Our Christmas Photo Shoot

Hot dog. I just beat the 'expert' level of Minesweeper :)


* * * * *

Shortly after I was laid off I lamented to Lisa that it took place when it did. Had it happened in summer, I said, I'd have had the unique opportunity to interact with the kids all day.

Yeah. And then came the ENTIRE WEEK they were (inexplicably) off of school for Thanksgiving, and that statement came to be known for the utter cr** that it was :)

But, we did use that week to accomplish some things. With our finances curtailed we could not go 'all out' as we usually do on Christmas cards, much less get a professional portrait. Instead we dressed 'em up and headed down to Southridge Mall to take a picture with Santa.









We got there early - earlier than Santa actually.



Here's two shots I tried taking with our camera. Neither was adequate, and I was running out of room on the memory card or out of battery power (I forget which) and couldn't take another.





It didn't matter, really. The mall still made us buy a photo (although I talked them down to half-price) and it was quite good enough. We later scanned and made copies to distribute in our cards.



If you DIDN'T get one this year, please don't be angry or remove us from '09's list. With our finances we only managed to get 40 or so cards in the mail (as opposed to 70-80 normally) and even those were staggered over a few weeks time.

After the shot we went and let the kids play in the jungle gym area of the mall. While we were there we ran into Lisa's cousin Jodie and her son Jackson, and chatted awhile while the kids played.













In case you can't pick up on it, Smiley LOVED wearing a tie!

Smiley's Christmas Concert

Well, holiday concert actually as it was at his public school, although you know what? I think they did call it a Christmas concert and just stuck to secular songs.
Because of the lack of a proper auditorium at his school, the concert was held at a nearby middle school.



Here's Smiley with his teacher Ms. Heidi before the show. He's got a little crush on her.



Anyhow, we took everyone but Lump to the show.



His class performed a Hawaiian Christmas song (not Mele Keleekemaka [sic])complete with pointy elf hats and a lei. I'd know the title of the song but Smiley appears to have stolen the program from his drawer in our filing cabinet (each kid has their own drawer full of momentos and schoolwork).

[update: I found the program. It was 'The Merry Hula']

He's third from the left in this shot.









It was a ball. Afterwards I snuck down to his class to retrieve him and take him home, as we weren't going to stay for the whole program (very rude I know, but every once in awhile you gotta just do what's best for yourself)



But . . . the guilt got to us, and the songs were pretty good, and so we stayed for 3/4ths of the performance (and therefore got a chance to see his other teacher sing a song in a trio)







We left early, as I said, and loittered for a minute or two in the hall.











Even with a bad hair day going on I couldn't stop being proud of the little guy!



P.S. One thing I did want to mention is that his school videotapes every concert and event and offers the results to families at a very reasonable cost - two DVD's for $10 in the case of this concert. What a great program, one that spares me from having to watch every special day through the viewfinder of a camera. Good job public school!

New Years Eve 2008

Yeah, I've got a ton of Christmas posts on back-order, but I figured we'd skip ahead and jot down a post about New Years.

It wasn't the most exciting of nights. It was the first time I've had New Years Eve off in more than a decade (I might have 'officially' had a night off, but I assure you it was riddled with phone calls and double-checking things) and what does Lisa do? She has to go to work.

So until she got off at 11 in was me and the kids. I'd drafted my niece to babysit from 11 on so we could go out, but she got an invite to a party and 'volunteered' her mother in her place. My sister showed up super early at six, which turned out to be a good thing as the kids were set to be a handful.

Before Lisa left she made a cake the kids frosted - and with the proper utensils. I assure you, this was a posed shot ;)





I'd done a good deed by downloading a two-CD set of Hannah Montana that the kids jammed out to.





Then YaYa did the dishes before settling down to blog a Happy New Years post on her site.





Smiley got a train set from his Great Aunt Royette for Christmas, and I set that up for him. He had a blast.









Here's the Lump. That's not 'red eye', it's just her devilish nature spewing forth.



Then the kids just kind of chilled out for hours, disappearing at times to watch the Disney Channel countdown upstairs. In the meantime I made a run to the liquor store, where I had to park two blocks away because of the traffic at the store.

At ten - two hours later than I intended thanks in part to the line at the liquor store - I rounded up the kids and celebrated 'midnight' and the turn of the New Year.



