San Francisco

We're back from vacation.

J and I spent the first part of this week traveling, and it was the first quasi-vacation that we've taken alone together since our honeymoon. James stayed with Nama and Papa (benedicte) and Kylie (benedicte) while we were gone, and I'm not actually sure that he noticed we weren't there. There is a sandbox at Nama's, and once he's in the sand it's hard for him to notice anything else.

I was, as is my custom before auditions, feeling wretched on Sunday morning. We went to our separate churches, came home, and finished loading up our suitcases. We woke James up, bundled him up in multiple layers, and then carried (what felt like) all our earthly possessions to the car. It was snowing pretty hard, so it was a slow drive to N. Chili, where we dropped him off. From there to the airport, onto the airport shuttle, and through an almost empty security line in terminal A of the mighty Rochester International Airport.

ROC isn't terribly crowded even at its busiest moments, but it seemed very nearly abandoned as we played cribbage outside our gate. Our connecting flight to Philadelphia looked like it might be the only departure for the evening, and the two-dozenish travelers who lounged around us were all looking like it was the end, rather than the beginning, of the week. I heard a phone go off, then another, and several other ringtones simultaneously. I noticed my pocket was buzzing, glanced outside at the the thick-falling snow, and said to J "This isn't going to be good news."

It wasn't. Our 5:45 departure was delayed due to icing on a previous flight, and our new time of departure would be 6:30. It takes just about an hour to fly to Philly, and our connecting flight was supposed to leave at 8:30.

"We're probably fine," said J "and more than likely our flight to San Francisco is going to be delayed also."

We meandered past closed and gated shops until we found the only open restaurant in the airport--McDonalds--and enjoyed a lovely and romantic vacation-starting meal. When we got back to our gate we found that our departure was bumped back again, this time to 6:50.

The plane arrived, a tiny regional jet with hardly enough space to swing a kneazle. (I spent most of the plane rides reading Harry Potter 5 and 6.) We squished on board and became intimate with countless human odors hitherto unfamiliar. Once I'd squashed my gig bag under the seat in front of us and successfully hid the protruding end under my lap-coat, we received word from the captain that we'd be pushing back momentarily and making every effort to arrive in Philly in a timely manner.

And then the plane went dark.

Do you know how commercial aircaft are supposed to be some of the safest and most thoroughly regulated and tested examples of engineering in the modern world? Well, apparently you can still accidentally bump the power switch on them. And that is what happened to us. We were in good shape to make it to Philly in time for our connection, and then we waited on the tarmac for 20 minutes while the plane rebooted and powered up. (Apparently US Airways regional jets run on Windows 98, which also did not have record start-up speeds.)

Incidentally, whenever I type the word "tarmac" in my phone it is auto-corrected to a capital T, making for weird texts such as:

R: I'm stuck on the Tarmac at O'Hare, can you text me a revealing picture of yourself?

J: I have never done that once, nor will I ever. Stop asking.

R: I meant "tarmac." Stupid auto-correct.

Anyway, we waited on the "Tarmac" for 20 minutes for the lights to come back on, and then for another 15 while we waited for the runway to be re-plowed. It was 7:25 when we took off.

I reminded myself not to grind my teeth every few minutes while reading Harry Potter, and we touched down in Philly at 8:25, just 10 minutes before our flight was scheduled to leave. We then waited for 20 minutes for an open gate.

Our flight to San Francisco was gone before we ever stepped off the plane. There was never a chance. US Airways was dumb about a lot of things over the course of the weekend, but they were good about this: As soon as we stepped off our first flight, they had rebooked tickets printed for us for the next flight out in the morning. And, it turned out that our original flight got re-routed to Kansas City because the snow was so bad. So maybe it worked out okay.

J and I were tired as we weighed our options. We had been given a number to call around for discount hotels, but since our nice romantic hotel in San Francisco was already paid for and non-refundable, we thought perhaps we ought to sleep at the airport that night. The volume and song selection of the airport music made the Days Inn Philadelphia an easy choice. We rode a swerving shuttle (think the Knight Bus...again, it was a Harry Potter filled trip) out to Springfield, watched the last ten minutes of the Pro Bowl, and immediately collapsed on what turned out to be a perfectly comfortable king-sized bed.

