About a week later, we went kayaking with a friend in Deep Cove, Vancouver (thanks Willy!). That's where we are in the picture. It's amazing that this beautiful peaceful area is only minutes from the city. I'm not sure the kids enjoyed the paddling that much but I did. K* was happy for me to do all the paddling. R* finally got her own kayak on the second trip but then found it was a lot of work.
It was harder than I thought to let it go and teetered on calling off the sale. But I had to be practical about it. The problem is that with us travelling, I wouldn't be using it for a 10 months and would have had to put it into storage for at least 7 of those months. Now, storage isn't good for a car anway but it costs £30 per week if you want them to start the engine and look after it properly. I've owned it for five and a half years and in that time, its depreciated £8800 which works out to £131/month. Put them together and the bottom line is that it costs about £250 every month to not use it.
On top of that, I have to say the kids had outgrown the back seats and didn't like riding in the car. And I admit I was driving it less often to avoid those £60 visits to the petrol station. It had become more of a weekend car.
But it was a great weekend car! Always a pleasure to drive it.
Our kids don't get a weekly allowance. You might think this is mean but I believe money needs to be earned in some way rather than just handed out.
First, we don't pay for chores around the house. That leads to the question "How much will I get?" whenever you ask them to do something. If they ask me that, I tell them how much they owe me for renting their room. The kids live in the house so they have an obligation to share in the domestic chores they're capable of. No arguments.
I will sometimes offer to pay them for a job that they aren't normally involved with such as washing the car or picking weeds. Its usually something outside to get them out of the house. Or I might pay them to do something like making greeting cards. If they can save me money, they can keep the money that's saved.
They don't get paid to practice their musical instruments. That's a commitment they made when they decided to learn them.
The kids go to "work" five days a week learning at school. I pay for results at school. At the moment, I pay for every sticker they receive when they've done a good job on an assignment or test. The tricky part is to come up with some quantitative and fair system that encourages them to put in extra effort.
I don't pay cash. We have an account book and I act like a bank. It's a generous bank that pays 1% interest on their accounts every month. It encourages them to save and shows them how money grows. Some day I'll teach them that interest rates change! I'm also an ATM machine.
If they want to buy something that I think is a good idea, I might offer to split the cost 50/50 with them. We negotiate all kinds of bargains and often require the kids to "sell" to us why we should share costs. The core idea here is that they must contribute some of their hard earned money. Clothes and books are an exception. We buy those. If we go to a fair or amusement park, I'll give them a budget and after they've spent that, they have to use their own money.
Sometimes they want to buy something that I would rather they didn't. I'll tell them why its a waste of money but after that, I usually bite my tongue. At that point, it's their money and they've earned the right to spend it as they wish.
This system has worked very well for us. The kids don't nag us for stuff and are careful with how they spend their money.
This year we came up with a point system to limit the amount of time the kids played games on the computer and get them to do more educational things. I've written up the details in an article called A Point System for Earning Computer Time.
Overall, it's worked very well. I would encourage parents to come up with their own system so that kids earn the privilege of playing on the computer rather than give them unfettered access. I'm not against playing games on the computer but rather believe kids should indulge in a wide variety of play with a strong preference for the real world.
This point system doesn't have to be just for computer time. I think of it as an alternative currency and you can invent other things they can spend the points on. My golden rule is that there is no exchange rate between points and real money. I also never deduct points as punishment as that would destroy trust in the system.
Welcome to my new weblog skin. It marks the start of our travels as next week we head off to Canada to visit family and friends in Victoria and Vancouver. Our itinerary is also more or less settled for the rest of year and is still a bit hazy for the first half of 2008. Not that we're completely ready. Far from it! There's just so much stuff to do when you decide to go travelling for a year.
I'm not going to give you a blow-by-blow listing of our plans but will try to blog more frequently and tell you what we get up to. Stay tuned.
Ran across this interesting info (that all fathers should know) over on 10ticks:
At present the world record for skimming a stone is set at 38 bounces. French scientists from the Institute de Recherche sur les Phenomenes hors Equilibre have studied the art of skimming. A throw involves four factors- the translational and spin velocities, the angle at which the stone heads for the water and the angle at which it hits the water surface. To get near the world record, Christophe Clanet, the head of the team recommends the angle to approach the water is about 20 degrees, spinning at 14 times per second and with a starting speed of 25 mph. Jerdone Coleman-McGhee is the world record holder and passes on these tips: Triangular stones skip best, circular stones are less stable. The lower your hand at release the better. Strength is not the key, quickness is. The faster the stone is spinning the better it will skip. The surface of the stone should be parallel to the water when it hits to achieve maximum bounce. The very finest skipping stones are flat black slate.
