New meaning to "spring snow"

I literally did a double take on the way to get my mail the other day. My body knows what season it is... pretty much everywhere else in North America seems to know what season it is... Cupertino California?

Completely oblivious.

Yeap, even the weather is a little blond down here...

Tales of teaching kindergarten

Now anywhere the class, or a speaking student is indicated... you need to imagine it in a high pitched Cindy-Lou voice, from the original Grinch.

Teacher: Do you guys know Frosty the snow man?

Class: Yeah!!!

Teacher: Yeah? Okay let's sing it together!

Class: "Frosty the snow man... la... la.. humphumpa... hmm.. somethin'... la"

Hmm.

Teacher: Okay, how about we learn the actions that go along with it, to help you learn, and to remember the words.

... "with a corncob pipe" *mimes holding a pipe*

student: what's a pipe?

... "he was made of snow" *mimes packing a snowball*

*pause*

Teacher: You guys know what snow is right?

Class: yeaaahhh..?..

Teacher: Hold up your hands if you've *actually* seen snow.

... righhhht, we're in California, only the Korean kids have seen snow... 

*siigggghhhh*

This isn't usually a problem I have

Well I finally did it, I got all of the ingredients for dinner ready at approximately the same time.

Until I drained the spaghetti...

The look on the little ninja's face said it all "This looks great, but uh... what're you gonna have?"

Yep, that's right... for the first time in the history of making spaghetti noodles, I did not make enough.

A time for every matter under Heaven...

How do you say goodbye to someone who has been a part of your life for longer than you've been alive? I don't think you do... I don't think you're supposed to.

Even as the realization tingles in every fiber of your being with the acute pain of something missing, and the hole that's been left in your heart threatens to cave your chest in and disintegrate everything that gives your body structure... you mustn't let it.

Stop for a moment... Take a deep, if ragged breath, and then take another one.

And know this. This is the moment... the moment in which everything changes. In fact it is from this *very* moment forward, that you must draw from all the good memories you've put away.

Every single one of those memories that are floating around inside the dusty recesses of your mind, that are now tugging gently at your skirt or coattail... don't brush them off, stop for a moment and look at each of them, turn them around, dust them off and remember how they got there.

Don't try to look at them in the darkness of the light that no longer burns, but pause and let your eyes adjust... and you will see that they shine with a light of their own.

 Once you've looked them all over tuck them away, safe in the hole in your heart... and hopefully you'll find that the hole isn't nearly as large as you thought it was.

This is what you save up good memories for.

There are so many things I want to tell you about my Granny. So many things that you would have to know in order to have an understanding of who she was and what she meant to me. But the thing is, I'm not story teller she was... and I'm not sure I can weave this tale together in any sort of pattern right now.

Well to start with, I can tell you that Granny told me with some disdain that she didn't want to make it to a hundred. "Those people are old, and all they do is sit there. I don't want to be like that!" ...and here we are, she would have turned 100 at the end of May.

"I've lived a good life" she always used to tell me. "I have wonderful children who all found good partners, and they're all still together... and they have wonderful children, and I have grand-children and great-great-grandchildren" and then she'd look back into memories that nobody else could see and smile.

She had a beautiful smile.  Her whole face wrinkled up when she smiled, and her eyes twinkled but all the wrinkles knew which way to go. I want to be old like this. Loving, and warm with an air of ancient wisdom. One part pioneer, two parts awesome and one part regally classy like the Queen Mother... when appropriate.

Whenever we spoke on the phone, she could make ten minutes feel like an hour, catch you up on all the important things going on in the family and still make you feel like you were the most important person in the world. No matter what kind of trouble I was getting into Granny would listen carefully and say "As long as you're happy that's the main thing."

She was a wonderful story teller, she was always talking, she loved to talk - got into more trouble that way. She had a way of saying things that no matter how soft or quiet her voice was, it made you stop whatever you were doing and listen. Even if you had already heard that story a hundred times before, or you were no relation whatsoever... time would slow down and you would hang on every word of that story.

She had stories about everything, good and bad... things that just don't happen anymore. But I loved how she delighted in the telling. Her entire body would change when she was telling a story, like she was somehow lighter. I liked that sometimes she told the sad ones too, with a respectful "that's just how it is sometimes".

One of the stories we have about Granny, that makes me ever so proud to be her grand-daughter was when she went down the *big* water-slide at West Ed.

