Happiness pt. 2!!!

Jury duty update -

I did not get panelled!!! Since it's "one day or one trial," that's it for me : )
Of course I was perfectly willing to do my civic duty, but it is reallllllly nice to not get picked and to not have to go in for another year!!! Also, now my vacation begins forsooth!!

One last thought though. There were two lists of jurors for panelling while I was there. I didn't get called for either, but before the first one they said something interesting; they let all of us know that this was probably going to be an especially long trial, and that it wasn't starting until late July. Anybody who had a reasonable excuse could get out of it, and before they called the names they asked people to say "yes" or "no" as to whether or not they could do the trial.

Immediately two words started floating around the room: "Michael Jackson" - although nobody really had any idea. While there may have been some people who were interested in spending time in the same room as La Toya et al., the overall feeling in the room was total horror at being on a trial that could conceivably go on forever - I know I was pretty terrified! Then they started calling the names.

Almost everyone said "Yes". Some people sighed very loudly before they said it, but they almost all did. Jury duty is a drag, but it always makes me very proud of my fellows!!!

Glad they didn't call my name though.

Peace & love to all!!

Happiness!!!

Hello Everyone -

I'm blogging to you live from jury duty at the L.A. County Criminal Courthouse! Don't worry, I'm not ignoring any important proceedings, but am only waiting to see if I will get called for a trial, or "panelled" as they so saucily put it. Everyone here is praying for the clock to hit 5:00 without being panelled, and the time goes by slooooooowly. It's kind of like being in an airport when you can't get any real work done, so there's not a lot to do - and they won't let you go on Facebook!!

Anyway, surfing around, I was noticing how many instructions for being happy there are on the Internet these days; websites, articles, etc. I think that this would be a really easy thing to be cynical about, but I actually think that it's pretty great! If there is any useful thing that all of this social networking can accomplish, it would be to help people learn from others and lead happier lives. Again, cynicism, cynicism; but it could possibly be helpful sometimes.

Anyway, whether it works or not, one of my favorite blogs is called "The Happiness Project". It's by a woman named Gretchen Rubin who decided to try (almost) every suggestion that she had ever heard about how to be happy for one year and see how it all works out for her. She really does have some good suggestions (my favorite so far is, "Anything worth doing is worth doing badly"), but I also like this site because the writing is good, she really has some interesting thoughts about what happiness actually is, and I often get a laugh out of it.You can see it here:

http://www.happiness-project.com/happiness_project/

Another thing I saw recently that was interesting was a study about how spending money relates to happiness. As you can imagine, the basic upshot was that money can't buy happiness, but there were some exceptions. Buying a decent car seemed to do good things for a lot of people! I liked one list in particular though. It shows the (relatively) inexpensive purchases that made people the happiest. I thought it was a good list, but also that Em would appreciate the last one : )

You can read more here:

http://tierneylab.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/06/29/when-money-buys-happiness/

"The items appearing much more on the ‘happy’ than on the ‘expensive’ lists were:

• Sharing meals with friends, “jolly dinner parties”, eating out socially. The networking necessities for the hyper-social primate.

• Alcohol: beer, wine, rum, “bar tabs”, “Château d’Yquem (Vintage 1967)”.

• Bicycles of all sorts: commuting bikes, street bikes, time-trial bikes, mountain bikes. Much more happiness-provoking than most cars.

• Camping gear, summer camps for kids, sports equipment (especially running, tennis, skiing, swimming, surfing). Physical activity is the most potent anti-depressant, and outdoor activities are the most natural forms of fun.

• Pets, especially dogs and horses; vet care, animal charities, “free orange kitten”, “organic food for cats”, aquaria, bird feeders. Very high happiness for the money – especially dogs, which have been selectively bred to be good human companions for 15,000 years.

• Hobbies: equipment for cooking, gardening, sewing, knitting, woodworking, pottery, photography, art, etc. Natural ways to enjoy and display skills and creativity.

