2009

March 29, 2009 Jeffrey GraebnerLeave a comment

One of the very best concerts that I ever saw was Billy Joel and Elton John at the Ohio State University Stadium in Columbus, OH during their first tour together back in 1994. When I found out that they were touring again this year and would be doing a show at the Honda Center (formerly The Pond) in Anaheim, I was immediately interested in getting tickets to see them again and to give my wife the chance to attend.

The timing for getting tickets turned out to be a bit of a challenge, as they went on-sale last December during the week that we were on vacation in Florida. The on-sale time, in fact, happened to precisely correspond with our dining reservation at Tusker House in Disney’s Animal Kingdom. Ticketmaster currently doesn’t have a mobile-friendly web-site that can be used for ordering tickets from a cell phone, so I ended up programming the phone number for their automated ticket ordering system into my phone. Their phone ordering system is a pretty big hassle to use and the process of ordering tickets used up the majority of the time we were waiting for our table at the restaurant, but I did manage to get the tickets ordered.

Traffic between home and Anaheim can be pretty heavy on a Saturday afternoon, so we made arrangements for our son’s babysitter to arrive in time for my wife and I to leave home around 4pm, which we figured should be plenty of time for us to get there in time for the 7:30pm concert. The drive wasn’t overwhelmingly bad for a Saturday and we made it down to Orange County by 5:30pm, giving us enough time to stop off at a nearby mall for a quick dinner at the food court. We then made it over to the Honda Center around 6:45pm or so. Traffic was a little bit heavy getting into the parking areas, but it wasn’t overwhelmingly bad. I did think that they would have benefited by a few more people directing traffic (particularly controlling access to the left turn lanes from Katella Ave.), but I’ve seen worse.

I had been to the Honda Center (still The Pond, at that time) once before to see one of Billy Joel’s solo concerts back in 1999. While I didn’t remember the layout exceptionally well, I did recall that I had been seated in the cheap seats in the top tier for that show and that the view was still reasonably decent. Considering that the tickets time time were over $100 each for anything on the lower tiers, we went with similar seats again this time. When we first got to our seats, our first reaction was that we were awfully high up and far from the stage, but we really ended up being pretty happy with where we were. Our view, while distant, was unobstructed and from the front, which wasn’t true of many of the closer seats. The picture below, taken using my cell phone camera while we were waiting for the show to start, gives an idea of how far we were from the stage.

The concert started about 20 minutes late (not too bad for a rock concert), with the lights initially going down about 1/2 way followed by an overture of instrumental versions of some of Billy Joel and Elton John’s songs, played as two pianos rose from beneath the stage. The house lights then went the rest of the way down as Billy Joel entered to "Yankee Doodle" and then Elton John entered to a very British tune that was extremely familiar, but I don’t know the title. The two greeted one another and then headed to their pianos to start an introductory series of duets.

Sea-Life Aquarium, Carlsbad CA – 2/14/2009

March 11, 2009 Jeffrey GraebnerLeave a comment

Last summer, Legoland California in Carlsbad opened the new Sea-Life Aquarium. Legoland’s parent company, Merlin Entertainment, already had several similar aquariums in various European locations, but this was their first in the US. We took the opportunity to visit the attraction during a trip to Legoland over the recent President’s Day holiday weekend.

My reaction to the aquarium is conflicted. I was quite impressed by its theme and decor and I felt that the overall child-friendly design of the exhibits was absolutely outstanding. If the aquarium was presented as an included attraction at Legoland, or for a very low extra charge, I would be praising it very highly as an excellent addition. Unfortunately, they have instead decided to position it as a stand-alone attraction with pricing to match. In my view, it just doesn’t offer enough to justify that approach.

The full priced admission to the aquarium is currently listed as $18.95 for each adult and $11.95 for children. At least at present, they are offering admission to Sea-Life as a $10/person/day add on with Legoland admission, but even that feels a bit high. We spent about 90 minutes going through the entire attraction twice and it felt like we were stretching it out quite a bit. We were able to take advantage of an $8/person price currently being offered to Legoland annual passholders (with a coupon) until the end of March and even that felt a bit high for our family of three for that amount of time, although I suppose that price/time combo is pretty comparable to a movie.

