Work issues and homemade pizza

I really don’t know what to write about today, all I know is I want to write something. So, hold on, I don’t know where this is going.

Let’s start with the last few days. I haven’t really done much of anything that I would call interesting. I ended up having to work all day last Friday, my usual day off, due to the incompetence of people at my work. Basically I had to work because the people I work with suffer from CYA-itis (a mental defect that makes humans only perform enough work to cover their a$$ in case somebody asks). In my case, the person I was working with to release a document responded to me with a bunch of petty, pointless questions in an email to a whole group of other employees who had not been involved with the project. Had I responded to his questions truthfully it would have made him look quite unintelligent and uninformed. I was pretty irritated with his approach and I started (and actually finished) my response but before I hit send I decided to take the “high-road” and called him directly to discuss his questions. After a little more than half an hour of explaining and responding to even more stupid questions he finally got it and I was able to move forward with the project. This did not help with starting my weekend off right.

Saturday was pretty typical – took the kids swimming, had lunch, came home to do some stuff around the house – all of which is fine for the most part. Sunday wasn’t much different than Saturday except no swimming and I was able to get some quite time sitting under the almond tree in the backyard reading. It isn’t often that I get time like that, it was pretty pleasant. My Wife checked out a book from the library called The Art of Simple Food by Alice Waters, which I browsed for a bit. I enjoy cooking so can generally spend quite a significant amount of time reading cookbooks. Not so much because I will follow the recipes, because I usually don’t, but rather to get some ideas for making something of my own creation. My family has a bad habit of going out to eat a lot so we are trying to break it by eating at home all this week.

The highlight of the day on Sunday was making pizza from scratch. We’ve done this many times but it has been a while. My Wife made some of her delicious pizza/marinara sauce with some fresh tomatoes from our garden and also made some pizza dough based on her bread recipe. We topped the pizza with olives, zucchini slices, red onions and mushroom and a lot of mozzarella cheese. Looks good, doesn’t it? The great part was how the whole family was involved in making pizza. The kids helped chop vegetables and grate the cheese. I think that having kids help prepare meals is one of the best things you can do for them. When kids help prepare meals they gain a sense of place, a sense of where their food comes from and what it takes to prepare a meal for the people you love. This works especially well if you have a garden where they can pick the vegetables or herbs or whatever that are going to end up on the table. My kids love that. I think I will have to do some research and post about this in greater detail.

Speaking of gardens, I really don’t understand why people don’t grow more of their own food. Anybody who lives in a single-family suburban home in the United States has more than enough room for a small vegetable garden. We have two eight foot by four foot garden boxes and a number of potted vegetable plants around the yard and they provide more than enough vegetables for my family from spring through fall. We also have a few citrus trees. Instead of planting all the crappy ornamental trees commonly found around most any neighborhood why not plant a fruit tree. Let’s face it, you have to water it and if it is ornamental you are getting nothing from it but green leaves and maybe a little shade, and if it is deciduous (loses its leaves in winter) a mess to rake up as well. If the same amount of care and water is given to a fruit tree you get all the same benefits of the ornamental tree but the tree also provides you with delicious fruit. This seems like such a no-brainer but to each their own, I guess.

Well, that’s enough for now. Until next time…

Wii? Sure.

My son's birthday isn't until late August but a few weeks ago my mom had the idea of buying him a Wii for his birthday. Of course, this was the same time the Wii Fit was coming out so a line in front of Target early on a Saturday morning would have to be endured just to get one. I proposed buying one for my dad for his birthday on August 1st. So, we agreed that we would each head buy one in our own hometowns and avoid shipping costs.

There was one catch to this idea. I would have to give my son his Wii before my dad's birthday so I could set it up so that when the eventual "how do you set this thing up" call came from my dad I would have an answer. So, my son got his Wii on Wednesday night. I have to admit, I didn't know how well he would take to it, he is an outdoors kid who doesn't like to stay inside, but he loves it.

My wife was very concerned about the Wii taking away from his time outside but so far it hasn't, granted it has only been a couple days. I definitely do not want my son to turn into one of those kids who sits inside all day playing computer games, no matter how active he may be while doing so, as he is with the Wii.

One great thing I have discovered about having the Wii is that I can spend some time with my kids playing and laughing instead of the usual nightly routine of them running around the house making messes while the Wife and I run around behind them telling them to clean up. And, during a game of bowling I found out my son is a pretty good trash-talker. Ahh, the things we fathers are proud of.

Farewell Randy Pausch

After being out of town all weekend I was jonesing for some news. On Wired.com and a few other blogs there was a lot of talk about the passing of Randy Pausch, a professor at Carnegie Mellon University. I had never heard of him before but curiosity got the best of me so I watched his now famous "last lecture" which was linked to in almost every article or post I saw about him. I found this to be inspirational and moving. His view on life is truly remarkable considering his circumstances. I would recommend anyone, but especially fathers, to watch this. Enjoy.

