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I caught a cold from Lydia a day or two ago, and today it's going full steam. To keep me from sneezing all over our holiday meal all day, Laura's stepfather and mother graciously stepped in to cook tonight's feast. We're having cassoulet, and asparagus goat cheese salad. I would never have chosen to do something so complicated if I'd thought they'd be doing the cooking.

I wrapped all the kids' presents last night except two; I ran out of steam and went to sleep. I finished up the last ones tonight. All of Riley's missing gifts are accounted for at last. These will be two happy kids tomorrow morning.

I didn't even know much to ask for myself, my life is pretty darn good. I doubt anything could ever top the super hug Lydia gave me tonight when she crawled up on my lap and said "Happy Merry Christmas, Daddy." However I do want to thank cobie for what will surely be my most Awesome present this year. :)

Wherever you are and whatever you're doing, I hope this holiday season brings you joy.

We sat down with the kids yesterday and transcribed their letters to Santa. ( Scans inside. )

A grade school classmate of mine died this year of a heart attack. I found out about it from some of our other classmates on Facebook. I see old photos of him there, as my classmates periodically share them, and so I've reflected on his death a few times now. There's a discussion group dedicated to memories of him. I was invited to join at some point.

I never did, because I had nothing positive to say about him. He was never anything but an asshole to me, frankly. Near as I could tell in grade school, nothing made him happier than ridiculing other people. Naturally, most people are usually pretty different after grade school, and I didn't ever even see him again. I'm sure he had some redeeming qualities, and I sort of regret that I never got to see them. And judging solely on the comments in this Facebook discussion group, he was a very different person to lots of other people.

He was actually the second person from our class (of just 25 or so students) to die. The first, another Mike by coincidence, succumbed to cancer of some sort, three or four years ago. I remember being a bit more struck by the tragedy then, not even because he was the first or we were all that much younger, but because he didn't have an easy life at all. He joined our class when he repeated the third grade, never did well in school, and didn't have any friends in our little class. He seemed to have to steal his happiness and self esteem when no one was watching. I hope his life got better than that; it's hard to imagine how it wouldn't, really.

I couldn't help but compare them when I heard about Mike D. I'm sure Mike S wouldn't have had an outpouring like this. Maybe I've got it all wrong, maybe D learned kindness and S was psychotic, and it's a testament to how poorly I knew either of them. But at face value it sure seems like a depressing confirmation of everything grade school taught me about human nature.

I brought Dwight (my accordion) to our Music Together class yesterday. I had worked up simple arrangements of three songs from the current songbook, and accompanied the class while they sang and danced. (I sang along where possible too, but was thinking too hard most of the time.) It was so much fun, I'm looking forward to doing it again sometime. I also want to bring the uke in at some point.

After class we went to Verizon Wireless to look at the new Droid, which Laura went ahead and bought. (I'm officially jealous. I love my Samsung Flipshot, but man is that thing sexy.) The kids entertained the sales guys by pretending to talk on the dummy model phones throughout the store. One of the guys went in back and got a couple of discontinued models, and gave them to the kids as toys. They were so proud. They've been making pretend phonecalls on them ever since.

Then, next door to Verizon is a Tae Kwon Do school, and they were celebrating their fourth anniversary with free food, demonstrations, a bounce house, and cake. The kids had a ball and wore themselves out. Riley was imitating the demonstrators, kicking and shouting an approximation of "hyah!" We got to thinking about how martial arts would teach a lot of the things that Riley needs most: confidence, discipline, focus. We spoke with the manager, and she was very supportive, saying they work with special needs kids all the time. She set Riley up with an instructor -- a teenage boy who surprised us by being really good with Riley. We signed Riley up for classes. He seems excited about it, we're hopeful he'll participate well.

(Of course, as I typed this he was screaming his lungs out, in protest of being sent to "quiet time" for having screamed about having to wear non-preferred underwear because he wet his Spongebob ones. So we shall see. Rome wasn't built in a day and so on.)

Baaaa. Got this from snobahr, whom I solicited to ask me about a handful of my userpics. The meme text says:
If you comment here, I'll choose five of your icons to ask you about. (Or, if you have fewer than five icons, I'll just choose one.) Then you do might a post explaining the significance of those icons.

But you can also comment here if you just want to ask about another of my icons but don't want to do the meme. I'll add it to the list below.