Lisa had bought noisemakers, glow in the dark bracelets, and whatnot, while I supplied cranberry juice 'champagne'.









No one could figure out how to make the kazoos work, except for Smiley and the next day, the Lump! Everyone else was symied.



Apparently the power of suggestion is as powerful as advertised, judging by this photo. It's non-alchoholic LuLu!











When Lisa came home I was rip roarin' to go out, but she was feeling worn out and sick and asked to stay home. Not . . .the answer I was hoping for, but I understood.

By midnight Lump and Smiley were fast asleep of course . .



But the rest of us gathered in our bedroom to ring in the New Year.









Happy New Year everyone!

Attention Please

I have a column in today's Journal-Sentinel.

Smiley's New Hairstyle

This is how a paranoid mind works. A few days before the New Year I saw Smiley come down the stairs looking like this:



and instead of thinking "someone cut his hair!", which would be logical, I instead thought "Oh man, I hope he doesn't have some weird disease where he goes bald young. Oh God that would be awful for him!"

A moment later it dawned on me that, like his sisters before him, he had taken a scissors and walloped his own locks. Only with his buzz cut that meant he tread awful close to the scalp. It's a wonder he didn't break the skin.



As Smiley still can't talk, I asked the girls if they knew what happened. Both LuLu and YaYa admitted to being in the room when he did it but 'didn't notice' or stated 'it wasn't my fault'.

No one lifted a finger to stop him, but I guess that's par for the course with this bunch.

Lisa wanted to buzz it even before a recent social outing, but I stopped her. "Leave it," I said. "At least I'll have a topic of conversation to work with."

A final hurrah in '08

This will be my 510th and final post of 2008, barring perhaps a Happy New Year blurb.

I hope you all had a great Christmas. Mine was, surprisingly, very good and may very well rank as the best ever. Nothing spectacular happened, and there were no grandiose presents, it was just a general . . . feeling of happiness, camaraderie, and peace. It was very nice.

Be assured, you will be swamped with boring photographic essays of the festivities. I won't disappoint on that score.

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It's been a week since my last real post here, and even that was a rehash of my column. So let's catch up.

There was the holiday, sure, but there was also:

- a (part-time/seasonal) job that ate up hours [more on that at a later date]. And no, I wasn't Santa Claus.

- two big snowstorms, a patch of sub-zero weather, and a severe rainstorm that melted most of the snow and led to a small amount of water in the corner of my basement

- the kids, playing at gymnastics in the living room, collided with my big screen TV and smashed the speakers in, rendering the TV mute. I should have/would have been demonically angry, but I received the news at work and had six hours to cool off before returning home.

- The TV is still out of commission, pending the arrival of some money that can be spent on a luxury item, but it isn't so bad. There's a lot more reading going on here, and no one, not even the kids, seem to mind its absence. Mind you, there's a TV upstairs, but I can't stand laying in bed and watching television. The TV usage in this house is easily down 70% or more.

- I did want to watch football though, and Sunday night watched NBC while listening to the Westwood One radio broadcast. The two were out of sync, with the radio three to five seconds behind. Very annoying way to watch a game.

- While we're talking football, let's visit the better late than never department. It's a lousy injustice that Texas Tech's quarterback Graham Harrell didn't get more votes for the Heisman. Pure economics. The votes go where the money goes, and the cash goes to the network's favorite teams - cue Florida and the vastly over publicized (but damn good) Texas and Oklahoma.

- On the other hand, at least he was excused from listening to the sappy love-fest ESPN made of the Heisman presentation. It's not the Nobel Prize people, and I'll say it here: 2007 winner Tim Tebow may kick ass in college, but in the pro's he'll have no more sucess than Ty Detmer.

* * * *

I've also been busy writing. I've gotten 19 posts written here on Slapinions, all of them scheduled for automatic distribution throughout 2009, with more on the way before the New Year.

This way, no matter what -I spend the summer on jury duty, I get hit by a meteorite, I go and pull a Judge Crater - you'll still be treated to the wit and wisdom of the Dan.

Spooky eh?

Naw, the real notion is that I'd like to devote more time to getting paid to write, but don't want to neglect Slapinons in the process. This seems like the best way to make that happen.