I was surprised that the aquarium has a linear design that pretty much forces guests to tour the exhibits in a specific order. I had expected a more traditional museum-type design where a central lobby would provide access to the various exhibits that could be visited at leisure in any order. I think the one-way, linear design of Sea-Life played very heavily into the fairly fast speed at which we finished with the whole attraction. The design didn’t really seem to encourage lingering anywhere overly long and certainly didn’t make it easy to go back and re-visit specific parts.

The first indication of the attraction’s linear design was a sign out front warning that the only restrooms in the facility are at the very end of the tour. The sign also advised visiting the restrooms next to the entrance to Legoland before entering the aquarium. The failure to include a set of restrooms about mid-way through the facility definitely seems like an oversight in an attraction of this type, particularly since families with children are the main target audience.

The main entrance to the aquarium is on the front, right-side of the building with just a couple turnstiles and ticket scanning machines providing access. There is also a second entrance from inside of Legoland, but we didn’t use it and I’m not entirely certain where it actually entered. My guess is that it probably just provides access to a pathway that goes to the same small waiting area outside the main doors. After going through the turnstiles, we had a short wait before the doors opened and we were directed into a small pre-show room. A day ticket to the aquarium does allow for unlimited readmission, but you do have to repeat the pre-show each time.

Walt Disney World trip, 12/2008 – T-Rex Cafe

January 15, 2009 Jeffrey Graebner2 Comments

(Continuing my very slowly-written trip report of our 12/7-12/15/08 visit to Walt Disney World and Orlando)

Even on a direct flight, the travel time from Los Angeles to Orlando is nearly 5 hours. When you add on the three hour time change (as well as the travel time to and from the airport), most of the arrival date is used up. On our trips, we have typically arrived at Walt Disney World by around 8pm or so Florida time. After a long day, this is usually a bit late to head into a theme park, so we instead usually look for a fun place for dinner somewhere that isn’t overly far from the resort where we are staying.

This year, our arrival night dinner was at T-Rex Cafe, the newly-opened dinosaur-themed restaurant at Downtown Disney. Saratoga Springs is just a short bus ride from there, so trying out this new restaurant seemed like an ideal choice for the first night of our trip. It did turn out to be a good choice and really helped us to transition from the high-stress of travel into the fun of themed entertainment. Giving credit where credit is due, I should mention here that I was so hungry and hurried to get to dinner that I forgot to take my camera along to the restaurant. All the pictures in this post were taken instead by my father (most during a previous visit to the restaurant) and I thank him for sharing them with me.

At the time of our visit, the restaurant was still officially in "soft opening" meaning that it hadn’t yet had its official grand opening and would still be operating with a few limitations. The main result of this was that they were not yet taking any reservations, which did at least increase the potential for fairly long lines. Even though it was a Saturday night, it was fairly late (around 9pm) by the time we got checked into our hotel room and then found our way over to the restaurant for dinner. In addition, my sister just met us there instead of coming over to the hotel, so she was able to monitor the wait time and jump into the line as soon as we called and let her know we were on the way over. This resulted in us getting a table almost immediately after we got there.

One other effect of the restaurant being in soft opening (and so new) was that we actually had a little bit of trouble finding it. Even though the building is rather distinctive and rather hard to miss, Downtown Disney is pretty tightly packed which means that individual buildings aren’t visible from everywhere. With the restaurant not yet having "officially" opened, it wasn’t yet on the maps or most of the directional signs. We even asked a couple employees for directions, but the ones we asked didn’t really seem to know the answer. We finally found it by simply starting to walk across the complex until we spotted it in the distance.

Holiday Memory: The Disneyland Candlelight Stampede of 1998

December 26, 2008 Jeffrey Graebner2 Comments

As a very regular visitor to Disneyland over the last 12 years or so, I have seen a lot of major events at the park and have been there for a few customer-relations stumbles as well. In one case in particular, namely the poorly run ticket-distribution for the 1998 Candlelight Processional show, one of Disneyland’s less shining moments ended up being one of my personally most important and memorable experiences at the park.

