Not All Bad

Despite my ski frustrations (see earlier post), the week in Garmisch was a great vacation and skiing is a wonderful family tradition. Here are the pics.

Calvinist Skiing

It is ski week in Germany. So, naturally, we are skiing. And I love it. At least that's what I keep telling myself, like a mantra, as I observe with considerable cognitive dissonance the happy faces all around me as we suffer through this odd ritualistic self mutilation called skiing.

But it becomes clear when one considers where skiing is popular: Puritan New England, Mormon Utah, Calvinist Northern Europe. These locations have two important things in common. First, a religious cultural inheritance that is skeptical of too much enjoyment and full of guilt. Second, current and long standing relative economic comfort. Put these two things together and you get societies desperate for self-torture opportunities to ease the guilt of so much comfort. Enter skiing.

The equipment and lift tickets are so expensive as to give one the impression that purveyors are deliberately trying to price literally everyone out of the market. There is no cost-benefit analysis that justifies the price. Until you realize it is a cost-suffering analysis. All these users of new Atomic parabolic skis and Oakley goggles and Spyder snow pants are really making a public declaration that they were willing to inflict more economic suffering upon themselves than I was, as evidenced by my selfish insistence on using 12-year old black ski pants that are too big and that I have rigged with the plastic strap removed from my kid's swim goggles as a make-shift suspender to prevent them falling down to my knees. You see, I'm just not willing to suffer that much. I'm not a good Calvinist like these other folks.

Then there is the process of getting to the mountain. Packing everything into the car and driving to the mountain. Driving back to the hotel because someone forgot their gloves. Returning to the mountain and checking in at the locker room. Again, being a not-quite-pious  zealot, I have purchased tokens for only two lockers even though we really need four. So when I open our lockers, helmets and poles and boots come tumbling out in a heaping mess. I remove the skis and place them against the adjacent lockers. The skis fall over. I place them again and remove remaining items from the locker. The skis fall over. I place them again. I call for the kids to come get their boots. The skis fall over. I place them again. The kids get their boots. The skis fall over. They have the wrong boots. I place the skis.  They get the right boots but have the wrong socks. How did that even happen? The skis fall over.

You know, I could handle the stinky, claustrophobic locker room if they could just design skis that don't fall over when you lean them against a wall. That's always the thing that bursts my bubble of feigned self-loathing Puritanism and causes me to openly express that I am unhappy with the ski experience. Such an expression, of course, is highly inappropriate as it reminds others of their own discomfort and tempts them to similarly express their true feelings.

At length, we are fitted with too many layers, and are on our way to the lift line. The "walking to the lift line while carrying skis over your shoulder" is another bit of ski suffering that forces me to conclude that the whole thing must be designed, on purpose, to suck. Walking in ski boots (which even when you buy the "comfortable" ones never feel like they were designed for human feet) is already terrible. But you have to do it with these ill-balanced sticks on your back. Truly we are reenacting the Via Dolorosa.

The lift line, once there, is a mad scrum characterized by being cut off by 6-year-olds who you just know are way better skiers than you. The lift ride itself is a serene reward amidst the insanity. A calm before the storm. It's almost worth all the hassle just to feel the pleasant contrast of riding in the gondola. The peace is short-lived, however, for once on the mountain, you are faced with a hill too steep and intense psychological pressure from individuals who only moments earlier were pretending to be your friends but who are now yelling at you to "Do it! Just do it! Don't be a loser!" This thing that causes me so much stress and anxiety (because I am equally likely to descend on my face as on my skis) is now the thing that I must do lest I be inadequate in the eyes of those who, allegedly, love me. But then I remember, it is not to be enjoyed. This is not supposed to be fun. This is penance for all the joy and comfort I have in life. And so I ski.

Valentine's Day 2016 Playlist

Songs that remind me of Katie or of fun moments since last Valentine's Day.

1. Give Me One Reason, Tracy Chapman
2. Budapest, George Ezra
3. 99 Luftballons, Nena
4. Barcelona, George Ezra
5. Hurricane, Bridgit Mendler
6. Wonderland, Taylor Swift
7. Love Her for a While, Sam Outlaw
8. Stand by You, Rachel Plattens
9. Masterpiece, Andy Grammer
10. God Made Girls, RaeLynn

Lucky 13

Officially two days away, but the anniversary gift I ordered, which would have been awesome, never arrived. Luckily, I already paid for it in full, so now I get to have a huge battle about that with customer service.

When we were engaged, I made some promises that were a bit overly optimistic. I submit the following evidence that I have done my best to make good on giving my girlfriend the world (and that she has succeeded in giving it to me):

The Quantum Mechanics of Family Council

I've been listening to a biography of Albert Einstein for the past few weeks as I walk to work. It is interesting to me that after introducing the theories that gave rise to quantum physics, Mr. Einstein distanced himself from the implications as the uncertainty at the heart of it made him uneasy. He called it "spooky" and frequently commented that "God would not play dice with the universe."

