Your Luv-in Rev.Vin

my grandfather, a retired minister, puts out a mini message or two each week. the same way he has for at least forty years. thanks grandpa and happy new year all!

Everything you need to know you can learn from Noah’s Ark...

1. Don’t miss the boat


2. Remember that we are all in the same boat.


3. Plan ahead. It wasn’t raining when Noah built the boat.


4. Stay fit. When you’re 60 years old someone may ask you to do something big.


5. Don’t listen to critics. Just get on with the job that needs to be done.


6. Build your future on high ground.
   
7. For safety’s sake travel in pairs.


8. Speed isn’t always an advantage. The snails were on board with the cheetahs.


9. When you’re stressed, float awhile.


10. Remember – the ark was built by amateurs; the Titanic by professionals.

Ps: lori and i watched war of the worlds for the first time on saturday night which lead to our 'escape plan' talk. (one of the privileges of living in nyc is having such a plan...i've already had to walk home to lori from manhattan to brooklyn twice since i moved here in 2001. no cell phones neither!)

so here are my adam's ark picks, I'll be keeping them in my desk drawer at work:

• a meeting place


• crank radio with cell phone charger and flashlight


• that old pair of running shoes you were going to throw out


• a water bottle and cliff bar (takes three hours to walk home)

i heart heart

last friday night i cried while watching "love actually". it's a horrible movie (sorry jen) that pulls together a bunch of successful british actors - obviously in need of a little personal fund raising for the holidays - into a sappy love story that happens on and around christmas day in london. the brits, according to the "love actually" script have to act truthfully on their feelings for the christmas holiday. all those jive adult romances had me about to push the stop button on the remote (kiera knightley can go take her one look pout-y face and suck it). but enter the twelve year old kid (who's recently lost his mother for good rom-com measure) with a crush on his classmate who learns the drums, performs in the pageant, and ducks airport security to profess his undying puppy love to her and i'm all teary-d up. guess it's the dad in me.

this friday i'm pretty much back there. pass the tissues. we the employees of d'ner architects are participating in the "letters to santa claus" gift giving program this year. a big thanks to jacky who for three years has tried to get the office to switch from its money grabbing in house secret santa exchange (hello fellow professional would you like a cheap gift from another professional...let's agree not to talk about it afterward ok?) to something with a little more heart.

so jacky grabbed a stack of letters from the post office and now we're getting down to business. my little man, aneury, wrote a thoughtful, convincing letter asking for warm clothes (fellow professionals...do you ever recall wishing upon a star for a warm sweater when you were ten?) for him and his older brother and sister. his dad left them last year and his mom, who's sick, busts her butt just hard enough to cover rent and food for the four of them. so not much left for christmas time. but i'm not crying over the sadness of their situation alone.

i get teary when you see someone who's still got a warm heart in a cold dark situation. this little man somehow heard of the program, wrote a thoughtful letter, and put it out there. at ten i bet he doesn't believe in santa, but he believes in something. the letter isn't desperate, and it's polite avoiding one possible stance which would be, "yo, salaried man who feels like giving up 2 hours pay, you owe me!". and yes, i saw 30 rock last night where they covered the potentially fraudulent angle to this program. i guess it takes some heart on the donor's part to believe the stuff is really going to a kid in need and not a guy with an ebay account.

i don't know if you all have felt it at all, but this fall i've felt such a dynamic shift in my community (i'd even draw that circle big enough to include the country) away from consumptive behavior to conservative. but there's also a sense of reality that makes you realize you don't have it as bad as that "lady on the radio". when we see the bottom fall out i guess it's natural to look down and see who is still below you.

the darkness is always there in good times and bad but this year i'm appreciative of the the changed perspective that let's me see into it with a little more clarity and concern. even more thankful to have felt the warmth in Aneiry's heart come my way.