• Adult education classes (art, music, dance, foreign languages, gymnastics, massage)

• Church, congregation membership, charity. Spirituality and altruism were cheap and rewarding.

• Books: High information density per pound; excellent value.

• Music: CDs, iPods, stereo systems, speakers, live concerts, instruments, lessons.

• Artwork, including paintings, prints, lithographs, especially from local artists

• Leisure software, especially for social networking (email, Facebook) and computer games.

• Quality beds, “excellent mattress”. Sleep quality is a major predictor of night-time comfort and day-time energy."

We'll get a new mattress soon, Sweetheart!

One more hour - keeping my fingers crossed : )

Em’s Happy Anniversary Addendum (and SF outtakes)

Since today is technically our 13th anniversary…a great big happy anniversary to my sweet pea! I loved all of the things that Patrick mentions in his post below, but there were a few other things about our trip that I wanted to comment on, as well.

First, the moon on the drive up was beautiful. It was a crescent moon, which is my personal favorite, but for some reason it was the color and size (minus the full part) of a harvest moon – which is Patrick’s favorite. I don’t really remember ever seeing a moon quite like that before, but it was really striking. It was a “blue moon” the year that Patrick and I got married, which is the name for a rare second full moon during the same month (or, more accurately, the extra full-moon that happens every couple of years when enough extra days accumulate.) I don’t think this was a blue moon, but it still felt like a special moon, just for us.


As for our trip, being in San Francisco for Pride Day was very exciting. The city just felt very warm and alive and loving. I wish we could have gotten more vibrant pictures along the way, but it was kind of a whirlwind trip. Seeing Mikey was definitely difficult, but we had a good time and enjoyed having a local to show us around.

Patrick, forgive me, but I had to include this picture. Patrick was an incredibly good sport, first to consent to take me to visit my sick brother for our first romantic getaway in 6 years – and then to push Mikey around in his chair for several hours on a fairly hot afternoon. Mikey, of course, was as gracious towards Patrick as he always is (which is to say, not very). When I asked him to take a picture of us…this is how it came out. I really probably shouldn’t see this picture as funny. I wish that Mikey was kinder to Patrick and I hope that this has more to do with Mikey being tired by the time we asked him to take the picture, than his feelings about Patrick, but after a day full of a lot of emotional tension, Patrick and I couldn’t help having a good laugh over this.


As for the first two pictures above, one is a heart that Finn made for us for Valentine’s Day, which we love so much that it now hangs over our bed, and the second picture is one of our customary self-portraits which we took in front of Mikey’s hospital. This picture reminds me of a similar one that we took on our honeymoon in France. Patrick, all I can say is I married a good guy and if you asked me again, I would still say yes. Thank you for a great anniversary.

San Francisco!!!

This last weekend was our 13th anniversary (!!) and we went on a great trip to San Francisco!! We both love this city, and I was lucky to experience a lot of it when I was in college at Santa Cruz, but it had been a long time since we had both been there together. It was a short trip (it would have been nice to have about 4 more days), but we made the best of our time there. Unfortunately, there was also a sad reason for the trip, which is that Em’s brother, Mikey, is in rehab at a hospital up there, so we wanted to see him, and hopefully cheer him up a little. So we packed A LOT into 2 fast days!

I hate to say it, but one nice thing about the trip (sorry guys if you ever read this) is that we had no kids! We looooooove doing things with our guys, but we haven’t had a childless trip in almost six years (!!!), so it really was kind of a treat. Huge thanks to a whole crew of people who made this possible including Julie, Scarlet, Rachel, Michelle, Panna, my mom Kathy, Amy, Jamie, and Felix, and of course Finn and Jack for being such good guys!! This feels like the Academy Awards : )
We stayed in a really nice hotel in the downtown business district (our hotel is on the left), which is a little strange for us since we usually like staying in little bed and breakfast type places, but it was really fun to be in the middle of so many things. Whenever we went outside, there were a ton of people walking around, which made it feel like a “Big City” movie set!

