the most profound quote, for me, from this year's mancation:

i found a pair of bella's underwear in the dining room.

when i opened the silverware drawer in the butler's pantry, i found a pair of anthony's pajamas stuffed towards the back.

no comments were made though until we found one of alex's socks pulled over the doorknob of our home's front door. marty pointed at the sock and asked me if that meant one of the boys were having sex upstairs and we should proceed with caution.

i thanked her for suggesting it was one of the boys and not my only daughter.

the email i received from marty after she read the family gallery posting (trapped) about her choosing to quit work and stay home with the kids. that was the message in it's entirety. no hello. no thanks. just, you write like a girl. i reckon the most appropriate response would have been: but instead of sending that response, i went to the kitchen and did the dishes.

i had lunch with a friend. we talked about many things. family, both immediate and extended. the generational divide in belief and approach. he talked about how disengaged his parents were with his children. he went on to add that he shouldn't be all that surprised because they weren't all that engaged with him when he was young. now rolling in his deconstruction of the relationships he said the following, and i'm paraphrasing here: when he paused i complimented his beautiful verbalizing of the experience, confessing i had never thought of it in just that way—that as a parent you get to experience nearly every facet of a child's experience in this world and how that isn't going to happen anywhere else, like ever again, except for maybe as a grandparent if you're lucky enough to have grandkids and live long enough to see it but even then you will spend much of the time in the next room, thus making your parental run all the more special. then, selfishly, i expressed my dismay at not verbalizing that sentiment before he just did (and me over-thinking just about anything kid related that can be ruminated on).

sometimes i hate being so predictable.

a new TROYSCRIPT was posted today. olden days

this quote from bella quickly illustrates the downsides of having, aside from including a sprawling map of the world, a transparent shower curtain. our last shower curtain, which also possessed a clear background, portrayed the periodic elements (in honor of marty's return to teaching high school biology) which shielded, i'm told, much more of the human body from the occassional passerby.

during thanksgiving week the nfl ran videos of players and coaches saying what they were thankful for. most of them included the player's family and had the expected and tired phrases. after watching a few i tended to fast forward through them but one caught my eye. first off it was an older guy sitting alone. as i slowed it down i saw it was dick lebau, the famed and long-time defensive coordinator of my pittsburgh steelers. he is 76 years old has been involved in the nfl for more than fifty years and is said to have the crisp mind and vigor of men half his age. i've only ever seen him pacing the sidelines with a intent look on his face and had never heard him speak. in this video he addressed the camera in a measured and methodical drawl, answering the question of what he was thankful for: the commentators, al michaels and chris collinsworth, on returning from the break commented on his spot. during this al michaels mentioned lebau's golf game and the advice he routinely offered, also in that quiet, easy tone: i find a simple beauty to this and reckon it, like all the best bits of counsel, could be applied to numerous facets of life.

i have a rule with my children that the first thing they say to me in a new day cannot be a request for something.

this results with them sometimes saying things like:

"did you sleep well dad? great. can you help me with my homework?"

or

"you look handsome today dad. can you log me on so i can check my mail?"

the other morning, the first thing anthony said to me, as he brought me from sleep was, "dad, you have a lot of hair in your nose".

i might need to extend the ban to include comments that make my first act of the day be studying my aging body, super-up-close, in the mirror.

mr jason kottke, my digital-hero, recently wrote an article about the death of the blog. the subject obviously caught my eye and i quickly clicked through. as i read i felt more old and more out of touch until i came to the line that read: and i instantly went from feeling totally disconnected to being exactly right where i'm supposed to be. and i can for sure count on one hand the number of times that has happened in my life.

i walked through the ping pong room on a saturday morning to find anthony leaning back on the futon playing a DS while a movie played on a laptop in front of him and a bowl of popcorn sat next to him which he'd reach into for a fresh mouthful when his game didn't require both hands. bella sat on the other side of the room, using marty's computer. the scene produced the following exchange:

TROY
hey anfer. nice juggling work there. most impressive.

BELLA (the quoted part being done in an exaggeratedly deep-dad voice)
WHAT!?! why when i do that, you yell at me and when he does it you tell him 'most impressive'?

TROY
because one of the things he's doing isn't his homework.