Here is the update from this year's Pro Bowl:

Al Michaels: Well, from the way that kicker just completed the extra point try you can tell that this year is really different and that the players are trying much harder than they have in the past. If you watch the replay, you'll see that the Coach Rivera actually put down his Mai-Tai to adjust his headset before calling the play in. Clearly, he really wants to win this game.

Chris Collinsworth: Yeah, and this player is sort of unknown and underrated, even though he made it to the Pro Bowl and is a millionaire, and plays for either Dallas, New York, San Francisco or New England. 

We woke up in time for the 6 AM shuttle back, checked through the security lines again, and then took our seats two rows apart on the six hour flight to San Francisco. Fortunately our luck began to turn here, and a kind man offered to switch with me so that I could sit next to J. (Seriously, this guy was a saint--I was in the very back row next to the lavatory. On a six-hour flight.) I then proceeded to not think about sick and nervous I was for the next six hours as we took off at 7:30 and and landed at 10:30 thanks to the magic of time zones. Breakfast that morning had been half of a fruit smoothie at the airport, and a bagel. J was a saint through the whole process, and didn't complain once as we took the smelly subway to the hall.

There isn't much to say about the audition. The staff was fine with me arriving late, they were very helpful through the whole round, and I ended up playing a good first round. I didn't advance, which was too bad. But that meant that we were free in San Francisco. In the city by the bay, my beautiful young wife and I had left our child and all our worldly responsibilities behind for 36 whole hours. It was 60 degrees out an sunny, and the day was ours.

"Let's go back to the hotel room and take a nap."

"Sounds great."

We checked in at the Fitzgeral Hotel in Union Square, and they were great to us. They refunded us the unused night (although they weren't obliged to do so) gave us great information about what to do in the city, and provided a lovely eclectic style room with a teensy-weensy television and a great view of the city. We sacked out for a few hours and woke up at about 5 PM real time (2 PM fake time) and walked down to Union Square, the fashionable shopping/retail district of San Francisco. We poked around a seven floor Macy's looking for food, and found a Cheesecake Factory on the top floor overlooking the square. To anyone who is judging us for eating at a restaurant that is less than a block away from our real house, WHATEVER because we were outside on the seventh floor looking over the city and watching pigeons steal people's food, and we had a great time. We hadn't eaten since breakfast (6 AM real time) and the crab dip, fish tacos, martini, and hamburger were amazing.

We walked around the square a bit more as it failed to get dark out at the appropriate time and balked at many prices. I accidentally knocked down a big sign in a three-story Old Navy, and we touched lots of things at a huge Apple store that we saw a picture of in the news the next day. We were back to the hotel by 7 PM fake time completely exhausted.

It was unbelievably cool to wake up at 6:30 fake time the next morning having slept for almost 12 hours, the air already warm, and the sun just starting to rise. We had breakfast at the hotel (complimentary Nutella, thank you very much) and were out on the streets even before the morning rush of men-in-suits-talking-on-cellphones. We played more cribbage at a Starbucks while we waited for shops to open, then did some clothing shopping, bought super fancy chocolate to bring home, and looked through rows and rows of jewelry. We did Thai for lunch, checked out of the hotel--they were kind enough to let us store our luggage there while we explored in the afternoon--and then set our for Fisherman's Wharf.

This was maybe the only really dumb decision that we made, although I still think it was kind of worth it. We decided to walk up to the Wharf instead of taking the bus, so that we could save a little money, get some exercise, and also see a little bit of Chinatown up close. It turns out that Fisherman's Wharf is pretty darn far away when you are going up and down hills the entire time. I used to walk a half an hour each way in grad school to go into classes, and I don't remember feeling as sore then as I did that afternoon. Still, we got to see some really amazing authentic Chinese architecture, decoration, and pornography shops, so the walk was pretty much worth it. 

Once we arrived at the harbor we saw the incredibly loud sea lion colony, tons of seafood shops, lots of touristy t-shirts, and of course several spectacular views of Alcatraz and the Golden Gate Bridge. We did our touristy things and browsed around, and walked as far up as Ghirardelli square. We called James (who wasn't really interested in us), ate some seafood, and enjoyed the sun. It was lovely. It was amazing. We talked and laughed and didn't worry about who was going to take which car where or what time the other would be home. It was fantastic, and it made me realize why people spend so much money to go on vacations. But it only lasted for so long, and then we needed to catch a flight.