Bark Houses and Dirty, Dirty Children

Went camping this weekend with the family at Indian Grinding Rock State Park in Jackson, CA. We camped with four other families at the U’macha’tam’ma’ environmental campground. The U’macha’tam’ma’ is a collection of seven recreated Miwok bark houses. A bark house is essentially a tepee constructed with wooden planks and a dirt floor. There were plenty of gaps in the planks for all the forests small creatures to come and go as they please. Each bark house has a picnic bench and metal fire ring and there is a common area with a fire ring and a few tables. The place is really cool and an experience I would recommend trying at least once. Here is a picture of our bark house.

Of course, as you can see if you clicked the link, there is one apparent drawback to sleeping in the bark houses, there is no door. At first, I was a little apprehensive. I wasn't so much worried about the family being mauled by bears or mountain lions, no, I was more concerned with raccoons getting into our stuff or a curious skunk. However, the view out the door at night as you lay down to sleep and the sunrising through the forest when you wake is amazing and more than makes you forget about the downside. Here is a picture taken of the view on Sunday morning.

We originally had two of the seven bark houses, one for the kids and one for the wife and myself. The first night after dinner and roasting marshmallows we all headed up to bed. The Wife and I got the kids settled in their beds and walked the 40 feet to our bark house to go to sleep. While we were laying there we discussed the positives and negatives of the no door layout of the bark house versus the traditional nylon tent. We had a good laugh at the false sense of security provided by a couple of millimeters of nylon and a plastic zipper. Although we had convinced ourselves that the bark house were perfectly safe about fifteen minutes later we were moving the kids, their air mattresses and sleeping bags up to our location. My kids are adventurous and brave to a fault and although they would never admit it but you could see it in their faces that they were relieved to be sleeping with mom and dad. We all slept very well.

The next morning, while the Wife and I prepared breakfast with the other adults, all the kids headed off into the forest around the campsite to explore. It took about an hour to get everything prepared for breakfast. We called the kids and they emerged from the trees covered head to toe in a fine red dust. We would come to find out that this would be pretty much how our kids would look for the rest of the weekend. We cleaned them up enough to eat, fed them and then sent them back into the forest to play while we washed the dishes.

One of the best things about kids, in my opinion, is that they are all about having fun and being dirty is just part of the deal. Somewhere along the way most of us "grow up" and become overly concerned with our appearances. Although I do appreciate that kids don't care about being dirty I still felt it was my parental duty to take them to the camp showers about a quarter mile away to shower and brush their teeth. Besides, the Wife and I really wanted a shower.

After showering we visited the museum at the park. It is a small museum but it has some wonderful displays and information. I think that I was more interested in the museum than I would usually be because we were sleeping in the same structures that the Miwok people one did.

We went back to camp and again let the kids loose into the forest. Of course, they emerged again from the forest covered in red dust. And, as we sat visiting with the other adults, we realized that we too were becoming covered in the dust from the kids running through camp. Finally we got to work preparing dinner. Following dinner we took a good look at the kids and decided that there was no way they were getting into bed looking the way they did so it was off to the showers again.

That night we laid down and the Wife decided to read to the kids while I read the newest Wired magazine I'd picked up while getting food for the trip. We were using headlamps to see our respective reading material. Soon we were getting dive-bombed, kamikaze style, by moths and June bugs attracted to the lights. Eventually it got to be so absurd that we had to just give up reading and go to sleep. The next morning we ate, packed up and got on the road.

The trip didn't involve anything terribly exciting but I think that the experience was unbeatable. The kids had a great time, I really enjoyed the whole bark house experience and the Wife I think just liked getting out of San Jose for the weekend.

Here goes...

So, a couple days ago I randomly came up with the idea of wanting to start a blog. I don’t know why or what inspired the thought but who am I to question inspiration. I started looking into how to start a blog, who would host it, etc. I Googled the subject and came up with way too many hits so I chose a couple and moved on. I took the first “how to” site on Google (courtneytuttle.com) and read an article titled “Starting a Blog That Isn’t a Time-sucking Money Pit”, a great article. However, this sent me into a whole other set of questions like ‘what is the purpose of my blog?’ and ‘what subject should my blog focus on?’ issues that the article pointed out as important to having a successful blog. As I struggled coming up with answers to those questions I backtracked a bit and asked myself ‘Do I care if my blog is successful?’ the short answer – no. Answering that question made everything easier, at least in my mind, I can post about whatever I want. Will people read it? Will I get any RSS subscribers? Will anyone link to my posts because the liked what I posted? The answer to all of these is maybe, and that is good enough for me.
Now that all that is out of the way, what will this blog be about? I will be posting about things I’ve done, places I’ve been and new things that spark my interest. I expect this whole blog can be summed up by the saying “an inch deep but a mile wide” hence, the name