The Candlelight Processional is a long running holiday tradition at Disneyland. It is a concert program that they typically run around the first week of December, which is a musical celebration of the religious aspect of the Christmas holiday, featuring a professional orchestra and a large massed choir formed from numerous church and school choirs as well as some Disney employees. The show also features a celebrity narrator, who tells the Biblical Christmas story in between the songs. This show has been a favorite Christmas season tradition for me for as long as I have lived out here in Southern California. It is something I really look forward to every year.

Traditionally, this concert is performed on a stage set up in the Town Square area of Main Street, with the Railroad Station used as the backdrop. In most years, there are just 4 evening performances of the show, two each on Saturday and Sunday. The majority of the Town Square area is blocked off for the stage as well as for a large seating area. Tickets for viewing the show in the seating area are mainly distributed to Disney’s corporate partners and other VIPs while regular park guests start staking out seats early to the sides and further back in order to get even an obstructed view of the show.

This can result in a lot of logistics problems and major bottlenecks in that part of the park on those days. Because of this, Disney a fairly short-lived (5 years) experiment starting in 1998 of moving the show to the Fantasyland Theater, an outdoor performance venue located across from "It’s a Small World". Walt Disney World had moved their version of the show from Town Square in the Magic Kingdom to a similar theater in Epcot a few years earlier and had eventually managed to expand it multiple shows a night throughout the holiday season, with reserved seating tickets being sold through popular dining packages. There was a lot of speculation that this experiment with a change of venue at Disneyland was also hoped to eventually lead to a similar expansion of the program, although that never materialized and the show was finally moved back to Main Street starting in 2003.

Walt Disney World trip, 12/2008 – Accommodations

December 23, 2008 Jeffrey GraebnerLeave a comment

Our family took our annual trip to Walt Disney World (and Orlando in general) from 12/7-12/15. We bought into the Disney Vacation Club (DVC) time-share a couple years ago, which makes it pretty easy for us to reserve a 1-bedroom villa for our typical length of stay.

Our home resort for DVC is Disney’s Saratoga Springs Resort, a large, very spread-out resort complex located near the Downtown Disney shopping and dining area. At the time that we bought in, this was the only home resort that was available without going through the extra difficulties (and risks) involved with purchasing an interest on the third-party market instead of directly from Disney. The DVC contract allows members to book accommodations at their home resort 11 months in advance and at any of the other DVC resorts, if available, at 7 months.

Based on what we knew about the location and decor of Saratoga Springs, it hasn’t been our first choice of where to stay. Our standard procedure has been to go ahead and book our target dates there at the 11 month mark, but then switch the reservation to another resort that is more to our taste once the 7 month booking window opens. Prior to this year’s trip, we had only stayed at Saratoga Springs for one night, which was last year’s arrival night before heading to port to take the Cruise the next morning. Our longer Walt Disney World stays as DVC members had included two stays at The Villas at the Wilderness Lodge (our favorite resort) and one stay at the Boardwalk Villas.

This year, we apparently picked some pretty high-demand dates for our trip as there was no other availability for the first 6 nights once we hit the 7-month booking window. We were able to book Villas at Wilderness Lodge for the last 3 nights only. We did get on the waiting list for the first 6 nights at Wilderness and also checked back a few times to see about other options. Nothing opened up, though, and we did end up spending those 6 nights at Saratoga on this trip.

Getting right to the point, we were not especially happy with Saratoga Springs. The room was very typical of the single-bedroom villas that we have stayed in at other resorts and was still a good fit for our needs. The size and layout of the complex was our problem. Saratoga Springs is huge and extremely spread out, making it very difficult to navigate. Our room was in the Carousel building, which is one of the most remote. This put us very far away from most of the resort’s amenities, particularly the food services and the Downtown Disney boat transportation. These major amenities are generally clustered pretty close to one another, but are a pretty long walk from the remote buildings, such as the one where we were staying.

My Last Baby Tooth – The Conclusion

December 6, 2008 Jeffrey Graebner2 Comments

Click here for Part 1
Click here for Part 2
Click here for Part 3

At long last, the series of dental procedures to replace my baby tooth have completed. Last Wednesday, I went in for the final appointment where the dentist set the crown (the artificial tooth) onto the implant.

About 3 weeks before, I went in to get fitted for the crown. Unexpectedly, this turned out to be one of the more unpleasant parts of the process. The main part of this process was taking wax impressions of my teeth that a lab would then be able to manufacture a properly fitting crown. To do this, they stuck a fairly large wad of the wax impression material into my mouth, had me bite down, and then I had to keep it in place for about 10 minutes or so until it set.