* * * *

I was aggressive on the writing front this week, and I'm proud of myself. I laid my hands on an advance copy of a novel due out in January and thought:

"You know, it's not like I don't know an editor at the Journal. I should review this and send it in. Ah, wait. I don't know her that well. I should give her some more material to work with, just to make sure my name rings a bell, THEN send in the review."

Normally, a thought like that would occur to me and slowly escape into the ether.

Not this time.

In one night I hammered out three columns, each and every one of them livelier and more Danny-esque than the previously published piece, and sent them in to the editor.

I then read the novel in a single night. The next morning, in an hour I had to spare before work, I put together a coherent and (I think) publishable review and sent it to that same editor, boldly asking her to forward it to the appropriate party and thus bypass any objection to outside reviews.

I'm not sure it'll get in the paper. I'm not sure that the book editor will even read it. But damned if the op-ed editor didn't forward it on to her.

As London Tipton would say, 'Yea Me!'

* * * *

See ya in '09 folks. Keep it fun, but keep it safe. Thanks for listening for the last twelve months :)

Christmas Wishes to All

All my favorite blogs are awash in Christmas related wishes, and if I have one small regret about this wonderful holiday it's that I won't have time to visit every one and share the blessings of the season.

To everyone who stops by this blog: Have a safe, happy, and memorable Christmas 2008.

The Full text of my Column

Ok, I figure it's been long enough. Here's the complete text of the MJS column I wrote. It 'reads' better in print (not as dry), as there's a lot to the idea of tailoring your writing to the medium. That, or I was just entranced by a suprisingly good photograph of me that ran with the piece.

* * * *

As a new community columnist, one of the instructions I received from my editor was: "You must zealously guard your credibility." That means disclosing a personal stake in an issue you're writing about, and I certainly have one here.

A few years ago, I managed a property that was the site of a pool drowning. It was a horrific day, for the victim's family most of all, and there has never been a day since when it hasn't weighed heavily on my mind.

Having seen the dangers of a pool firsthand, I was happy to hear of the Virginia Graeme Baker Pool and Spa Safety Act.

In 2002, the granddaughter of former Secretary of State James Baker died when the suction from a spa drain trapped her underwater. The law enacted in her name specifies that by today drain covers must meet specific anti-entrapment requirements. Locally, that means most of the 193 licensed public pools and spas in Milwaukee must have upgraded their equipment. (The Bush administration said this week that public swimming pools and hot tubs must shut down after today if their drain covers don't meet the requirements.)

I have no objection to the law, which seems like a reasonable attempt to prevent injuries. But some statistics raise questions. Between 1997 and 2007, suction entrapment resulted in 74 accidents, including nine deaths, according to the Consumer Product Safety Commission.

Nine deaths in 10 years are nine too many, but consider this:

According to the National Swimming Pool Foundation, about 800 people drown each year in swimming pools or spas in this country. On average, 283 of those deaths involve children under age 6. That same age bracket produced more than 2,700 emergency room visits for pool injuries.

I have four children age 7 and under; small wonder I remain skittish about having them go swimming.

It's that last statement that reveals a serious problem. We can protect our children with all the legislation and physical barriers imaginable, but we can't forget the surest way to limit water-related injury: teaching them to swim.

An AP report from May revealed the results of a USA Swimming survey: 31% of Caucasian children couldn't swim, while a staggering 56% of Hispanics and 58% African-Americans couldn't swim.

Smarter people than me can sort out the reasons behind those numbers and the racial divide it demonstrates. I can tell you that I've heard fewer complaints about the proposed closing of Milwaukee County pools - the only structured water play for many children - than I have about locked restrooms in the parks.

I've taken my children to swim classes that were half full, and I've heard the instructor tell a girl that she could have a private lesson because no other student bothered to show up that day.

For a city located near a huge body of water, we seem woefully ignorant of the value of teaching our children to swim.

Here's hoping we change our priorities before another tragedy prompts a law to do it on our behalf.

*** ****

As far as feedback: I had a great letter from a cousin of my Dad's, one from an old co-worker, one from Beth at Nutwood Junction (thanks!), and two from strangers who read the piece and wanted to give me their two cents. All were positive, and if I ever obtain permission from them to do so I'll repost them here.