It will be the summer of awesome and fun camps

I’ve been told that the summers at this magazine are pretty brutal, in that we put out two huge issues a month for a five-month stretch. That should be fun, once that period arrives, but my preparations for such time have already begun. I started thusly, “You know, I’ll be working a lot this summer, and I’m not going to let you sit at home and play Minecraft all hours for days at a time or anything like that, so we’ll have to figure out the summer camp situation, since you’ll be at summer camp every week.” The initial reaction was a pause, and mild irritation.

But then I reminded her that at this year’s zoo camp, she’ll be moving up into the next group/grade level. And then I asked her if she wanted to do gymnastics again, and then reminded her about the invention camp at school, and then the golf place. At that point, she was off and running. All those ideas sounded good to her, but what else?

“Well, why don’t we try something outside your comfort zone and maybe broaden your horizons a bit?” Again, hesitation, but by the time the conversation was over, she was tentatively in for drama, sports, art, and maybe a week or so in California with Grandma for a camp or two there. I suggested the wilderness sleep-away camp, but she wasn’t having any of that, and actually almost cried at the thought of being away from us overnight. Maybe architecture? “That’s interesting…” she said. Wow! Really?

So, now we’re all excited about the prospect of summer camps, a full two months before we can even find out about them, which is a drag. But I actually found a summer camp expo in our area in several weeks, so I think we may check that out. She’ll probably be more excited about anything new based on the counselors and information she sees there rather than my description of any of it, so that’s got definite possibilities.
I’m super relieved that she’s so excited. I wish I could go to summer camp again. It sounds like so much fun.

New news is good news

Hot on the heels of my anti-Kardashian-Jenner rant, I’ve got bigger fish to fry. Apparently, Yahoo! decided that I really shouldn’t have the option to dismiss even those articles, and changed the entire makeup of their home page. Now, in an effort to “connect” their home page to the youth zeitgeist, they’ve set up every article to be able to go viral. You can comment, sign-in to like, reblog on Tumblr, and share and/or tweet each article. What you can’t do anymore is dismiss the article from your news feed.

Forced with this issue, and not wanting to learn another new Yahoo! page, I have moved on to something else. And in that, I have discovered the Google News page. My friends, it is glorious. It’s remarkably free of hype, if I can say that. It’s got small photos, headlines, and links. That’s it. Interested in a story? The headline did its job? Click on the link, and you can read the article.

Also, I can personalize what news sources I prefer, and what topics I want most to read about. It won’t let me remove Kardashian-Jenner from my page, I don’t think, but there is so much other information that I can gloss over them super quick and it doesn’t even bother me too much. I’ve got my own pages for space, books, movie reviews, weather, NFL, Day in Photos, Hollywood, wildlife and environment. All good things, and all interesting things to me.
I’ve removed the Yahoo! bookmark from my browser. … My Chrome browser. … Oh my gosh, you guys, I think I may finally be becoming a disciple of Google.

Get them off my feed, PLEASE

Not until you try deleting Kardashian-Jenner stories from your news feed do you realize just how many stories about the Kardashian-Jenners are online. Here I am, living life on my Yahoo! home page, and I can not get away from these people. I indicate “less of this” all the time in my feed, but the damn click-bait headlines continue to show up. They will not go away. I also delete the Kanye West bits because they’re mostly about the Kardashian-Jenners, too.
I am in loathe of this “famous” family, and I can not avoid them. If you live on the internet for any amount of time every day, you will get exposed to them.

I think the worst thing is that if something bothers you to the core, there is actually no way to avoid it. Where is the list of key words that you can input on your computer that will ensure that you won’t see any articles about that thing? Like my friend, SafeSearch, but with topics? I would put “Kardashian,” “Jenner” and “Kanye,” right up there atop it. I would consider putting “Trump” there, too, but that’s such a train wreck, I kinda have to keep up with what going on with that. I honestly can’t think of any other words that provoke as much ire in me, so much that I can’t think of a context in which I could stand reading them, as those.

No, you may not have that information

I did something I consider pretty awesome today. I returned Christmas gifts that no one wanted. The flip in that script is that I bought those particular gifts for my family.

