I thought I saw you before!

Do you ever get a kick out of finding where you've seen that actor/actress before? When Friends became popular back in the fall of 1994 (after we graduated, not before), I thought it was great I could name shows each of the six cast members were in before Friends. And that was without IMDB!

Last night, Joanne and I watched the last 2 episodes of season 3 of the Office, which happened to include the greatest, happiest smile ever recorded on film in the penultimate scene of the finale. In my usual fashion of not being as productive as I should be (like now for instance), I checked out TWOP forums for commentary on the episode. A couple of comments were made about the performance of Melora Hardin, so I googled her, as I wasn't able to piece together that it was definitely Jan. So I started perusing her IMDB page, and was surprised to see how extensive her guest starring has been. Various shows I may have occasionally watched, but nothing that I could clearly identify.

Until I got to the mid 80's"




That is so awesome! She was Whitney Dunbar!

Stickler

Twice in league playoffs I was criticized for calls that were deemed minor, or too petty for league (and there may have been two more, but that feedback didn't get back to me). All the calls shared a common theme--how and where the disc is put into play. Somewhere along the line, this is the area of the rules that I became most precise about, so it leads to calls on infractions that are slight, but they are infractions. The calls were all made on experienced players, and in my mind, they should be called because the purpose of league is teach new players the rules. And that means the experienced players should know them. I don't make the calls to gain an advantage--it's to play by the rules (or maybe it IS just the ones I want to enforce--it's not like I make delay of game calls, which would be pretty easy in league). THe only regret I have on some of them is that I recognized the infraction, thought about it for a bit and then called it, rather than following my instinct and calling it immediately.

Those pet peeves include:
When a disc goes out of bounds, the disc is ground checked in with the pivot foot next to the line (commonly thought of as on the line, but that's out of bounds). Twice I called travels on veteran players when they were somewhere between 8" and 2 feet off the line. The first was deemed petty, the second the excuse was the crowd on the sideline. I agree to an extent on the first one. And the second, well, then the crowd needs to move, not the player.

However!

The reason I make that call, even if it's only 6 inches is that from my perspective as a thrower, and distance off the sideline is a relief, even a couple of inches, improving throwing angles and making the marker's job more difficult. It's possible I'm just not a good enough thrower, so I need all the room I can get. Or maybe other people don't have the hangups I do. But if I feel like that 6" or 8" will help me, and I don't take it, why should someone else?

Next is the need for a ground check. The ground check says "I am putting the disc into play/establishing my pivot foot here". The 11th edition was updated to define the 3 states of the disc and clarify that if the disc moves from where position is gained, it must be ground checked. The ground check also prevents/minimizes the offensive player from using any of that momentum on the throw which he or she would not otherwise have. I have a smaller pet peeve for those that ground check whenever they pick up a disc, but that's pretty minor (but also unnecessary as a disc laying on the playing field proper is "in play" and not "live"). Related, the location of the pivot when gaining possession of a stopped in bounds disc is either overlooked, or unclear. The rules state "When there is a definitive spot for putting the disc into play, the part of the body in contact with that spot is the pivot," which means the pivot should be at the spot the disc is picked up from. This may seem minor (and I've only called this travel once, on someone taking the disc laying on the short half of the field behind the midfield line for an opportunity for a two-point play), but that initial change of 6-10" can make the well positioned, legitimately stationed marker less so.

Another call (which wasn't actually a call, since I wasn't actually on the field, but I did tell them what the rule was) was someone calling for a brick after they stopped a sliding disc. Nope. Need to call the brick before touching. Or just catch the pull and start your offense.

The last issue is one in which I get frustrated with my teammates, but it annoys me so much I let the other team know when they are boofing it as well: waiting for a defensive check to start play after a brick. Why does this happen? How did it become so ingrained in everyone? If the defense chose not to mark the thrower, he couldn't start play? This one aggravates me a great deal since it's not uncommon to turn the advantageousness of the brick into a disadvantage because of an in position, and ready defense. Of course the advantage is that so many people assume that the brick is a defensive check that nobody does anything until it happens, so there I am in position for a throw (or to make one) and there's no action. Grrr.

Time Stands Still

Judge Parker on December 7, 2007:









Judge Parker on January 5, 2008:









Judge Parker on May 27, 2008:










Really?! Six plus months to cover 2 days? [It reads as possibly three days, but Curmudgeon readers say 2] I haven't really followed the classics (JP, MW, S-M, MT or GT) in about that long. Glad to see I haven't missed much.

