Visiting Virginia

We finally made it to Virginia to visit cousin Tony. The boys went for a swim in the pool soon after we got here, and I tried to rest for awhile. The pool looked fun and and probably would have been more relaxing than my attempted nap.

We had a very long day and an absolutely awful drive down here. The trouble started at 7am when we intended to get on the road. My car was on the street where it had been parked for a couple days (I walk to work). As I approached the car I noticed the key remote was not working, so I just did it the old fashioned way and manually unlocked the door.

I stepped into the car, put the key in the ignition and turned it. Nothing! Not even the smallest hint of a click. What happened? I was immediately struck with anxiety about canceling our trip, since I didn’t want to spend six hours in Brian’s car. After a deep breath and some thought, I figured a light or something was left on and drained the battery over the 48 hours since the car was last used.

I got Brian’s car and moved it into position for a jump. With the cables hooked up and Brian’s car running for a few minutes I then attempted to start mine. The engine turned over and started. Then the car alarm goes off! I wasn’t even aware I had a car alarm! Did I mention it was 7am? Did I mention anxiety before?

I bought this car used and didn’t know it had a security system, or how to turn the darn thing off. I frantically searched the controls for any hint of how to turn it off. I guess an off switch on the dash would defeat the purpose of the alarm. After a couple of minutes it went off by itself.

So then, figuring it was safe to go unhook the cables, I exit the car. The alarm starts blaring again! I’m sure by now the entire block is awake and cursing. Grabbing the manual out of the glove compartment, I start skimming for any information on the alarm. Apparently with no power to the security system it had not registered the key being used to get in. All I had to do was use the key to lock and re-unlock the car to reset the alarm. It worked!

We got going a little while later and the trip down through upstate New York and to about mid New Jersey was pretty uneventful. Then we ran into heavy traffic. The heavy traffic lasted all the way through to the DC Beltway. It took us two hours longer to arrive than planned.

We should have taken the train. It would have been the greener choice and much less stressful. It probably would have taken less time and the cost not much more than the cost of gas for the trip.

Tomorrow we’re off to Kings Dominion, an amusement park here in Virginia.

Breakfast with a Friend

This past Sunday morning we had breakfast with Eliot and his mom. Eliot and Darius are best friends at the Montessori school they attend. It was a fun morning and very enjoyable to have breakfast with friends. Darius has been missing Eliot over the summer and has been anticipating the start of school so he can see his friend again. We saw them once or twice over the summer but not as much as the boys would have liked.

They played with toys and chatted together, and ate a lot. We enjoyed having an adult conversation while the boys interacted, a rare occurrence for us. Usually, when just the three of us go out to a meal we have to entertain him.

School starts next week and Darius will be a third year student in the primary class. This is the same as Kindergarten in a more traditional school. Students stay in the same class with the same teacher for three years. The primary class is 3, 4 and 5 year old kids, then they move up to the next level up for three years.

This weekend we’re off to the Washington DC area, actually a suburb in Virginia to visit one of Brian’s cousins. I’m not sure if we’re going into DC, or we may go to an amusement park in Virginia. It’s going to be a long drive and a nice end to our summer.

Help Defeat Arkansas Ban on Gay Adoption

This fall, voters in the state of Arkansas may vote on a ballot initiative to prohibit gay men and lesbians from fostering or adopting children. The ballot measure was proposed by a conservative group called the Arkansas Family Council Action Committee, which collected enough signatures to have the measure placed on the ballot this fall. The proposal will ban all unmarried couples that live together from adopting or fostering children. The state of Arkansas prohibits same-sex marriage and does not recognize same-sex marriages performed where they are legal.

A group called Arkansas Families First is challenging the ballot initiative in court. They will be reviewing the petition signatures submitted by the Arkansas Family Council Action Committee for any that are not valid. Here is an excerpt from the Arkansas Families First website on why they are fighting this ballot measure.

 What We Believe

• We oppose this initiative because it works against the best interests of children who need loving homes. We can all agree that children should be placed in loving permanent homes where they can be nurtured and raised in an encouraging environment. We ought to be making that easier, not harder, to do.
• We believe that child welfare experts, who know what is in the best interests of children, should decide on a case-by-case basis who should be a foster or adoptive parent. We oppose a blanket rule that bans otherwise qualified people from being foster or adoptive parents.
• Arkansans should not deny loving homes to the children who need them most.

We adopted our son from foster care and believe it was a good choice for us. The process was a little bumpy at first, even here in New York, but we wouldn’t change it for the world.  There are thousands of children in foster care around the country waiting for loving homes to adopt them. Limiting the number of loving families that want to foster or adopt really shouldn’t even be considered. It will leave that many more children without permanency in their lives.

Arkansas Families First is in need of donations to help them in this fight. They have a Pay Pal link on their website where you can make a donation.  We have just made a contribution of $25.00. Can you help too?

Atmospheric Research Guy

On Whiteface Mountain

Here is Brian at the research field station on Whiteface Mountain in the Adirondack Mountains. He has been traveling up there once or twice a week for part of the summer to do field research. His work is researching air pollution and specifically he works on characterizing nano size particles. I guess they monitor air quality at that elevation.