The first gift was the game Apples to Apples that Cooper “bought” for Sydney. This was returned because I had forgotten that I’d already gotten her the junior edition of the game several weeks before. That was a brain fart on my behalf, and I felt super bad about it. So, it got returned. The second gift was a game that Sydney and I got for Brian, the Brain Games board game. At first glance, this was a great idea. We love the Brain Games television show. What didn’t occur to me until after he’d opened it and shown no interest or excitement, is that probably after the first time we go through all the games in that game, we’d know all the tricks, and it would cease to be fun at all. So, it got returned, as well.

I bought both at Toys R Us, so it was a quick fix to return them. But this is interesting: I had to provide my driver’s license for the return (the Toys R Us employee input my address into their computer system) and my phone number. (Duly noted, that I did have my receipt.) I asked why they needed to see my ID, and she said that it was a change in policy from a few months ago, but that they couldn’t process my return without that information. I’m annoyed by that. Almost to the point that I hate Radio Shack for needing my full address to buy a battery or cable or something.

Also, because I used my debit card for the purchase, they would prefer to give me cash back because to return the money electronically back to my debit card “may take several days.” I’m all, “What?” Yeah, it’ll take a while, she said to me. I said, fine, give me the cash, though I think you need to check with your processes because everyone else can get money back on a debit card within a day or two.
I don’t understand why Toys R Us would go rogue on parents like that, for sure. As for the irritation I have right now for Toys R Us, it translates into the solid reason why I won’t be going back without the person for whom the trip is being made. No more gifting from Toys R Us, because they want too much from me. My address and phone number are not their business.

Road trips are awesome

Conversation today rolled towards road trips, and I got to thinking about some pretty epic road trips I’ve been on. The first, that I remember enough to write about here, is the vacation that Mom, Howie, Gramps and I took to Ireland in 1984. We spent two weeks, I think, or 10 days, but a lot of time driving around the country, stopping here and there and doing awesome things. I was only 11 years old, and I’m sure the driving part was way more stressful for the adults that were actually driving than it was for me, but it was my first big-time road trip.

Second, mine and Brian’s drive out to Boston in 2002. It was summer, and hot, and we were in a rush. The moving company picked up our stuff in Phoenix, and told us that day that they would see us in Boston in five days. We had been told to allow a 10-day window to get our belongings, so this shift was quite a surprise. We busted out of town super early the next morning, and made it to Boston in four days, driving 12 and 13 hours per day to get there in time. It was fun, to be sure, but way too stressful to really enjoy. Because my boss at the time would not let me quit my job before the end of August, I had to come back to Arizona, live with a coworker, and go on about my life after traveling with Brian and moving him into our apartment there.

Hence, the third big road trip, with Mom, moving me and my car from California to Boston, in September that same year. Yes, I drove coast to coast twice in a matter of four months. This particular trip was super awesome, and a ton more relaxed. Mom and I had a steady driving schedule of eight hours per day, had our itinerary of where we would stop each night, and had our plans for what fun things we would visit along the way. This is, no doubt, my most favorite road trip. That she fought tooth and nail to not go is amazing in hindsight, isn’t it?

Fourth big trip: the drive back to Arizona from Boston. Brian, Oliver and I, and my big-ass tummy with a baby in it. I was six months along when we drove back to the desert, and it made for a more interesting trip. That trip, actually, is mapped out on the blog, for your enjoyment, in July of 2006. But for the sake of conversation, I’ll tell you that we took our time with that one, driving down the East Coast on the 95 South until we reached the 10 East in Florida. We took a right at that point, and continued across the South, and Texas, to Arizona. It was a better trip than our trip out in July, 2002, for certain. Our stuff took eight or nine more days beyond that to arrive in Scottsdale, so we spent several days with Brian’s parents in southern Arizona.

The fifth big trip took us out to Houston, with a kid, two dogs and two cars. It sucked that there was no one we could share driving duties with, but we dealt okay, and enjoyed the ride nonetheless.

The sixth road trip, and last one so far, brought us back to Arizona from Houston. Mom, Sydney, Oliver, Daisy and I, all crammed into the Jetta, rocking along the highway. (Brian drove back to Arizona a couple months prior.) It was a different experience, certainly, with Sydney and the dogs, but we all still had a lovely time, and again, had our route mapped and figured out for every day.

