Mom
was tutoring today for Katie and Michael, so Dad went with Sam to the Summer in
the Arts “Explosion”. After picking up Sam’s flip book in the cafeteria from
Animation class, they went to the piano room. Sam was up first and played
“Tiger Chase” (see video).
Then Maggie (formerly known as Meggy) played "Spring
Time" and finally Helen played “The Caisson Song”.
There wasn’t much going on in
the room for Sam’s Photoshopped and Digital Sketchbook classes, so after
listening to a little bit of a poorly made “Melee” podcast (picture above) Sam
and Dad went down to Room 406 and Sam spent about an hour teaching Dad how to
use Photoshop. They took a picture of Ashe, and replaced her bow with one from
a picture of Varus. It came out pretty nice. They called it “Varushe”.
They
skipped the stage performances and headed home after grabbing some lunch. Sam
played his song a second time at home in the afternoon so Dad could get the hand
positioning on the video, from a better angle.
Dad
and Sam were having lunch at Deli Italiano. First they looked at a map to learn some of the
local counties around Fairfax and Loudoun -
Prince William, Fauquier, Clarke, Stafford, etc. They were playing a few
games. Dad asked Sam to guess whether a word was a county in Virginia, a
football player, or both. Then Sam said he would name either a medical
condition or a League or Legends character, and Dad had to guess. The first one
Sam asked was: “Rheumatoid Arthritis”.
Pete
was waiting to make a u-turn somewhere in Tyson’s Corner after lunch, when Dad noticed this
rather sad looking shovel on the truck next to them at the light. They began
wondering how long it might take to fill up the dump truck with that rather
shallow shovel. Also, what force of nature is preventing it from sliding out
into traffic?
Pete
got some practice driving in Tyson’s Corner today when he went with Dad to
Smashburger for lunch. They got an Oreo shake that was 860 calories. Of course, the name of the place reminded them of Sam. There was
also a cool Walmart with parking and a cart return on the second level. There
was an escalator with a track in the center that brings your cart up to the
top. They will need to go back there sometime just to try that out. Pete returned to SmashBurger a few weeks later with Mom.
Pete
is going to be taking 14 mandatory hours of driving school. Dad gave him a pep
talk to help prepare him. “They’re going to tell you a bunch of garbage about
stopping for yellow lights and waiting until it is completely clear to merge.
Just do whatever they tell you, and then after you get your license you can
resume driving like the rest of us maniacs.” It turns out that Pete's driving instructor actually told him some pretty good stuff.
Dad
and Pete accidentally ended up at the same place yesterday without knowing it.
They were both at the “Leesburg Acoustic on the Green” concert. Dad arrived at
6:45 and got a nice spot right in the middle. Pete swung by the concert with
Jennifer around 8:00 for about 20-30 minutes. This was only discovered when Dad
and Pete were discussing it the next day at lunch. (Sam was at the mall that
evening, seeing a movie and having dinner with his friends.)
Pete
has been playing a lot of piano these past few weeks. Some of it has been from
his new book “The Giant Pop & Rock Piano Sheet Music Collection:
Piano/Vocal/Guitar”. He is getting pretty good. Tonight he was briefly heard
playing “Falling Slowly”, which was humorous to Dad and Sam, due to its
appearance on some recent episodes of “Last Man on Earth”.
Sam
took a shower this morning before camp. After the shower, he sits in the pictured
position for about 5 minutes before he is ready to get dressed and take on the
day. Pretty soon he will outgrow his custom hoodie towel that mom made for him.
Pete
is getting a lot of good driving practice this week, driving back and forth
with Mom or Dad to Manassas for his job at the Freedom Center. Here is an action shot of Pete driving on Route 28 in the rain:
Dad is also
enjoying having a human to eat lunch with, after picking Pete up. Then on the way home they stop off
at Dominion Trail to pick up Sam from the bus home from Summer in the Arts.
