The Adventures of a Dad Run Amok

The Adventures of a Dad Run Amok is currently in protest mode. Since you have a bookmark and can see this post, you have missed my protest page.
As a content creator (okay, it’s not a lot of content) I’m in favor of good copyright protection. But the Stop Online Privacy Act and the PROTECT IP Act cannot be enacted.
I am not in favor of the kind of Internet control that is used by totalitarian regimes like those in China, Iran and others. If you are a US citizen, please contact your Representative or Senator and let them know you do not support this legislation.
Ars Technica has a list of things you can do to help defeat this dangerous and anti-democracy piece of legislation.

Something a little different for the next couple of days. We are in Virginia Beach, VA, attending the American Commonwealth Region conference, hosted by the Hampton Roads Church of Christ.

I’ve never blogged live from something like this, so we will see how it goes. Tonight’s schedule:
Praise and Worship
World Missions Report
Opening Address: “Because the Lord Loves You”, delivered by Randy McKean

More to come later…

UPDATE AFTER THE FIRST EVENING
My wife and I have lived and worked for God in Colorado, Utah and Maryland.

One of the things that my wife prayed for was to run into somebody from “the old days”. He didn’t waste any time at all in answering that one. Within twenty minutes of being in the meeting hall, we ran into Don and Susan–Susan was Amy’s first roommate when we all moved to Utah in 1994–and Josh and Michelle, whom we also knew in Salt Lake City. Pretty cool…

DAY TWO BEGINS!
Had a good walk this morning from our hotel to the conference center. This morning’s activity is a session just for the men titled “Armed for Battle”. Looking forward to listening to Doug Lambert. But first, news from around our region, including Virginia, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Maryland and DC.

Looking around, I see lots and lots of people that I’ve known, but not seen, for a long time.
…..
There has been a lot of good stuff so far this morning. I think I’m just going to have to post my notes at some point.

SATURDAY MORNING SESSION
The topic of the men’s session in the morning was “Armed for Battle”, but Doug Lambert talked about so much more than that. The talk was more about being fully equipped to keep the battle going after we’re gone.

The single biggest thing that we need to do is to be men of integrity. This includes (unfortunately for somebody like me who is getting older) admitting when it’s time to step aside and let the younger guys take their place at the head of the line.

My car died recently.

Well, it didn’t actually die, but it became very, very ill and we made the decision not to seek treatment. It was not a hard decision. I had probably spent about $3,000 over the last 18 months to keep it on its wheels (so to speak).

The onset of the illness was quite sudden. A friend of mine and I were on our way to a weekend retreat, heading down I-95 in Virginia. Suddenly, my battery light came on. Then the engine temp light came on. Then the air conditioner stopped working and the power steering went away.

Somehow, I managed to jockey it into the parking lot of a truck stop. We were only “stranded” for about 15 minutes since we had some friends that were going the same place and were 15 miles or so behind us. Also fortunate for us was the fact that there were only three of them and it was a large vehicle.

We were able to get the gold car back home with a relatively small amount of fuss. The next day, I took everything out of the car and then “de-commissioned” it by removing the license plates. The next day, the guys from Purple Heart came and dragged it off.

After the car was gone and it was too late, I realized that I missed one thing: Yolanda, a little pink piggy that lived on top of the rear-view mirror, had also ended up getting donated.

That was very sad. We had had Yolanda longer than we had had our kids. She never said much, but I knew I could count on her sitting up there and keeping an eye on the car so that I could keep my mind on the road.

It did not take too long for me to get over the loss of Yolanda, however. That same evening, I arrived home in a brand-new 2010 Jeep Wrangler. Surf blue. Soft top.

Oh yeah.

My desire for “El Jeepo” (as we called the mythical dream vehicle) had pretty much dominated any trip we took in the bus or the car. Any time we saw a Wrangler, at least one of the kids would point it out to me.

It’s not that I could not see them–on the contrary, it seemed that some days every other vehicle we saw was a Wrangler–but that they had become professional Jeepo spotters.

My friend Melanie got her first look at it the Saturday after I got it. Her response: “Nice. You’re having your midlife crisis, I see.”

Hmmm…

It is true that I have been at least 29 for a few years now. It also is true that I have long hair and drive a Jeep. But I don’t think that means I am having a midlife crisis. I mean, it’s not as if I play bass guitar in a grungy band or anything so immature as that.

Oops. Wait a minute. I guess I do play bass guitar in a grungy band. Never mind.

But still, it isn’t a midlife crisis. I still fall asleep when my kids are watching cartoons, which seems to me to be a very mature response. It seems that if I was having a midlife crisis, I would be fighting them for the remote to get to the cartoons I like.