He was up there the day of the infamous basement flood. I tried to text message him several times about the mess in the basement, but apparently there was no cell reception there.  As he was driving back toward Albany and his cell reception returned, he got a series of text messages from me that must have sounded a little frantic.

I grew up in the north country and have relatives spread around the Adirondack Mountains. I fondly remember going to Whiteface Mt. many times as a child.  There is a ski resort there used in the Lake Placid Olympics, but I most remember it as the mountain that you could drive up very close to the top.  Then after parking your car you entered a long tunnel in the mountain where you came to an elevator that took you to the top of the mountain in the middle of a gift shop.

The other neat memory of that area is a little village near the base of the mountain with the name North Pole, NY.  There is a little tourist theme park there called Santa’s Workshop that my family went to frequently. In the middle of this theme park is a frozen pole of ice that stays frozen even in the summer. I think it would be a great trip for us to take Darius on some day.

Welcome to Book Dads

We all know it’s a mom’s world out there.  Our son has two dads, so when he first joined our family we were concerned that he wouldn’t have enough women in his life.  Instead, we found ourselves surrounded by women - at school, on the playground, and elsewhere - and found the world of parenting dominated by “mommy culture”.  Suddenly, we were dads in a mom’s world, whether looking for masculine diaper bags or searching for parenting advice that wasn’t directed exclusively to mothers.

Gay, Green and Geek

Time Out

Papa & Darius

I’ve mentioned before that both my partner and I are scientists, but did I also tell you we were big science fiction fans? Not only that, we first met just over 17 years ago at a science fiction convention for GLBT fans called Gaylaxicon. Gay, Green and Geek or GGG as Dan Savage would say.

This past Saturday we went to a meeting of The Alternate Universe. This is our local club for gay fans of SF. My friend Joe and I started this group in 1987, I was 27 years old at the time. There is a core group of about 12 people, many of them have been around for much of that time.

The meeting on Saturday was an annual pool party that we have at one members house. Here are a couple photos taken with my phone at the meeting. Darius is sitting off by himself in the grass for a “timeout”. Stuff happens!

Guard of the Cemetery

Red-tailed Hawk guarding cemetery

Recently Darius has been asking many questions about death and what happens when people die. These are big questions that I was not expecting or prepared for. Go ahead, ask me about where babies come from, sex, race, adoption, or how we are different from other families. I have already given those discussions some thought.

One day in the car I pointed out some cemeteries that we passed and talked about how people who had died were buried there. He asked if we could visit one and read the names on the headstones. I promised we would do that someday.

Yesterday Brian took Darius to lunch with a friend while I went “back to school” shopping. Apparently they decided to stop and visit a cemetery afterwards and wander around reading names and dates. It didn’t take long however for a certain five year old to exclaim, “This is boring! There’s nothing to play with”. The one thing he was most excited to tell me about was the Red-tailed Hawk that swooped by them very close as they walked. You can just see the hawk in the picture here on the top of a monument.

The Green Parent: A Kid Friendly Guide to Eco Friendly Living

We like to think of ourselves as Green Dads in many ways.  Are we living a sustainable lifestyle? Do we practice green living and working? How do we fall short? How do we convey green values to our child?

I was thinking about ideas for posting about green parenting when I got up this morning and happened upon this site called, The Green Parent: A Kid Friendly Guide to Eco Friendly Living.

This particular post is from a year ago and titled “Why go Green?”, and it discusses a list of items the author Jenn Savedge sees as her reasons for going green and for green parenting. Here in reason #5 she touches on exactly my thoughts on the importance of green parenting.

No matter how hard I try to teach my children to do the right thing, they will inevitably learn from what I do rather than what I say. If I show my children that I care about the environment by making environmentally-friendly choices, they will (hopefully) follow my lead. Raising children who understand their connection to the environment is one of the most eco-friendly impacts you can make.

It’s an interesting site and I’m looking forward to reading it some more.

Basement Flood

Over a foot deep.

Yesterday afternoon there was extremely heavy rain here.  I was on my way to pick up Darius at camp and also run some errands when the rain started. On our way home I saw stopped traffic on our usual route, so I took another street. On that route I ran into a blocked street, the water was two or three feet deep and there was water shooting out of a storm drain several feet into the air like a geyser.  When we finally got home we found over a foot of water in the basement.

We have had some water in the basement before, but never like this.  Several months ago we had a back flow valve put in the sewer line, but the water keeps coming. The entire neighborhood seems to drain down onto our property.

Today Brian and I took some time off from work and began trying to clean this mess up. We have to throw a lot of stuff out. Brian lost his comic book collection.  We had packed many things into plastic bins but the bins just floated up in the water and tipped over.

We’re both really bummed out right now and sick of homeowning.  We sold our old home because we couldn’t keep up with its old house maintenance issues.  One of our hopes when we moved to this one was that we would have fewer projects and problems because it was newer. We just don’t have the home improvement gene. Unfortunately we could not sell this house now with out taking a big loss.

Family Week 2005: Three years ago.

And just to continue our little trip down memory lane, here are photos of our very first Family Week trip. Darius was two years old.

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