Stimulus payment, pt 2

Odd what time and becoming a tub of goo will do. When I first starting the rowing thing last year, I looked into what they cost (a Concept 2--the market leader). Nearly a Grover! OK, well, I'm not getting one of those.

But then my job moved away from the ASU Tempe campus and the Student Rec Complex. And my sole exercise became ultimate 1 day a week. That's NG (no good).

Over a year, though, I got acclimated to the cost and found out what the general market was for them used. I had been focusing on a Model C (6+ years old and what I used at the SRC), since those are getable for under $500. Alas, I missed out on two prime opportunities. The first was a guy who listed one for $50 and he was deluged with a lot of calls. I did actually get to talk to him, but he went another route (perhaps someone offered "x" times his asking price off the bat--which I did in my second of about 4 messages to him (I was approaching Mikey in "Swingers" territory). The second was listed for under $400 but the Craigslist photo looked like it was a gym. Which means a lot of use. I dawdled on that a bit, but finally called. It was actually a Play it Again sports, and they had just sold it. Doh.

That brings us to earlier this month. A model D was listed for $700, and stayed up for a number of days. It was still up, so I got the boss's approval and offered $600. Accepted, with no negotiation! I think this is about the best we've done on a CL purchase--the dining set, for example, we paid asking price. And I think most other things were either really close to asking price, or the seller discounted without us asking.

Still, $600 is a lot, but having gotten used to that cost, it just became a point-of-entry. I didn't really compare it with other forms of home exercise machines because I knew what I wanted. Turns out a new Nordic Track is in the same range. Cheaper ellipticals and treadmills can be had cheaper. The one thing I'll say in the Concept 2's defense--it is the best/top of the line. There's not really anything above it in its class. Unlike say a elliptical, in which a consumer-targeted model is a couple of hundred (but limited in terms of range and levels), the gym-level, more than $2 grand. And if it turns out we don't use it as much as I hope, it has a pretty good resale; even better since it was bought used in the first place. But I digress...

Having gotten on board 5-6 times now, despite being in much worse shape than I was a year ago, my times are actually comparable, which means my form hasn't regressed too much, but I could still use an experienced set of eyes to help set me straight. The one technique fault I know I have is my legs break before my arms are out on the return. I'm not sure why it's bad technique, but I read that it is. My guess is that the longer you hold of on the knees breaking, the quicker you can make it out of the catch (ie, more explosive, like bending the knees into a jump, rather than jumping from a squat). I'm also a little stuck on not knowing anything other than a 500m or 2000m pace. I did 5ooom the other day, which didn't go that bad (other than where it ranks (see below), so the pace problem may be overblown.

Today I had the joy of comparing my pace to the online results on the Concept 2 website. My 2000m times in the 20th percentile of so among men! That is unimpressive! Even less impressive--if I was 30 years older and had the same time, I'd be just average (The 50th percentile among men 60-69 is 8:11). The aforementioned 5000m time was somewhere in the teens. So there's some room for improvement. OK. Lots of room.

Parting shot:
Most sports have their roots in military application: running, jumping, fighting, throwing...

Rowing on the other hand was historically a form of capital punishment.

More birthdays

Back in the day when I thought I was interested in international politics, one region I avoided was the Middle East, particularly Israel/Palestine. It just seemed to be in quagmire with no resolution, no coherence and little rationality that a deep understanding would require too much time and too little enrichment. Or maybe I was just being lazy (this was my undergrad days).

With Israel turning 60, the state of the nation has been a hot topic, including the cover story in the May Atlantic. The author wandered a bit (or maybe he didn't--it might have been the cover monkeys providing a misrepresentation of the article [the cover asks "Is Israel Finished?]), but there is this passage which wouldn't be a revelation to anyone who follows the Israel/Palestinian issue with a modicum of attention (that person isn't me), but succinctly illustrates the difficulty of Israel's position.

On one crucial issue, Olmert is credited by many of the most doubting Israelis with sincerity and thoughtfulness: his newfound belief that the dream of a Greater Israel—one that incorporates the West Bank, Gaza, and the Golan Heights—is dead, replaced with the recognition that the land must be split between a Jewish democratic state and an Arab state.

