My Growing Addiction

I came to a rude awakening after posting my last blog entry yesterday morning, and this is my confession: I am a Site Meter junkie. Not a blogging junkie. A Site Meter junkie. I used to blog for the love of blogging. Now I blog to support my Site Meter habit. I post a blog entry then quickly check my Site Meter page to see how many tens of people visit my site. It's pretty pathetic, a desperate plea for attention and validation: Please read my vapid, unoriginal blathering. Please stroke my bruised ego. And if you'd like, you can even leave a comment! Oooo! Oooo! A visitor from New Delhi! Where the hell is New Delhi? It's in India, you idiot. I knew I should have paid attention in geography class. Maybe that Blogger Buzz article on blogging in Hindi isn't such a stupid idea after all?

I'll then spend the rest of the day checking my Site Meter page, at five minute intervals. Please, oh please, oh please, oh please, oh please...A VISITOR...from...Ynysddu? Don't any freakin' english-speakers visit my blog? Wait, Ynysddu is in the UK. Even geography class wouldn't have helped me on that one.

It's getting pretty bad. On any given day, if it looks like I'm not going to meet the average number of visits, I break out into a cold sweat. I think, maybe I can boost the numbers. So I'll go back to my latest post and publish it a hundred more times, the equivalent of pushing the elevator button repeatedly in an effort to get it to arrive faster. Does it work? Probably not, but at least I'm trying to do something about it! Pretty soon I'll be tiptoeing to my computer in the middle of the night, not to sneak in some porn like other demented dads, but to see if I've had any visitors from the other side of the planet doing a google search on "fathers tormenting children". I think I need help. Anywho, gotta get this thing posted. I think you know why.

Extortion, An Excellent Motivator

Last week while at Kailey's gymnastics class (yes, it's not enough that the girls are on separate softball teams...they're now in separate gymnastics classes), Kyra busied herself by perusing the gymastics outfits in the "gift shop". The "gift shop" is nothing more than a coat closet with several racks of leotards along the wall, a couple of snack machines, and a cash register where all of my hard earned money resides. She hadn't browsed long before finding and falling in love with a pink, sparkly leotard. Sticker price: $36. All of my girls have been "blessed" with expensive tastes. Kyra ran to get Diane to show her this amazing find. If I had been there, the answer would have fallen in the category of, "Thirty-six bucks for something you'll be able to wear for six months max? No frickin' way!" But Diane is a little more tactful. She resorted to extortion.

Don't get all self-righteous and judgemental, because you know you do it too. Here's how it all shook down. Diane paused for a moment, then reasoned, "We'll see. If you can show me that you can clean up your messes without complaining and be a good listener, then maybe we'll get you the outfit." I love my wife. She's a freakin' genious. We've been dangling that little gem over Kyra's head all week long and it works like a charm.

Last night as I was getting the girls ready for bed, I asked her to clean up her mess in the family room which she did willingly. She picked up her toys and took them to her room, then returned to inform me that she didn't want to clean up her room. I quickly replied, "Then I guess you don't want that gymnastics outfit."

"Oh, all right," she moaned. "I guess I'll clean my room." A grin crept across my face as she moaped back to her room.

I wonder if we can stretch this thing out until she's eighteen.

Use It or Lose It

All my life I've had a tendency to take the more difficult route in learning life's lessons: pull-ups on the clothes bar in your closet is not a good idea; flipping someone off in front of your history teacher will draw you a little time in detention; stealing the lids to the brand new garbage cans in order to play Knights of the Round Table will get you chased down by your mother; and peeing directly into the wind...well, you get the idea. Granted, these are all examples from my childhood and early adolescence, but trust me when I say that the process has followed me into my adult life. I've heard my most recent life lesson expressed thousands of times, but for me, lessons just never seem to sink in and take hold until I experience them first hand. And the lesson is this: use it or lose it.

Last week, a friend of mine informed me of the American Idol Songwriting Contest and invited me to submit a song. I guess another lesson I should learn is always see what you're up against before agreeing to do something. Since I was feeling cocky over completing my first song in three years, I took on the challenge. That was a week ago, Tuesday. The next day, a thought occurred to me: I wonder when the contest deadline is? I looked it up and my jaw dropped: April 17th, tax day. I had one week. Game over. Not gonna happen. I was already in the process of putting in twenty hours of overtime at work, and my taxes still weren't done. How in the world would I write and record a song in seven days?

Although the cards seemed to be stacked against me, I decided not to pack it in. I mean, I still had seven days, right? Actually, six. I spent Wednesday getting our taxes done. At some point, I don't remember exactly when, a concept came to mind that I thought I could run with, and I spent the next several days jotting down ideas and experimenting with rhyme schemes. I also pulled out my guitar and played around with several chord progressions until I settled on one I liked. After filling several pages with my scribbles, I finally sat down Monday morning to organize to my thoughts. I worked for about an hour and made significant progress, but that was the only free time I had. I entered Tuesday the 17th, deadline day, with an incomplete song.