My coworker doesn’t like road trips, she said. I love them, obviously, because if I didn’t, I’d be in a world of hurt. But I really do love them, because it’s fun to drive into a town, or away from a town, with a destination in mind. I love that with a road trip, it’s the journey that makes it so special.

Artists are interesting, it's as plain as that

Brian and I watched Straight Outta Compton this weekend. … I’m going to preface this post by saying that first and foremost, it was a very good movie. I enjoyed it thoroughly.

Now, having said that … I was super hesitant to sit and watch it. It was one of those movies where I knew it would be good, but I also knew that there would be aspects that would make me uncomfortable, and I didn’t really want to see that. So, nervous and knowing that I would be witness to racism and gang violence in all manner of forms, I agreed to watch. I’m so glad I did.

I’m not a fan of rap music; I never have been. I appreciate artists for their art in all forms, but as for listening to it a lot, I don’t. Brian, on the other hand, was a huge fan of N.W.A., so he was very excited. I am a fan of Ice Cube, in all his talents and entertainments, so for that, I was intrigued.

It was super awesome to see the beginnings of all these men, to see how they started in the industry, and the trials and tribulations they managed to overcome. I was excited to learn how they grew and established themselves in the heights of their art. And it also was cool when I recognized bits and pieces of music from my own memory, as well as remembering news from way back when. We watched the unrated director’s cut, which was about two hours and 48 minutes long, but it really didn’t feel that long. I did not want to sit for three hours, but the pace of the film made it fly by pretty well. I’m curious what was cut for the theatrical release (probably a lot of the party scenes).

I love it when a movie makes me want to sit on Wikipedia for hours reading about the people depicted, which I did, and makes me want to buy music, which I didn’t, actually, because I don’t really like it beyond the beats here and there.
So, in all that, I’ll say that I highly recommend this movie. And I think it did get robbed by the Oscars, but Ice Cube himself said that the accolades he received from the fans and movie goers was worth more to him than the industry recognition. Indeed, they make movies for the people, not the industry awards. This one was a labor of love, clearly, and they knocked it out of the park.

No snow, but a ton of sunshine

When there's bad weather, Brian is obsessed with watching The Weather Channel. No joke, the station was on our television all day. He compulsively watched all the snow updates, government press conferences, and meteorologists standing in the wind. It's entertaining, to be sure, but also, kinda monotonous. They're all like, "It's snowing outside everybody! Look how cold I am standing out in the snow!"
It really just makes us both miss living in Boston, where we would have been able to go outside and play in the wonderful snow, rather than just watch it on our TV.
Incidentally, here in the desert, we had a high temperature of 68 degrees today. Boring.

Short, sweet, and 3,001

Holy crap, you guys. Last night I wrote my 3,000th post on It's All About ... . I don't even know what to write about tonight, though that seems silly because this is not my 3,000th post, so it's really no big deal. Actually, it's just the first on a long road to 4,000.

Tiny Thing #6: If not here, then there

In my stocking on Christmas Day, Santa Claus left me a totally awesome little book designed to give me ideas here and there for blog posts, called 642 Tiny Things to Write About. Since I seem to be lacking in inspiration at this very moment, I'm going to try it out.
As there are no page numbers or ideas numbered in the book, I've had to figure out my own way of keeping track. Remarkably, it is by numbering the ideas myself. Herein, #6:
Where would you choose to be exiled?
Since being exiled technically means being pushed out of your native country or land, I need to consider where I would choose to be if not in the United States. I would select Australia. Mom, Howie and I spent two weeks there in 1996, and it was fabulous. I loved it, all of it. Every different kind of environment, from desert to rain forest. So many different and interesting animals. And just the beauty of it all. No kidding, if Trump is elected, I may self-exile my ass to Australia out of protest and disgust. A friend told me that the Australian government won't let you emigrate with any debt to your name. This is concerning, certainly, because I have a lot of debt.
What three essential items would you take with you?
First and foremost, of course, would be the family: kid, mom, husband, dogs. Second, would have to be my phone, so I can take photos, blog my adventures, Google Maps my way around, communicate with all my other loved ones and bug them about visiting me, and probably check in on Facebook everywhere. All those wonderful things can be done with the little device in my pocket, and that's pretty amazing, don't you think? Third, my reading glasses, because to not be able to read would be awful.

