The Monday Morning Epistle

On the subject of birthdays, our birthday last week was an superb reflection of our life and family, as the Gruesome Twosome cooked and served us dinner Tuesday night. With Mom's supervision, Jacob carefully prepared pork chops and baked potatoes while Alex sat on the couch and read a book. As soon as dinner was served, Jacob announced (with a distinct note of glee) that since he had cooked everything, his older brother was responsible for cleaning up. This prompted an indignant snit on Alex's part, who claimed that "he hadn't been given the chance to help" and that "Jacob did it on purpose" despite the fact that everyone in the room (including the dog) knew this to be blatantly untrue. The evening ended with both boys going to bed without cake or ice cream, and I got Alex out of bed half an hour earlier than usual the next morning so that he could finish the kitchen…

I did however, get two unexpected birthday gifts: the first came when the Google search engine crawled through www.humble-programmer.com for the first time on our birthday. You can now type "Monday Morning Epistle" (with the quotes) into Google and end up in our little corner of the Internet; this may not seem like much to non-geeks (and we know who you are) but I'm still amused by the coincidence. The second gift came from my lovely bride, who remembered me waxing rhapsodic over a colleague's copy of Donald Knuth's The Art of Computer Programming last Fall. I don't know where she got the boxed, hardcover, three volume set from…and I don't care…it's mine! Mine! All mine!!

Ahem…sorry.

Mary and Auntie Robin took advantage of the long weekend to fly to London for an extended "girl's night out" that seemed to revolve around shopping and the theatre. Armed with cheap airline tickets from RyanAir, they departed after dinner Thursday evening, and returned late Monday night. Judging by the number of Marks & Spencer's bags emerging from Mary's luggage last night, the trip was a success. They enjoyed dinner at the British Museum, took in Phantom of the Opera at the theatre it opened in, and missed the "Jack the Ripper Walking Tour" by a matter of minutes. Mary's attempt a bringing back a dozen Krispy Kreme doughnuts for the Gruesome Twosome almost met with disaster at the Karlsruhe airport, though, when the bus between the plane and the terminal collided with a baggage tractor. None of the standing passengers were seriously hurt in the resulting tumble-although Robin bruised her knee pretty impressively-but the doughnuts obviously broke Mary's fall.

Alex was also scheduled to go skiing with his Boy Scout Troop over the long weekend, so my single-parenting duties were somewhat lightened. Troop 324 left for Garmisch-a popular US military resort in southern Germany-after school on Friday and returned Monday afternoon. Although the German schools were in session on Monday, ISS is well used to the student body being decimated on American holidays, and I didn't have the heart to make Alex leave a day early. More importantly, this act of paternal largesse also meant that I didn't have to make the 3½ hour drive to Garmisch (and back) to collect him. It wasn't until the night before, as I helped Alex pack, that I understood his eagerness for this particular ski trip: his mother had finally given him permission to try snowboarding for the first time. He returned Monday completely exhausted, but jubilant at his new-found passion: listening to him rave about it, being a 'snowboarder' will clearly enhance Alex's already emerging teenage attitude towards life.

Alex did admit that he "…ate a lot of snow." over the weekend, and when I asked about the large bandage on his hand, he quickly assured me that it had nothing to do with snowboarding. As he peeled away layers of ragged gauze to finally show me an angry nickel-sized blister on his palm, I began to piece together the story. It would seem that Alex was the designated Fire Warden at the Boy Scout bonfire, and one of the first things he did as Fire Warden was to pick up a burning stick…by the wrong end! Concerned that he would be removed from office if he admitted the injury to an adult, Alex used Band-Aids from his First Aid kit, then wrapped the whole sticky mass in gauze. Since he used up all his own Band-Aids-and asking for more would prompt too many questions-he simply left the bandage on all weekend.

As for Jacob, Garion and I, we had a great time doing absolutely nothing. Since Jacob is our 'play by myself' child, he was happy switching back and forth between my computer and the PS/2. He also was thrilled when I kept my promise that he could rent any movie he wanted, as long as it was appropriately rated and he hadn't seen it before. To be honest, I did not know there is a full length movie starring nothing but Lego Bionicles™, but Jacob watched it almost nonstop until we returned it Saturday before church, then insisted on trying to explain it to me Sunday. Monkey-Boy was also quite happy, and-thanks to our recent ski vacation-still used to Daddy as a full-time entertainment device. He spent hours happily ambling around the living room bringing me various things to admire. ("Yes, that is Alex's shoe…can you put it back now, please?") He also got a quick lesson in computing when he (& I) discovered that by standing on his tip toes he could just reach the edge of my keyboard…having the [Enter] key pressed at random intervals adds a whole new level of difficulty to most programming tasks. As for me, I used the quality time in between bedtime and breakfast to catch up on my backlog of 'guy movies' and play the computer game du jour. (Blitzkrieg: a WWII squad-level simulation created by a Russian software house and distributed by a German marketing firm-capitalism is alive and well in modern Europe.)

Lastly, just in case nobody other than me is keeping track, this is the 5^th anniversary Monday Morning Epistle. I still remember having a stroke in high school English class when the teacher assigned a (gasp!) 10 page paper…and we only had the entire semester to write it! After five years and more than 250 weekly epistles, the complete MME is well over 700,000 words and fills just over 400 pages if printed out in single-spaced 10 point type. I'm not sure which I find more astonishing: the fact that I wrote that much, or that people are (still) willing to read it! As a favorite radio DJ of ours used to say "Thank you both for listening…"

KidBit: As I helped Jacob into his cassock before Mass on Saturday, he loudly protested "Mom said I don't have to do this any more!" Hoping that Jacob's voice hadn't carried too far, I hastily looked around, just in time to see our new Pastor enter the room. As Father Passamonti and I made eye contact, all he did was smile and roll his eyes…

PotW: Jacob in his 'reluctant regalia'.

Until next week…Tschüß!

,,,^..^,,,

09:07 17 Mar 04