The Conservation of Momentum

It's amazing how many zoos and museums you discover within a 75-mile radius when you only get to see your kids a part of each weekend. Divorce forces you to be more creative because you'll be damned if that Xbox, Netflix or Yo Gabba Gabba will define your day. This is why Google searches like "I've been to all the museums in the SF area, so HELP ME GOOGLE I'VE RUN OUT OF EDUCATIONAL FUN THINGS TO DO" exist.

Even better, these results also exist: Mythbusters: The Explosive Exhibition at the Tech Museum of Innovation.

Google, I am feeling lucky.

Wasting no time, I got the kids into the car, hit the drive-thru for lunch and headed down to San Jose. I even timed it so Lessi's nap coincided with the 90-minute drive. I am a highly effective and efficient parent (especially when you, dear reader, cannot see the chicken nugget in her hand, rising and falling in cadence with her snoring). 

We eventually got there, found parking some ways away, and headed toward the big orange building, ready to bust some myths.

Turns out the myths weren't ready to be busted. The Mythbusters Exhibit starts October 13 (I know it's Oct 15 today - this story took place 2 weeks ago. I just hadn't gotten around to writing it.). Like it says on that huge banner in the lobby, or everywhere on the museum website, or like the lady at the ticket counter tells you after you pay for your tickets and remark on how awesome it is that no one is here and you'll have the Mythbusters exhibits to yourself.

At least we did have the museum to ourselves. And luckily the Tech Museum is pretty cool, even without Jamie and Adam blowing stuff up. We learned about genetics, sustainable technologies, space and underwater exploration, earthquakes and best of all, they have an infrared camera. Or as Fury and I more aptly deem it, the Predator cam. 

On our way out, we stopped at the gift shop, where Fury picked out a Newton's Cradle. Being that these are educational, as well as the requisite desk accessory for every high powered executive and/or criminal mastermind, I bought him one. 

As kids are wont to do, Fury took it out of the box and set it up on the sidewalk. 

As he watched the metal balls clack back and forth, I told him "that's called the conservation of momentum. The energy you put into one side, comes out the other side, with a little loss due to friction."

You have now witnessed the strength of street knowledge.

Since Lessi and I wanted ice cream more than a science lesson, I told Fury to pack it back up. We trekked to the parking lot, got in the car and drove off in search of ice cream. The ice cream was easy to find. The parking, not so much. So of course Fury took his new gadget out of the box again.

"Dad, can you help me? This is all tangled up."

Apparently my boy should never work in a restocking room. Those balls and their corresponding strings were gnarled up into a latticework that could rival that of kevlar. 

"Fury that there is beyond hope. I'm going to drive you back to the museum and park outside while you run in to exchange it."

As with anything worth blogging about, things were not as easy as the statement above implies. I had already thrown the receipt away, and outside of school book fairs or his impromptu fruit stand, Fury has never done a retail transaction before. It makes no sense that he'll wheel and deal with customers in his front yard, but be too self-conscious to pay for something at a store. I guess that's the beauty of kids.

"Dad, can you just pleeeease do it? I'll watch Lessi in the car."

Any other situation, I might have caved. He just looked so fearful. Also, this was a tricky transaction. He had no receipt, the tangled mess wasn't entirely the item's fault, and he had already thrown most of the packing material away. The odds were stacked against him. I would be sending him into a retail suicide mission.

But there was no parking outside the museum, and we would have to trek to the parking lot all over again, at which point it would just be easier to order another one for him from Amazon. So I parked in front of the museum, hazards on, and started coaching him.

In our household, I am the customer service whisperer. I can profile a rep within the first 5 seconds of an interaction and find a way to speak to them in a way that will have them giving me refunds, free stuff, upgrades and their first-born before they can ask me for my account number. 

"Ok Fury, you tell them your dad is parked out front with a baby in the car. You tell them you just bought this a few minutes ago and all you want is an even exchange. You don't want your money back. They will ask you for a receipt and you tell them 'my dad threw it away' and you just wanted to learn science with this. You offer them all the packaging that comes with the new one, so they can properly process the return with their supplier. You use all your polite words. You ask, you don't demand."

"But dad, I can't--"

"If you can't, then you have to live with the fact that your Newton's Cradle is going to always be a tangled mess of balls and fishing line. It's now or never. I can't stay parked here."