We even had trolley cars passing by our hotel! One nice thing is that you can just jump on and off of them whenever you want (and sing the Rice-a-Ronie song if you want to annoy people). San Francisco is definitely not a cheap city, but it makes up for it by having so many great things that are totally free. We loved the trolley cars, the beautiful artwork and murals everywhere, window shopping, and being able to walk to a few places!

Of course, another great free thing about SF is the people watching! It was especially entertaining this trip, because it was Gay Pride weekend! There were soooo many people ready to party in rainbow-colored outfits!! It did make the driving a little more difficult, but we really enjoyed the energy of the celebration.

Mikey's hospital - we were so happy to find it in super-confusing San Fransisco that we had to take a picture.

Of course, it was nice, but tough to see Mikey in bad shape. Em can write more about it if she wants, but I’m glad that we got to take him out for a while.

I was also glad that Mikey wanted to go to the Haight-Ashbury district! That's where my heart is in San Francisco : ) Everyone knows that it’s very touristy now, but I totally enjoy all of the hippie stuff, and I’m really happy that they’re still keeping some of that spirit alive there!

How many places can you go where the restaurant is playing live Grateful Dead the whole time?! I think it was Hampton 1989 - a great show!

After we brought Mikey back, we had more of our anniversary part of the trip (here's Em getting ready). First we had a great dinner at a restaurant close to our hotel, and Em suggested that we try to find a club afterward. Luckily, there was one right down the street from our hotel (although there is probably one close to every hotel there!) I think we were both a little nervous about going clubbing after not having gone in (ahem) a little while, but it turned out so great! They actually let us in really quickly – after we thought for sure the bouncers would just laugh at us! It must have been because Em looked so teriffic!!

Club kids! That's Em's scarf - I'm not trying to be euro-trash.

It’s true that we may have been the oldest people there, but we had a really great time! We danced for hours, and I was surprised that I actually recognized some of the music! Of course, they had to play Michael Jackson, and I think that everyone was waiting for it, but the DJ did a really cool thing. After starting off with some (kind of boring) club music, he started playing more hip-hop, which everyone liked, and then he started mixing in the “mama say mamma sa mamacusa” from Michael’s “Wanna be Startin’ Somethin’”, which really got people going. Then he mixed it in to “Welcome to Atlanta” by Ludacris, which, strangely, I really like. He kept mixing in the Michael through a couple of other songs, and then finally played “Don’t Stop Till You Get Enough”, and the crowd loved it! It’s easy to forget how fun it can be to go club dancing and just remember the hassle, but I’m so glad that we made the effort!!

This self-took picture didn't come out too bad (Em looks great!) It was so funny because most people there were more focused on taking more cell-phone pictures of themselves than they were dancing!

We had a nice breakfast at our hotel and then headed back to L.A. tired but happy. It was a great aniversary!

the Jackson 5 - I Want You Back RARE

I was never the biggest fan, but he had some amazing moments.

Random!!!!

So it’s Random Thursday today at the Dore Family Blog. As you all know, this is a day that appears, like the Chapel Perilous, at uncertain times throughout the Multiverse. In fact, it is so rare that this is the first time that Random Thursday has ever made an appearance. So it’s, you know, special. Anyway, it’s a good excuse to put up some weird stuff.

For example, check out the twirly picture on the left. See the pink, blue, orange, and green? All well and good, except that the blue and green are the same color (dramatic music here)!!!!!!!

If you're interested in this, or you don't believe me (and I certainly wouldn't), check it out here:

http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/badastronomy/2009/06/24/the-blue-and-the-green/

Next up, here are some more pictures that I like & forgot to post yesterday. The first one is from our annual Coffeehouse & I just had it sent from the drama teacher. I love this picture!!! Thanks David!!!

I posted this one a little while ago, but I just love it!