BELLA
oh. yeah. that.

a new TROYSCRIPT was posted today. house rules

we recently learned that one of bella's dogs (from her dog-sitting business) had taken ill, ill to the point that the vets told the family they probably had a week left with him before it would become unbearable for all concerned. of all the dogs bella has cared for this one, Guinness, held the top-spot with our family. whenever bella watched Guinness he would stay at our house, sometimes for weeks at a time, sleeping in our beds, walking laps around our dinner table and standing guard at the french door windows for joggers and dog walkers.

marty and i held off telling the kids as long as able due of the holiday break but given the short window we had to work with—as we had to go down to say our goodbyes—we called the kids down to the living room just days before christmas and explained the situation. bella was, predictably, leveled by the news. marty held bella's quaking frame, tears streaming down her own face at seeing her daughter rocked so. i sat with alex who leaned into me silent and staring. we hushed anthony's questions telling him we'd explain better later.

alex and i then left for a lunch we had planned, leaving marty still holding a now quiet isabella. after a few silent miles in the car, i asked my ten year old how he felt. following a longish pause he softly said, "i think i'm a little bit devastated."

if there is one who makes the most of his words in our family, the safe and accurate bet would point to alex.

i will bet you a boat-load of money this phrase, casually uttered to me by a twelve-year old bella while walking to the bus stop, did not pass before you in 2013, any year prior, or any future year you may be fortunate enough to enjoy.

i'm tempted to let the quote stand on its own without explanation just to let your mind dash madly from scenario to scenario, opening doors and looking behind boxes in search of the event that would lead to such a statement. i imagine the wayward paths your mind might travel down, the stories unfolding with the exciting unusualness of a tarantino narrative would be far better than the actual context, and marty swears there's always context.

i'm equally tempted to explain what led to the exchange because i like you and even if i didn't like you a whole lot, well, i'm not a complete ass-face. not most-times at least.

when i'm torn between two viable options i tend, like most reasoned folks, to act conservatively which in this case is to let your minds imagine how such a moment could develop between a mother and daughter. this path can be reversed, the other path cannot.

oh, and, happy new year. i'm infinitely thankful and excited to be sharing this shiny fresh-out-of-the-box year full of minutes and potential with you. in fact, i'm bristling just like alex did before falling to sleep the night before christmas.

things i say a lot to my kids:

in the morning when i first see them:
welcome to another beautiful day on planet earth.

when i say goodbye to them:
do good.

when i announce we're about to leave:
wheels up in five.

when it's time to go to bed:
shut it down. brush, potty, and bed.

when they do something i deem foolish:
oh c'mon. you've gotta have more sense than that.

when i'm in mush mood for them:
you know i love you big, right?

excerpt from Brain Rules by John Medina

i recently shared this Khoi Vinh quote with a young man who works for me that has been in a bit of a funk recently. i told him that this was something i read every morning before starting work to remind myself of the import of my daily effort. i then added that as i've gotten older i've discovered that a lot of design and technology theory seems to be fully relevant to our personal lives too (and near-surely any industry you can imagine). i find the above example to be abundantly and beautifully evident of this observation.

if you prefer something with some meat on it: and for those who are more hankering for a chicken mcNugget:

if you distract anthony from his work or play, he will, in a very exasperated manner, turn and say and yes, there are waving arms involved.

a new TROYSCRIPT was posted today. cool and sophisticated

another thing that happened this last weekend was bella, alex and i volunteered in a service project organized by the university i work for. in this program all incoming freshmen are encouraged to participate in this annual ritual where various projects are identified for them to work on throughout the city. these projects tend to be beautification efforts (e.g. clean-up, painting). last year i worked on a team that painted a high school football stadium. this year my team helped paint portions of an enormous inner city school.

the overall structure of the initiative is this. the university selects a number of projects to be worked on, via application i believe. each project is assigned a site manager. the site manager is responsible for organizing the overall effort. they will meet with the contacts at the work site, identify the work to be done, recruit and direct project managers, order the necessary supplies and manage all the communication between the relevant folks. for the last two years i served as one of the project managers. and each of the last two years i took bella and alex with me for the day.

on the day of, the project leads arrive early and figure out a game plan. then about a hundred students are brought by bus to each site. they are divided up among the project leads who direct and oversee the student effort. last year bella and alex just worked along-side the freshman (and out-worked, complaint-free, a great many of them). this year i asked bella and alex to be runners. given the size of the school we were working at and the number of efforts happening i asked them to move between the various teams carrying a crate of supplies (e.g. water, paint brushes, rollers, rags) around and asking if the groups needed anything special. when a group did need something, bella or alex would go find what they asked for and bring it back.