( More than you really want to know about my icons. )

Other Guy: So your job is to stay at home with these two?
Me (spinning Lydia in the air): Yup.
7-year-old: Your job is to stay with them? That just sounds like a dad.
Me: Well, I am their dad.
7yo: That's not a job, what's your other job?
Me: I don't have one right now--
7yo: You lost your job?
Me: No, I left it so I could take care of them at home.
7yo: That was a dumb idea.
Me: ...
7yo: You could be making... a hundred dollars a week!
Me: *visualizes him doing Dr. Evil pinky gesture, chuckles inwardly*

(Other topics included Bakugan and the Coca-Cola museum.)

On our last move, we decided to lose the land line and go all-wireless for our telephony. A phone line at the house was another expense and we barely used it anyway. It's been almost a year now and we haven't looked back. During this time my cell phone and I have grown closer. I've gotten a bit more reliable about keeping it with me constantly.

Now, my phone is a fairly typical marvel of modern nanotechnology. It's got hours of music on it, Internet access, a navigation app with voice recognition, Bluetooth, a 3 Megapixel camera with video capability... and oh yeah, you can use it to make calls too. And perhaps most amazing of all, it's small enough to fit in the same pocket with my keys (just in case I should happen to want to scratch it all up like a turntable at a rap concert).

But therein lies my beef with the thing. It's designed for the human pocket, not the human head. It's uncomfortable to hold in the hand for any length of time. Forget cradling it on your shoulder while your hands are busy, it's so thin that you have to kink your neck at about an 80° angle to pin it there. And the flip-open style does get the microphone closer to my mouth than my old phone did, but it's still not quite close enough that I can talk at a volume that I consider normal. (And I can't stand "cell phone voice." It doesn't seem to bother most people to have to raise your voice to be heard, but it's kind of a pet peeve of mine, in any context.)

Enter this thing. It's a handset like old fashioned telephones used to have, back when cranial compatibility was a primary design goal -- there's a reason phones were shaped that way for so long, after all. But this one's got Bluetooth, so you can use it wirelessly.

I got myself one with birthday money a while back. It's as comfortable as I wanted it to be, holding it is like a friendly handshake. The classic shoulder-prop is a much more reasonable technique now, and it cups right up to my mouth so my soft normal voice is usually enough. I do need to crank up the headset volume on my phone to make the earpiece loud enough, but that works perfectly. The battery life is good, for my usage anyway. Two thumbs up!

Every night before bed, I sing lullabyes to Lydia for a bit. She recently started singing them right along with me. We do three songs, and Edelweiss is the grand finale every night.

(Apologies to Facebook people who've seen it already.)

Last night I tried to replicate a dish from my favorite casual Mexican restaurant in New York. They called it "budin poblano," which is a bit of a misnomer because it's not like a pudding at all. It did resemble a small cake, though, so maybe that's where they got the name.

Anyway it's a stack of tortillas layered with chicken, refried beans, sour cream, and mole. I served it with my ridiculously simple Ro-Tel and frozen corn combo. It turned out really well, I'm psyched because I have missed this dish so much over the years.

( Here's what I did. )

Mmm, just as good on day two. It's kinda rich though, more of an occasional craving killer than a regular menu staple. Oops, I forgot to take a picture again tonight. Tomorrow, if I remember, I'll add one.

Yesterday Laura suggested that we could come back home a day early, and that's what we did. She gets more time with the kids this way, and our own bed sounded quite a bit better than one more night and morning at Comfort Suites. So even though the trip was great fun and we enjoyed it, we headed on home yesterday.

But not before climbing to the top of Looking Glass Rock. My legs were still a little worn out from Tuesday's bike trek, so I was going kinda slow by the time we reached the summit. But it was worth it. The path opened up onto bare stone, sloping gradually to the cliff drop like a beach with sky instead of ocean. It may not have been the highest peak in sight, but standing on the brink, I was on the very edge of the planet. I felt the earth turning beneath me, scraping the sky as it went. It was exhilirating.

The four hour car ride home, while not exactly exhilirating, did give us a chance to sit still for a while, and by then I was quite appreciative of that. We made it home in time to tuck the kids into bed. They were happy to see us. Lydia seemed to have done way more than three days' worth of growing up. She's been bursting with Lydiacity today too, she treated us to a dance marathon. I'm so glad we didn't miss her this morning.