Anyway, back to the stories of El Jeepo…

There is a road near our house that goes through a river. I learned about it one day a few years ago when, thinking I had found a shortcut, I was stuck driving through it in the Big Silver Bus. We made it okay, but even then I knew I would be better off in something made for such terrain.

On the day after I got El Jeepo, I threw the top down and headed out with the family to go through the river. When we got there, we found a couple of guys in a Ford Taurus wagon (OF ALL THINGS) that were stuck on the bank of the river.

Just like us, those fellas had come down specifically to go through the river. However, thanks to little ground clearance and a nervous foot on the accelerator, they had managed to kill the car. I ran home, grabbed jumper cables and helped them get on their way. So I already have performed my first rescue in my Jeep.

It’s true that any doofus with a set of jumper cables could have helped these guys, but I still consider it an official Jeep-assisted rescue since the Jeep was the only reason I was there in the first place.

Since then, I have been through that river at least a dozen times. It is really the only off-roading I can do in El Jeepo.

As I mentioned a couple of weeks ago, our family recently acquired two rats. Merlin (my rat) and Sniffles (Mrs. Dad Run Amok’s rat) live in a big cage in the living room. We are in the process of upgrading their quarters: the cage currently sits on the floor and we would like to put it on a table. We think that they will be happier that way.

We could not be more pleased with them. It only took them each a week or so to get used to us and I am happy to report that they are pulling their weight. Their tasks are pretty simple at this point: they are required to make us laugh and occasionally to ride around on our shoulders. We have big plans for them (learn their names and only poop in the litter box) but for now, we are quite satisfied with their performance.

I have found people’s reactions to them interesting. The most typical reaction is “RATS?!? EWWW!!!”

This reaction I do not like. I do not like it, but I do understand it (I guess). Rats do not have a sterling reputation in our country. Quick: name more than one movie where rats played a role not found in this list:

Apparently, even the pet industry’s attitude is a collective “EWWW” at rats, since they are typically lumped together with pets like tarantulas and snakes. I did not realize how far we had moved toward the extreme end of the pet ownership continuum.

I had one friend offer her address so that we could ship them to her to feed her husband’s snake. Since she did not ask for the rats’ resumes or salary requirements, I do not believe they will be employed as cooks or waiters. This leads to the inescapable conclusion that their jobs will be of a somewhat more permanent nature.

One of my cousins conceded that they are cute but could not resist adding an “EWWW”. The Dad² Run Amok stated that he was glad they are not horses. A friend of my wife’s decided, after careful consideration, that she would be willing to come over to the house even with the rats there.

One other person seems to think that we found them wandering around our house and decided to keep them. To that I say “RATS?!? EWWW!!”

Ours are pet store rats. That’s the only reason that they are allowed in the house. I greet Sniffles and Merlin with a cheery “Good morning, rats!” when I come downstairs to find my keys and head out to the office. With the wild variety, I would be far less cordial. In fact, if I learned of wild rats living in my house, I’d probably move out (and take all my family and the invited rodents with me).

Here is another short story that exists only because I had fun writing it. Enjoy!
~~~~~
He stood quietly, hoping that the partial shadow would conceal his form. His quarry was in sight, but he could not allow himself to relax. Not now. That was always his temptation: to allow his focus and control to lapse when he was so close to the goal.
He looked around, scarcely daring to turn his head lest the motion attract the attention of his adversary. This opponent, the one who had dogged him for as long as he could remember, seemed sometimes to have inhumanly keen senses. It almost seemed as if his nemesis could see and hear him though they were not in the same place.
But not today. Today he had done everything right.
Slowly, so slowly, achingly slowly, he moved into the chamber where his prey waited, insensate to his presence. There was just one more portal through which he needed to pass and his mission would be a success.
There! He heard a sound! Ducking back toward the wall, he waited, sure that the pounding of his heart would give him away, as loud as it was to him.
He waited for a long moment. The sound did not recur. The stalk continued.
Again, with maddening, frustrating slowness, he made his way to the last barrier. He was certain that his footfalls would not be heard since he was not wearing shoes. It was an odd decision, he knew, but this was too important not to risk everything.
With caution beyond imagining, he reached his hand out to push aside the last impediment in his progress toward the successful completion of his mission. Now was the time.
As his hand closed on the handle, a familiar voice rang out and he knew he had been thwarted, again.
“Put it back, Billy! You’ll spoil your appetite!”

This has absolutely nothing to do with anything. There is no significance to it whatsoever. It is not very long and does not have a beginning or an end. But since I wrote it, I decided that I probably ought to post it.
~~~~~~~~~~
Lieutenant (JG) Jefferson DeMarco did not know the lavender-skinned humanoid who was standing on the other side of the baryon ray emitter weapon from him. There was not, furthermore, any inkling in the young man’s mind why the alien’s face was screwed up into such a look of determined malice. In fact, DeMarco did not know how this young Velanzian had ended up on a ship flying through space fully five thousand light-years from the Velan system. As far as anybody knew, the Velanzians were still at least two centuries from developing the technology needed even to journey as far as one of their homeworld’s seven moons.