We rode a trolley car back to the square, picked up a few souvenirs, and then gathered our bags. It felt really late even by the time that we arrived at the airport, and then it was a long wait for an 11:00 (that's 2 AM real time, although we were already losing track of that) flight back across the country. We slept poorly, but we made it into Philly, and when we stepped outside to catch the terminal shuttle it was like getting slapped in the face by a winter-demon. There was another weather delay on our flight back, but our little 2-prop regional jet made it home, and we traipsed through the crunchy snow back to the terminal, out into the parking lot, and into our salt-stained dirty PT Cruiser.

Vacation is over now, but it was wonderful. And it won't be six years before the next time J and I get away together.

At the Carwash

I was walking through the frigid courtyard to our apartment building, and my legs were frozen from my toes all the way up past my knees. I'd left the house at 7:45 that morning and driven an hour and a half to Syracuse, where we'd played a two and a half hour rehearsal in an unheated auditorium, went straight to an orchestra meeting, and then played another two and a half hour rehearsal. The sun went down as we drove back, and by the time I parked in front of our building it was completely dark and completely cold. My shoes had been soaked all day, and I could feel the damp squish of my socks as I padded up the walk.

The foyer might have contained a blazing hearth. I stopped for a moment and leaned against the downstairs mailboxes, soaking in the warmth and quiet. J and James would be upstairs waiting for me. I slipped off the wet shoes on the doormat outside, and I hear James exclaim "Daddy!" inside when I turned my key in the latch. I heard him pitter-pattering up to the door as I pushed it open, and he grinned at me.

"Daddy! Daddy!"

I swung my trumpets off my back and grinned at him.

"What were you going to tell Daddy?"

"Daddy, COOKIE! Cookie! Cookie, cookie, cookie! Cookie, Daddy!"

I looked on the kitchen table, and there was a tray of gooey looking chocolate chip cookies set out to cool.

"Daddy, shh-shh! Shoes, shh-shh!"

"Shh-shh" doesn't mean silence. Shh-shh means car wash, which has found an even deeper level of fixation for James recently. He has loved walking down the hill by our apartment and gazing at the cars and trucks that pass through the Royal Car Wash for as long as we've lived at our apartment, and we even took him through once in the PT Cruiser. But last Friday he found his new favorite book in the world, Curious George and the Car Wash.

It is (as you may have guessed) the story of how Curious George visits a car wash with the man in the yellow hat. George then builds his own car wash with help from his friend Allie to wash his toy cars. We have read Curious George Car Wash so many times in the last week that we've started setting a timer between readings--we refuse to do it more than once every half hour. It is is the first thing that James asks for when he gets up, and the last thing he wants to do before he goes to bed. About halfway through the week we also discovered the corresponding Curious George TV episode, and it is a guaranteed 12 minutes of absolute still silence. (James' most recent haircut was done with the assistance of the Car Wash episode.)

Everyone in the house knows the book by heart. We've developed a read-aloud script where we leave out words that he can fill in without looking at the book, and he brings his entourage of toy cars (green, yellow, and red) along with George and sometimes Steven for each reading. And every time we go outside, he points to the car wash and begs to visit again.

So tonight, when I got back in and James asked to go see the car wash, I took him. I slipped my freezing wet shoes back on, pulled on his boots, coat, and hat, and drove down to the car wash. We pulled into the parking lot, and I switched him from his car seat to the front passenger seat. I paid the automated machine, and we drove through the initial spish-spish of the rinse, the flap-flap cloth, the blub-blub soap suds, the scrub-scrub scrubbers, and the spish-spish of the final rinse. (James helped me make all these sounds while transfixed in rapt wonder.) We drove out of the wash, and as soon as I put the car in park his eyes welled up with tears and he begged,

"Daddy, Daddy, do adain, do adain!"

"No, James, it's time for us to go home and have some supper."

"No, do adain!" he wailed, shaking his head.

He was still crying when I carried him back up the stairs, but when he saw what was on the table we were treated to the following chorus for the next half hour:

"Daddy, cookie! Cookie, Daddy. I want cookie. Cookie. I want that. Cookie, Daddy!"

(and repeat)

We read Curious George and the Car Wash twice before bed, and he asked to drive our car back down the hill to get washed again about twenty more times.

And that's why Julie and I are both tired at the end of the day.

At least we have some cookies.

Free Coffee

So this morning Calvus and I were sitting at Bruegger's doing Hebrew (as is our wont) when a middle aged man with very distinguished looking spectacles came up and wished us good morning.

