Category: Homefront

Half-Baked Plans

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So we’ve been planning a trip south to visit my family for months now – and by planning I mean we intended to come and we knew generally when we would do so, but beyond that few of the details were thoroughly worked out. In the end the main driver to our travel plans was the time I schedule as vacation (figuring picking some time is better than waiting for a fully-baked plan to come together). We debated many variants to the plan (camping either on the way down or on the way back, taking day trips to places while we are down here, etc.), but many were nixed through lack of effort, lack of planning or lack of enthusiasm. Sometimes just the trip itself is enough. And sometimes I make impulsive decisions that are not well thought through.

So we are packing and cleaning late into the evening on Wednesday when a ‘brilliant idea’ pops into my head. Knowing that the following day of travel would likely be long and arduous due to the combination of other early holiday travelers, various rush hour commuters, and my own children’s shortage of patience for long car rides, it strikes me that we can avoid all of the above by hopping right in the car that night. The loose plan was that we would drive as long as we could stay awake – taking shifts as needed – while the kids slept through the trip down. In the least, we get past the major cities and find a place to crash for a few hours until we can continue south. While my wife was hesitant, the kids were all about getting to their grandparents’ sooner and I was able to sway her.

So by 12:30 AM we are finally packed and ready to go (bad omen #1) and we get started. Grasshopper had already fallen asleep before we left so we just had to move him into his car seat. Cricket was awake still, but fell asleep within the first half hour. After 3 hours and a couple brief stops to refuel, I’m starting to wane. Unfortunately my wife (partially due to me being chatty to start off) hadn’t really gotten enough rest to take us much farther. We made it south of DC which was our main concern, but my wife was hesitant to stop at a hotel that would cost over $100 and I was too tired to Google one that didn’t, so we settled for parking at a rest area near Potomac Mills. My wife was paranoid about the kids developing some weird leg disorder I hadn’t ever heard of, so I had to convert the seats to beds they could lie flat in. We had pillows and blankets and were all set … in theory.

Grasshopper decided he had his second wind and kept trying to talk and play – which I mostly responded to with loud shushing and barks of ‘go to sleep’. After about an hour and a half he finally settled back down. Then an hour later I was awake and couldn’t settle back down (it couldn’t have been the discomfort of sleeping sitting up in a mini-van). After silently arguing with my wife about getting the kids re-situated for the next leg (where she conveniently through a good handful of sharp I-told-you-so’s she’d been saving up since I suggested the night drive), I finally started quietly shifting the kids back into sitting positions to continue the trip. They stirred and grumbled, but were back asleep within a half hour on the road. And we made the rest of the drive with little incident. Around 9 AM we stopped for breakfast and a driver switch, and I got a shallow nap for a good amount of the remaining leg.

After 11 hours we finally made it to our destination. In truth, even if we had left bright and early Thursday morning, it would likely have taken just as long between traffic and stops. So it generally worked out. But most of the ‘extra visit time’ we gained was spent either alternately napping or dealing with meltdowns from cranky, sleep-deprived children. But both of these are easily washed away by a normal night’s sleep for all … I’ll let you know when we get one of those.

A Wedding and a Birth

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After years of trying and months of incubation, my wife’s photography business finally bloomed past its fetal development stage and into a living breathing entity.  It will still take some a good while of feeding it and caring for it and giving it a lot of nurturing and attention before it will be completely up on its own feet, but it is getting there – mostly thanks to her cousin’s wedding.

My wife has been taking on both casual and paying engagements for a couple years now, as well as plenty of practice both at home and out and about, with the intent of getting such a business effort going.  But to shoots so far have mostly been with a few couples or small families and have been too spread out and too discounted to really be called a successful business.  But with the help of a new website launched for her business (designed by yours truly) and a full wedding shoot now under her belt, not only has her confidence shot up, but so have her requests for business.

So now comes the next phase – the building phase.  Mostly likely any money that she makes for the next 6 months or so (and possible some of my money as well) will go towards equipment investments.  She rented a Nikon D300 for the wedding and wielded it well, but the D70 that she owns isn’t going to server her well for much longer except as a backup – she will need a better primary, a few more lenses, a good flash, and a more powerful computer to really manage the business well in the long run.  The tough part is convincing her to spend the money (she is incredibly frugal).  I’ll just have to get some good bonuses to use to buy in as an investor.  😉

So support her by checking out her new site (http://www.corinafiorephotography.com), and drop her a note to tell her what you think of her pictures.  And if you live in the area and have a need for a photographer, consider contacting her for a shoot (I know – shameless plug, but worth it).

Travel Epilogue

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11 cents.  That’s how much cash was left in my pocket after two weeks on the road.  I honestly only used cash for minimal incidental expenses that required it (e.g., train & bus fares, items from convenience stores and news stands) and I only started with a little over $100.  I just find it funny how closely my funds matched my needs.

Anyway, I’m glad to be gradually returning to normalcy.  Though while Saturday with the family went smoothly, Sunday my children did their best to remind me of what I didn’t miss while I was gone.  Grasshopper seems to be going through that phase in life where he is realizing that he is not in charge and is fighting that reality tooth and nail.  And Cricket seems to be giving us a preview of her teenage drama queen years to come.  All upon the backdrop of dinner with the in-laws – their older cousin got fed up with the behavior and I’m sure the parents of their younger cousin were not thrilled with the image of their possible future.  It seems my wife and I have some work to do with them.