Baxter. Great picture from Josh!

Finally, here are a couple more songs that I would totally have on the blog if the jukebox would let me:

Blue, Red, and Grey - The Who

Through My Sails - Neil Young

Witch of the Westmoreland - Stan Rogers

So there's your basic Random Thursday - hope you liked it! I'm off to apply for the Eagle Rock Music Festival - Peace & Love to all!

I’m finally starting to get through the physical meltdown brought on by the end of this school year (plus the Eagle Rock house party – see below). Still not feeling 100% but (knock on wood) I can hopefully start to do more than read Patrick O’Brian and blow my nose. As usual, there are a million projects that I’d like to do over the vacation. Even though I’ll probably only get to three or four of them, it’s nice to be ambitious!

One of the projects that I’d like to take care of pretty soon is to finally learn how to use my camera! I’ve been into looking at different photographer’s work on the net recently, plus different blogs, etc. and really want to figure out how to take better pictures. I know that a lot of it is just having good equipment, and our camera is not exactly professional caliber, but I also know that we have taken good pictures with it, so it is possible! It also seems like there are a lot of really useful tricks to know about, like lighting, composing the picture, not shaking the camera around, etc. So I’d like to get a little better at this stuff over the break. Anyone have any suggestions?

Here are some pictures that kind of jumped out at me as being pretty good. A few of these are from a great site that I found recently called “Boom”. It’s a collection of visual art put up by a guy in Canada, and I think that he’s got a really great sense of what is interesting to look at. A lot of the photography is amazing! You can check it out here:

http://www.booooooom.com/


Anyway, here’s my gallery:

This woman takes lots of pictures of her daughter that are pretty great!

Here's another one.

Here's one of ours - no idea why they work sometimes.

I love this picture from my friend Eric - Jude healing his Mama!

If anyone has some pictures that they like a lot I'd love to see them!!

Party!!!

There's nothing like an Eagle Rock house party! We played last Saturday night at Dave's house in the ER. As you would expect, there were lots of long-haired guys, lots of beer, and lots of good vibes.

As an extra bonus, the guys set off some fireworks, like a real rock show! Plus we played until midnight and the cops never showed up. Eagle Rock rules! It may not have been a huge festival, but I think that we would be pretty happy just doing one of these every weekend. It was a very nice way to start the summer : )

These are a few of my favorite things

In no particular order, just a few things I felt like posting. The chalk board is here because Patrick was kind enough to hang it for me and to write the sweet message on it. There are many other people who belong here, of course, but I figured I'd stick with these for now. Happy Father's Day Patrick! I love you!

Em

One More!!!

One more for Father's Day. My wonderful son Finn had his last day at kindergarten on friday. He ended up with 4's (like A's) in all of his subjects, and his teachers recommended him for a class with 2nd graders next year! I am sooooooo proud of him!!!!

Father's Day

My dad sent me this a couple of years ago and it seemed like a great thing to post for this Father's day! Thanks Dad. I love you & happy Father's day!!



From Rick Reilly of Sports Illustrated:



I try to be a good father. Give my kids mulligans. Work nights to pay for their text messaging. Take them to swimsuit shoots.


But compared with Dick Hoyt, I suck.


Eighty-five times he's pushed his disabled son, Rick, 26.2 miles in marathons. Eight times he's not only pushed him 26.2 miles in a wheelchair but also towed him 2.4 miles in a dinghy while swimming and pedaled him 112 miles in a seat on the handlebars--all in the same day.


Dick's also pulled him cross-country skiing, taken him on his back mountain climbing and once hauled him across the U.S. On a bike. Makes taking your son bowling look a little lame, right?


And what has Rick done for his father? Not much--except save his life.This love story began in Winchester , Mass. , 43 years ago, when Rick was strangled by the umbilical cord during birth, leaving him brain-damaged and unable to control his limbs.