And if that sappy post isn't the start of "love actually: the sequel" i don't know what is. merry christmas all...be good!

an electric car for my birthday

my friend mack (in facebook and in reality) posted a great link to google's archives of all of the popular science magazines. i immediately went to november 1975's issue...the month i was born. the ads for manly smoking cigarettes (already carrying a surgeon general's warning back then) and sexy air mattresses takes me back a bit. but the article pictured above seems pretty 2008. i'll save my grumbles for the damnation i wish upon the big 3 for another post.

it's anybody's race

just home from a "day at the racetrack" (never gets old saying that) i was inspired to make a quick post. first to say thanks and happy birthday to j + j. i missed last year's jam, but these guys have a way of putting the group into some superb outer borough action. today we went to the aqueduct track in queens.

i knew going there not to expect southern belles in jewels balancing a mint julip as they walked down the steps to their box. i knew that this was a down and out type of track. but i was really pleasantly surprised - for a few reasons. yeah it's seen better days, but the people there are having a blast. english is spoken but not like i do. crazy accents ranging from all over nyc, to the islands, asian and spanish too. of note, the place is all dudes (except for the lovely ladies we were rolling with).

it's got all of the vices of any other gambling establishment (i can reference casinos, jai lai - an old connecticut thing, and those dumpy off track betting places all over town). expect to breath a lot of tobacco smoke, fuel up on greasy over priced food, and watch guys drink out of celebration and defeat. either way a percentage of the winnings comes back to the house bar...or does it?

the aqueduct doesn't charge admission and the security was light. you drink and smoke pretty much wherever you want to. and you can sneak in booze too (sadly we didn't). it sounds simple but these little bits of lawlessness in a town that's always under such surveillance and colored coded fear reports...these little bits of lawlessness made my heart sing.

we (the guys in skinny jeans, dark rimmed glasses, campers, and pata-gucci coats) stuck out big time but no one bothered us. we bet one dollar at a time, once every twenty minutes, and it felt good and safe. usually gambling places put me on edge. i even managed to pay for my $10 chili dog and a beer by betting on #8 Alexandro in the sixth race. (note to parents, whenever a horse shares your kid's namesake...let it ride!)

the other non parents in the group were headed home for a nap, then east village dining, then LES drinking. amazing what those youngsters pack into an evening...party down, my friends, while your biological clocks are silently being wound up inside you.

anyway. what a day. what a city. where else but nyc could you hide a racetrack, a bunch of horses, indoor smoking, a thousand locals, and a few hipsters?Photos courtesy of j. nordberg on flickr

should we 'let the guy smoke'?

i recently found out that our president elect is a smoker - i was probably the last to know. the news came to me when i heard michael kinsley on brian lehrer this morning:



political columnist kinsley just wrote a piece in the washington post titled "let the guy smoke"
like the title implies he thinks that if obama needs smoking as a crutch while he leads us through war, recession, and whatever else the times throw at him then no biggie. he also wonders how obama gets away with smoking when mccain was predicted to croak because his skin cancer might return. is obama still in a honeymoon period with the media? why not give him hell for smoking? isn't that what we do nowadays as part of the nicotine fiend witch hunt?

i speak from experience.

i think it was my 12th birthday when my mom quit smoking for me. i'd always given her a hard time (as much or more out of my own embarrassment than out of concern for her health and longevity) for her smoking. on again and off again quitting ever since (back on as of the thanksgiving break) it sounds like obama and my mom may have something in common. apparently obama has never said he didn't smoke. he honestly answers questions about it and talks about chewing nicorette gum and sticking on patches - my mom would do the same. but i somehow doubt (as does kinsley) that obama is really going to quit. seriously, if you had been a smoker on a regular day would you find inspiration to quit while running a fierce campaign on little sleep or food without your hypocrisy police (michelle and the kids) nearby?

so when i say it bothers me that obama smokes is that bother out of concern for his health? or is it a concern for the image (weakness in failing to quit) that his smoking projects on him as leader of our country? how can the guy talk about installing a basketball court in the white house when he's blackening his lungs? to say nothing about my concerns for his ability to crack down on the tobacco biz. kinsley warns us not to worry about obama's health. he points out that the odds are in favor of obama dying of assassination (u.s. presidents don't have a good track record) not smoking. as if that wouldn't cause you to light up to calm your nico-nerves!

so to obama (and my mama) while i wish you'd quit you should know that my concerns are likely more for my health than yours. take my scolding with a grain of salt (as if you weren't already!) and i'll try a little harder to just 'let you guys smoke.'