He took a deep breath, gathered up his Newton's Cradle, exited the car and headed into the unknown. But first, he paused in front of the door and made the sign of the cross.

That's his mom's doing.

A few minutes later, Fury came bounding out the door, all smiles. As he got into the car, I high-fived him with as much pride as I would had he scored a goal in lacrosse. 

"NICE GOING FURY! I am proud of you! How did it go down?"

"The lady said that this is the 5th time this month someone has returned one of these all tangled, and it happens all the time. Then she just gave me a new one!"

As I pulled away from the curb, listening to the silver balls clacking rhythmically from the back seat, I wondered how much of this latest victory was due to my coaching, and how much of it was due to that momentary pause before he stepped into the store. It doesn't much matter, I guess. Friction be damned, I just want to conserve this momentum.

I can't read. And now I'm part of a reading club?

Here's a fun fact: the only reason this blog exists is because I can't read. The moment I open a book, I can't make it more than five pages before my face is planted nose deep into the spine, drooling. I'm sexy and I know it. This proved to be problematic back in 2007, when I had a two-hour LA Metro train ride to work. The Metro doesn't exactly traverse the "wish you were here" LA hotspots. When you fall asleep and miss your stop, all you wish for is your mommy. Blogging meant I could stay awake, and that led to good things like getting to work on time, and also not being dead.

My kid used to take advantage of this affliction of mine. He'd pick the longest story possible at bedtime (i.e. longer than 5 pages) just to make me dream talk. You know what I mean, right? You know when you're on the phone with someone and you're dead tired and you start dreaming and say something totally non-sensical, and then they're like "what did you just say?" and then you wake up just enough to kind of remember what came out of your mouth, at which point you scramble to explain what you just said, as if you totally meant to say it? "Um, you were talking about back stabbing friends and I said pickle sunny side up ergonomic because everyone knows you can't eat on a Sleep Number bed, yet I have jerk friends who come over and eat breakfast on it. And to add insult to injury they add gherkins to that bullshit! God! Don't you hate that?"

So, getting back to my original point, Fury used to make me read long books to him because he knew that five pages in, Peter Rabbit would be riding the cashmere pineapple Pythagorean theorem. His squeals of laughter were totally worth the feelings of complete parental ineptitude that this phenomenon would trigger, however. 

In addition to the above, I also have to admit that I can't do fiction. Just never got into it. With a few exceptions (pretty much all having the name Stephen King attached to them), I have never enjoyed, nor appreciated fiction. I read true crime books. I read history. I read business, pop psych, biographies, memoirs... but fiction? Never appealed to me. When I read, I feel like I need to learn something. Fiction isn't true. Therefore, it is a waste of my time. I know this is wrong, and I know movies are fiction and I enjoy those. What's life without inconsistencies?

I recently bought The Final Storm for a plane ride, thinking it was a WWII history book. When I found out it was fiction, I tried to read it on the plane anyway. Big mistake. After every sentence, my brain countered with "you know, Jim, this never happened." I fell asleep three times and got through about 30 pages before accepting that I hated it. If you did the math, that's twice my reading endurance. This proves that I tried.

So now I'm part of an online book club. 

Say what??

This is a good time to give you my FTC disclosure statement: I said no at first. I said I don't like to read because I fall asleep after five pages. I said I don't like fiction either, which means half the catalog is dead to me. They said they would pay me. I was between jobs at that time. I said "ok, keep talking." They said that this is a reading app that lets you write comments in the margins as you read; and your friends who are also reading the same book can read your comments, and you can read theirs. It's like live tweeting a book! It's like a sidebar conversation. It's like the filmmaker's commentary on a DVD. Plus, I could pay the electric bill. Done.