Another one of my favorite Granny moments, was when her and my Aunt were leaving a restaurant up Island and Granny pointed at a motorcycle in the foyer and said to my Aunt "*That's* a Harley-Davidson!"

Well it turned out that the proud owner of that lovingly restored Harley was right behind them, and when he asked Granny if she'd like to sit on it she said "Oh yes please!", and just like that this big hulking 6 foot-something of a man picked Granny up and set her in the saddle.  In the picture of that moment, Granny is grinning to split her face, but the best part of that was after when she recounted the tale of it her eyes would twinkle and she'd end up grinning again.

When my Grandpa passed away, I composed a list of things I remembered about him that nobody else knew... well, these are some of the things about Granny... things I remember from when I was little;

I remember her turning around to me sitting on the dining-room table and saying in a stern voice "Tables are for glasses, not for children's asses" and it shocked me so much that she'd said *whispers*asses*whispers*, that I very nearly fell off!

I remember sleep-overs on weekends, and pushing the couch up against the end of her bed for me to sleep on, singing Robbin-a-Bobbin, and reciting this prayer before bedtime each night...

"Now I lay me down to sleep
I give the Lord my soul to keep
If I die before I wake
I give the Lord my soul to take" 

I remember waking up at 5, and watching cartoons until Granny got up at 8 and made me breakfast... and then let me eat and watch in front of the TV (yes Granny let watch TV for *hours* and it was amazing!)

I remember a round black dog named Binny, because once Granny talked to a vet who unwittingly gave her the advice that if it wasn't going to be a show-dog to "feed it whatever you like" and from that day forward every dog in her life was spoiled with a sampling of the table scraps... or whatever happened to be left over.

I remember walks to the park, even when it was raining... and puddle jumping, she'd call me "Puddle duck" and that it never really mattered what the weather was like, or how wet and dirty I got, we always had fun.

I remember Granny babysitting us as kids, and when Daniel was crabby she opened up the drawer and let him play with all the pots and a wooden spoon.  It was almost as loud as him screaming, but he was happy...

I learned a lot of things from Granny, and I have so many favorite moments that I will probably be writing about them as I remember for the next 30 years... but one of the morsels of wisdom that she passed on came at a perfect time in my life. It was the story about a visit to Northern Ontario with her Mom, Dad and I'm thinking he must have been her fiance at the time, my future Grandfather.

She related the tale with an impish twinkle in her eye... they'd snuck and gone to the Olympic pool, and the two of them had dared each other to dive off. Granny told me that she climbed up and up and up and up, and by the time she was up there, there was no way she was admitting to being chicken and climbing back down so she jumped. The impact of hitting the water stretched her swim cap down over her eyes and face, but she did it!

The next morning, her parent suggested they go check out the Olympic pool... since they were in the area... Granny said when they got there they looked waaaaaay up at the high diving board they'd jumped off of the night before. "You know" she said, "if I'd been able to see that's how high it was I  wouldn't have jumped!" 

That's when she said to me "There are *some* things I never told my parents, and there are some things my children have never told me... *nodding* and I'm alright with that."

Thanks Granny, that's good to know... I'll keep that in mind ;)

I don't want to grow up, but this is how I want to grow old...

When my Granny was 80 she went down the big water-slide at West Ed "The Sky Screamer" which is located 83 feet above the rest of the water park (it's the red one down there, on the left). 

I've mentioned this before, but it's lost in my other ramblings. It really deserves to be told on it's own, so here's the whole story.

She looked up at it and said "I think I want to do *that* one" I'm sure my Aunt looked at her like she was crazy, but said "Okay Mom, I'll be waiting for you at the bottom" and as Granny started up, my Aunt grabbed the nearest lifeguard and muttered "You're coming with me..."

Granny took her time and hiked up the stairs, and waited patiently in line at the top.  While she was up there she watched to see how "everybody else" was doing the big waterslide, and of course modeled herself after the 30-something hunk who crossed his legs, lay down flat and tucked his arms in.

Little did Granny know at the time, that this is the position you assume when you're trying to model a human torpedo... and accordingly torpedoed out the bottom of the Screamer!

My Aunt rushed in, to check her pulse and when the lifeguard asked how Granny was doing, she muttered "better than I am..." *grins* that's *my* Granny.

Later when anyone asked her about the big waterslide and how she liked it she would say "Oh it was fine!" and grin like a school-girl.

Why I love gmail...