alpha dad

a week ago lori and i suffered the accusation of "accidental parenting". whereas sears and brazelton keep an open ear to family beds, forced naps, sleep in a stroller, laisez faire, whatever works for the parents AND baby. the baby whisperer don't play. one night crawling into bed at 4am after giving a bottle to AOW - lori had bottle duty the night before, and I the night before - I said, "wait a minute we don't give the baby a bottle in the middle of night anymore." lori was up an hour later with AOW, this time for good. she pulled out the baby whisperer and that's when we got the bad news - we were accidental parenting.

i read the chapter on toddlers and took in the sobering news too. this little girl had taken advantage me...very cutely i might add.

so we took to undoing the damage blaming the move downstairs of 2 months ago on AOW's acting out. like the guy who took his kids to Venezuela in the book we opted sleep on the floor when she would cry for a few more nights. talk about suckers. it worked but i couldn't help but feel like she had one up on us again. so last night i got alpha with her.

after a discussion about how it was time to sleep, laying out her lovey, and setting her constellation turtle to green, i locked eyes with her. she looked away, looked the other way, looked at me around the way, then we locked eyes again. repeat 2 more times and then she came crashing down face into her lovey for 3 more hours of sleep. game on.

we'll see what comes next, until then i'll just be wondering in anticipation, anxiety, a bit of fear. not so alpha of me...

these colors after a run

after a family run last month we came across a giant american flag in prospect park. the same site where i saw a makeshift political circus the month before. these are key reasons why we hover around this park several times each weekend. it's always the same place but with ever changing events. of course we wanted to know whose flag it was (never did find out). we've all watched this symbol get reduced to the size of a lapel pin and here it was as big as a parachute. a huge parachute. about a 100 park goers would rotate around its edges yanking it up into a bubbly tent while kids of all ages raced around underneath it. most significant were comments overheard about how as liberals 'we really weren't too bothered by the flag anymore.' i had to agree. after 9/11 the republicans got to the flag first and together with yellow ribbons started the 'support our troops' movement. sitting on the other side of the aisle the lefties were left wondering how to politically oppose the right. to not love the flag? to not support the troops? we were made out to be unpatriotic. and here, watching these kids - too young to remember 9/11 or to be caught up in any movements - were just playing around it. and in spite of all of our nyc cynicism we actually are pretty wrapped up in this year's presidential run. i am excited for obama's chances on tuesday in a way i never thought possible for a presidential election. i won't be pulling the dem's lever as the ok choice but as my favorite choice. listening to the press commemorate the 2008 presidential run today on the radio i couldn't help but wonder back to this family run in the park and these photo ops. after a 7 year break up with this symbol it's nice to have it back in my heart.

Life Imitates Youtube

Cameron Frye's Day Off

yesterday osita and i were both home sick. sicks days certainly take on a different tone when you have to take care of a little one and yourself.

where in another life i might have flopped on the couch, watched movies (ferris beuller's day off?), and sipped gatorade cocktails yesterday morning found me out and about at 8 am with the baby girl making doctor's appointments...planning our day. like ferris beuller calling me up out of my sick bed, it was clear that alexandra, smoker's cough and all, had bigger plans for us than lying around in the house.

9:40
daddy/baby nap? nope, dr's appointment in brooklyn heights. turns out she's got the croup cough.

10:30
nap time? nope. text message from lori to come by cobble hill high for some visiting. one way too pleasant of a walk through brooklyn heights (how does that neighborhood do it?) and we arrived at school. we had such a good time with the kids and seeing the little learning room lori has made for her kids that we stayed for over an hour! lori said it made her week and it was one of the better points of mine too. apparently the kids think the baby is a cute and that i'm hot. awesome.

12:30
nap time? nope. cheesy organic hot dogs for lunch (would see them later).

1:00
a bottle later and it's, at long last, nap time. down she goes and i barely make it to the bed before i crash too.

1:15
lori calls and inadvertantly wakes me.

1:20
baby wakes...please go back to sleep.

1:30
not going back to sleep

1:40
i call lori and explain that she's not sleeping but is throwing a tantrum trying to get to sleep...head in blankets, etc. lori suggest rocking.