Real-time social reading. This is the answer to all my reading problems. Being able to read your friends' notes on each page is like having that friend who makes conversation with you in the car so you don't fall asleep at the wheel. And that is what the Copia social e-reading tool is all about. And a 6-paragraph preamble is what I'm all about. Bullet points are nice too: 

• Copia is device agnostic. It's not going to iPad heaven, but it'll have a good time on any platform while it's here. It'll even work on a web browser.
• You can buy millions of book titles direct from the site. I just read Escape from Camp 14. It's a memoir of the only person to ever escape from a North Korean labor death camp. You will never look at life the same way ever again. Don't say I didn't warn you.
• If your friends are reading the same book, you can read their notes in the margins as you read. So in the case of Escape from Camp 14, I fully expect to see notes like "Jim I hate you" "I am now depressed for life. Thanks a lot, Jim" and "Kim Jong Il can suck it!" 
• If you go to someone's profile page, there's a cool Venn diagram thing that shows how their library overlaps yours. That's the kind of dangerous technology that causes soulmates. 
• Copia got a whole bunch of us parent bloggers together for this, so if you're into that kind of thing, check out the Copia Parents Book Club.
• You can also set up impromptu reading groups with your friends on Copia. Some of us decided to read the same book at the same time to take advantage of the real-time commenting feature. Feel free to join MrLady, Redneckmommy and LaidOffDad and me in our splinter group, Tanis, Doug, Jim, and Shannon Do Books. I believe you need to be logged in for that group link to work, but getting an account is free.

You may have noticed that the book we decided to read is a work of fiction. That's because Doug picked it and I'm trying to remain open to new frontiers. Just note that if you happen to be reading Telegraph Avenue with us, you might see a comment that reads jjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjafvirwj'bvowirtjrq. Just be thankful Copia hasn't yet figured out how to share drool.

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If you want to jump into the pit with us, or simply enjoy agnostic reading, leave a comment and share with me one book you've been wanting to read by Friday, Oct 5 11:59pm PST (leave the comment by then, not finish the book by then). I will draw TEN lucky winners to receive any book of their choice through Copia. So get a book, fire up the iPad/iPhone/Droid/laptop and join us!

We Used Our Words

Comments usually make me laugh. Sometimes they make me think. Occasionally, they piss me off. But never before have they made me feel like a superhero. That is, until the month of August rolled around. What happened in August? This:

There have been many times in my life when I've half-heartedly uttered the phrase "I'm lucky to be a part of..." But right now, at this moment, I am telling you with full heart (and those of 30 other bloggers) that I am so lucky to have been a part of this amazing campaign. 

The premise was simple: blog about the impact that blog comments have made on you, and for each comment anyone left on your post, $20 would be donated to Shot@Life, an initiative of the UN Foundation.

What does a $20 donation to Shot@Life achieve?

It provides four life-saving vaccinations (measles, polio, diarrhea and pneumonia) for one child. $20 SAVES ONE CHILD'S LIFE. And all anyone had to do was leave a comment for this magic to happen. For once, even that guy trying to sell hot tubs via my comment section could feel good about his work.

While I was all set to serve as the last leg in this 31-day relay race, it turns out my teammates were simply too awesome. They reached the goal of $200,000 before the torch was handed to me. YES...

But I'm not going to complain. 10,000 kids will now receive life saving immunizations because of this. 10,000 kids!! Stretched end-to-end, 10,000 kids would be almost as long as the line for Space Mountain. These are kids who could grow up to be world leaders, doctors, athletes or even bloggers. The circle of internet life is complete.

While I feel a teensy bit melancholy that none of my comments will contribute to the overall kid-life-saving fund, there is a pot of gold at the end of this rainbow, and it is filled with lighter fluid. You see, as the last one to wield the torch, I got to light the ceremonial fire. And that makes everything a-ok. I also went ahead and built you a slide show of my favorite passages from all the other Blogust bloggers who posted before me. It's all in the video, so check it out:

By the way, you can simply pledge your support for Shot@Life, get involved and yes, even donate.

Exit, stage

I haven't been writing much lately, even by my own lowly standards. It's not because there hasn't been anything to write about. Stories still happen, whether we want them to or not. I've simply chosen to let them pass by, because nothing makes sense without a context. And my context was in flux. Phantom of the Opera isn't the same production when you put Michael Crawford on the Great Wall of China. The story fundamentally changes. So as we come out of this intermission, I need to let you know that the set has changed. Divorce papers have been filed. No commentary will be offered nor accepted. I just needed to address it, so that my stories make sense. I need to usher this elephant out stage left, and Ghenghis Khan along with him so that I can blog again.

I'm not good at this stuff. Can we just talk about the zoo now?

When your time with the kids has an imminent handoff attached, it sure makes you look at Xbox in a whole different way. Instead of being a lifesaver, I now see it as my competition. Good thing there's wildlife. Last weekend, I took the kids to a local museum that rescues animals and teaches you about them, too. Luckily, some exhibits are like videogames. You have to wean the kids off their natural environment first.