I figured I had maybe two hours on Tuesday to finish, then record a demo of the song. HA! I pulled my Fostex MR-8 digital multitracker, and it's user manual, out of the drawer that housed it for the past year, and blew off the dust. Kyra was excited because she likes to put on the headphones and sing into the microphone while I accompany her on guitar. To her, this was playtime. To me, it was time to get everything set up so that when I took her to school, I could get down to business. We played for about an hour, taking turns singing songs. I love playing the guitar and having the girls make up tunes and lyrics on the fly. More often than not, they come up with some good stuff. I've been tempted to use some of it, giving them credit, of course.

I took Kyra to school, then went to work. I pulled out my guitar to lay down the guitar track to my demo. Remember, I didn't have a finished song yet. I thought I'd lay down the accompaniment track and then fashion the lyrics and melody to fit. After about ten false starts, I finally laid down an acceptable track. It was only a demo, after all, and I had already given in to the idea that whatever I presented was not going to be perfect. I just didn't have the time and I was OK with that. I recued the track to listen to it, but there was nothing there. Silence. What the crap! I forwarded through the track and found the beginning, roughly a minute in. Since I hadn't used the recorder in such a long time, I forgot to recue it after all of those false starts. Oh well, at least it was there.

I turned my attention to the lyrics, and after massaging them for close to an hour, I came to something I could live with (by American Idol standards, anyway). I then began to rehearse them with the guitar track I recorded earlier. This was the first time that I would attempt to sing the song in my full, head voice. As I was writing the song, I would rehearse it in a light falsetto that was usually audible only to myself. As soon as I sang the first verse, I knew I was in trouble: the key I had written the song in was too high for me to sing comfortably. Crrrrrrrrap! It wasn't always this way. I used to be able to sing up in the rafters with little or no problem, but since I haven't really used my voice consistently over the past few years, I've gotten a little rusty. OK, a LOT rusty. Life lesson? If you don't use it, you lose it. I got it.

Normally, I would say "No problem" and just transpose the song into a lower key, but I couldn't do that because my guitar is jacked up. It buzzes when I play certain chords, which is the reason I wrote the song in the key of E...no buzzing. So I was stuck. I also realized that the song was too long. If I was going to gut out the song in the key of E, I was going to have to shorten it, which meant re-recording the guitar track. What the CRAP!!

By this time, Diane was home from work and the girls were home from school. My "two hour project" was stretching to four hours and beyond. I recorded the guitar track over, this time with only a couple of restarts and recues, and then moved on to my vocals. I figured I'd give it one run through and be done with it, but I screwed up the first verse. I hit the "Undo" button which was only supposed to delete my vocals, but it also erased the intro of the guitar part. MOTHER PUS-BUCKET!! WHAAAAT THE CRAAAAAAP!! I was furious. It was late afternoon, I had been working on this song for most of the day and had nothing to show for it. I'd had enough and was ready to pack it in.

"Don't quit," Diane admonished. She assured me that she would keep the girls busy and gave me the green light to finish the job, so I returned to my makeshift recording studio. I laid down the guitar track AGAIN and quickly moved to the vocals. I practiced them a couple of times to warm up my voice and to ensure no screw ups, then hit "Record". I got through the first verse fine, but began to struggle at the end of the 1st chorus. Verse 2 was OK, but I was outright hurting by the end of the chorus. I mustered all of my strength to get through the bridge, but by the final chorus, I was flat out croaking the melody. It wasn't pretty. "It's a demo. It's a demo. It's a demo," I kept telling myself as I finished the song. Only later did it occur to me that I could have recorded the vocals in sections, taking a breather to rest my voice. But I wanted it done, and I got it done.

I walked into the kitchen where Diane and the girls sat at the table, grinning. Kyra had her hands over her ears, Kailey mimicked me singing, and Diane asked me if I was OK, all of them basically busting my balls. "It's not pretty, but I'm done," I replied. Not really. It took me another couple of hours to read the manual, then go through the long and tedious process of converting the tracks to a stereo .WAV file, uploading the .WAV file to my computer, converting the .WAV file to an .MP3 file, and submitting it to the Idol contest. But I eventually got it done and I was exhausted. And even though I got it done, it felt like I had wasted the day.

Lesson learned? Use it or lose it. If I used my multitracker more often, I'd know the ins and outs and not have to rely so heavily on the user's manual.

Use it or lose it. If I sang more regularly, I'd maintain some of my range. Granted, getting older will suck some of that range from me, but still.

Use it or lose it. If I'd write more regularly, I might have had a song already in the can that I could have tweaked/submitted instead of killing myself to write and record a whole new song.

Use it or lose it. Lesson learned? Probably not.

Am I a Life-Talent or a Talented-Lifer?