"You two gentlemen come here often, don't you?"

I looked up and said that we did.

"Well, I'm glad to see you studying Talmud. My name's Ken, and I think this is the sort of thing we want to encourage. Have some coffee on me."

We both said our thank-yous to Ken while he handed us two small pieces of plastic. I wondered whether we ought to tell him that we are both Christians, and Calvus a pastor at that, but he was out the door almost just as quickly as he'd come in.

Then we looked down at the small plastic keychains. They weren't gift cards for a free coffee. They were two memberships in an unlimited mug program. This kind Jewish stranger had just bought us unlimited free coffee for a year.

So we might visit Bruegger's more than once a week now.

In other news, here is a throwaway paragraph from Paul and the Faithfulness of God that made me stop reading just so I could think about it for the next fifteen minutes or so:
Paul's detailed understanding of what human beings actually are can again be see in continuity with his Jewish traditions, but also in implicit dialogue with the surrounding culture in which, ever since the pre-Socratics, quite sophisticated analyses of human interiority had been offered. Humans, noble in reason, infinite in faculties, can be understood from a variety of angles, or perhaps in terms of several interlocking features: 'body,' 'flesh,' 'mind,' 'heart,' 'spirit,' 'soul' and 'will.' These words sometimes appear to designate different 'parts' of a human being, but, as many have pointed out, it is better to see them as each encoding a particular way of looking at the human being as a whole but from one particular angle; as though one were to describe a piece of music in terms of its basic theme, its harmonic structure or its tempo--or indeed its orchestration, its historical period, its place within the composer's career or even its role within a wider cultural narrative. The song or symphony would be exactly the same, the rich, rounded whole. Each of the aspects means what it means because of all the others; but one would use different language to draw attention to these different facets or aspects of it, without implying that this facet or aspect could be split off from all the others.

And lastly, James is sick. But here is a video of him laughing at Curious George drinking juice.

Also, O should sit at Bruegger's with me and talk about football every Tuesday morning until a stranger gets us season tickets.

Updates

1) James is no longer quite so scared of the dark. About a week ago I put on Zarathustra, took out our camping lantern, and turned out all the lights in the house. James was going along with it until the last light went out. I even asked him "James, should we turn out all the lights and just have one lantern on?" "Yeah, oh wow!" he said. When the last light went out he started to shriek and cry, and he wouldn't calm down until we'd turned on EVERY light in the house, even in the rooms that we were avoiding because they meant brushing our teeth and getting in the crib.
But today, he discovered my Mag-lite and carried it around for most of the morning. (James, don't shine it directly in your eyes.) This evening I gave it back to him and turned off all the lights one by one. He laughed uproariously as he toted around the sole light in an otherwise black house, delighting in "extinguishing" it by holding it under a pillow. With him occupied and unable to see, I put away all of his toys. This was exciting because when he sees me putting away trains and blocks and trikes, he knows that bed time must be near, and he tries to take out of his toy box whatever I'm putting in. When the lights came back on, everything was already stowed for the evening. (Albeit in a rather messy heap.)

2) For all those concerned, we found Lego kitty this week. Lego kitty (or "mow-mow," as James calls it) is one of two plastic animals that came with a duplo set he got for his birthday last year. The other animal is a little doggy (we call that one "woof-woof") and we'd been missing the kitty for several weeks. James would get out the duplo box, point to the picture of the cat, and say "Where's mow-mow?" Then he'd look under the sofa for it and forget what he was actually doing, because looking under the sofa is so much fun. But anyway, it got to the point where we were sad whenever we saw "woof-woof" because we didn't know where "mow-mow" was. We found Lego kitty under Mommy and Daddy's bed (?) earlier this week, and promptly lost Lego doggy for several days. But this morning I found Lego doggy under the Christmas tree skirt, and the two friends were reunited at last. James didn't want to let them out of his sight all day, and they had to come with him when we went to check the mail and when we drove to Staples. It was very fortunate that I've retained some of my hearing, because when I heard the "click" of something falling I thought to look in the aisle behind us and saw Lego kitty lying beside a box of printer paper. A salesperson also pointed out to me later that "your son dropped his toy" and we had to go back into the store after we'd purchased our printer ink to retrieve Lego doggy from the checkout area.