They started off by taking the impression of my upper teeth (the implant is on the bottom). This was kind of uncomfortable, but not too exceptionally bad. The worst part was that the wax had a very slight, strangely spicy flavor to it and I found that it kind of burned my lip a bit while it was in place. While waiting for the impression to set, the staff left me alone in the room and went off to gather supplies and/or tend to other patients. For some reason, I kind of felt oddly self-conscious during that time.

After the upper impression was completed, they next took a couple X-rays to verify the exact angle and positioning of the implant. I thought it was interesting, and encouraging, that while reviewing the X-ray, the dentist spontaneously exclaimed that the oral surgeon is “a master”. Apparently, the implant was very precisely and cleanly positioned, creating a pretty ideal situation for the placement of the crown.

Thanksgiving at Disneyland

December 4, 2008 Jeffrey GraebnerLeave a comment

We have had an exceptionally busy month of visiting relatives and our son’s birthday celebration and, to top it off, we have a trip to Florida coming up next week. With all that going on, we decided that we just didn’t feel like going through all the work of preparing a big Thanksgiving dinner at home this year. Knowing from past experience that, on Thanksgiving, Disneyland isn’t overly busy and they offer special menus of traditional turkey dinners at most of their restaurants, we decided that a day at the park was an ideal way for us to spend the holiday.

We left for the park around 11am and I was pretty surprised at how heavy the traffic on the south 5 freeway was. In the past, I’ve usually found that traffic is pretty light on Thanksgiving, but the drive this time turned out to be pretty slow-going. We didn’t see indications of any accidents or other problems, so I suspect that our timing was such that there were just a lot of people heading down to Orange County or San Diego for holiday gatherings. The drive wasn’t particularly unpleasant, though, and we enjoyed listening to the Christmas music station on XM satellite radio during the drive. Thanksgiving is the first day that I’m generally willing to start listening to Christmas music, even though it seems like some stations start playing it earlier every year.

We occasionally switched over to the traffic reports on XM, but didn’t get any information from that either. We found it weird when they were reporting one major incident on “southbound I-10”, considering that the 10 is an east-west freeway. Eventually, we figured out that the traffic reporter was misreading the first digit of “110” as an “I”. We often find the traffic reports on there a bit amusing since the reporters are clearly not in Southern California and often seriously butcher pronunciations. It is particularly fun listening to some of them trying to pronounce “Cahuenga” or “Sepulveda”.

By the time we actually got into the park, it was close to 1pm. During a previous Thanksgiving visit, we had eaten at Carnation Restaurant on Main Street and had found that to be an especially good choice. It is a table-service restaurant, which is preferable to cafeteria style for Thanksgiving dinner, and the Americana setting of Main Street just seems exceptionally suited to the holiday. We were briefly concerned that the weather was a bit drizzly and overcast and the restaurant has all outdoor seating, but the weather was already clearing by the time we got there and we noted that they had large umbrella coverings over all the tables, so we decided to go ahead with it. Even though we didn’t have reservations, we were seated with only about a 15 minute or so wait.

When they brought the menus and explained to us about the special Thanksgiving dinner, we immediately ran into a very large irritation, although it was one that wasn’t entirely unexpected based on a previous experience. Despite the fact that it was Thanksgiving and the fact that Disneyland is obviously well-known for attracting families with small children, they were not offering a children’s portion of the turkey dinner. Basically, children had to either order the adult portion (at the full price) or settle for a choice of chicken strips, macaroni & cheese, or PB&J. Our 5-year-old most certainly was not going to willingly accept anything other than a turkey dinner, which is one of his favorite meals even when it isn’t Thanksgiving.

When this came up 2-years ago (and our son was only 3), we ended up escalating the issue to a manager and eventually the chef actually came out and offered to prepare a half-portion for our son. He also instructed the servers to make that option available to any other families and we saw several other families order the same while we were at the restaurant. I had hoped that after that experience they would start simply placing it on the menu, but I guess that didn’t happen.