2:00-4:00
and rock we did. normally i'm more of a shush pat in the crib guy but today the rock was what alexandra had cooking for us. together we would nap. sweet babe in my arms and be snoring with my neck snapped back over the back of the rocking chair. these are the moments i know i'll recall a long long time from now. 2 hours later and lori home from work i had to tap out - my neck was so sore from being stuck in that rocking chair.

4:01
alexandra is crowned snuggle champ by outlasting me. she rubs it in by continuing to snuggle with lori.

5:00
off to ikea. you know you've got a little ferris bueller magic working on you when, your sickness cured, you muster the strength to take the ikea bus to red hook. by the way that's the subject for another post.

5:30
sunset at ikea waterfront. kudos to lee weintraub landscape architects.

5:40
$5 meatballs. see also organic hot dogs for results. what was i thinking?

8:00
back in the apartment arms heavy with ikea booty. baby to bed.

9:45
daddy to bed.

what a day! probably not exactly what the doctor ordered. today i'm totally wasted. but amazing how a little girl's spirit can move you. i don't know if you remember the part where ferris rolls back his sick day chart as principal rooney's assistant watches in disbelief. but i could definitely use a hand from him now. zero sick days left in the bank! at least i went out with a bang. love you osita!

pan for vp!

who is this mythical creature? why none other than sarah 'pan' palin.

lori and i watched a youtube clip of s.p. playing flute last night. cross eyed with concentration and playing a fairly elementary piece of music, she was trying to score her way to the top of the miss alaska pageant.

i've seen better flute played, but as palin performances go it's teh best i've seen so far.

we'll see what tonight's vp debate holds in store for her. there's lots of talk about how we will 'meet' palin for the first time tonight, but i must say biden's been pretty quiet lately too.

i can't wait for the kick off tonight. i think to add dramatic effect i'll watch palin while imagining her as our first woman president (sorry for any jinx mccain, ditto obama...you're still my man). picturing her man as 'first dude' and her litter of kids and theirs. reality tv never looked so promising!

green office culture -or- bring your snot to work day

(at right. an image search for "sinus infection")

1 day of sick time left in my sick bank and 4 months of my daughter in daycare left before it refreshes. this is what runs through my head with some regularity (everyone knows that a kid in daycare equals an opportunity to catch every cold in town). but today it was a constant concern - i think cold and flu season arrived at labor day this year.

all my best hopes for a speedy recovery to my "podmate" at work who hacked, coughed, and blew into tissues this morning...our office is near her doctor and she has a big time deadline tomorrow so why not pass the time in the pod rather than dr's office or at home in bed? but seriously, what is it with american office culture and the badge of honor it awards for playing through the pain of sickness? why are sick employees encouraged or even allowed into workplaces? how am i going to coast into the new year with but one sick day when i have to fight a two fronted germ war (my office and alexandra's daycare)?

i know a sick day off is a day's pay without labor and that (due to the stress of a deadline) sickness is often concurrent with important to do's. but what about infecting the rest of the place?

our office and the recirculating air handler that i sit under is a big germ fest. who out there thinks i can make it to january 1 on one sick day? one thing's for sure, should i blow that last day early this fall i'll be playing through the pain till christmas. pass the kleenex.

high stakes hide and seek

this post involves a toddler, a new father, an unguarded spiral staircase in their new apartment, and a happy ending.

his morning like every morning since osa started daycare found me with a 1/2 hour’s sole custody after lori left for work. It’s my favorite part of a weekday – alone time with the baby girl – and a chance to prove to myself and the world (lori) that i know what i’m doing.