3) Our printer is temporarily up and working again, now that I've purchased some ink and installed all of the correct drivers. That poor printer takes a lot of abuse. James finds it fascinating, and will come running into the bedroom whenever anything is being printed so he can dance to "music" it makes. He also turns it on and off recreationally, and has been spotted cramming toys into the paper tray.

4) James and I discovered a charming low-cost Christmas tree stand at a greenhouse about a half a mile up the road from our house. If we'd gone there instead of the Dairy and H---eye falls in December the whole Christmas tree fiasco could have taken about 45 minutes. Also, the number of people who've read that story is shockingly high, given the number of illicit undergarments contained therein. But pretty much everyone has found it humorous, and we haven't (to our knowledge) been disinherited by anyone yet.

5) Our stock sound for "Pittsford Library" has changed from "ooh-ooh, ah-ah" to "choo-choo." Whenever we tell James we are going somewhere, he has a reactionary sound. For example, if I say that we are going to Daddy's church, he says "choo-choo." (There is a train there.) If we say Wegmans, James says "choo-choo." If we say Barnes and Noble, he says "choo-choo." If we say Uncle Calvin, he says "mow-mow." (Uncle Calvin has a cat.) If we say "Mommy's church," James makes drumming motions. "Grandma's house" also means drumming motions. Alexa's house is "whooooo," which is the vacuum sound, and the carwash is "swish-swish." There are two Curious George dolls on the children's shelf at the library, which is why it usually is "ooh-ooh, ah-ah" but there has been a train display up there for the last two visits, so it has changed to "choo-choo."

6) We are still never bored.

We Made Brownies

We made brownies today. It is the coldest day in my memory, and I was home alone with James for the late morning. I went out briefly to the store and to the garage across the street. We needed toilet paper and contact solution, neither of which you want to be out of during a state of emergency day. It's bad news to attempt a substitute for either. The Neon was also due for an inspection, so I dropped it off at the corner garage and trudged up the hill to our apartment. I don't think "snow" adequately covers what's happening outside right now. In my fat black copy of German Myths and Legends there are all sorts of words like "bifrost" and "rime." I'm not sure what those terms mean, but it has to be something like what's happening outside today.

James at two is a different sort of creature than James at 18 months. James at two is still sweet and happy and generally cooperative, but he is also becoming much more specific about what he wants. Today he wanted to bake something. He dragged one of the kitchen chairs out from behind the table, slid it across the linoleum to the counter, climbed on top, then opened the silverware drawer and began to pull out all of our measuring cups and spoons.

"James, do you want to make something?"

"Oh, yeah. EAT!"

And then he showed me a 1/2 tablespoon and nodded. I found our last box of brownie mix in the pantry behind the mountain of recycling I haven't taken out yet--it's very cold, you know--and set the oven to preheat. I poured the brownie mix into a bowl, and let James stir it with a spoon (be gentle, don't spill) while I greased the pan and searched for eggs in the refrigerator.

There was a little bit of fine brown powder spilled on the counter when I went back to him, but he hadn't been too messy. He went back to digging in the silverware drawer atop his chair while I mixed in the oil, water, and eggs. Brownies are so easy to make that even I can't mess them up. When I reached over James to get a clean spoon for mixing, he indicated that he wanted to stir as well.

"Just Daddy's going to stir the brownies for a minute."

This did not go over well. He leaned over my arms, attempting to put his spoon in the bowl, and then when I held it out of reach he tried to climb up my arms. I moved over to the other side of the sink, and he (whinily) resumed digging through the silverware drawer. A few seconds later he tipped the chair over backwards and crashed to the floor. He managed to land perfectly, but scared himself badly enough that I had to hold him and "there, there" for a few minutes. I put the chair away back at the table and went back to mixing the brownies. As the oven beeped, a sniffling James was dragging the chair back to the silverware drawer.

I scraped the batter out into the pan as he watched, still holding his spoon. Again, he wanted to do it too. I let him scrape a little bit, but when I went back to working on the spatula-layer, he started to cry again.

"Do again, do again!"

"No, Daddy needs to do the spatula part by himself."

He stuck his spoon in the pan and began to stir it.

"No James, that's going in the oven. Let me take your spoon."

I took the spoon away and put it in the sink. Whine, whine. Fuss, fuss. He reached into the silverware drawer and pulled out another clean spoon.

"James, don't get another spoon dirty. We're done stirring for now."

