Tag Archives: Personal

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Newly Minted Teenager

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My house is on lockdown.  My daughter just became a teenager.  Only the latter of these comments is true, but thinking of the years ahead perhaps a lockdown may not be the worst of ideas.  Then again, I think things are probably going to be OK.

Taylor Celebrates

I have been secretly dreading this day, and I think deep down most dads feel the same way.  Turning 13 really is a number that signifies change in a way that no other age does.

Change from the little girl who wanted to dance on your feet at parties into a young lady with a mischievous streak that now takes great joy in tickling my tummy.

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Moments

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Did you make it past my last post on the Chromebook? Not my best blogging moment at all, but I wrote it because of a conversation over Christmas, and it resulted in a great conversation this past weekend. Read on.

Sunrise Moment

It’s no secret that I have struggled with my writing lately. Lately being, oh, the last several months. I had a weekly goal to publish my ‘musings’ and I started to slip. A skipped week easily becomes months of no posts.

Over Christmas I was at a party with good friends. Kids dashed everywhere, friends who had not seen each other in a long while caught up with each other. It was a perfectly lovely evening. As I wandered about I started chatting with a lawyer friend. Well, in reality he started chatting with me.

“Why don’t you write your blog anymore?” I really did not know what to say, eventually stammered out something like, “You know about my blog?” My friend said that, yes, he was a subscriber, that he liked my take on things, my writing ‘voice’, and that he had noticed that it had been a while since I had written a post. I was floored. I had no idea that some of what I said here had an impact in a positive or thought-provoking way with anyone, and certainly if it did I never thought it important enough that it would be noticed if I stopped a while. I left inspired to write.

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We Have Much To Be Thankful For

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This weekend I am in Canada with my family. We are here visiting with my son, Ryan, who is in boarding school at Trinity College School in Port Hope, Ontario. This weekend is Canadian Thanksgiving, and we really do have much to be thankful for.

Christina and Ryan

The past six weeks have been particularly hard on my wife. She has been good about keeping her emotion on Ryan leaving for school under the wraps, but it is the little things that leave her teary eyed, and I can tell its hard. Little things like no bass coming from his stereo turned up too high in the morning. Little things like the daily, “Whats for dinner, mommy?”

But an instant takes that all away, or at least puts it in perspective. And in that instant we were so thankful for the ability to support our son in his education and growth from a boy to a man. That instant happened with the wonderful reunion of mom and son at the school on Thursday, followed by all of us chatting with several of his new friends. I think you have to be a parent to fully appreciate the feeling you get watching your son hug his mom and all the love that conveys. I believe you must have the memories of a baby held in arms to fully sense the maturity that has accelerated so much in the past six weeks as we chatted with such a diverse and wonderfully confident group of young people who are now friends at Trinity. This really is something to give thanks for.

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Can An Artist Teach Us Business Lessons?

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I have been visiting Toronto, Canada, this week placing my son in a pre-boarding academy at his new school.  I had 10 days between dropping him off and picking him up so decided to stay here, set up business meetings to try to generate future work and strategy ideas that eventually may help pay for the world-class education he will be receiving. I took a quick look at the cultural events that were available during my stay.  When I saw that Ai Weiwei’s traveling exhibit, “According to What?” was on at the Art Gallery of Ontario I knew I had to set aside time to visit.  What a moving experience!  Read on.

Ai Weiwei

If you don’t know, Ai Weiwei is one of China’s leading contemporary artists.  However, that short – almost pithy – definition really does the man, and his body of work, a severe injustice.  He is, on a macro level, the consummate social voice of his country.  On a micro level, he is an artist, an architect, a blogger, a photographer, a documentary videographer, to name but a few areas of interest he turns his prodigious talent towards.  He is, as he summed up in his book of blog posts, a voice of honour against abusive authority and ‘shameless people with one foot in the system and the other out the door‘.  “May 14, 2006, As Soon as You’re Not Careful … an Encounter with Idiocy on a Sunny Day.”

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Those Lazy Hazy Crazy Days of Summer

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It’s that time of the year, summer time.  The kids have gained freedom from the interminable routine of school and oppressive tests.  Parents are left suddenly adrift without their routine.  The year has its comforting cycle for those of us with kids in the middle to high school years.  The shorter public holiday breaks are mere pauses of the cycle.  The slightly longer breaks at Easter and Christmas fall into time slots that generally have a rhythm and traditional routine of their own.  But summer is different.  It’s a really long break.  How can you use the changed routine of these ‘lazy hazy crazy days of summer’ to your advantage.  Read on.

Boat Kids Summer

It was the great Nat King Cole who in 1963 scored a hit with the song that gives its name to this blog post title.  I love it for the mood that it captures.  Even reading the main chorus and first stanza you can’t help but have a smile on your face as you think of your summer antics.

Roll out those lazy, hazy, crazy days of summer, those days of soda and pretzels and beer.  Roll out those lazy, hazy, crazy days of summer, dust off the sun and moon and sing a song of cheer.

Just fill your basket full of sandwiches and weenies, then lock the house up, now you’re set.  And on the beach you’ll see the girls in their bikinis, as cute as ever but they never get em wet.