"He'll be a vegetable the rest of his life;'' Dick says doctors told him And his wife, Judy, when Rick was nine months old. "Put him in an Institution.''


But the Hoyts weren't buying it. They noticed the way Rick's eyes followed them around the room. When Rick was 11 they took him to the Engineering department at Tufts University and asked if there was anything to help the boy communicate. "No way,'' Dick says he was told. "There's nothing going on in his brain.''


"Tell him a joke,'' Dick countered. They did. Rick laughed. Turns out a lot was going on in his brain. Rigged up with a computer that allowed him to control the cursor by touching a switch with the side of his head, Rick was finally able to communicate. First words? "Go Bruins!'' And after a high school classmate was paralyzed in an accident and the school organized a charity run for him, Rick pecked out, "Dad, I want to do that.''


Yeah, right. How was Dick, a self-described "porker'' who never ran more than a mile at a time, going to push his son five miles? Still, he tried. "Then it was me who was handicapped,'' Dick says. "I was sore for two weeks.''


That day changed Rick's life. "Dad,'' he typed, "when we were running, It felt like I wasn't disabled anymore!''


And that sentence changed Dick's life. He became obsessed with giving Rick that feeling as often as he could. He got into such hard-belly shape that he and Rick were ready to try the 1979 Boston Marathon.


"No way,'' Dick was told by a race official. The Hoyts weren't quite a single runner, and they weren't quite a wheelchair competitor. For a few years Dick and Rick just joined the massive field and ran anyway, then they found a way to get into the race officially: In 1983 they ran another marathon so fast they made the qualifying time for Boston the following year.


Then somebody said, "Hey, Dick, why not a triathlon?''


How's a guy who never learned to swim and hadn't ridden a bike since he was six going to haul his 110-pound kid through a triathlon? Still, Dick tried.


Now they've done 212 triathlons, including four grueling 15-hour Ironmans in Hawaii . It must be a buzzkill to be a 25-year-old stud getting passed by an old guy towing a grown man in a dinghy, don't you think?


Hey, Dick, why not see how you'd do on your own? "No way,'' he says. Dick does it purely for "the awesome feeling'' he gets seeing Rick with a cantaloupe smile as they run, swim and ride together.


This year, at ages 65 and 43, Dick and Rick finished their 24th Boston Marathon, in 5,083rd place out of more than 20,000 starters. Their best time? Two hours, 40 minutes in 1992--only 35 minutes off the world record, which, in case you don't keep track of these things, happens to be held by a guy who was not pushing another man in a wheelchair at the time.


"No question about it,'' Rick types. "My dad is the Father of the Century.''


And Dick got something else out of all this too. Two years ago he had a mild heart attack during a race. Doctors found that one of his arteries Was 95% clogged. "If you hadn't been in such great shape,'' one doctor told him, "you probably would've died 15 years ago.'' So, in a way, Dick and Rick saved each other's life.


Rick, who has his own apartment (he gets home care) and works in Boston, and Dick, retired from the military and living in Holland, Mass. , always find ways to be together. They give speeches around the country and compete in some backbreaking race every weekend, including this Father's Day.


That night, Rick will buy his dad dinner, but the thing he really wants to give him is a gift he can never buy.


"The thing I'd most like,'' Rick types, "is that my dad sit in the chair and I push him once.''





Here's a video about them:

The strongest Dad in the world

End of the Year!!!

Senior prank 2009.

Friday was the last day of school for the year!!!! I’m still not feeling up to the great critique of our education system that I feel like I need to get off of my chest soon, but for now I’m just happy that this year is done and wanted to write a little about the last couple of days.

First of all, I know that teachers like myself are incredibly lucky to get a huge amount of time off! In the face of our three-week Christmas break, one week off for Spring break, and two-plus months for summer, it always feels a little whiny to make any negative comments about the teaching profession. Very few people get to have perfect jobs, much less all of this time off, but teaching high school still feels tough, and I’m not inclined to be apologetic about it right now. I just feel so happy and relieved to be done for a while!