I was scrolling through Blogger's "Next Blog" feature, when I came across a blog that contained the following Talent, Lifer, or Mandarin quiz. I was bored, so I took the quiz. Normally, I wouldn't publish my results, but I thought they were interesting, and a little too telling of my current inner life-struggle, so here they are. You can read about the difference between a Talent, a Lifer, or a Mandarin here.

I'm a Talent!

You're a risk-taker, and you follow your passions. You're determined to take on the world and succeed on your own terms. Whether in the arts, science, engineering, business, or politics, you fearlessly express your own vision of the world. You're not afraid of a fight, and you're not afraid to bet your future on your own abilities. If you find a job boring or stifling, you're already preparing your resume. You believe in doing what you love, and you're not willing to settle for an ordinary life.

Talent: 56%
Lifer: 54%
Mandarin: 33%

Take the Talent, Lifer, or Mandarin quiz.


Notice that there is only a 2% difference between being a Talent and a Lifer. So I went back to the quiz and changed one answer that really could have gone either way, and, voila, I became a Lifer.

I'm a Lifer!

To you, a job is what pays the bills. You put in your hours, follow the rules, and then go home. Occasionally, you consider quitting, but then you think of how bad the job market is and you reconsider. Whatever happiness you get, you get from your life outside the workplace. Relationships, family, hobbies, and outside creative pursuits are what really matter to you. You're probably taking this test at work because you don't have anything better to do.

Talent: 54%
Lifer: 56%
Mandarin: 36%

Take the Talent, Lifer, or Mandarin quiz.


What is interesting to me is that, philosophically, I desire to be and to live my life as a Talent. But, practically, I'm living my life as a Lifer, working in a decent job that pays the bills and provides stability for me and my family. And I just recently came to grips with the realization that whatever happiness or contentedness I would experience in my life would come outside the workplace. Kind of freaky.

Game Day II...The Mouth Heard 'Round the World

You know how at every kids sporting event there seems to be some obnoxious, loud-mouthed a-hole that spends the whole game razzing the officials and blurting out rude comments to no one's delight but his own? Yeah, well that guy has a daughter on Kailey's softball team. And remember when I wrote about how nice and refreshing it was to have all of the parents cheering for all of the kids? I spoke too soon. That utopian ideal of unbiased parental support during children's sporting events has been shot straight to hell.

Kailey's game was Monday night. It was a cold, cloudy, windy, miserable night for softball, so nobody was in a particularly good mood to begin with. Then Mouth began his taunting. First, it was directed at the umpire, who had made a couple of bad calls, calling balls strikes. But understand, being an umpire in an 8 and Under softball league has to be the most BORING job in the world. The girls pitch until they've thrown four balls, then the coach takes over. As you can imagine, probably fewer than 10% of the balls pitched by the girls are strikes. If you're an ump, you're probably going to make a couple of questionable calls out of sheer boredom. I'm not saying that it's right...I'm just saying.

So loud-mouth dad, who, incidentally, is always decked out in St. Louis Cardinal's attire which further draws my ire as a Cub fan, starts in on the ump. At first he drew a few snickers from the parents, but as he continued, an awkward silence descended on the crowd. Then, it got worse the next inning as his daughter took the mound. He turned his taunting from the umpire to THE EIGHT YEAR-OLD GIRLS ON THE OTHER TEAM!! When one of the girls would strike out, he'd yell, "RING 'ER UP!" I was mortified and getting really pissed off. Finally, his wife, bless her heart, turned around and laid into him for being a complete ass. He had a couple of things to say back to her, but eventually relented. I swear I heard a mental cheer erupt from the parents.

I just don't understand people like this. Did he think he was funny? Did he have a few too many at the local pub before heading to the game? Or is he just the world's biggest jerk? I don't know. But what I do know is that his behavior is horribly inappropriate at this age level, hell, at ANY age level. It teaches young kids that it's OK and even expected to disrespect game officials and to ridicule your opponent. So much for sportsmanship.

I can understand the competitive spirit. I played organized sports through high school, college and beyond. I've experienced the thrill of getting the game-winning hit, of hitting the jumper in the face of a trash-talking opponent, and of gunning down the runner at the plate. I get it. There's no feeling in the world like it. But I believe that healthy competition should build people up rather than tear down. When my opponent robs me of a base hit with an amazing diving catch, or drains a three-pointer with my hand in his face, he deserves praise for a great performance regardless of the color of his jersey. It just seems that tearing down your opponent has become an ugly part of competition in our present day society, and I hate it.

Jumping down off my soapbox and into more important news, Kailey had a great game in a 3-2 Blue Balls Bandit loss. She went 1 for 1 at the plate with a run scored. She also had two plays on the field, one from third base and one from shortstop, where she cleanly fielded the ball and made strong throws to first. The runners were safe on both occasions, but that's typical at this level: anything hit left of second base is going to be a hit. Most importantly, she didn't freeze to death during the game.

The Blue Balls play next on Saturday and we'll see if obnoxious dad can keep his trap shut. My money is on no.