Our son’s appetite has grown quite a bit and, quite honestly, we just weren’t in the mood to go through the big hassle of escalating the issue again this year. Therefore, we just went ahead and ordered 3 adult meals. We figured my wife and I can also augment our own meals a bit, if it proved to be too much food. The portions were really quite large, though, and he did end up leaving some of the turkey (and most of the stuffing) on the plate, even after we did both take some of his food as our own second helpings. We did see other children in the restaurant also struggling through the large portions and I suspect they ended up with a bunch of waste. In retrospect, I do kind of wish that we had made more of an issue out of it again.

The food was generally pretty good, although we did agree on one complaint. The gravy used on the potatoes and turkey was quite a bit more salty than it should have been. It certainly didn’t help that it didn’t occur to me to test it before adding a little additional salt. It still wasn’t bad enough to warrant sending the food back, but I did find myself scraping off much of the gravy. Other than that, the turkey was served hot and wasn’t overly dry and the potatoes and stuffing were good as well. The meal also came with some cooked vegetables which aren’t to my taste (I really don’t like any cooked veggies other than corn) and some fresh cranberry sauce and a dinner roll. With the obvious caveats above, it was a pretty decent Thanksgiving meal for about $15/person and the location certainly was top-notch for it.

While pumpkin pie was available as a special Thanksgiving-only dessert option, none of us really care for that and decided to opt out from it. Instead, we got ice cream sundaes from the Gibson Girl Ice Cream Parlor as our dessert and enjoyed them while listening to the piano player at Refreshment Corner. One of Disneyland’s long-standing traditions for the holiday season is to offer special seasonal food choices at some locations and one of my absolute favorite is peppermint stick ice cream. That was a key motivation for me wanting to get ice cream for dessert and it was as good as ever.

During the remainder of the afternoon, we took the opportunity to enjoy some of the park’s special offerings for the holidays. This included two rides (one during the day and one after dark) on It’s a Small World, which they have been extensively decorating for the holidays for a number of years now. That is something we look forward to every year and we were particularly excited to see this time, since the attraction had been down for a major refurbishment since the beginning of the year. We only noticed a few minor changes (most notable being all new boats), but everything looked to be in excellent condition. This is a very popular attraction during the holidays, but the lines were very short (10 minutes or so) each time. Thanksgiving just isn’t a very busy day at the park.

Other than the two rides on Small World and one ride on King Arthur’s Carrousel, we didn’t actually do any other rides that day. Instead, we spent some time looking at the various decorations as well as paying a visit to the "Reindeer Roundup" area on Big Thunder Trail to see the pardoned national turkeys (who usually end up at Disneyland after the ceremony with the president) and pay a visit to Santa Goofy. We also enjoyed a walk through the newly re-opened and updated Sleeping Beauty dioramas in the castle. This had been closed for about 7 years and it was nice to see it return. After dark, while my wife went off to do some shopping, my son and I enjoyed sitting for a while at the hub waiting for and watching the lighting ceremony where they turn on the elaborate Christmas lights on the castle.

We left the park for home around 7:30pm or so and found traffic to be fairly light for the drive home. We made a couple attempts to see if we could find any fast food restaurants opened for a small and quick dinner, but found that everything we checked was closed. I guess there just isn’t much demand for McDonalds or Burger King on Thanksgiving. While we were getting a bit hungry by the time we made it home (and fixed some hot dogs), I did think it was nice that those places let their employees spend the holiday evening wieh their families.

This was a nice Thanksgiving and, despite some complaints about the meal, I felt we made a good choice as to how to spend the day.

Week in Review 11/24/08: Pre-holiday Work Rush, Bolt, and Farrell’s

November 24, 2008 Jeffrey GraebnerLeave a comment

The work week last week was pretty busy and stressful due to the rush to get various projects finished before the Thanksgiving holiday. The team that I lead is most actively involved with projects during the early parts of the quality assurance process. Since many teams really want their projects to complete over the first couple days of this week, the work piled on us quite a bit last week. Our office is closed for Thanksgiving on Thursday and Friday, while the day before Thanksgiving is traditionally a 1/2 day with most staff wrapping up around 1pm or so. That really only gives two full work days for this week.