He stuck the spoon in the pan and began to stir it. By the time I'd put the new spoon in the sink he already had another one out and in the brownie mix.

"Okay, down you go."

I picked him up, set him down on the kitchen floor, and set the third spoon in the sink.

There were many tears as I scraped off the spatula and spoon. I looked at him and felt sorry for the child. All he'd wanted to do was to help me make brownies, and he'd only been allowed to use his spoon once in the whole process.

"Hey, how about a treat. Don't tell Mom I let you do this, but would you like to lick the spoon?"

He stopped crying so hard and nodded. I handed him the batter-covered spoon and waited for (as far as I know) his first reaction to raw brownie batter. As soon as he got a taste he shoved the whole spoon in his mouth so far that he almost gagged on it. Once he'd licked off the initial spoonful he gestured at the pan of mix.

"Do again."

"No, we're going to bake this mix so we can have yummy cooked brownies."

And that was when the crying started in earnest. He was genuinely distressed when I put the brownies in the oven, and he actually attempted to open the oven to get at the batter again.

"James, I'm going to tell you what Nama told me when I was little. Someday, when you're a grown up, you can make a bowl of brownie mix and eat the entire thing raw. But as long as you're here you can only have a taste."

"Nama, Nama!"

He made his begging please sign.

"Do you want to talk to Nama on FaceTime?"

"Yeah."

"I don't think she's home."

"Nama, Nama!"

We didn't get ahold of Nama, but we did tell Papa how upset we were that we couldn't eat more brownie batter. The brownies looked great when they came out of the oven, and we're about to serve them to our guests tonight. I should probably go help, because J just finished making biscuits with James, and he's now flipping out that she won't let him stir the empty bowl with his spoon.

Hebrew Mondays

It is Monday morning at 6:00, and in the early darkness thousands of alarm clocks are going off around the city. Everywhere in Rochester people are rolling away from their warm beds and spouses having slept too little after watching football too late the night before. They grope through the darkness to their bathrooms and kitchens, shivering in the winter air.

I do not turn on my coffeemaker. I pull on a pair of dress pants, a button up shirt, and two coats. I pull my lunch out of the fridge, throw trumpets over my shoulder, and make sure I have everything I need for my teaching day in my bag. I close the door to our apartment as quietly as possible behind me, make my way downstairs, and step into the crunch snow, walking through our courtyard to my car. I leave behind everything but my bag of books, and continue walking through the snow down the street and up to Clover Street. There usually isn’t any traffic at that early hour, and I cross the street to the Bruegger’s bagel shop.

The bagel shop has already been open for several hours, and the two faithful bagelers are behind the counter looking bleary-eyed. I set down my book bag on the second table and chat with them about the weather while I order a bagel and a tall cup of coffee.

This is where I meet Calvus every Monday morning to read Hebrew together. He usually arrives a few minutes after I do, and when he greets the bagelers they brighten up and look awake. He always remembers more about their names and previous conversations than I do, and the few times I’ve been there without him they look disappointed that he doesn’t show up. (“Where’s your brother today?” they ask)

We eat our bagels and chat about how our weekends went, and then one of us will say “Well, want to do some Hebrew?” If I grew out a beard like his, we would look perfectly Jewish—sitting in a bagel shop in Brighton, NY, reading aloud from Exodus.

We both had much quicker work of Greek, and there are several words that we seem to have forgotten anew every week. We’ll get stuck on a single funny form for almost ten minutes one week, and then another week we’ll rattle through six or seven verses with no problem. (Genealogies make you feel very good about your linguistic prowess.) When something theologically interesting comes up we puzzle over it, but the morning is more about practicing speaking and translating than anything else. I keep a notebook with tiny illegible handwriting, and Calvus keeps a notebook with even tinier and more illegible handwriting.

We work until 7:15 or so, and then Calvus asks if I have time for another verse before I have to leave to teach. I usually don’t, but sometimes we do another verse anyway. We finish up, and I duck my way across a much busier Clover Street.

Out of all the poor folks who have to wake up early on Monday morning and start another work week, there aren’t many who get to start by having a hot cup of coffee with their brother and read 3500 year old literature from halfway around the world for an hour.

It’s a good way to start a Monday.

New Computer

We are officially old, and it does not feel good.

I am sitting on the couch with a brand new Toshiba laptop in front of me, freshly arrived from China. (Or perhaps Korea or Japan or Germany. One of the countries that was an enemy back in the good old days of us old people.) I don’t understand it at all.