Dad
asked the boys to play a new game called “guess the battery level”. Sam’s phone was surprisingly
at 100%, even though not plugged in, Dad’s was 93% and Pete’s was 85%. Now it
was time to guess Mom’s. Dad guessed 44%, followed by Sam guessing 45%. After
hearing this, Pete guessed 46% which had Sam very annoyed, having essentially
lost the game at that point. He tried to get Dad to change his guess to 47%, but Dad did
not feel very honorable about doing that to Pete. Finally, the moment of truth arrived
and they asked Mom to check her phone. She called out “forty five percent”. Sam and
Dad went berserk. Sam had miraculously won after all. Mom must have been
wondering what all the fuss was about.
Sam
had fun at his first day of Summer in the Arts camp, once he realize the issue
with the incorrect schedule card that was provided to him. He knew a few people on his bus, including Moksh, Sarah, and Aubrey. As per tradition, he came home and complained about
not having the proper version of Photoshop. Pete also had a good first day of
work in Manassas.
For
Father’s Day, Dad wanted to take a family bike ride on the W&OD trail to Andolini’s
for lunch. Pete and Sam did not care to participate in this, so it was just Mom
and Dad. Later Dad selected Arby’s for his birthday dinner. Everyone agreed to
join him for this. It was not very crowded there at 8:30pm on a Sunday evening.
Dad handed out a matrix where everyone could vote on what they want to do
during the family week off in late July. The winner was pretty close between “Ropes
Course” and “Do Nothing / Stay at Home”. Sam and Dad ended up doing a Ropes Course with Boy Scouts, so the winning activity was changed to Escape Room (on the way home from the Philly trip). More details on this later.
Today
was the big Crawfish Boil on the street. Sam emerged in the late afternoon, and
was hanging out with the growing crew of kids in the evening. At one point, he
brought out his ukulele. He was in the middle of a circle of about 20 people
near Mason’s driveway. (Sorry, no picture.) Fortunately, Sam did not feel the need to keep any of the crawfish as pets this year.
Sam
decided not to go to the pool today; perhaps to give his sunburn a chance to
heal. Also maybe he is recovering from last night’s end-of-school party at Taylor’s house.
Dad
and Sam have been eating leftover pizza for lunch all week, from the pizza that
Pete somehow brought home from the last-day-of-school bonfire. (Pete has been
going out with his friends every day for lunch.) So goes the first week of
summer. Today Dad asked Sam if he wanted a slice of leftover pizza for lunch and Sam
said “not really”. So mark it down – the day that Sam turned down pizza for a meal.
The
first family game night in quite some time featured two card games. The first
was called Kabul. Pete explained the various rules and then everyone played a few practice
games. Mom did really well in the practice games, but then Dad won the regular
game. Sam would have won if Dad hadn’t received one especially timely bit of
help from Pete. This was the first of many Kabul games over the next few weeks. The second game was called “BS”. This game was a lot simpler,
and pretty fun too. Dad did not like it as much, since it involved some
“bluffing” when you didn’t have the necessary card. Dad is not a fan of bluffing.
Sam
and Pete received their school yearbooks last week. Sam’s official picture was in the 6th
grade section of the book. They also have the candid shots of various people in
and about school. Among the amusing things was that this section of the book featured more
pictures of Dad (1) than Sam (0). The picture of Dad was in the background of a
shot at the “Donuts with Dad” event.
Dad
went to Sam’s Troop meeting tonight, now that he is officially an Assistant
Scoutmaster. He noticed that Sam was rough-housing with a few other scouts just
prior to Kevin notifying Scoutmaster Roll (his Dad) that there was a hole
in the wall. Apparently, Kevin’s elbow had made contact with an un-reinforced
section of the wall. Stuart said to Dad, “I always knew the day would come when
we damaged this place, I just didn’t think it would be my own son.”
Today
was the day that Sam was supposed to go to the 21 Pilots concert with Sarah.
But Sarah went silent about 1-2 weeks ago, so nobody knows what happened. It
seems most likely that she decided to go to the concert with one of her boyfriends instead.