On a good note, there were some positive aspects of Father’s Day this year.  My family made me French toast in bed, got me a nice geeky card, and got me Super Mario Galaxy 2 (which the kids proceeded to watch me play for hours).  The game is a good continuation of the series in that it keeps some continuity with the previous installment.  But it is also an improvement – the level layout is much more sensible and enjoyable.  In the first you had this huge “ship” with various rooms to navigate to find the levels of play.  In the new version you steer the ship (which is smaller and simpler) to the various worlds which are all laid out on an easy to navigate map (more similar to games like Super Mario World or Super Mario Bros. 3).  And they brought back Yoshi which adds a fun new variation on the game play (plus the kids love to watch me make him eat things).

Anyway, now that my travels are done, I must return to reality and be a productive member of society.  I look forward to getting back into more interactive tasks than just sitting still and listening all day.  I look forward to getting to go home every day and enjoying some time with my family (maybe a bit less of it like this weekend panned out).  And I look forward to getting refunded all of my travel expenses so that I have more than a dime and a penny to line my pockets.

Travelogue – Homesick

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I’m tired.  It isn’t jet lag or a hangover or lack of sleep.  I’m just tired – tired of sleeping in foreign beds, tired of being in unfamiliar terrain, tired of feeling like I’m connected to my normal life by a long tether.  I’m ready to pull that tether and reel myself home; ready to go back to dealing with chores, crazy Kamikaze children, and chicken little-esque panics over issues that take moments to right (I’m not specifying which front that comes from for fear of incrimination) – ready to re-immerse myself in my familiar routines and environs.

In truth this week has been going relatively smoothly.  The training course has been informative and useful.  My colleague has been much more tolerant and tolerable than I would have expected in such close quarters (though apparently he has been spending half of most nights beating me with fancy pillows to stifle my snoring).  We managed to catch a couple shows while in NYC … ok movies – we saw A-Team and Get Him to the Greek.  The former was surprisingly well conceived given the premise, and the latter was ridiculously funny (though they put some of the funniest bits in the trailers which sort of ruins them).  Besides that and the happy hour earlier in the week, we played our time here pretty low key, which I was perfectly happy with.

I can say with confidence that I will never stay at the hotel in which we stayed this week ever again.  The room, with 2 bed rather than one, was about half the square footage of the place I stayed in while in San Francisco and it cost almost twice as much.  The room service pricing was nuts and the service itself spotty.  Their menu is completely in Italian (since the cuisine is as such), but if you read them the Italian names for the dishes, they are confused – they only recognize them by the English descriptions.  They charge $3 for an 8 oz. soda and no food item is less than $10.  And they will forget to ask appropriate questions regarding ordered items as well as forget to bring some of them (though I assume that we were charged for them anyway).  While I avoided as much as possible eating food at the hotel in San Fran, when I did the service at least was comparable to what I’d expect of such a hotel.

Anyway, as I said before – I’m tired.  I’m tired of sitting in training sessions (there is only so much sitting still and listening one can do).  I’m ready to take that quiet, smooth train-ride home.  I’m glad that my company was willing to send me globe-trotting in the name of education and networking (though I feel I haven’t been very successful at the latter), but I’m ready not to travel for work again for at least a few months.  I’m ready to stop living out of a suitcase and go back to living out of laundry baskets.  I’m ready to be able to consider going places more than a few blocks or a transit line away.  I’m ready to drive my car again.  I’m ready to stop carrying bags everywhere and instead go back to carrying children everywhere.  I’m ready to have access to a refrigerator and a microwave and a toaster and a stove, none of which have motion-sensored food that I need to eat with plastic utensils.  The journey was good, but I’m ready to be at the end of it.

Travelogue – a Side Track

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As exciting as I’m sure my daily chronicles of travel have been, I’m going to take a day off from it to write about something else.  This concept was something I discussed with a colleague last week at the conference in San Francisco and got to talking about again with another colleague this week in NYC.  After chatting about it, we dug up this link and made some popcorn.  The below video is a condensed version of a longer talk – the longer talk is good to, but doesn’t include the awesome whiteboard work demonstrated in the video below.

In watching this, as baffled as the results seem to be to a number of experts apparently, to me this seems akin to common sense.  While money can be a decent incentive, it is not the great incentivizer.  If it was, then rich executives would be the hardest working people in the world (while a handful of them might argue that they are, most of them are far from it).  The interesting coincidence of this topic is that in the discussion, the company that is used as an example of a different way of thinking about incentivization is the very one that sponsored the conference I attended last week.

I am very tempted to send this video to the top executive team at my company and see how willing they may be to adopt some of the habits of it.  I’m sure they will really love the full-length version as it seems to suggest that the sales commission model may be flawed as well (well the CEO and COO would like it, sales maybe less so).  What is important to glean from this, though, isn’t that monetary incentives like bonuses don’t work (though apparently they don’t), but that what does work is to pay people what they need and deserve (so that money is not an issue) and motivate people through personal challenge and growth, a level of autonomy, and a sense of purpose.

I am also motivated to consider the lessons of this set of studies in the context of parenting.  Obviously children aren’t motivated by money (at least not most kids) and material rewards and punishments have limited results. But perhaps more intrinsically valued rewards may be more motivating.  If I have any luck with it, I’ll post an update on the matter.