We’re in this new apartment which has many boo boo hazards and one granddaddy of them all – a spiral staircase whose landing is a terra cotta tile floor 10 feet below. We keep a baby gate up or the door closed to the room with stair at all times. this morning i went with the closed door.

so when i started our morning routine of washing dishes, entertaining baby, making lunch, dressing baby, hide and seek, monitoring baby i had it all under control. osa was running around like a crazy girl but that's just because she loves to be chased. it's a simple game of hide and seek barely evolved from peek a boo...until this morning.

i was washing a bottle at the back of the apartment when alexandra took off for the front of the apartment - there's but one skinny line of vision from the sink that provides the ultimate peek a boo high for her. when i went to 'peek' she was nowhere to 'a boo'. and i heard footsteps...what?

i put down the bottle brush and took off after her. but she wasn't at the front door. the bedroom door to the stair was closed (phew!) so i started to look behind boxes (we just moved) and in her room but she wasn't there. i totally panicked and then i heard giggling (seriously sounded like that old movie child's play) coming from, of course, behind the closed bedroom door with the stair in it. what a great way for her to teach me that she had learned to turn a door knob (for the first time) slip in and shut a door silently.

i took our lord's name in vain then ripped open the door as she began to take off for the stairs. luckily i caught her grabbed her and hugged her before she got there. we did the rest of the dishes and morning prep with her clutched under one arm as i worked along. the new morning routine, the new solution. i'm going to keep that little mush-mush held tight at least until she's through high school. and buy a surplus of baby gates!

I Stalk Barack

(Pic of a pic. Couldn’t get the stupid thing of my camera phone. Guy with pink arrow is none other than Barack Obama! I happened upon him while passing through The Parker Meridian’s hotel lobby.) Last night, I confirmed my suspicions that Senator Obama and crew were staying at the hotel next door to the building I work in. SWAT teams, assault rifles, secret service agents (complete with red lapel pins – thanks Tom), street closures. It had to be one of the candidates (they were both in town to exemplify how polite they could be around the subject of 9/11) and with all that protection it was more likely Obama than McCain. McCain packs his own pit bull wherever he goes! I may have to save the part where a grin took over my entire face and I yelled “good luck!” and got a wave for another post. AutoCAD calls…

the box - weekend2

weekend 2 and my facebook status was updated to "adam is ready to rock...sheetrock." the sheetrock arrived in the van of leopoldi's hardware owner, joe, who lugged in 10 sheets with me for the right price of free. leopoldi's and their excellence shall be the subject of another post.

more thanks is due to my very good friend brian. a fellow young dad whose son is just months older than alexandra (it would seem months turn to weeks turn to days older as time moves on...they are very good friends too). our wives also speak the same dr. teacher speak (c&t 5000, self ethnography, can you believe so and so's pedagogy pendulum has swung back to phonetics?). they are the rubbles to our flinstone.

anyway in our most manly mandate ever brian and i unholstered our power screw drivers and threw up a whole lot of drywall for a day. we climbed a very short and steep learning curve too. by the end we were really cooking with gas. btw for cutting large openings like doors and windows out we highly rec'd covering over completely with the wall board then cutting out using the rough framing as a template. start with a pointed drywall saw to get the corners started then slip in a board saw and go to town. mad dusty but highly effective and speedy.

a hundred thanks to brian who, on a very hot and humid day, kept me going. the kid exudes enthusiasm and i was honored to share a few 8' long perfect slices so that we could woot, high five, and pound, lock, and shock.

thanks brian and leopoldi's...almost there

Baby's First Duathlon

(Photo note: that's neither alexandra swimming, nor me in a women's bathing suit, and it certainly isn't the prospect park Y!)

today was alexandra's first gym and swim class. the day started at 6am and soon moved to daisy's diner for a little caloric intake - how phelpsian?. the multi sport combination of gym and swim would take some preparation.

there was some meltdown during warm ups over a a dropped pacifier and taking away an off limits watermelon container, and a fall against the bathtub during pregame. eye rubbing signaled nap time but we rallied anyway and found ourselves at the gym portion of the day. balls, babies, tunnels, adults avoiding eye contact, adults talking to other adults by asking questions to their babies.

alexandra was rallying through event one. but during transition one - change into a swim diaper - she crashed hard eyes closing, more eye rubbing.

one 'if your happy and you know it' song set in the blue waters of the ymca pool and she had had enough. apparently if you are happy and you know it you should spin around, but do not wet your face or splash around. the song went on but from that point on the alexandra's race was over.

i type this as alexandra sleeps it off. in spite of it all it was a great saturday morning with my baby girl. maybe next time i'll shout coaching chants at her (crumpled piece of paper in hand 'you see this? this is how you played out there...like a piece of trash!") but today i was content to hang out with my babe and know there will always be next saturday.