Catch you on the flip side, awesome school

And then you find out that they’re closing down your childhood.

Word came down from the Internet gods last night that the elementary and middle schools I attended will be closing down after this school year. I attended two different campuses, the first, from kindergarten through fourth grade, and the second, from fifth grade through eighth grade. I met some of the best friends I’ve ever had at this school, and we all continue to be close and see each other as often as possible to this day. So when the news broke that the schools would be shutting down, we all felt the loss keenly, and it spread through our Facebook pages and posts like wildfire.

Granted, it seems silly to hope that your school will be where you left it forever and ever. It seems naïve to think that your school will survive all the hardships that so many other schools face, and have faced. It seems immature to be sad that your school is closing, especially since you haven’t stepped foot on its grounds since the 1990s. But here I am, all silly, naïve and immature, and thinking that a grand and special era has ended, simply because the doors are closing.

There is no way to quantify everything that the school gave and taught me, from confidence in myself and pride in my education, to the ability to meet and exceed expectations, and socialize with people. And most especially, I appreciate the friends I made there, those who, more than 30 years later, are my everything: my emotional rocks, my loving hearts, my candid reality checks, my spiritual reboots, and my best times ever.

So, the school is closing, and that’s sad, but I am more than grateful that it was there when I needed it, and that it continues to be an influence on me, and I daresay all those friends, still. It’s just another monument to my youth that will fade into memory, but will remain in my heart.
Also, we all can still sing the fight song.

I don't *feel* like I'm 43 years old

Today is my birthday. I turned 43 years old at 7:39 a.m., California time (because that's the best kind). It was the first time in 10 years that I had to work on my birthday, and I was reminded at about 6:30 this morning that working on your birthday f*ckin' sucks. I had played around with the idea of calling in sick today, but I figured that being "sick" for the first time at this job ... on a Monday ... would kind of be a red flag. So there I was, at work, on my birthday. But the decision I made as I was driving in, to sign in to my Facebook and sit on it all morning, ended up being the best thing for me today.
It was a virtual birthday party, if you can believe it, and it was awesome. I felt like it was the perfect get-together, with me just hanging out in a chair, and throughout the morning, people would arrive, wish me a happy day, maybe hang out for a chat or a smile, and then they would leave and go about their business. Glorious. Honestly, there were, like, 40 people at my party today, and it was super cool. Of course, the actual phone calls and texts were fantastic (and better), but as Facebook birthdays go, me having the ability to just chill at a computer all day today made this one among the best.

Does anyone ever really win a debate?

I can’t help but feel like all political debates are like kids getting into arguments on the playground. They all just kinda yell at each other, no one really understands what they’re saying, most of their statements are just sorta true, and the actual point of the “conversation” gets lost among the kerfuffle.
Full disclosure, I don’t watch the debates anymore. As a rule, I hate listening to people argue on television, whether it’s politics, sports, religion, or anything really. I can’t stand it. To sign up for a couple hours of watching some normally contained and stable people devolve into arguing like elementary school kids is not my thing. Nor do I read much about the debates after the fact. Perhaps I only click on the fact-checking articles, since they are the only real things going on up there. 
But every morning, on my news page, I am subjected to so many images of the debaters, arms spread and gesticulating, angry and offended looks on their faces, and I am reminded how very smart I am to not watch all that garbage. It’s interesting to me because presidents don’t debate. They take in all the pertinent information (or at least, they should), and then make a decision. Beyond the campaign trail, debating is moot. So it interests me how people in the voting populace think that the debates could possibly show them how a person will lead the country. If anything, it shows how someone wins and/or loses an argument at home with their spouse. That’s how emotional and sometimes heated these people get, in my eyes anyway.
This morning’s news feed, with its five or six articles on Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders, is hurting my eyes and heart. I hate that our political system seems to cater to the lowest denominator of theater and continues to host these things. It would be nice if the issues were themselves the only things people were interested in, rather than watching adults argue and insult each other. Their ability to do that, and “win” even, is not super presidential, I don’t think.