Fortunately, the work load was such that I was really busy (and a bit stressed) while at the office last week, but it didn’t result in overly late schedules at the office or anything much in the way of weekend work. I was typically pretty tired when I got home from work last week, but I still made it home in time to have dinner and help get my son off to bed each night. I don’t really mind being very busy at work in cases like this where it doesn’t really interfere too much with my own time.

While I was a little concerned late last week that I would have to put in some time for work over the weekend, that turned out not to be the case allowing us to have quite a bit of time for family activities. On Saturday afternoon, we took our son to see Bolt, Disney’s new animated feature which opened on Friday. We have been pretty conservative when it comes to taking our son to the movies and this was only the third that he had seen in a theater (the two previous were Horton Hears a Who and a revival showing of The Muppet Movie). So far, we have been very proud of his behavior at movies. He did get a little fidgety around the hour mark, but we were able to settle him down very quickly. He stayed very quiet throughout the movie, having taken very seriously our repeated reminders beforehand that a movie theater is a quiet place. He seemed to enjoy the movie, although his attention did wander a little bit The movie was targeted perhaps a bit older than we had expected.

I enjoyed the movie a lot, finding it to be fun, charming, and very funny. The action sequences were surprisingly good for this kind of animated film as well. I thought the voice cast was well selected and the character designs were appealing. The film had some genuine heart as well, with the character of Mittens the cat being particularly effective in this regard. On the downside, though, the film did have a pretty conventional look and style to it and the story line was almost entirely predictable. My reaction was that this was a very good film, but not a particularly inventive one. The end result was a fun movie, but one that is on a somewhat lower tier among Disney’s animated films.

Like The Emperor’s New Groove a few years ago, I think that Bolt is going to remain a film that I enjoy and admire, but where I also can’t help but wonder what might have been. Both films evolved from projects that seemed much more ambitious than the final versions, but were halted when Disney management felt that they weren’t coming together in a commercially viable way. In the case of Bolt, the film evolved from American Dog, which was to be director Chris Sanders’ follow up to Lilo and Stitch, which I believe to be Disney’s best, and most creative, animated feature since Beauty and the Beast. Sanders was ultimately fired from the project and is now making films for Dreamworks. As much as I enjoyed the final version of Bolt, I can’t help wonder if this fairly conventional film could have been something much more.

Shifting topics again (yes, these "week in review" posts can’t help being a bit rambling), yesterday’s main activity was a somewhat more intimate continuation of our celebration of our son Andy’s birthday. For the big party last weekend on his actual birthday, we had to kind of go against his wishes in our choice of venue. For his last two birthdays, we had taken him to Farrell’s Ice Cream Parlour for dinner/dessert with a few of our adult friends. He remembered last year’s party and really wanted to go back there again this year. That isn’t really the best venue for a party with a large group of pre-schoolers, so we ended up promising him that we would take him to Farrell’s the following week instead.

The Farrell’s chain is one that I remember well from my childhood. They have a very boisterous, celebratory atmosphere, with sirens and a big drum used to regularly announce birthdays and other special occasions as well as to herald the delivery of such large and elaborate ice cream concoctions as "The Zoo" or the "Pig Trough". The chain all but disappeared about 15-20 years ago, but a new set of owners are now trying to revive it. One of the only three current locations is up in Santa Clarita, only about 20 miles from our house (the other two are in Hawaii). The Santa Clarita location is inside of Mountasia Fun Center, an amusement facility featuring various video and carnival games as well as miniature golf, batting cages, go-karts, and other similar items.

Yesterday afternoon, we drove up there around mid-afternoon and spent an hour and half or so playing some of the various games while waiting for a few friends to arrive. They have a small merry-go-round (basically one of the miniature coin-operated type) which Andy especially enjoys and was, in fact, one of his main reasons for wanting to go back there. He spent a lot of time playing that, while my wife and I took turns wandering around playing some of the various carnival and ticket-vending games. Andy did take a bit of an interest in a couple of the other games this time, particularly enjoying a basketball game (it was cool that that they had a child-sized one in addition to the full-sized adult game) as well as a race-car video game.