I'm no physicist, obviously, but as I understand it, at the core of his concern is the Uncertainty Principle which is (more or less) that we cannot know the precise attributes of sub-atomic particles at any particular moment. All we know are the probabilities. A particle is likely to be here or there. That is all we can know.

But it actually goes even deeper. You see, at least as far as I've understood the discussion as presented in the book, the reason we can't know is that the particles aren't actually anywhere until we observe them. There is no objective reality until we observe it. Einstein rejected this, based on logic, but contrary to evidence.

I kind of love it. I find it beautiful and, in a way, empowering. I can create reality. As a man of religion, I wonder about the meaning of faith in light of a universe in which our will apparently can interact dynamically with the reality around us.

When asked whether he was religious, Einstein said he believed in an impersonal God that organized the universe. Despite his reservations about quantum physics, he rested this believe, in part, on the field's implied requirement that something must observe the universe in order to give it form. He called that observer God. Well, so do I. I also believe that He is personal.

Then I got thinking about family council. Our family life has become much happier since we started consistent family councils on Sunday afternoons. The events that happen in our families have no meaning. They are formless. They are like unobserved electrons. Then we come together and discuss the events. We observe them formally which gives them shape and meaning. And we get to choose the shape and the meaning by how we observe them.

No, we don't reinvent. It is more subtle. We can shape the meaning of events by formally discussing them and by proactively assigning positive meaning. This is also the value of journal writing. This is also the value of goal setting. We create the shape of our reality. We invent the future. We take the infinite quantum probabilities and make them finite realities by exercising our free will. 

But when we are passive, when we haven't any goals, we are but random electrons in no particular place at no particular time, reacting randomly to the universe.

Maddie the Fish

Madeline is on the swim team. They practice at 7 am and it is a 30 minute drive from the house. So we get up early. I drive her to swimming at 6:30 am. It is a special bonding time...during which we sit in utter silence. One time I tried to talk to her and we were both a little startled at the sound of my voice. I had broken the code of pre-dawn silence.

She is the youngest and smallest to have made the team. She is not winning any races at the meets.

When she returned from a recent meet in Munich, she informed us she achieved personal best times, by a wide margin, but nevertheless failed to qualify for the final meet in Warsaw. She was disappointed. Then she made me very proud.

She said she didn't want to be disappointed like that again, so she committed to attending every practice with the team and working harder than ever for the next two weeks even though she is not swimming in the meet. She committed to doing whatever it would take to make the swim team, and eventually win some races, in Manila. She said she does not want to play softball this spring or soccer next fall, only swimming, always.

A few days later, she was informed she could attend the meet in Warsaw because another swimmer had to drop out!

And a pic, because snow.

Anxiety

Henry sometimes throws tantrums (don't we all). He can get rather loud and a bit violent.

His fits had been decreasing in frequency but have been almost daily since Christmas. Here are some of my super clever, highly researched tantrum defeating  and prevention methods I have tried over the years*:

1. Yelling back
2. Time outs
3. Dragging him by his feet to his room
4. Threatening to take away toys
5. Taking away toys
6. Throwing toys in the garbage
7. Realizing I was being childish and removing toys from the garbage
8. Standing silently in a coil of my own barely contained rage waiting for him to unwind
9. Leaving him on the side of the road
10. Wrestling him to the ground and pinning all of his limbs

In case anyone reading is in a position to benefit from my experience, let me save you some time: none of these methods were effective.

Anyway, I have been attempting a more prayerful, thoughtful approach. Since anger hasn't worked, why not try kindness, I thought? It couldn't be any worse and at least then I'm not angry. This led me the other day to a tantrum-following quiet conversation with Henry that went something like this:

Will I have a bed in Manila?

Yes. Of course.

The same bed?

No, different bed, but the same sheets and pillow.

Oh. Can I bring my stuffed animals to Manila?

Of course.

Oh. Can I pack them now so I don't forget?

Sure.

I already packed all my action figures, so I don't forget. There in this box.

And here we are at the Reichstag in Berlin

* Katie wanted me to add that these include exaggeration for effect

A Late Christmas Video

We had to wait for the arrival of some gifts that had been shipped to Egypt by mistake, so we just finished celebrating "2nd Christmas" and taking down decorations this weekend. The video below is mostly interesting to grandparents, but I made sure the end had a little funny for those who stick with it.

Charmed Life (and a Resolution)

We've had an odd string of bad luck. Maddie dropped my iPad and the screen shattered. A one-in-a-million bit of randomness did about $3,500 damage to our car and after considering it an obvious case in our favor, I was surprised when it was determined the other party was not liable. Caleb's iPhone mysteriously vanished from the school bus. Maddie's iPhone, fine one moment, then placed in her purse during a train ride, was removed from her purse with a shattered screen.

I was pondering this odd bit of luck the other day when Caleb said to me, out of the blue, "Dad, we sure are lucky we were born in America."