All the young officer knew for certain was that he was looking at the end of the gun that never portends a happy ending.

Just at that moment, the bridge’s blast door slammed shut, separating DeMarco from his would-be assailant and the immediate prospect of blistering death. A moment later, the ship shuddered as the antechamber holding the alien was decompressed, ejecting him into the void with the same suddenness as that of a cork leaving the top of a bottle of Champagne.

“Well, I guess that’s that,” Jefferson thought. He nodded his thanks to Lieutenant Commander Rigby and then, settling back into his pilot’s seat, he returned his full attention to the intricate and dangerous task of navigating the Osmirian Asteroid Belt.
~~~~~~~~~~
As I said, the story does not really have a beginning or an end. I have no idea where Rigby and DeMarco are headed or what they will do when they get there. Like DeMarco, I do not know why the Velanzian was so angry or how he got there in the first place.
If you have found this page and you have some ideas about the heroes of this story, leave me a comment. I would love to blow these few paragraphs up into a longer story…

Our house is overrun with rodents.

Not vermin, just rodents.

It all started innocently enough. Fluffy the Hamster, our first little furry buddy, came to live with us the second spring after we moved into our current home. I have chronicled her deep desire to be a network engineer, so I won’t rehearse that again.

She lived to the ripe old age of two and a half. When she went to hamster heaven we waited a little while and got Tippy the Hamster.

Important note: I don’t know if there’s such a thing as hamster heaven, but if there is, I am sure Fluffy is there now. And most likely, she has found a heater grate across which she can run back and forth in her pink hamster ball.

Tippy was a nice fellow, but nothing like Fluffy. We’re pretty sure that he had aspirations to be a truck driver. His favorite thing to do, at least until he slowed down in his old age, was to run on his hamster wheel (he didn’t want anything to do with the hamster ball). He would not stay on the wheel, however. He would run for a few seconds, then hop off to see how far he had gone, then hop back on and run again. He would do this so fast that the wheel never actually stopped.

I’m pretty sure that with his footwork, he would have made an outstanding ninja. We made sure that people understood the danger with a “Beware of Attack Hamster” sign on the front of the cage.

After Tippy went to that big hamster wheel in the sky, we decided to try something else. We welcomed the gerbil brothers known as Tom and Jerry into our house.

These were the first rodents in our house upon whom we bestowed nicknames. They are known collectively as “the fellas” or “the gents”. They also are known, rather formally, as Thomas and Gerald (naturally!).

They are beginning to slow down a bit, but we love having them around. They live in the aquarium in the dining room and eat cardboard. Lots of cardboard. Unbelievable quantities of cardboard. When we clean the aquarium, we supply them with about an inch of hamster fluff. We have to clean it out weekly or they will end up with only an inch of clearance between the top of the fluff and and the roof of the cage, the product of all of their chewing.

The fellas don’t think they have a cardboard problem, but I am pretty sure that it is a major addiction. When you have a couple of different friends giving you all of their empty toilet paper rolls and cardboard egg cartons, and it isn’t enough to keep up with the demand of the two little furry buzz-saws, some therapy is definitely indicated.

They are not the only ones who may need therapy. After we had had Tom and Jerry for a year, the situation began to get out of hand. Emily’s best buddy got a curious little creature known as a Chinese dwarf hamster. Emily, of course, had to have one also. So on her tenth birthday, we headed out to the local rodent emporium and did some shopping. We returned home with a second aquarium and a little guy by the name of Tiny the Hamster.

Tiny the Hamster’s name is appropriate. That is exactly what he is. But even so, you can tell that he is a bloodthirsty creature who will not be denied in his quest for fresh victims.

Okay, that last sentence isn’t true. He really just stands there when you pick him up. And he is entirely too small to be a danger to anything much larger than a sunflower seed. However, to be on the safe side and avoid lawsuits, we have given Emily the “attack hamster” sign to hang on his cage. You just never know.

Very recently, the family brought to more critters into the house. These are probably the most controversial of our pets. Sniffles joined us about two weeks ago and Merlin came along a few days later.

Who are Sniffles and Merlin? They are rats. Yes, Norwegian rats. Most people learn that we have rats and get a bit, errr, freaked out.

The fact, however, is that they are fun guys to have around. They’re very intelligent and friendly. We have read that they can learn their names, that they like to play peek-a-boo, and that they can be taught to play ball. I guess we will see.

Hopefully that will be all the rodents in our house for a while. I suppose you never know, however. I enjoy having them around and I am getting used to their cold clawy feet.

