PART 3 - What makes the perfect gift?
(In case you missed part 2, it is here)

The logical continuation of this conversation is how did it come to this? How does something like shopping on the bed come into existence? When I give it a few minutes thought, I can see how this might happen. Fa...

PART 2 - Shopping on the Bed
(In case you missed Part 1, it is here)

Another big difference between Marty's experience and mine was where the gifts that lined the tree came from.

For me, part of what made Christmas morning so exciting was the complete mystery of it all. While you...

PART 1 - Two Schools

When young, in the weeks before Christmas, after getting home from school, I would walk to the tree and scan the gift-landscape for any new additions. When found, my eyes would zero in on the tag. If it read something other than TROY, I'd give it a scowl and move on. If the festive label had the magic four letters, I'd pull it from the disarray and ha...

Click for a fuller-size rendering of the above.
PART 5 - Meanwhile, at home

The above picture was taken on the first day that all three of our kids were back to school, virtually, of course. Our tradition has been to take individual photos with each child on the first day of a new school y...

PART 4 - Saved

It turns out Marty's apprehension about starting a new semester online was wrong—it turned out far worse than she imagined. While many teachers did lots of preparation for day one, everyone knew there would be bumps. Some you could predict. Others you could not. Marty's institution got double-hit by a decision made the previous year before the word co...

PART 3 - Take it from the top

When it was decided that the Fall term would be entirely virtual, Marty began her preparation. After a few days of thought, she made a worrisome discovery. Closing out that Spring term was as successful as it was because she knew her students, and they knew her. Given the seven months of in-class time she had with her kids, she knew who could...

PART 2 - Marty Catches a Break

Marty was running into lots of setbacks and few solutions in the early going of online teaching. Then she finally caught her first break. Many might predict the person to come to her rescue would be her husband. He has worked in the technology industry for twenty-five years, ran an online photo competition for fifteen years, and taught a uni...

PART 1 - The New Norm

Before properly starting the story about Marty's experience of teaching through a pandemic, I need to address a few administrative matters.

I'm not sure if you have ever personally taught in a formal setting or not. I believe that to be a hard-prerequisite to having a qualified opinion about the art of teaching. For me, I "taught" for four y...

Many people wondered over the decades why I NEVER used proper capitalization when I wrote. The answer is to save time. I can type faster without having to mess with the shift key. Further, I never thought the capitalization merited the extra keystrokes in the type of writing I did. If I ever wrote a book, I would use proper capitalization because I think it would aid in the readability of it. But with the short, silly things I do here, I never thought it mattered enough to be bothered with.

Some have noticed I've started using proper capitalization this week, and are again wondering why. Curiously the answer is the same, to save time. Now the places where I write for this site auto-capitalize everything. I know it is possible to go and mess with settings, but I write and edit things in various places. The way tech runs these days, it has become more effortful to craft everything in lowercase than to just let nature run its grammatically-correct course.

So, in summary, I used to not capitalize things to save time. Now I capitalize things to save time. I know. Confusing. But as Gale Snoats told H.I. McDunnough in Raising Arizona, "This can go hard or easy H.I." That was no lie in 87 and it is no lie now.

I have a standard tennis workout I do when hitting against a practice wall. I will hit fifty forehands, followed by fifty backhands, followed by a hundred mixed single-bounce balls. That's a set. Then I do some pushups and squats and a few other equally dull things in between. I try to do six sets per session, so it is a routine I've become pretty competent at over the last few years.

I was in the middle of one of these workouts and hitting forehands. I found a nice groove and was striking the ball cleanly, which meant each return came right back to me so I could just pivot, prep and swing again. I had hit maybe twenty straight as an older guy, who looked to be in his late sixties or early seventies, came shuffling by on his way to a neighboring court. As he passed, he said, "It looks like you are either really beating that guy or he is really taking it to you. I can't tell which." He then gave a boyish smirk and continued his foot-scraping gait past me to meet his buddies.

I kinda love old guys.

a new TROYSCRIPT was posted today. brick-dumb

When searching through my email for a work matter, I stumbled upon this forgotten diamond from a fourteen-year-old Aleo. Yes, it may appear to have been written at academic-gunpoint, but it is still an all-net, three-pointer on this father's scorecard.

Last Christmas, I got a piece of sand art as a gift. It is a twelve-inch disc that rests in a plastic base. Half of it is filled with grains of sand of varying colors, sizes, and weights. The other half is filled with a liquid, which I assume is water. When you flip it over, the sand on the top half will slowly and unpredictably fall towards the base. This is the art part, watching the sand slowly...