For anyone who cares to look, there are little morsels of the human element behind the machine scattered amongst the detritus of automated feedback... things like this that make me smile, because someone just like me put them there.

Apparently it's spring in Cupertino!

I can't believe that after two weeks of decidedly cold weather (not just cold for the area) it's spring at the end of January.

My internal clock is still on Canadian time, and I keep trying to leave the house with my winter jacket on only to take it off as I walk around the corner.

--
The story of my life http://scubajunk.blogspot.com
http://about.me/samantha.vincent

Lesson with my 3rd grade trumpet student today...

Me: This next song is a duet.  What's a duet?

Student: It's when two people doooo it

Machine screw this!

My first successful dremel mod *grins*

Home Despot didn't have a long enough round headed general purpose screw (the kind shaped like a mushroom)... *sigh* because this post wasn't suggestive enough *ahem* aneeeways, so instead I got a longer countersunk one (the kind shaped like it would fit in a funnel) and "fixed" the pot handle instead.

Thanks Dad!!

Good things come in white boxes

Thanks auto phone rotate... whatever, you get the picture.

Happy Birthday, Mac

There are some perks to being a contractor  here ;)

Multi-tasking mishap

Eating carrots, drinking tea and programming.

All very ninja-esque... until you reach into your tea cup for the next carrot.

Pah, puny human!

Every once in a while karma reminds me that I'm only human. In the way, that only karma can.

This generally happens any time I start to think that my superior immune system renders me impervious to the plights of weaker ones.

That's about the time I'm reduced to a pathetic, achy, congested, sneezing, snivelling mess of a human being. Unfit to walk to the corner store. One that is about as far as possible, from the supposed peak of evolutionary development we like to consider ourselves to be...

But this cold has got me thinking (for the briefest of moments anyways)... That seriously? This runny snotty mess is the most efficient way we've come up over the last six million years to get rid of internal disease and pestilence?

I'm not impressed.

I would ponder this further, but my congestion has backed up into my cerebral cortex and everything is grinding to a halt.

No match for even the tiniest of virus and bacterium.

Absolutely pathetic.

*That* friend

Everybody needs that friend who trips you up short...

 just before you descend into your spiralling whirlpool of hypothetical chaos.

That friend who says 

"Dude, stop worrying about things that haven't happened yet. You have enough to contend with."

The one, who will, if absolutely necessary say "Remove head from ass, and use it for once!"

Then reaches down a hand to pull you out of your own Wile E. Coyote body indent.

The one who reminds you to stop, and breath for a moment.

I really appreciate that friend right now.

Thank you, friend.

Dear future self

When you are working with SVN and trying to svn:ignore a file...

Stop.

And remember, that as this lovely gentleman clarifies it so nicely:

You don’t svn:ignore a file.

You put an svn:ignore property on the directory to ignore that filename pattern!

Thank you kind sir, the time and frustration you saved me have been reallocated to more important matters. 

It's so SHINY!!!

I don't think there is anything quite as awesome as a brand new slinky, (except maybe you) thanks Dan!

Joke for the day

What do you call a fast moving chihuahua?

... a floor-pedo!

How do you like your coffee?

I like my coffee crisp ;)

The miles between strangers, from different worlds and times

You are intrigued, you think I might be interesting... and yet what a disappointment, how boring I must seem. A veritable chasm exists between us, although we appear at first glance to inhabit the same nerdy high-tech world... 

There are experiences I take for granted, that have left their mark on this skin that I wear, and helped shape me into who I am... and yet, here you are, arriving at the same time and place having travelled a completely different path.

It makes me a little bit sad, that you are so far removed from the natural beauty that surrounds you.

How you have no idea what it feels like to fall through fresh powder, or to get tumbled end over end through a wave with your surf board your lungs screaming for air, feeling like you're on the verge of inhaling water... only to break the surface and swim back out to try it again because you were *so* close to riding that last wave...

You've never ridden a bike in any manner that used any muscles other than the ones in your legs, nor have you had it try to throw you into a tree (which to tell you the truth, isn't a bad thing)... Nor have you been soaked to the skin, covered with mud and slush and chilled your face to an unnatural hue... But that also means you've never felt the thrill of accomplishment that comes with navigating a particularly hard section of trail, or just how wonderfully alive your entire body feels when you get off your bike in the parking lot... standing there panting, body steaming, warm muscles twitching as if sounding off that they are still alive and counted for.