After our friends arrived, we went into Farrell’s for dinner and ice cream. My wife and I both had pizza slices for dinner, which were pretty greasy, but still not too bad. I was particularly surprised by how generous they were with the toppings. They, of course, have a good variety of ice cream sundaes available for dessert. I selected one called the "Hot Caramel Nutty Nutty", which pretty much is what it sounds like: vanilla ice cream covered in hot caramel with lots of pecans and Spanish peanuts. My wife had an Oreo sundae and Andy had the kid’s "clown sundae", which was a scoop of ice cream with chocolate sauce, whipped cream and sprinkles and then a sugar cone placed on top such that it looks like a clown’s hat.

It was a fun evening that provided a chance to spend some time with a few good friends as well as to enjoy some family time. It made for a good supplement to the bigger, more chaotic party of the week before.

Happy 5th Birthday, Andy!

November 17, 2008 Jeffrey GraebnerLeave a comment

Yesterday was my son Andy’s 5th birthday! This was an event that leaves me with some fairly paradoxical feelings. I can’t believe that it has already been 5 years since he was born as the time does seem to fly quickly. On the other hand, he has become such an integrated and vital part of our family that the time before he was there now feels a lot like a part of a different life.

Becoming a parent is unquestionably the best thing that I have ever done, with only the decision to marry my wonderful wife even coming close. I’m well aware that I run the risk of becoming potentially intolerably sappy and sentimental in this post, but I simply don’t know how to accurately express my feelings towards my family without sounding that way. For any readers of this blog that are turned off by an excess of sentiment, I’ll try to post a review of the new James Bond movie in the next day or two. 🙂

After 5 years, a bit of reflection pretty much comes automatically. One thing that I’ve often heard repeated, both before and after becoming a father, is that parenthood involves a lot of sacrifice. While I definitely understand the meaning behind such statements, I’m not so inclined to agree that “sacrifice” is really the right word. Unquestionably, there are a lot of things that my wife and I did before Andy’s arrival that are much less common, if they still occur at all. Reductions range from such small-scale activities as TV and movie viewing or nights out with friends, all the way up to substantial changes in vacation planning, major purchases and pretty much every other major life decision.

I tend to look at these as trade-offs rather than sacrifices, though, as the pleasures and benefits of being a father push way into the background any significant thoughts about what I might be missing. While such activities as visiting a theme park or going to the movies have become more complicated (and in some ways restrictive), and often more tiring, I also find them to be rewarding in a whole new way. Andy is mostly in a constant state of discovery and I find it tremendously rewarding to share with him many of the things that have brought a lot of joy to my own life.

The day to day routine is also full of moments that I treasure. I absolutely love hearing Andy tell me about his day when I get home from work. When I ask him about what he did at school, his answer always starts excitedly with "I played!", but it doesn’t usually take too much effort to coax longer and more detailed stories out of him. His stories can be rather hard to follow and don’t always make a lot of sense, but they are told with a compellingly breathless enthusiasm that is usually a delight.

Andy has a tremendous imagination, so his stories of the days activities are often filled with rather colorful stories about pretending games involving such favorite things as cars, airplanes, fire trucks, and hotels. Like many kids his age, he has an imaginary friend, but in his case that friend is an airplane who goes on all kinds of interesting adventures, although a lot of them seem to be more focused on the hotels where it stays rather than on the actual exotic (or not so exotic) destinations.

Another favorite pretending game of Andy’s is bringing people imaginary food items. During phone calls with his grandparents (via speakerphone), he likes to occasionally run off and then come back and announce that he is delivering some food item to them. They get a big kick out of that. He was similarly providing imaginary appetizers to our friends while we were waiting at a restaurant for our table during a dinner party a few weeks ago. After finishing his cake at his birthday party last night, he also had to go around and serve other pretend food to many of the party-goers.

As I just mentioned, we did have a big birthday party yesterday afternoon. We have been taking Andy to a class at the local Gymboree facility for a couple years. For his party yesterday, we rented the facility for a couple hours and had a party for Andy and 19 other kids from his pre-school and Gymboree classes. We were fortunate enough to be able to arrange for his usual Gymboree teacher to host and run the event, which ended up being a huge success. The teacher did an outstanding job of providing a pretty much perfect mix of organized activities and free play time and really kept the kids all highly entertained for two hours. It was a lot of fun and an event that I think will be pretty memorable both for Andy and for us.