The only item that caught us ill-prepared through this shut-in has been toilet paper. After each empty-handed return from a store-run, Marty would ask if people understood the Corona virus doesn't give you diarrhea.

This unexpected plight reminded Marty of an interview she heard a few weeks prior. In it, a recent immigrant to America shared a story that shortly after re-locating here, the state he lived in was bracing for a hurricane, and people stormed the stores in preparation. When he went for his supplies, he paused at the frozen section to take in the throngs of people fighting over a rapidly dwindling stock. After watching for a moment, he continued to an aisle of canned foods. In that aisle was just one other man who was also identifiably new to the country. They exchanged friendly nods, and one commented on the mayhem in the frozen aisle. The other said it seemed the people living here had not been through a recent catastrophe, else they would know there would be no electricity to run their freezers. The other smiled in understanding. They both then shrugged their shoulders and continued filling their carts with canned foods.

Whatever the cause of this bum-rush on toilet paper (;-)), there were a good number of folks about to be greeted to an empty shelf, both in their linen closet and local store.

Marty was unperturbed, like completely. So completely, in fact, part of me thinks she was hoping we would run out. When the kids and I, all visibly unsettled about the situation, asked what we'd do if we ran out, Marty flatly said, we'd just do soapy bottoms. Soapy bottoms are what would happen when the kids were little and complained that their bottom itched. Marty and Marty only need I say it, would tell the child they must need a soapy bottom washing. This ritual involved the child sitting on the toilet seat leaning forward as far as they could to give their mother easy access to their itchy place. When in position, Marty would wash their backside with her lathered-up hands. No cloth. No gloves. No hazmat suit. Just her bubble-coated mitts.

As the table of people aging from 13 to 51 stared back at this woman, she asked how we could not like or even want a soapy bottom washing. She said she'd very much enjoy such lavish treatment. This epiphany led her to ask the big question, who was going to do her soapy bottom when the time came. I don't want to say people actually recoiled, but I'm pretty confident I did hear one person's gag-reflex kick in. At this reaction, Marty reminded the three children that their parents weren't getting younger, and they might want to start wrapping their arms around the notion because it would soon be her turn to climb on the toilet seat and their turn to lather up those hands.

When everyone balked at the soapy bottom plan, Marty calmly said we could go the cloth diaper route. In the event you were not a cloth diaper house, Marty's version of this plan involved wiping with old cut-up socks and then rinsing them in a bucket that would sit beside the toilet. Then when the bucket was filled, those used, soaking socks would be washed, and the cycle would begin anew. As you might guess, plan B didn't get a lot of traction either. I'm not saying people would have preferred soapy bottoms, but rather no one was prepared to call those our only two options just yet.

By the end of the meal, Bella and Alex said they would just take showers after using the restroom. Anthony kept asking why we couldn't just use paper towels. I said I was just going to eat super healthy and exercise religiously so I would have nothing but perfect no-wipers. Marty said anyone was free to use the socks and bucket they would find next to the toilet.

Thankfully, at 6:48 a.m. on Tuesday, April 7th Marty and I found toilet paper at our local supermarket.

Now that we have dodged that near traumatic situation and I had time to study some hard choices, I can say there is a largish difference between CHOOSING to play soapy bottom and HAVING to play soapy bottom.

After Marty got her online-curriculum process in place, she turned her attention to students who seemed to be struggling with this new virtual schooling. Her idea was to invite small groups to video chats and talk through the challenges they were having. Before doing a for-real call with her first set of students, she wanted to practice running a Zoom meeting. Like all of us, she had heard the horror stories and didn't want to be the next casualty. To this end, she sent an invite to Bella, Alex, Anthony, and I. In the invitation, she asked us to (1) join her on a practice Zoom call and to (2) try to wreck the meeting.

At the appointed hour, I joined the meeting. Marty's office is right next to mine, so after joining, I went to her desk to explain the process. Bella was down the hall in her room, and the boys were downstairs in our "computer cafe."

Bella was next to join the meeting. Bella and Marty were talking nicely when Alex chimed in. The second he appeared, he started screaming. Loudly. Then Anthony popped up and started screaming too. Also loudly. Remember, Marty asked the kids to try to wreck her call. I've held many Zoom calls since starting my company, and the most significant challenge I've encountered is a lagging internet connection. I was about to learn how badly one of these could go.

From the moment they joined, the boys were screaming jokes and trading memes, totally taking over what moments earlier was a peaceful conversation between Marty and Bella. Marty immediately got flustered and asked how she could shut them up, hands flared over the keyboard. I, leaning over her shoulder, helped her find the Manage Users / Mute option. She hit it for Alex, and his voice dropped out. Then she hit Anthony's switch. But the moment she muted Anthony, Alex's voice returned, saying demonically, "I will not be silenced, mother."