just after the students arrived, i was standing on a large stairway landing explaining our job to the twenty freshmen girls assigned to me. in the midst of the talk alex came up the stairs wearing an orange bandana, carrying his supply crate and began excusing his way through the collection of girls trying to pass. i stopped my instruction to introduce him, saying, "ladies, this is alexander and he ...". before i could continue he cut me off loudly proclaiming ... with this he put his head back down and continued cutting through the crowd and up the stairs to the collective, melting sigh of twenty, now smitten, college girls. this is an example of 'new alex' which appeared shortly after turning ten. 'new alex' is not only not meek and shy, he is actually quite outgoing, gregarious, and quietly charasmatic (and as just shown, able to turn a gaggle of college girls into doe-eyed, fan-girls with little more than a few quickly dashed-off sentences).

later in the day i saw bella and asked her how she was doing. she said ok but alex was making her angry. when i asked why she said that every time she went up to cute guys to ask if they needed anything they kept saying they did but that boy alex was already getting it for them. so, let's not forget to add hard-worker to new alex's resume.

oh. and another interesting thing about the dishwasher bit. when the repairman, one of them at least, was at our house assessing our broken washer, after backing out of the washer, standing up and drying his hands on his rag, he explained that what we're experiencing is now rather common. he said f'ing brilliant.

over the summer marty found herself catching up with an old girlfriend for a few days. during their visit our dishwasher saga got shared. the moment marty concluded the roller coaster of woe the girlfriend, anne, said, "it's your refrigerator". i wasn't there but in my mind i heard marty correct her saying "no, not my refrigerator, my dishwas...

part three is over here

a few years ago i asked my students to attend a talk given by a special guest visiting our school. the man speaking was an alum of the university and now the ceo of a large investment firm. he stressed, emphatically, the importance of excellence and making sure that all of your work and all of your interactions were thoughtful and nothing short of outstanding. in the class i teach, excellence in your work served as a cornerstone, if not the entire point, of our lessons and we were deep enough into the semester that my students knew being excellent and thoughtful took time, like a lot of time (e.g. to make a good, passable twenty minute presentation can take four to five hours, but to make a great, memorable presentation you're looking at more like like fifteen to thirty hours, depending on how soon the inspiration comes). to this principle one of my students asked the man, "i understand the importance of being excellent but can you speak to how one is to find the time and energy to be excellent all of the time?"

to say i wasn't proud and impressed by my student's cogent question would be a full-on lie, especially next to the other ridiculous questions being wasted on this guy. unfortunately the man's answer kinda just stuck to the rallying cry of there is no rest for the successful and they are always working and they are always excellent which was a mainstay of his overall talk.

the next day in class we discussed the talk. someone commented that they felt his answer to the girl's question was lacking. i agreed but then defended him saying that it's hard to have a bulk of questions fired at you, moments after completing a talk, and get all of them perfect (which unfortunately soils his be excellent all of the time argument). i told them given his experience and how thoughtful his talk was if he were given a few minutes to properly ponder the question he might have said something like: fact is, i wouldn't have been surprised to see this man clap his knee while in his first class seat home as he thought of a better answer to the young, eager girl's question. he might have even mumbled audibly as he realized the missed opportunity to have been excellent.

part five

part two is over here

in leading up to the interview with my uncle, i started practicing my questions on random folks i was hanging out with. before going to pennsylvania to meet my uncle, we spent a week at a beach with a few families. while out in the breakers one morning, i asked one of the dads, also a man who has had a markedly successful professional run thus far, if he ever received any advice that made a difference. he thought through a few rolling breakers and then lit up. to add support for his claim i learned he was a ski instructor in oregon while in grad school. i asked where he skied as i knew he grew up in the midwest. he said he hadn't skied. the obvious next question dealt with his 'ski instructor' credentials. the story goes, he was told a resort or school (i can't recall) was looking for a ski instructor. after talking to them (and telling them he could do it) he went to the mountain, got outfitted with some skis and started skiing working his way to the challenging terrain and skiing it until proficient. when it came time for class he proved ready and everyone came away happy. in the end i guess it's as my father-in-law said in regard to parenting "you just have to be smarter than your kids". perhaps the same holds true of teaching.

to add another important detail here, a mutual friend of ours, e-love, has also said of chris, the "say you can do it" guy, that he is the most extraordinary natural athlete he has ever seen. to support e-love's claim, after chris creamed us in tennis i asked when he, chris, learned to play and if he played in college. e-love interrupted the answer saying, "you don't want to know the answer to that question troy". of course i pressed on and e-love was right, i didn't want to know that the guy who just annihilated me in tennis and has the form of a former division 1 athlete, started playing a year ago and for the most part just pretends he's trying to hit a baseball.

part four