I wonder if Petsmart sells capybaras…

The other night my wife asked me if I had anything that I wanted to work on in the new year. I was, of course, ready with my answer:

“Yes. For 2010, I resolve to have some great New Year’s Resolutions ready to go by December 31 for implementation in 2011!”

For some reason, she didn’t buy that. I guess I need to work on my believability in the New Year…

That’s probably the last wisecrack in this particular post. Here, in no particular order, are the things that I want to work on in 2010. There are probably twenty or more things that I need to fix, but I’m not dumb enough to try to tackle them all.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
1. This one comes up every year, and given that I’m posting this on fourth fifth fifteenth of January, I guess it needs to be there again: I tend to wait until the last possible moment to do anything.
With the kind of responsibilities I have, I can’t afford to do that. My procrastination tends to have adverse effects on other people. Its been a problem most of my life. This theme, I’m afraid, is going to come up in a couple of others things on this list.
This year I will work very hard on doing things as soon as the opportunity arises to do them and not wait until they become crises.

2. This one may be the toughest.
I wrote an entire post a few months ago about my hobbies. There are just too many to keep up with. I love to tinker with my computer (a post about that is coming just as soon as I can get around to it). I play music, I carve wood, I knit and crochet, I cook.
There are three different instruments that I play well enough to be in front of people with them. But I just do not have the time to practice them all to achieve real proficiency.
This resolution does not sound like a big deal, but it is. When I mentioned it to Mrs. Dad Run Amok, she greeted it with the same sort of groan that usually accompanies the news, delivered by the mechanic, that a car repair expected to cost a couple of hundred bucks is going to enrich said mechanic by four to six times that amount.
I love my hobbies. I don’t want to give any up. But if I’m going to become truly outstanding in any oif them, I have to offload something.

3. For most of my life, I have played music. I definitely think of myself as a musician. Most of my best friends are musicians. Some of them are pros (or good enough to go professional). I feel incredibly blessed to play and sing with them. I believe that they enjoy playing with me. I do not, however, feel like I belong with them most of the time. I realize that it’s the product of huge amounts of work, but when they play it seems effortless.
I want to get to where I don’t have to think hard about playing my bass guitar. I want to get to the point where I can sing and play at the same time. And I want to become a better player in general.

There are many more things I want to work on, but these three feel like enough.

Goto 12:50 PM Update
Goto 3:30 PM Update
Goto Final Update

As longtime readers of The Adventures of a Dad Run Amok are aware, I don’t have a lot of time for “meteorologists”. Ordinarily, they don’t get it right.

This time, however, they’ve gotten it right. If you’ve seen a news broadcast any time in the last 24 hours, you know that the East Coast is getting hammered with snow.

And we live right in the middle:

The scary thing is that they say we’re just starting to get into the heavy stuff.

Last night Mrs. Dad Run Amok and I had a date. We dropped our kids off, ate some of the party food that our friends had out and left for our date.

First stop, the library. It was closed, but we had some DVDs to drop off.

Next, Safeway.

Here in the DC area, the rumor of snow is enough to send grocery-loving residents into a feeding frenzy. And of course, with wintry armageddon in the offing, the joint was packed last night.

As we came through the doors and saw the lines to get out of there, my wife looked at me and said, “do we really want to buy anything here?” The question turned out to be 100% academic.

We were in there for one thing: molasses. So, over to the baking stuff aisle we trooped. As we started our search, a man wandered by, muttering to himself:

“What, do these people think we’ll be snowed in for fifty years?”

I replied that I thought it would be longer. He wasn’t amused, but Mrs. Dad Run Amok thought it was funny. Apparently, others were having a gingerbread craving as well, because there wasn’t any molasses. So we left.

Final stop, another Safeway, this one closer to our house.

This store was not at all crowded and they had plenty of molasses on sale. So we bought a couple of jars. I thought we should also have some eggs, but it was not to be. The only thing left on that shelf was about six dozen cage-free, organic brown eggs. $4.19 a dozen, or about 35 cents per.

I’m happy for the cage-free chickens, but I’ll buy the regular kind. My love for nature does not extend to having to submit to a credit check in order to buy eggs.

I’m glad we went last night, because we’re not going anywhere today.

Hopefully we’ll have another post about snow fun later…

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
<<UPDATE – 12:50 PM>>
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