I asked Olmert whether there was a moral dimension to his desire to exit the West Bank... He won’t call the dream of both banks immoral or destructively utopian, because it is a dream that many Israelis believe is just. “If there had been a 10 percent or 15 percent minority which is not Jewish there, then it would have been legitimate. But you don’t come to a majority and say to them, ‘Listen, we deprive you of your right to self-determination and at the same time we won’t provide you with the natural right of equality and equal votes.’ At the end of the day, it was about demography,” he said. “We couldn’t do it.”

Max Nordau wrote that Zionism is meant to create for the Jewish people a homeland in the land of Israel, assured by international legitimacy. One sentence, the whole story. It’s about Jewish people, about defining the community of Jews as a nation, one in the family of nations. Second, it’s not a state for all citizens, but for the Jewish people. Third, it’s in the land of Israel, but not necessarily all the land of Israel. And it has to be secured by international legitimacy.”

Israel’s flagging international legitimacy is one of Olmert’s preoccupations. In an interview with Ha’aretz in November, he said, “If the day comes when the two-state solution collapses and we face a South African–style struggle for equal voting rights [among Palestinians of the occupied territories], then, as soon as that happens, the state of Israel is finished.” He went on to say, “The Jewish organizations, which were our power base in America, will be the first to come out against us, because they will say they cannot support a state that does not support democracy and equal voting rights for all its residents.”"

Maybe this isn't as revelational as I thought, but it does give me a perspective I had thought about before--how does a country defined on one identity adapt/change/respond to a demographic change that, if left unaddressed, will irrevocably change the ability to maintain that identity?

Given the demographic change in the US, albeit in a more peaceful fashion, does it/will it serve as a lesson at all?

12 weeks later

Finally, another post (from me)! Let's see if the readership numbers more than my number of league championship game losses (Doh! that number used to be zero, but not anymore).

I've actually spent a decent portion of the past 12 weeks composing blog posts in my head, but, alas, that hasn't actually translated to actual posts. JT stated at one point that post-baby arrival, I'd still get the same amount of stuff done out of greater efficiency and scoff at the ineffectiveness of the pre-baby Keith. So I stand as a rebuttal to JT's thesis. I've accomplished very little outside of child rearing, and even that's giving me to much credit--Joanne's doing practically all the work, mainly because of evolutionary effects that make me less than necessary to Owen's well-being in his current state.

But that doesn't make me completely worthless to the cause. I'm sure it's been stated before, but it was something I don't remember reading/being told, and that is: after birth, of critical importance isn't being a good father, it's being a good husband. The first (almost) 3 months has been less about the travails of parenthood (for me) and more about making sure I'm supporting Joanne to the best of my ability. It's funny how that works, though. At Easter, we had the family over and it came up that Joanne had yet to do any cooking since Owen's arrival--I had taken care of that, most of the cleaning, shopping, etc. I was praised for that. Less than a week later, though, Joanne said she wanted to do some of that because it made her feel more normal. Even if she wasn't going anywhere, or if Owen was no more than 20 feet away, she still got a little separation to refresh herself. So now we've split that up a little more, which means, apparently, I do less "work" around the house, yet that's a positive. Joanne gets non-Owen time, I get Owen time (even if it's not real work, since I get to play with him) and everyone is happy.

You'd think after 10+ weeks of thinking of this post, there'd be more to it. I suppose there was insights I made during my on-the-job training, or realizations of how I need(ed) to change, but that all seems old hat now. I remember the impatience the first couple of weeks when Owen wouldn't go to sleep and not understanding why--I thought that's what babies did. They wake up long enough to eat and they promptly fall back asleep. I suppose some are like that. Not Owen. I don't think he gets that 16+ hours of sleep that is recommended. Not that we don't try to make that happen, but he seems happy to be awake. Or maybe that's just the weekends. I know Joanne's had some rough days and nights in which I wasn't really in a position to help, but I'd say the number of periods Owen has been difficult to deal with for over an hour numbers in the single digits (that number would be higher if the time criteria was say, 30 minutes or more), as he's only had maybe 2 bouts of what might be considered colic, and food pretty much always calms him down.

Joanne previously mentioned that the Hogg's EASY method has helped and could be a contributing factor to Owen's "goodness." But the Hogg also offered/promoted some other ideas that to me seemed questionable, which brought up issues of who/what to believe, ie what approach is best. This issue is exacerbated by these approaches coming off as holistic--you have to do everything or it just won't work. But we seem to be doing OK with what we're doing. I guess we'll find out in 14 year if it didn't work.