It's been a while since I've read an entire book. That is, a proper thick book with over 400 pages. However, I recently finished reading "Guns, Germs and Steel" by Jared Diamond. It won the 1998 Rhone-Poulenc Science Book Prize. Its subtitle is "a short history of everybody for the last 13,000 years".
Diamond sets out to explain why human history turned out the way it did. His thesis is that the big picture of history is completely a product of environmental factors and has nothing to do with racial capabilities.
He covers the early human disporas, the rise of food production and the invention and spread of technologies. It's a fascinating story.
The gist is that the Fertile Crescent had an overwhelming advantage in the number of domesticatible seeds and animals. China had the next best collection. These areas developed agriculture and the earliest civillisations giving them a head start. Because of the East-West primary orientation of the Eurasian continent, food production and technologies spread easily. Meanwhile, the Americas and Africa had a poor collection of domesticatible seeds and animals and a primary North-South orientation. Farming developed slowly and did not spread easily in these regions. With greater food production, Eurasia developed higher population densities which led to increases in disease and immunity, sophisticated government, technology development and warfare.
China was, for most of history, the most advanced nation on earth. The anomally of China's recent isolation and stagnation left the world to western domination in the last few hundred years. It's interesting to watch the explosive development of China as it takes back its historic position in the world.
Diamond does discuss in detail developments in North and South America, Africa, China, Polynesia and Australia. What I'm left not understanding is why India did not play a more powerful role. It had a head start in the Indus Valley, early food production and access to technology and trade with the other early civillisations. I need to read more about Indian history.
Last Sunday we had the almost bizarre experience of being home alone without any kids.
K* spent the weekend camping with the cub scouts. It was his first big trip away from home. Lots of pictures on the website. Unfortunately, the weather turned bad and some of their tents blew down Sunday night! Lots of rain but he enjoyed it and still likes camping.
R* was away for four days hiking the Brecon Beacons in Wales as part of a school trip. She didn't say much about it but she seemed to have enjoyed herself.
So we had Sunday free to ourselves! For a treat, we went and saw comedian Shazia Mirza at Norden Farm. Overall, she was very good. As a Pakistani Muslim woman, she can draw on a lot of cultural and ethnic material and she does it well (F*** Off, I'm a Hairy Woman). Amazingly, she also receives death threats which she reads out and makes fun of during her show. Respect.
That same weekend we did the bluebell walk, we had a major family first - a family bike ride!
During March and April, I finally taught K* how to ride a bicycle. The trick I found was to first get him riding a regular push scooter to get the idea of keeping one's balance. It didn't take too long from that for him to transfer the idea to balancing on a bike. The main struggle was getting K* to *want* to ride a bike. He's been very, very reluctant which has always baffled me. I finally bribed him with a brand new computer game or something of equivalent value.
I was really chuffed when he finally got it.
And now he's keen! On sunny days after school we've been going riding in the park. We need to build up to more challenging rides so I'm now workig on road safety and building confidence. I'm very pleased that we've got a new family activity to pursue.
With the kids on Easter break, we spent a day up at Bletchley Park. It's famous as the site of the Government Code and Cypher School (GCCS) during World War II. It's here that Alan Turning worked on the Bombe machine and Tommy Flowers brought the Colossus into production in their work to break German Enigma cyphers.
Ok, maybe not the most exciting place to take the kids but I've been wanting to visit for ages. Bletchley Park is hugely significant in both its role in winning the war and contributions made to Computer Science.
It's not a very big place and it looks like it struggles to finance itself. The most interesting display was the rebuilt working Colossus that's there and running. Those 1500 vacuum tubes put out a lot of heat! It's not the first true computer (that was the Manchester SSEM) but it was electronic, digital and semi-programmable and put to work in 1944.
Another great display at Bletchley is the hands-on computer museum with a great hodge-podge of old computers - Pet Commodore, Commodore 64, Vic 20, an orginal IBM PC, Classic Mac, etc. Fabulous! Wish I had collected some of them myself over the years. Of courses there's excellent displays on the whole Enigma story and some on life during WWII.
So if you're a computer geek, Bletchley Park is well worth it. If you're dragging kids along, it's not going to be a long visit. There's a free tour, free audio guides and the ticket is valid for a whole year - adults £10, kids under 12 free.
Just got back from a ski trip to Austria with a couple of friends. Went to the same place we went last year staying in Altenmarkt which is less than an hours drive south of Salzburg.