It really is beautiful music, you know

I'm obsessed with the Beautiful Instrumentals (820) radio channel on DirecTV.
I can't tell you how I landed on it, probably just looking for something relatively soothing to have on as my background while doing some computer work (actually, I can tell you how, apparently). But as there hasn't been any other real television to watch over the last few weeks, the music channel has stayed on every night. It's super relaxing, and nice to have such a chill background noise going on. I especially like it when I hear something I recognize, such as "Three Coins in the Fountain" just a bit ago. The music allows me to concentrate on the task at hand, whether it's reading or writing. Also, if I choose to watch something on the DVR, the channel just disappears into the background to be there when I'm done. It's reassuring, for certain.

UPDATE: SafeSearch continues to work. No vaginas were seen in the search results of "pretty music" for that image.

Pretty pictures, no more vaginas

I've had my pretty, pink quilt on my bed for all of three days, and it already has a small spot on it, because dogs. Oliver has a super sensitive wart on his shoulder that will bleed over any little thing, and evidently, he rolled over onto it while sleeping last night, and he bled on my pretty, pink quilt. I'm bothered, but obviously, I can't expect a pretty, pink quilt to stay a pretty, pink quilt when I have two dogs.

Also, I just discovered something pretty awesome that, as a parent of a kid on the Internet, I should have discovered and enacted a year or so ago. I have turned on "SafeSearch" on Yahoo!'s search engine. It's been bothering me a lot lately that when I do image searches for my blog posts, I can put in seemingly innocuous phrases like "pretty pink images," and end up with several photos of girls with their vaginas all out and open, with and without penises in them. It's disturbing, to say the least, when all I'm looking for is a photo of pink flowers or something, and I get an eyeful of vagina from girls that I can't confidently say are consenting, sober or older than 18. Typically, if a search has brought up images such as that, I clear the computer's page history before shutting down, because the last thing I need is Sydney wondering why I was looking for "princess" images and finding several cartoon drawings of Ariel getting pounded from behind by Eric, you know? Tonight's search grossed me out, and suddenly and vaguely, I remembered that there is such a thing as parental controls on online searches. I found the SafeSearch function, turned it on and locked it, and then was very pleased to discover that a second search for "pretty pink" images yielded zero vagina. ... Honestly, even though I say I'm doing it for Sydney, I'm really doing it for me, because I don't care to see that stuff. Because like I said, who knows if those girls are consenting, sober adults when those photos are taken .. and yuck. I'm kicking myself for not enacting this particular safety measure way before now.

Last night's ITEM! list, today

ITEM!: Randomly, it makes me very happy to compose my blog posts at work because here I have Microsoft Word on my Apple computer, and I can finally type in my favorite font again: Book Antiqua. And that’s about all I have to say about that.

ITEM!: Last night, I finished the second book that I started reading since I started working. That shouldn’t be an accomplishment, by any stretch of the imagination, but it kind of is, since I’ve had the hardest time sitting down with a book since November. I have a couple other awesome tomes in my room that I need to dive into, and I intend on finishing another this weekend. Anyway, last night’s book made me cry at the end, which rarely happens (I can count on one hand how many times a book made me cry), and also I stayed up until 1 a.m. to finish it. So along with the puffy eyes this morning, I was super tired.

ITEM!: Also, excitement of all excitements, Oliver has begun climbing up and down the stairs again, a full 10 months after he tore his ACL. And he’s getting pretty bold and cocky about it, too. He makes a bit of noise while ascending, for sure, since it’s an effort for him, but he’s determined and motivated, since he seems to think that Sydney always has food upstairs. The downstairs trek is scarier for Brian and I, since all we can imagine is him tumbling, but he made it on his own last night (silently, so I didn’t even know that he’d done it until he was downstairs again). This morning, he wandered upstairs only to want to get on the bed with me. Of course, he is still old and wobbly, so he actually toppled off the bed about 3 a.m., giving B and I heart attacks and fits of parental guilt and anxiety (he’s doing fine this morning, like I said, since he made his way back up around 7). Still, he’s getting stronger, thanks to the increased pain medications for his arthritis, and the daily walks and exercise, so we’re very pleased. He’ll never be able to jump up onto anything again, i.e., sofa or bed, but at least he’s got the strength to move around the house again. And more than anything, that means I need to start being more diligent about emptying the bathroom trash cans again, or he will.

ITEM!: Also, I’m wearing a pink hoody sweater that I haven’t worn since I was living in Boston. It feels weird, but also pretty cool, to be rolling “old school” in a sweater I bought in Maine.