Lessi and Fury had a great time observing local wildlife, some alive and some stuffed. I had the pleasure of seeing my first-ever live bald eagle. Lessi had the pleasure of learning that because of our species' opposable thumbs and abilty to harness the power of gunpowder, she can take pictures like these without becoming a tasty snack.

Also, I get to do this:

Unfortunately, this museum was kind of small, and high fiveability aside, stuffed animals aren't that exciting. We decided to go to the Oakland Zoo instead. But not before spotting a rogue exhibit on the way out.

The Oakland Zoo was a storybook come alive for Lessi. The first animal she saw was a monkey. As adults, we take monkeys for granted. If you could translate childhood wonder into words, she said "WTF, those things are REAL??" Although Fury has pretty much seen it all, you can always count on a full-blown chimpanzee fight to brighten a 10-year-old boy's day. Also, a 40-year-old's. They also witnessed an elephant pooping. That's zoo admission ROI right there.

And I take back what I said about stuffed creatures. They can be pretty cool. Meet Lessi's new Otter, which she named Butter, because "I like butter!" 

She took this picture in front of the otter exhibit. She wanted Butter to see where he came from. That, or she's into being all meta and stuff.

If picking the blog up again was this hard, I can only imagine the long road to the new normal. For everyone. It'll take a lot more than zoos and monkeys and high fives, but at the end of the day, if it's about these two being able to smile like this, it's a small step in the right direction.

10 Minutes

As a working dad, weekdays have always been tough. I'm usually out of the house before the kids are up, and home right around bedtime. Forget dinners with family around the table. Dinner is whatever you can forage between the distractions of everyday life. 

When life gives you a wedge of lemon, you suck on that and extract whatever you can. Lemonade is a luxury for folks with time and a pitcher. To make the most of my few minutes with Fury on weekdays, we instituted our aptly named "10 minutes playtime." For close to a decade, I've been getting on the floor each night with Fury and playing Legos, Star Wars figures, Bionicles, Hot Wheels, Transformers, or any mashup thereof.

But kids grow up, and play evolves. Fury no longer lives out scenarios with his toys where I can easily grab an action figure, make up some robotic voice, and jump right into. Now he likes to create. He conjures up entire armies of hybrid Bionicles. He uses parts from his dozens of Lego sets to build war machines. It's more reflective, solitary. Robot voices need not apply.

Sometime last week, as we made our way to his toy stash, Fury stopped and asked "Dad, I don't feel like playing with toys today. Can you just tell me about what it was like when you were a kid for our 10 minutes instead?"

He just wanted to chat.

So he lay in his bed and I sat in the chair beside him and we talked. We talked about how bad I was at sports as a kid, and how I only scored one goal in youth soccer (in practice) and how in youth baseball, I only made contact with a ball once (foul), and of course we talked about the guy in Florida who ate the homeless guy's face off before he was killed by the cops. Because the dawning zombie apocalypse is relevant for any conversation in the house of Lin.

The next night, the Bionicle army stood by in the dark as we talked about the conflict in Afghanistan, North Korea's threat to launch missiles at South Korea's media companies, and Hot Wheels' new line of toys (I hope client NDAs cover 10 year-olds).

The other night we discussed careers. He wants to be a video game designer. This works because it gives me leverage to make him do his math homework. It might even make all our Xbox games tax deductible.

"Dad, what did you want to be when you grew up?"

"A marine biologist."

"Well, you could still do that. They'll hire you because you're already a VP and it looks good on your resume."

"That makes sense. I never thought of it that way."

"Also, all you have to do is hold up a fish and spout random facts about it. You're good at that."

Like toy time, I'm sure our conversations will also evolve as he and I get older. I will see the world through his eyes and guide him with my hindsight. He will see the world I have mapped out and explore it with fresh vision. There will be moments to ponder, issues to tackle, emotions to sort, stances to take, decisions to face, opportunities to laugh.

"Oh Fury  -- that guy who got his face eaten? He survived! I saw a picture today. He has a skin graft over his eye and a hole for a nose, but he's alive!"

"Don't the doctors know that he's going to eat them now?"

And zombies. There will always be zombies.

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Bonus reading material: I posted about life lessons from the film Goodfellas on Mamapop last week.