Sam made the best of it by going to the pool with Colin. Pete worked on his
original song about Lord of the Flies that he wrote for his final project.
After returning home from the Broad Run graduation at George Mason, he was
heard playing the guitar late into the night.
After
Pete’s haircut, Dad rode along with him to his American Inline training class.
After class, Pete drove with Mom and Dad through some back roads up to a party at
Jennifer’s new house in Waterford. Mom and Dad went to an outdoor concert in
Leesburg and then went to Windy City Red Hots and brought home Wendy’s for Sam
around 9:30pm. Sam had been reading some creepy original fiction on Reddit, so
he texted Mom and Dad a few times asking how soon they would be home.
Pete
did not need to go to Math class today, since they were taking a test that he
could skip due to having an A already for the semester. And he didn’t
particularly want to go to Theater class either. So Dad wrote him a tardy note
that he would be arriving at school at 12:10. Pete was at school, but not at
school at the same time. He spent some time with Christopher in Study Hall and
then sat out in the courtyard for a while. He took advantage of the time –
finishing his English paper, as well as the first Economics / Personal Finance
module for his summer class.
Sometimes
Pete disappears for a while with Jennifer. Above is a video that Dad found that
could explain some of it. Hopefully Pete did a good tick check when he got
home.
Dad
came to the realization yesterday that, despite only being 15, Pete is already beating him about half the time in Song Pop 2. This includes regularly beating Dad in categories such as 80s
and 90s music. Soon Dad may have to resort to choosing 50s and 60s music to get an
advantage. (Or Amy Winehouse.)
Today
Sam showed Dad that he had learned to play The Pink Panther on the saxophone.
Dad called grandpa and asked him to guess the song. Grandpa was at the checkout
line at WalMart (wiring some money) and had to go, but he emailed Dad later that he heard Sam play
it and knew that it was The Pink Panther.
As
you can see in the picture, Sam made a big change today. He replaced his chair
at the kitchen computer with one of the stools from the bar. Dad asked him
about it, and it seemed to be primarily an ergonometric decision. This is a
pretty significant move, since it is where he spends most of his time. More on this in a future post.
Sam
asked Mom if he could go to the pool “for an hour” with Colin before his Scout
meeting. Mom thought this meant “I will go to the pool and after exactly an
hour I will text Mom that I am ready to be picked up and then wait outside for
her to pull up so I can quickly get in the car and be home in plenty of time to
eat dinner before my Troop meeting.” As you may have gathered by now, that is
not exactly what Sam means when he asks if he can go to the pool for about an
hour.
Today
Sam enjoyed a quiet day at home, since Pete was off at another graduation party
(for Marietta) and Dad was downtown at his crossword puzzle tournament.
Pictured is Grandma’s Kia that she is not driving anymore. She was going to give it to
her neighbor, but Dad convinced her to sell it to Pete instead. Soon it will
be time for a family road trip up to Philly, driving up in one car and returning in two. There should be plenty of opportunities coming up, as Grandpa is
continuing his cancer treatments, which are starting to get more aggressive.
It’s
interesting how trends come and go. They usually involve a small investment, a
frenzy of activity, and then are not seen much again. Pete bought 3 NES controllers
during the "Kaizo Super Mario" craze, but now two of them sit unopened in their
container by the chair in the family room. Pete bought a special Rubiks cube
that he used a lot for a week or two. The most recent purchase was a $20 book
of rock songs for the piano. Pete has been playing a lot of piano over the last
2-3 weeks. It is nice to have music heard throughout the house. This too will
pass. Sam goes through his phases too. At the moment, he wants a $100 Gamecube
controller for playing Super Smash Bros. Meanwhile, a cache of Tech Decks and
Flick Trix gathers dust in a case in the playroom, near the nerf guns and spy
gear.
Sam
and Dad have a deal that if someone kills Dad and tries to impersonate him, Sam
will ask the "Dad" what his favorite word is. If he does not come up
with the word, then Sam will know it is an imposter. By the way, the word comes
from a French word.