Let the record show first that I was a vocal supporter of an Apple computer. But perhaps further explanation is needed. You see, our old computer is stupid. We got it for free back in 2007 when we agreed to stay in the ghettos of Greensboro, NC for another year at the Happy and Safe Apartments. (Motto: You probably won’t hear all of the car alarms going off because the parties are so loud.) The management offered us an enticing incentive (it took me forever to find the italics button on this strange machine) to stay on as tenants for another year by offering a brand new laptop for renewing our lease. We did renew, and the complimentary laptop served us quite well for 6 years.

2 years ago, however, we had a child and decided to take a trillion photos of him lying on the floor and looking frightened of us. Our old Toshiba laptop, already growing old and slow, was completely overburdened by the influx of photos and videos. Plus, that same small child regularly used the computer as a conducting podium/trampoline. Hey, it was free. It didn’t bother us if it took some abuse.

J has been working a lot from home recently as a worship leader/musician wrangler, and her job requires a steady and up to date computing machine. We were both aware that our old Toshiba was no longer up to the task. Here’s how a typical morning of being a stay at home Mom/worship leader might look.

8:30-James is up and breakfasted, and J needs to pick songs for the Saturday service and get them to the office by 10. She pulls out the computer, plugs it in, and turns it on.

8:47-The computer reaches the login screen. James is standing on the piano wearing only one sock, there are matchbox cars in the sink, and he has removed every single pot from the lower kitchen cabinet. Julie enters her name and password.

8:51-The computer flashes a “not responding” message as it tries to pull up the desktop screen. James is vacuuming the floor with a tennis racket, and then begins to beat the bookshelves as hard as he can.

8:56-Norton anti-virus informs J that it is not up to date. Would she like to upgrade to full virus protection? There is a crash in the pantry and James repeats “uh-oh” to himself several times.

8:59-J manages to pull up firefox while sweeping the garlic powder back into its container. James is crying because he wants more juice.

9:07-J attempts to log onto the worship leader website, but chrome gives her a “not responding message.” James is on her iPad surfing Youtube unsupervised.

9:13 J has planned half of the Saturday service when a window pops up informing her that automatic updates will restart the computer in 15 minutes. James is shrieking because he dropped Curious George in the crib and can’t reach him to get him out.

9:18 James keeps on pushing Curious George at the Ice Cream Shop in front of the computer screen while J swats it away and tries to finish her service. James pushes a random button and a photo pops of him asleep on the floor at two months old. J clicks to close out of the photo but accidentally restarts the computer. All her work is lost, and it will be at least another twenty minutes until she can turn the computer on again.

This is why we needed a new computer. And as I said, I campaigned for a macbook. We’ve had nothing but the best from my iPhone and her iPad, and we would have been happy to show our loyalty to Apple. But, since we didn’t have enough money to feed James AND to buy the really nice laptop, we decided to get another Toshiba.

Still, there was a lot to be excited about. Our machine would have the latest Pentium processor, a whole terabyte of storage space, a new long-lasting battery, and the latest Windows software.

I don’t understand it at all. I think my face looks like what J’s grandparents look like when we pull up videos on our phones.

The thing is, I’ve always been one of the kids when it comes to techie stuff. When my parents came to my third grade open house and puzzled over how we could keep track of all the information we needed to do that fancy “logging-in” business I was already buying supplies to show them an adventure on the Oregon Trail. I understood intuitively how to make the newest technology work because I was as young as the technology itself. Also, my Oregon Trail strategy was to stock up on ammunition and only carry a little food, and then to hunt a lot and just carry what I needed.

But now, I’ve grown old and the technology is no longer intuitive. Even as I write this blog entry in Microsoft Word 2013, I keep on accidentally shrinking the page view until I can’t see the words anymore, and my glasses are in the bathroom and I don’t want to get up because of my back because of how I had to bend over for an hour to play trains with James. (Choo choo!)

What used to be “windows” are now “apps,” except instead of being like the apps on my phone they jump away every time I get near the touch pad, and I can’t ever find the start button to get back to my desktop.

We’ll probably learn and adjust, but if we don’t James will show us. Because he is young, and even though he’ll want to use this expensive new machine as a conducting podium, he will automatically know how to use it in complex, enriching, and efficient ways. Mainly, watching Curious George on the Netflix app.