More panic. A deeper dive into the settings revealed a second mute switch that would let the meeting organizer mute people and keep them muted. After silencing Alex a second time, you could see she was starting to understand the setup. But the moment she killed Anthony's mic, Alex started writing on the screen in a huge jagged scrawl using the Annotation tool--TURN OUR SOUND ON!!!

It took Marty a few moments to find how to disable the writing tool. All the time this was happening, Bella was helping Marty find the settings and giving her additional suggestions.

BELLA
Mom, make sure you don't have any porn tabs up.

MARTY
I tend to not run a lot of porn in my browser, so I should be safe.

BELLA
Well, check your history too. People have been bitten there also.

MARTY
Again, I think I'll be safe Bella.

BELLA
And make sure other people don't play porn on their screens.

MARTY
They can do that?

To this question, Bella changed her background to a beach scene. In the time we asked her how she did that, she changed the picture to an old boyfriend. While we asked how she did that (again), she contorted in her bean bag chair, pretending to make out with his large smiling face. While we looked for how to defend this setting, Bella put up a textbook drawing of a penis with some medicinal (I hope) thing on it. Even though Marty had figured out how to silence the boys of both their verbal and annotated barbs, we could still hear them downstairs howling hysterically at Bella's phallic background.

After much laughter and more than a few obscenities from Marty, she figured out how to run a defensive zoom campaign. Granted, she spent the whole time squinting at her screen and hovering over her keyboard in a frenzied battle-pose, which made her look like our own Ender Wiggen.

In one of her first meetings, she had a couple of kids show up she didn't recognize. She immediately asked them who they were and why they were there. When they didn't respond quickly, she bounced them from the room without pause or question. She then turned her attention back to her for-real students as if not a thing had happened.

If you would like to rent out the DeArmitt-children for your own Zoom training or Marty to run your Zoom-events, they all have an unprecedented amount of free time on their hands.

TOMORROW: Part 5 - Soapy Bottoms

The moment they announced the remainder of the school year would happen online, Marty began researching how to convert her instruction to a fully digital format. For as dynamic as she is in the classroom, she is admittedly un-dynamic on a computer. The fact is, technology is just not her medium. She knew what she wanted, but she didn't know how to get there. When Alex and I pool our experiences and abilities, it turns out we make a decently comprehensive support team. Given this, Marty was able to start publishing online versions of her lectures on day one.

After the first week of online lectures, a few students reached out to Marty. They thanked her for figuring out how to still present the material to them personally. Through conversing with them, Marty learned this was not the norm, and many teachers were just sending worksheets to do, videos to watch, and articles to read. I've seen a few of Marty's video lectures, and they are pretty top-flight given four days prior she had zero experience in the craft.

She mixes her speaking into the camera shots, with "action" shots using my tripod-mounted GoPro pointed down at the tabletop. An example of action shot might have Marty pointing out details of a worksheet or using sock puppets to demonstrate some biology tenet just as she would have done in the classroom. After Alex and I taught her how to do the various shooting techniques, she writes out her scripts and then shoots all the various pieces. Once everything has been recorded, she and Alex go through the footage selecting the best versions of each. Alex then stitches all the footage together via his editing software/skills so she can distribute the end video to her students. Once we got her workflow figured out, my support role became appearing at her side anytime I heard more than four obscenities strung together. Three consecutive swears is just Marty using a computer. Four in a row is Marty having problems with a computer.

TOMORROW: Part 4 - Zoom-Bomb Prevention

The next Corona-development for us was having all the schools go online. This held a double-impact in that we have three school-age kids and a parent that teaches high school. I fall into that lucky camp where my pre-Corona life looked quarantinesque already, so aside from a fuller and noisier home, my days saw little change.

My initial reaction to this news deemed it a non-issue. Fact is, I thought it would be nice to have Marty working in the room next to me. And I could also sleep longer or start work sooner since I didn't have to help get kids off to school in the morning. Then our first shared work morning took place. I had been at it for an hour and falling deeper into some code updates. Things were starting to hairy-up, and the world outside of my screen fell away. In the background, I heard Marty start her day by recording her first video lecture. After saying hello to her students and acknowledging the curious times, she described the day's lesson. A few sentences in, she warned that the vagina would be making an appearance at the 7:43 mark of the video, so anyone not wanting to see the vagina should prepare to look away a bit before then.