i can remember my first swim lessons in wood pond - i quit before lesson 2, followed by open swim sessions at cornerstone where i was too scared to join the others in the deep end and would pass the hour by myself in the shallows. it would be 25 years later when i would get back to the pool again for my next swim lesson!

i feel like this morning i passed the first test of not pushing her to do something that was supposed to be fun but wasn't. we'll see what happens next week...maybe we'll just cut class and eat watermelon in the park!

the box - day1

today was day1 of the box construction (unless you count the three weeks of planning and fretting i've already put in). i didn't think i'd be able to pull it off. no saw, no wheels, no money to pay someone to do it. the box is a place for our baby girl to sleep in. a bit inhumane, except for she doesn't like light while she sleeps.

i'm beginning to see why balloon framing has hung around for so long! i framed this wall in about 3 hours...not one lesson (unless you count architecture school - but in this case i wouldn't).

oh, and the best part is that leopoldi's hardware down on the corner was cheaper than lowe's. i granny carted the lumber up the hill and sawed it the old fashioned way!

i'm a little more of a man tonight!

just shoot me

if this lady helps to get the mccain ticket into the white house who else out there would like to join me on the first amtrak to canada?

really republicans? are you serious?

ps: this post is dedicated to my one republican friend vin who has already developed a crush on our prospective vp!

one degree from phelps

Imagine my surprise this morning when i heard that michael phelps had been swimming in the mcburney ymca pool in chelsea yesterday. i've swam there before...why not yesterday?! what's more the pool wouldn't have attracted phelps if it hadn't been for the lovely aqua marine tile job the pool possesses courtesy of my employer dattner architects (see photos above. phelps in banana hammock and dattner's work).

on top of all that at lunch the day before i stepped out onto 57th street which is normally full of reasonably large commotion but this week even more due to u.s. open players and fans staying in a neighboring hotel. add to that this day that there were a bunch of film trucks and trailers displacing the u.s. open tour buses. police cars, lazy stage hands and their sandwiches, angry bus drivers unable to get to their stranded tourist travelers. a disaster all made legal by a bunch of those no parking signs posted on colored paper we see all over the city when film shoots are going on. usually they are for c.s.i. something or other but this time they were for one of my favorites, entourage.

so where am i going with this? check it out. sir phelps and my boys from entourage filming somewhere just outside my door whilst i autocadded my afternoon away just a few floors above!

Drywall master of the universe!

for some reason I always remember that dan, the dad on Roseanne, was always at the mercy of the rise and fall of the drywall profession. This weekend marks my first attempt at sheetrocking. to prepare i've been reading this page turner pictured at right with a growing mancrush on myron r. ferguson.

tomorrow, this black pantsed architect, will get his hands dirty and risk finger cuts (and subsequent mousing delays) by traveling to lowe's for a load of lumber.

baby girl needs a box to sleep in and i'm the one to build it!

save a horse, ride a cowboy

thursday at 3pm and it's town for a cowboy parade in provincetown. l, a, b, s, e & i were on an a tour of the town last week as the subject of our morning adventure. pulling out of the crowded parking lot at noon (cowboy parades are a popular sight!) b put on this tune (be patient while it downloads) by mgmt.

'time to pretend' is a mixture of synthesized pop beats that come in and out perfectly with lyrics about aging out of youth complete with an eff-bomb or two and suggestions for using cocaine and getting with hot models. it really helped form the scene of p-town on parade day. have a listen.

welcome to a nu-normal

it's going to be a 'new normal' they told us in birth class. it's true and it's the result of a lot of early 30's occasions. i recently came across a recent email to my friend james when he turned thirty:

what's in store? continued professional improvement. 30 somethings rule the world - or at least do all the work. you'll also take over the family as most responsible most able bodied generation then there's your own family. breeding if that's the path you choose will become an ever increasingly present thought/discussion. and finally saturday afternoon becomes the new thursday night. unless you go hipster and then tuesday night becomes the new saturday afternoon.

inspired by so many of my favorite blogs i thought i'd give it go. here goes...