Maybe you've woken up sore, a day or two after a particularly hard workout... but I wonder if you feel like you earned it, or if it's just something that you put up with, to maintain your "girlish" figure?

I am trying not to judge you, just as I hope you are doing the same.  This first hurdle is the hardest, getting to know someone when you have completely different perspectives, and it seems no common point of reference. 

When you look at someone surfing, or skiing you see crazy danger... but I see something beautiful and amazing. For a brief second I am caught up in what it feels like and long to do it again.

How do you explain that, to someone who has never done it before?  Describe how doing something feels (which sounds awful to them), but also convey the *entire body* sense of well being that comes after? I haven't found out yet. I will be sure to let you know if I do though.

In any case, I think we could probably learn a lot from each other. I know from experiences past we will find something, and then laugh and wonder why it took so long... but until then bear with me friend, I've come a long way... but I still have a long way yet to go.

Delta Airlines, into the burlap sack with you.

Last weekend, I was leaving somewhere it gets harder to leave every time I go...

We were out for dinner, and I got an automated voicemail and email informing me that my flight had been delayed by half an hour. I figured at very least it would make getting stuck in traffic on the way to the airport less stressful. However upon arrival at the airport I was unable to print off my boarding pass... not awesome, so I talked to some guy at customer service who informed me that my flight had only been delayed 4 minutes and unless I had my own printout, or the mobile boarding pass I couldn't go through security - even though I had checked in the previous evening.

He then waved me in the direction of "Special Services" however I ended up at the automated check in kiosk, waiting for an attendant and scrolling through the flight options while calling my friend to say "You might not be rid of me yet..."

The first option I was looking at was an hour later that evening and had the ambiguous option of "No standby available" and then a "Standby only" button. WTF does that mean?!?!  ...and when the attendant was able to assist me, she looked at me like *I* was the crazy one, as if somehow I had magically gone to some screen she'd never seen in her life.

*raises eyebrows* are you kidding me? What do you mean you don't know?!?

In any case she pointed me in the exact direction of "Special Services" where I got a very helpful lady, who listened carefully, pulled up my details and reacted.  She called the gate, explained that she needed to print me a boarding pass, got off the phone and said "They aren't going to hold the plane for you, but if you can make it through security in time, they'll let you board." as she handed me my boarding pass she said tell them that you need to be expedited at security.

And with that I was running to security.

Somehow, there was a gap in the flow of people... magically they opened a second security line as I was standing there and almost everyone moved into that line, as I was waiting to go through the body scanner the security guard pulled me around through the metal detector effectively bypassing that line... and my things were just coming out the other end of the x-ray vision machine.

All I could think of while I was trying to jam things into my backpack was that I never would have survived the fire in the first story of the hunger games.  My movements were awkward and it took way too long to get my laptop back into my bag...

I ran out of security frantically searching for 51A, and saw 51B... 52... 53? Where the hell did they put 51A?!?! Over the loudspeaker I hear "...this is the final boarding call for passengers VINCENT and SOMEOTHERGUY with service to San Jose" *grrrrr* I spun around back towards security, and there tucked around the corner, nestled in there far enough to be easily overlooked is gate 51A.

I hustle over, hand the lady my boarding pass which she scans disregarding my id completely... and I board the plane.

I don't even mind that I'm sitting next to a slightly inebriated 21 year old.  I'm on the flight I'm supposed to be on. I'm not going to have to call and change my shuttle again.

As the flow of information... sights and sounds slowly returns to normal no longer tightly focused to getting on this plane, I realize that I'm not the last person on this flight, and that we aren't quite leaving yet.

*sigh*

We did finally end up leaving somewhere after the time I had been automatically informed my flight had been delayed to, but I am still less than impressed.

First of all, don't bother informing me of a delay unless it is actually delayed... Secondly as your customer I should not have a "delay time of half an hour" when everyone else who looked at it on their terminal has a delay time of four minutes. Thirdly, for how cool I thought it was that you were keeping me in the loop... I have now lost all confidence that your notifications are correct, making them completely useless. Also, being next to a guy at Special Services who actually missed his flight due to your faulty notifications makes me even less impressed.

To mitigate this, you should have sent another update when the flight was changed to back on schedule.  Thanks for trying, but you have a long way to go before I'll put any stock in your notifications again.

If I were illiterate...

This would look more like instructions to me *squints and strokes chin* 

"When you light a fire on the stairs, run away from it going down!"