or so. Until then, I just had to wait and tell stories. Telling stories is a good way to pass the time.

To be continued...

Tweet, Tweet

At the insistence of several people, I am trying out Twitter. The idea is that regular status updates bring people together. Or something. I've added the feed to the blog (that's it over there on the right) or you can follow my 140-character-or-less musings at http://twitter.com/life_amuses_me. I haven't made my mind up about it yet. Could be good, although there are some definite weirdnesses built in.

And they're waving the checkered pillowcase...

They race beds in South Whitley. In fact, they're the bed racing capital of the world — you can pick up a green wedge in Trivial Pursuit for knowing that. Rules? Minimal: One bed. One passenger, four runners, no interference. Safety? Sign a waiver — no brakes or steering mechanisms allowed! The atmosphere? Good fun.

We arrived late in the afternoon, and walked over to main street just as the zero-turn mower square dance was finishing up, and staked out a spot in front of the fire station while I went off to get a few photos.

Hey, sweet mama, wanna go... bed racing?

A real racing bed. I think this is one of the ones available to teams who haven't constructed a bed of their own. Apparently steering mechanisms weren't always disallowed — I wonder what prompted that particular rule change?

Teams this year included Manchester United ...Methodist Church, Night of the Living Bed (my favorites), Team Dynamite (I think these were the sixth-graders), Big Blue (the high school track team, if I'm not mistaken), MSC (Manufactured Structures Corporation), and the TK Bed Sled Team, resplendent in Hawaiian shirts and bike shorts.

Night of the Living Bed, with their entry, the new and improved Grateful Bed II.

The TK Bed Sled Team, like most, picked the smallest member as passenger. Only the winning team actually had them lie down in the bed — presumably for better aerodynamics. When was the last time you heard "beds" and "aerodynamics" in the same sentence?

I dig the welded rebar "spiderwebs" on the Grateful Bed II. Night of the Living Bed would go on to win the "best theme" prize.

The heats were short, fast, and furious, and the cheering was genuine. Manchester United, Team Dynamite, and MSC fell in the opening rounds. The remaining three teams battled it out. Night of the Living Bed was dominating until they veered off course and had to stop to avoid a collision. TK Bed Sled Team moved on to the next round, the final showdown against Big Blue.

It was a close race, too close for me to tell from where I was standing. In the end, Big Blue got it, and were declared the 2008 Bed racing Champions.

The victors return. There's something poignant about this photo; I'm not sure I can place my finger on it, though.

For the non-bandwidth-challenged, you can see my videos on YouTube here, here, and here.

And... that's it for this year! Anyone want to put together a team with me for next?