Last year we went in February. It was cold and there was lots of snow. This time it was much warmer and there was no snow in the valleys.
First day, we drove up to Zauchensee. We were all quite concerned about the snow conditions but things started looking much much better as we drove up to the resort and got above the snow line. That was quite a relief. It was snowing too so it couldn't be too bad!
Snow at the top of the mountains were great but it got quite heavy and slushy as we skiied down to the bottom. My balance and technique were pretty crap. Worse of all, my glasses and goggles kept fogging up and I could barely see. The falling snow was very wet. By early afternoon, my legs ached and I wasn't having a good time so I quit skiing early. Mike and David continued skiing but unfortunately David had a nasty fall and pulled his calf muscle. It turned out to the end of any more skiing for him.
On the second day, Mike and I headed out to Obertauern which was only about half-an-hour away. It's claim to fame is that it's where the Beatles filmed the snow scenes in the Help film. It is one of the higher resorts in the area and felt colder than Zauchensee. The snow was indeed really good up there. It wasn't snowing that day so I could avoid the foggy goggles too. I took it quite easy sticking to blue runs and concentrated on getting my technique back. For a Friday, it was very busy but waits for the lifts were very short.
It was snowing when we got up on the third day. Mike and I headed out to Schladming on the basis that the weather reports were better out there. We were both a bit disappointed when we got there - the ski run down was brown slush. However, we went up the cable car and found a blizzard at the top of the mountain! Excellent snow and wide pistes. However, the snow did get slushy as you skiied down to the half-way point of the cable car. I wiped out a few times getting caught by the change in snow conditions.
That last day was great. My balance and technique were much better and my glasses and goggles didn't fog up. Even my legs weren't so tired. Got in some great runs. Unfortunately, three days isn't enough. Next ski trip needs to be for at least a week and I figure February is the right month to go. I have liked all the resorts we've gone to in Austria. All are well organised, have excellent facilities and offer enough variety for me. The Salzburger Sportwelt is a huge ski area but as the mountains aren't very high, it best not to go too late in the season.
It's been a right horrible day.
Early this morning, just after midnight, our cat , Pixel, sauntered back from his usual night prowl. I went to wipe his paws since it was wet out and quickly realised his face and paws were covered in blood. That wasn't a saunter; it was a crawl. He was a mess and was wheezing out his breath. He was in shock. Oh my god.
Panic ensued. We tried to wipe him up and make him comfortable but his jaw, teeth and tongue were hanging out at different angles. I called the emergency vet but would have to wait until the morning to get him into an animal hospital. I was distressed but hopeful. I figured he had been in a bad fight with another animal - something smaller than him. I figure it couldn't have been a car or he really would be shattered. He couldn't of met a dog or fox or he would have more injuries. My worst thought was that someone had kicked him.
We got him into the hospital by 9:15 in the morning. The vet quickly assessed he had been hit by car. She thought his internal organs were alright and if it was just the jaw, he should recover and learn a lesson. One life down, 8 left I thought feeling a bit relieved. He needed have an x-ray to double-check the fractures before having the operation to wire the jaw back together. Turns out a broken lower jaw is a common injury. Many cats survive getting hit by a car.
We got a call around noon with devastating news. The upper jaw was broken too. It's a rare fracture. Fixing it was very difficult and prone to complications - the brain and soft palate being very nearby. He might not be able to eat properly ever again. Recovery would be painful and take a long time. It was going to be expensive. Furthermore, it was clear that he had been hit very hard and there was a good chance there might be futher injuries.
One of those really horrible phone calls. She suggested we call her back in 5 minutes to tell her how to proceed.
Five minutes?
Five minutes to breakdown while Pixel lay on an operating table under anasthetic. We chose - I chose - euthanasia. It seemed the right choice at the moment. I choked the words when I called her back. Put him to sleep. She thought it was a good decision. I felt like shit. I still feel like shit. Killing a pet you love dearly. I could write tons about why he was a wonderful cat. When do you let go? He was only 19 months old. Maybe we should have struggled to nurse him back? Is that being selfish or generous?
At first we were going to let the hospital cremate and dispose of the remains but Jenny decided to bring him home. His body was still warm to the touch. I broke all composure at that. It really hurt.
Breaking the news to the children was difficult but they took it better than us adults. After some hugging and crying, we all stroked him and said our good-byes. Together, we buried him in the garden wrapped in a pillow case and planted flowers on the grave and marked it with a headstone.
He's gone. But I still catch myself checking the glass door where he would usually appear, asking to come inside.