The kids are done playing outside. They lasted about 15 minutes. Even after we warned them that they’d be inside for the day when this playtime was over.

I don’t blame ‘em. It’s cold and windy and cold (and windy) out there.

I have just finished my first pass at shoveling the walk. Ready for a nap now. It’s only about 25 feet long, but there’s a ***lot*** of snow. I’m glad it’s cold enough not to pack. It would not have been movable if it was packed at all.

When I was done about twenty minutes after I started, there already was a half-inch of snow on the first patch I shoveled.

Dude.

Just for grins, I had my daughter bring the yardstick. We are already under anywhere between eight inches (on top of the Big Silver Bus) and 12.5 (on the front lawn). By my calculations, if it keeps up like this until 6:00 tomorrow morning, which is what they’re predicting, we’ll get an additional 16 inches of snow.

Again, I say it:

Dude.

Stay tuned to this blog for more exciting news from the land of the white blanket…

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
<<UPDATE 3:30 PM>>
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

A couple of hours ago, my wife poked her head into my secret lab (where I’m trying to bring a Linux environment to life using nothing but source code) and wondered out loud whether she thought our deck could handle the amount of snow.

I wasn’t worried about it and told her so. Then I got to thinking about it. If there was a foot of snow on there already and another foot coming, maybe we should do something about it.

The snow is, as I mentioned earlier, very light and fluffy. But there is a lot of it. And that much of anything is going to be heavy. So I just shoveled the deck.

Before I did, though, I stuck the trusty yardstick into a couple of spots. Since the deck is high and somewhat sheltered, it’s a good place for a snowdrift. One spot was 13 inches. Four inches to the right, I had nearly a foot and a half of snow.

And it’s still coming down as though it has no intention of stopping.

<<Epilogue>>

The snow stopped sometime between 9:30 and 10:30 on Saturday night. I knew that I’d have a reason to complain about the weathermen. They said it would last all night and a bit into Sunday morning.

As a result of their wrongness, my prediction was off by a fair amount. The final Sunday morning reading, which was a bit difficult to get accurately due to snow blowing all over the place, was 17 inches.

It took the entire townhome neighborhood about four hours to set all of our cars free. There was a plow truck that helped quite a bit, but a whole lot of it was just shoveling.

I figured out that if a person can lift 20 pounds of snow in a scoop, which I don’t think is difficult, it would take only 100 scoops to move a ton of snow. I’m pretty sure we all moved at least that much.

I had a ballgame on today and missed a fair amount of it. That was a lot of shoveling. I’m happy to report, however, that I will be able to drive down to the office tomorrow morning.

Well, at least I will if I can still lift my arms.

This past weekend was another debut for my daughter. And for me.

Last spring, Emily had her first chance to perform on the violin at a recital. This past weekend, she played in her first concert with the Academy of St. Cecilia’s Prep Orchestra.

As soon as we learned that she was in, I volunteered to be the manager of the orchestra. So, for the past three months, we’ve been trooping up to rehearsals together. Her job was to play the violin and not get caught cutting up with her friend Emily (not easy, considering they sit in the front row, right under the nose of the conductor). My job was to set up stands and chairs for the ten members of the orchestra and help them tune their instruments.

Or so I thought.

When I reported on her successful audition, I wondered whether I should go buy a conductor’s baton. As it turned out, I could have used one. Because of the notorious DC traffic, I had to step to the conductor’s podium twice in rehearsals. Being batonless, I had to use a pen.

At least it was a nice pen.

About four rehearsals in, the conductor stopped the orchestra and ran off to the other side of the room.

“What could he be doing?” I thought to myself.

A moment later, his preparations complete, he stood in front of me with a drum and a sheaf of music. The orchestra was going to play excerpts from The Toy Symphony. Since the ten diminutive string players would be otherwise occupied, Mr. Webb needed somebody else to take up the serious business of playing the bird call, the bicycle bell, the toy drum and the ratchet. Since I was there anyway, I got the call.

It’s funny. Each week, he would hand a percussion toy to another parent, and each week, another kid would get dropped off by a parent who would wave a hasty hello to me and make off in a big hurry. Maybe it was just a coincidence.

At first, it was tough to get through the piece. The problem wasn’t so much that they couldn’t play it; it was more an issue that they couldn’t get their little heads around the idea that one of the dads was playing with all these toys!

The performance was a great success. As always, we forgot our camera and I have not yet had a chance to beg pictures from some of the other parents.

One of these days we’ll actually have the camera at one of Emily’s events…