As I wrote before, there were many things that made this year particularly hard. But my one main relief right now is the same one it always is: being finished with the homework! Not the students’ homework – they don’t do it anyway - but mine. I’m sure that everyone knows that being a teacher implies bringing some extra work home. The problem for me at least (I’m sure that there are some teachers who don’t share this issue) is that there is always something to be done; some more papers to grade or some lesson that needs to be created or that could be made just a little bit better.

For me that’s the biggest one: planning lessons. Even after all this time I worry every night and wake up early every morning with the feeling that something is not quite right, and that I’m walking right into a death-trap. It’s not totally paranoia either, as I notice every day how a tiny change of one verb in the instructions for an assignment, or how a change in one pause in describing instructions to the kids can make the difference between success and failure; which can be the difference between knowing that you have given the students a hand in having a better future, and having all of your desks tagged up. No teacher can control everything in their classroom (the weather has just as much effect, and a bad air-conditioner can destroy any lesson plan), but there are so many details that can make or break a school period.

The amazing thing is that how often it seems to work out. It’s really one of the things that has made me the most religious: the amazement almost every day that things don’t go horribly wrong. It really feels like God is helping me out, and I am constantly grateful. It could be luck, but I’ve seen so many “small” miracles (that seem huge at the time) that I can’t help but feel incredibly blessed - although there are just enough power-outages in the computer lab, or fights in the back of the room to keep things interesting.
So the last few days after finals are pretty nice. There is the last movie (Gridiron Gang this year – don’t rent it, but if you’ve got a class of 14-year-olds it’s great) when only the first-year teachers are still trying to get anything done. And usually there is a nice party with one or two of the better classes. This year we had a great one with my fourth period (usually not a good period since it’s right before lunch), who were (mostly) wonderful! One student brought pork tamales that he had made which were amazing!! The worse classes always feel like this is unfair, but they don’t bring anything, and I couldn’t really care less at that point.

Tamale-maker Daniel left.

And then finally there is the last bell!! Here are two pictures I took right before the final bell, and while it was ringing. It’s not really possible to express my happiness when I took the second picture.

At the beginning of every long break, like this one, I wish that I could take the relief of being finished, and the expectation of so much rest and enjoyment and put it in a bottle for future use. That’s how I feel right now; not exactly human yet, but pretty sure that in a few weeks (and after jury duty, boo) things will be pretty great for a little while – I really do enjoy the vacations!

So I hope that it doesn’t sound too much like gloating, but I feel very thankful for this one pretty good morning : )

A belated welcome to Julie, Scarlett and Thor!

Our good friends Julie and Thor and their little girl Scarlett moved into our complex a couple of weeks ago. These pictures were taken on Scarlett's first visit to the park - while her poor parents were moving everything in, we were having fun sifting sand and chasing birds and generally causing a ruckus.


Scarlett and the boys got on so well that by the time her Mom and Dad came to get her, she was wearing a pair of Jack's PJ's and was playing with cars. Give us your little girl for a couple of hours and we'll turn her into an honorary boy. Alright, I know, girls play with cars too, but still, she did look much more like a boy than usual.

Poor Ms. Scarlett had to go in for an operation on her ear shortly after these pictures were taken. Her surgery went just fine (whew!) but her fever kept spiking for days after that which resulted in many late night visits the emergency room. She is doing just fine now, thank you very much, and would be very happy to show you around her new home any time you please.

In the meantime, a big welcome to Scarlett and her family. We are so happy to have them here! Julie and Scarlett have walked Finn to school three times already, which is a big treat for him, and we've had several impromptu visits back and forth at one another's houses. We're looking forward to many more gatherings over the summer and Scarlett and Julie and Thor have invited us to go whale watching soon - woo-hoo!

Balloons!!!

Performance art naiveau : ) Come on!

More here (from We Love You So):

http://davidhorvitz.tumblr.com/