One of the Hogg's peeves is/was "accidental parenting", that is, doing something that works for now, even if it will lead to bigger problems in the future, generally centered around sleep (ie the tricks necessary to get the newborn to sleep that will soon become the inconvenient crutch they can't sleep with out). I confess we do one form of this--how we handle Owen's daytime sleep. We have yet to make a habit of bringing him upstairs during the day. We're content with putting him in his rocker downstairs so we can keep an eye on him and letting him sleep in that. However, he tends not sleep in it unless the vibration is on. IF he's asleep and we turn off the vibrate, he tends to wake up within minutes. I suppose it might be a crutch, but, thus far, it has negatively impacted his ability to sleep at night without the same sensation.

His nighttime sleeping, though, has also benefited from us having two stories. Having been in the house for five years now, we draw a pretty clear line between upstairs and downstairs. Unless we're cleaning or need something, we're rarely upstairs during the day. Even though it's only 11 steps, the world up there is very different. This is a positive for Owen, because once we (by that, I mean Joanne) puts him to sleep around 7:30, we don't bring him back downstairs. I commented to some friends that we have yet to watch a movie since Owen was born. We're not in the habit of watching things 20-30 minutes at a time, and we've found pausing movies multiple times negatively affects our enjoyment. We thought about watching one earlier this month, but we didn't have anything short enough that we hadn't watched yet to fit into our time frame--it would be suboptimal to watch the first 1:50 of a movie then take a 30 minute break to feed Owen and then come back for the last 15-20 minutes. So someone commented, "You know, you could just feed him while watching the end of the movie." And that concept of that was.. "shocking" is to strong, but it will have to work. Why would we do that? That would just wake him up more. Once he's upstairs, he's staying there. So the person's rebuttal was "I guess you're a better parant than me". I don't know if he was being facetious or not.

Even more than his vibrating chair, but not quite as much as the feeding apparatus, Owen loves ceiling fans. If you go back and look at the lead picture, and if you're familiar with our house, you'll recognize that yes, he is indeed looking at the fan by the front door. He just loves them. He doesn't show a lot of interest in mobiles (I made some homemade B&W cards for his PnP and there are some attachments for the rocker), but fans? He can't keep his eyes off them. In the past week, I've even taken to holding him up closer to the fan in the TV room. He seems to enjoy it.

This veered way from being my thoughts on fatherhood, but that's to be expected when the system isn't quite set up to have me on completely full active duty. Or at least not as active duty as will soon be forthcoming.

"Congratulations, you're no longer a pagan!!"

This past Saturday was Owen's baptism. The whole affair was a lot less formal than I thought it was going to be. Which was probably mostly due to the fact that it was run by Deacon Dutch, who is constantly making jokes ("I've got more chins than a Chinese phone book!"). It's a good thing I didn't spend $45 on a fancy outfit on Owen that probably would have been huge on him. It was a night of connections: my friends Clint and Deb were there for two baptisms; the third baby being baptised was the grandson of a family that we did Religious Education with growing up; my parents had Nebraska and Virginia in common with my friends Mark and Lois - just to name a few of the many. The biggest surprise of all was seeing Jason from the Burque (Albuquerque) show up during mass after he responded to the evite that he couldn't make it. It was also great to have my brother Ken and his wife Katie in town from San Diego to see Owen for the first time.

After the ceremony we invited our Catholic friends and family over to our house for food. It was great to visit with everyone. Owen's favorite part was probably Evelyn's (multiple) goodbye kisses. Which led Keith to comment that Sarah must be teaching Evelyn to go for the younger men. Josiah pointed out that Evelyn was robbing the cradle - literally!

Sunday was my very first Mother's Day as a Mom. How special! Keith made me an omelette for breakfast and made sure that I didn't change hardly any diapers all day. He is also getting me a digital SLR camera, which has me really excited. In college I took a b&w photography class which turned out to be one of my favorite classes in college. It was a lot of work, but I started seeing the world around me in a new way - I started freeze framing my daily life. I pulled out my old textbook to freshen up on concepts and terminology, and am researching the web for more digital-specific subjects. Keith has done most of the research (surprise!) on the actual camera to get. We are currently debating the Canon XT, Canon XTI, or Canon 30D. Once we get that figured out, we get to have fun with lenses! Anybody who has any thoughts on the subject, please let us know.