Clueless in the UK

The other day Jason had a play date with one of his school buddies after school. We fed his friend dinner and later his mom and older brother came to pick him up around 7pm while I was washing the dishes. The older brother is in Madeline’s class, actually.

The older brother came by and looked at me and said, “I’ve never seen a man wash up after dinner before.” Just the look of utter confusion on his face was worth the price of admission. That and the fact that he didn’t hesitate to say it …

Impressive, huh? I wouldn’t mention it except that this is not the first time I have heard those very words uttered about me. The neighborhood kids have tried to make fun of our kids by pointing out that I am doing the dishes and they have never seen their dad do that. They were also shocked to see me cooking dinner.

So I’ve decided, That’s it. We moved here, we’re going to adopt their customs.

I’ve been meaning to write a new entry for quite some time. This one will be about me, so if that bores you, time to move on.

I have been wanting to say a few things about why I am writing the blog, after spending two months trying to decide whether I should do it anymore. The answer is: I want to remember this time of our lives. Maybe I will want to remember “this time of our lives” for the rest of our lives, or maybe it’s just a special time here in London. I also want our kids to have something to check out in a 5, 10 or 15 years. But why a blog and not just a journal? Ah, well, I cannot bring myself to write unless I think somebody is going to read it, even if it’s just three people.

I have lots going on right now and there is not enough time in the day. This is how I had hoped my first year of not working would have been, but it’s OK that it took a year to get to this point. Here’s what’s going on:

• Piano - I decided to take up piano to take the place of my drums, which are still in the states. Without going into it I will say that I am having an unbelievable amount of fun. I am playing some nice pieces (two Bach and now a Handel) and I practice between one and two hours a day. It won’t be long before I am singing and playing Tori Amos songs about teen angst! I took a video of myself - I looked horrendously twisted, tense, etc., so you will spared the details.In my last lesson my teacher told me to stop trying to impress him with how well I interpret the music. I get nervous when I first play for my teacher at each lesson, and last week I tried a shot of brandy before the lesson to see if it would help. It didn’t.
• Hacking - I got good, concise books on php, mysql, JavaScript and CSS and I finally know how the modern web works. I was stuck back in the 1997 time frame in terms of those technologies.I have been working on getting a website for our kids’ school up and running. I am using WordPress, WebCalendar, have my first mysql database, wrote a JavaScript photo viewer, etc. Programming is just fun, that’s all there is to it.I am trying to switch from Emacs to TextMate, a mac editor that is taking the hacking world by storm (maybe). It’s very interesting but hard to break 30 year long habits. It was so exciting at first that I couldn’t sleep at night.
• Getting Out - Last week I went out drinking with a bunch of other Dads at the school … um in the middle of the day, stopping just in time to pick the kids up at school. That is what I envisioned from the moment I got here and saw the pub from across the street from the kids’ school.
• Working Out - the opposite of the previous item, working out three days a week, if I can keep healthy. Lately it’s been hard because I have had a nagging cold.
• Learning How to Drive - We decided it was time, so we joined a car club. There are cars parked on the side of the road all over London and we can schedule them for an hour at a time. I went out for a test drive last week and luckily one of our friends came with us. She made sure we didn’t get lost or do anything stupid. Unfortunately I had to drive 1000 yards to her house to pick her up and during that time I almost hit a lady who was bending over with her car door open on the LEFT side of the road, where I was correctly driving but not correctly looking. I looked up just in time and swerved away. (I am not exaggerating.) The only other mistake was not noticing a traffic circle until our friend yelled STOP!Anyway, I am going to get my UK driver’s license. I hooked up with an instructor yesterday and everything went well. Once he explained the rules about round-abouts it was a no brainer.

I am boring myself with my own post. I am sure my children will treasure this entry when I am long gone… Once I can figure out how to get WordPress to allow me to upload more than one photo at a time I will have some more interesting and colorful blog entries.

Until then, cheers!