Yesterday’s party brings me full circle back to the trade-offs that come from being a parent, but my hesitance to call them sacrifices. Yesterday, many of our long time friends (most are not parents) spent what sounds like an exceptionally fun day at Disneyland. I’ve thoroughly enjoyed reading the various reports from and about their day. Six years ago, I’m pretty sure my wife and I would have been there as well and it sounds like we would have had a great time. Andy’s birthday party is absolutely where I wanted to be yesterday, though.

Week in Review 11/9/08: Elections and In-Laws

November 9, 2008 Jeffrey GraebnerLeave a comment

Depending on whether I have enough to say and how disciplined about it I end up being, this may or may not turn into a weekly post on here. I’m a terrible procrastinator when it comes to writing, but maybe I can talk myself into spending a little time each weekend writing up a few thoughts about whatever caught my attention during the previous week.

On a national (and probably even world) scale, the biggest event of the past week was obviously last Tuesday’s election. I haven’t really made it a secret in previous posts that I’m a Democrat and supported Barack Obama’s run for president. Therefore, I was happy with the results of the presidential election. After the past 8 years, it is definitely nice to be back on the winning side and I do have hope that this will signal a positive change in direction for the country.

I do think that President-elect Obama has a very difficult job ahead of him. More so than in the other presidential elections that have taken place since I’ve been old enough to vote, I genuinely felt quite a bit of enthusiasm as I voted for him. I was certainly very aware of his policy positions and agree with him on most issues, but I also have an impression that he is someone with a vision that could genuinely lead to correcting some of the biggest negatives that I have seen in our political system, particularly in areas of corruption and cronyism and a sometimes stifling fear of trying something different. It is pretty clear to me that I am not alone in feeling that way about what Obama has to offer, but I also think that will prove to be both a blessing and a major challenge for him. He goes into office with a remarkably supportive public, but he also faces the potential to disappoint dramatically if he fails to live up to his promise.

Of course, this election also represented an historic breakthrough as this country selected its first African-American president. I was very disappointed, though, that I couldn’t help feel the euphoria surrounding that was blunted dramatically by the fact that a majority of voters here in California, among others, also decided to vote in favor of continued discrimination against homosexuals. At least here in California, many of the arguments used in support of Proposition 8 were so ludicrous that I can’t help but see it as simple excuse-making by those that don’t want to admit bigotry even to themselves. I do still believe that the clear trend is in the right direction here and I was at least heartened somewhat by how close the vote was on Proposition 8, particularly with younger voters pretty decisively opposing the continued discrimination. I do believe this setback to be temporary, but I was truly hoping that this would be more of a year of breakthroughs on multiple fronts.

Shifting gears to my personal life, this week was dominated by one of the recurring events regularly experienced by those of us who do have marriage rights: a visit by the in-laws. My wife’s parents currently live in Arizona and we typically manage two visits with them per year, usually with us making one trip out there (which we did last February) and them coming out here one time. For this visit, they arrived last Wednesday and will be staying through tomorrow. While they aren’t quite the constantly "on-the-go tourists" that my parents usually are during their visits, I’m still pretty tired after a weekend of company, even though it was a very pleasant and positive visit. I think maybe I’m becoming too used my wife’s and my usual weekend ritual of tag-team napping, making the change of pace a bit harder.

It has been a good visit and I’ve been very pleased with the amount of quality time that they have had with their grandson. Andy’s grandmother has particularly bonded very well with him, spending quite a bit of time playing toys and reading with him. Both grandparents have put in some time working on drawing and writing with him and he has also enjoyed demonstrating his various computer games to them. His grandparents also joined us for his weekly Gymboree class this morning and our usual Sunday morning breakfast at McDonalds. This afternoon, we had an early birthday celebration for him where we had a small cake and they gave him his presents. Tomorrow, grandma is going to accompany Andy for at least the first part of his day at pre-school.

Looking forward to the week ahead, it is back to work tomorrow although it looks like it could be another rather quiet week there. Between the upcoming holidays and the slowing economy, there aren’t a lot of active projects going on right now, which has kept the stress level and number of work hours somewhat more manageable the past couple weeks. I don’t really anticipate that changing. Other big events of the coming week include the appointment to get the crown attached to my dental implant on Tuesday (hopefully the last step of that long process) and Andy’s actual birthday and birthday party next weekend.

Bigbeaks Blog

Author: Jeffrey Graebner