I assume my wife's vagina would not be the one winking hello at 7:43. But, Marty does few things half-genital. This is just to say I would not have bet twenty dollars on this fact. What I can tell you with twenty-dollar bet certainty is my coding productivity was not what it was three minutes earlier. Admittedly, this can in part be attributed to the fact that a vagina wasn't scheduled to be on my computer screen until early afternoon.

TOMORROW: Part 3 - Work/Study from home

Leading up to all this Corona-mayhem sat our annual family ski trip out west. We saw the dominos stacking up as our departure date approached. Three days prior, I touched base with our Utah hosts. They said everything was good, and we should bring appetites for Sunday dinner. Two days out, our ski resort affirmed they were open and had thousands of nature-filled acres for folks to spread out on. And, on the morning of, the resort sent more assurances that all was well and the snow was deep. So we saddled up and headed west.

The two and a half day drive was smooth and uneventful. By the time we arrived in Utah, all of their resorts had closed. So instead of spending the afternoon renting ski gear, we spent it around our friends' kitchen table. During this lunch, dinner, and dessert campaign, their youngest son returned from a week in Banff Canada. Then their middle son returned from a week at Moab. We all caught up and watched the news feeds roll through. Our first fallback plan was to take advantage of the many hiking trails in Salt Lake and Park City. We thought we'd spend a few days doing that and then head back. But when the talk of stopping interstate travel began, I got a touch nervous. I'm usually the first to ignore such alarmism, but per my accounting, every measure floated up to that point had come to fruition, so that travel lock-down spooked me a bit. Granted, there are worse states to get trapped in than Utah (including the one I live in). However, I did not want to be an imposition to our friends, even though I believe they would have been thrilled to have us (the few that didn't have to give up beds at least).

To be on the safe side, we opted to head back in the morning. For those keeping score, that would be a full day of driving on Friday and Saturday. The first half of Sunday was on the road, and the second half we visited our friends. Then back in the car first thing Monday morning, where we drove twenty straight hours to get home at 5:30 Tuesday morning. I wanted to be in our state before midnight—we crossed the line at 11:55. I reckon few people have made that sort of trek for what turned out to be dinner with friends.

For the rest of the week, our family experienced our first staycation. This is something that has been on everyone's wish list but never punched. To see how each person fell into their own easy routine, you'd think they had already done this a dozen times. It wasn't skiing, but it was memorable.

TOMORROW: Part 2 - Homebound

bella does a good amount of house and dog sitting. she has for years. just about anytime she sees someone walking a dog she approaches them, asks if she can pet it, and strikes up a conversation. most of those talks end with the following sentence -- "if you ever need someone to watch your dog and you hire bella's bright dog-sitting business, the future will be bright for you and your pets!"
<...

a new TROYSCRIPT was posted today. make marty happy

we were driving home from our michigan camping trip. marty had bella and anthony in the van and alex was with me in my car. alex and i had just eaten dinner and were about 60 miles west of indianapolis.

as we were driving and talking i noticed a car had pulled up on my left and was driving steady with me. after a few moments, i looked their way. there was a college-aged guy in the passen...

my uncle tim died in october. this was my mom's older brother and he died nine years to the month after my mom, his sister. i always described uncle tim as my favorite uncle. at his funeral lots of people described him as their favorite fill-in-the-blank. a contributing factor to this was my uncle tim was a prankster. never malicious. never hurtful. but also never off-duty. he seemed to always hav...

bella kept the first hat she ever knitted in her car. this was not for ornamental purposes like a graduation tassel but a functional part of her car's toolkit like an ice scraper or flashlight. being her first full project it had some pretty obvious flaws so she felt it didn't merit a routine rotation, nor was it worthy of proper donation. but it was perfect to help fight a morning chill until her ...

good friend bookpimp called me recently to tell me i was in a dream of his. he described it as such: the next day he called me to tell about my place in history. he said that when he read this in his dream, he chuckled. and the worker even asked him why he laughed. he played it off saying he knew something about one of the sites. i could totally see that playing out as there are few things sweeter in this world that a genuine bookpimip chortle.

dreaming my work is not only in the top 10 of pivotal sites to mankind, but third on the list, should definitely earn you top-billing on the super-fan list. vp at the least.

and i don't think we need to hire a fancy dream analyst to gauge bookpimp's mood on the current state of affairs.

we have a new ritual in our home. and to be clear, whenever i say "we have a new ritual" it means i am adding a new thing to my already lengthy list of routines. when the term "we" is involved it just means i am subjecting the rest of my family to the routine as well. i call this new one "house tip of the week".

this stems from a belief i have that if there is some life matter (versus s...