So that put me in my place.

Thus, a resolution: more gratitude in 2016.

Happy New Year!

Darth Vader: Disgruntled Mid-Level Bureaucrat

Caution, mild Force Awakens spoiler ahead.

A colleague lamented that it didn't make sense that Kylo Ren would be so easily defeated if he is supposedly the heir to Darth Vader. I'm sorry, are we thinking of the same Darth Vader?

Darth Vader didn't even have a real position in the empire. He hung out at real meetings in which all the real participants wore uniforms, had titles like General, and sat at the table. Meanwhile,  "Lord" Vader stood in the back and whined about not getting his way and made excuses for his failures, which were many.

The Death Star water cooler gossip no doubt frequently mocked how Darth was only there because of some family connection. Lord of what? they teased. Inherited some Lord-ship from a distant relative or something. He's so useless. Seriously, if one of us let the Death Star plans get away like that, do you think the Emperor would be as forgiving? No way. Our employee evaluation system sucks. If he gets promoted to Career Minister before I do, I swear I'm joining the rebellion.

Think about it, if Ren is the new Vader, then he has to fail at everything, just like Vader. I'm sure that when Vader told Grand Moff Tarkin that he couldn't get any information out of Leia, Tarkin was like, Of course not, you idiot. That's why I already have this other plan, because you always fail.

Having grown up as the brilliant Anakin, it must have been very frustrating for Vader to rise no higher than mid-level Empire bureaucrat with no real authority. When the others rightly pointed out that he failed and didn't know what he was talking about, his response was, Yeah, well, I can choke you from across the room, so who failed now? And Tarkin had to tolerate it long enough for Vader to think he had won the argument so he wouldn't go tattling to the Emperor. Then Tarkin told him to knock it off. Tarkin was no doubt tired of having his able technocrats choked to death by the disgruntled peacock.

No, Vader was no master of evil. He was a mid-life crisis suffering washed out former Jedi attempting to re-live his glory days as enabled by his doting patron, the Emperor.

The Force Awakens Theories (with spoilers)

I am about to spoil the heck out of it. So stop reading now if you haven't seen it yet. Which would prompt the question, what else could you have been doing?

I loved it. Cheered out loud several times. The few negative reviews I've seen complained that it was too similar in its plot points to Episode IV. To me, this was the beauty and joy of it. And it also leaves loads of clues. I hatched some theories today, which I will present here. Yeah, yeah, my kids are fine. But I have Star Wars theories!

Disclaimer: I haven't read any books or comics. All I know is the movies. Nor have I read any of the various theory blogs out there. So forgive me if I'm redundant. Here we go.

So, there are all these parallels with Episode IV. The Death Star, only bigger, and so forth. This includes characters with similar arcs and playing similar roles. Most obviously, right off the bat, was BB8 as R2D2, carrying the secret message.

Then, Rey was positioned as the new Luke. She has nascent force ability. She dresses like him. She lives on a desert planet without a family. She ends up with BB8 (R2D2). She's the new Luke.

But then it gets a little less clear, it least to me. I had to think about it a little bit. Because, if Rey is Luke, who is the new Obi-Wan? Han Solo, that's who. Obi-Wan was Luke's guide and mentor on the adventure and was killed, giving himself up to Darth Vader. Totally Han Solo. He is Rey's guide and mentor and gives himself up to Kylo Ren, the new Vader. Han is Obi-Wan and Ren is Vader.

So, who's the new Princess Leia? That would be Poe Dameron. He's the one who gave BB8 (R2D2) the message. This leads me to suspect a twist in which Poe and Rey, rather than Ren and Rey, turn out to be brother and sister. Or maybe they are twin younger siblings of Ren.

Finn is the new Han Solo. He's Rey's (Luke's) buddy and has questionable motives and tries to leave at one point but decides to come back to help out. And, of course, Luke is now Yoda, the one Rey (Luke) goes to for Jedi training; the last remaining Jedi Master.

Having parallel plot, themes, and character arcs appears to be a guiding motif. The idea, basically, is that there are the original characters, and then there are shadows or types of the original characters incarnated as the new characters. This leads us to ask, where is Lando? Where is Boba Fett? Is the motif meant to give us correct clues or to throw us off the trail?

I can't put all the pieces together though. There is clearly more to Finn's story. He is a traitor. Darth Vader calls Leia a traitor at the beginning of Episode IV. Captain Phasma seemed pretty eager to get Finn reassigned to her division so she could...not really punish him at all. Also, she was pretty easy to convince about putting down the shields. Not to mention Gwendoline Christie got way too much press to be such a small piece of the puzzle. So Phasma is a spy for the resistance, or maybe a third party with her own agenda. Perhaps she is a sith, or a Mandalorian. Perhaps she is the new Boba Fett. Perhaps Finn is Lando's son. Perhaps Snoke is the original Boba Fett, half digested by the Sarlac, or whatever that thing was called.