The boy is notorious at not doing his part of cleaning up. One Sunday, the girl figured out a hack, enticing him to help. They took videos of each other cleaning up — and played it backwards on the iPad to great hilarity. Viola! A clean playroom!
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Our daughter had jaundice that kept us in the hospital an extra night after her birth.
Late into that third night, I walked around the ward in a sleep deprived haze. I suddenly realized that my parents were just making shit up as they went. I also realized that this was now my fate for the coming decades.
Maybe some parents know the answers; do they figure it out after the 3rd or fourth kid?
But I ain’t got no epiphany to share after almost ten years in this parenting game.
I’d love to think that I might have something to do with raising them right. But I suspect that our main job is to avoid traumatizing them and to avoid spoiling them. And to share cool stuff along the way.
Between those two wide bounds with that fuzzy directive, I wonder if we actually exert all that much influence over our kids.
Who knows, I’ve been making shit up all along the way.
We have limited screen time for the kids, and they have been spending it slowly working through all the free episodes on Pokemon TV. I’m very close to canceling our Disney+ subscription, but here are some goodies from the past few few months.
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Elementals, Peter Sohn, 2023
Another forgettable Pixar movie. Two months after watching it with the kids, I remember almost nothing from the film.
But the visuals are cool.
All I remember are everyone else’s opinions — the overblown negative commentary when it came out, the reaction that it’s actually good, and my kids enjoyment.
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Spirited Away, Hayao Miyazaki, 2001
The train scene is one of my favorite moments in film. Beautiful, slow paced, fully earned.
My personal preference still lies with Isao Takahata (My Neighbors the Yamadas and Pom Poko) and Whisper of the Heart (Yomshifumi Kondo, 1995), but this movie is the Ghibli masterpiece. So good that Mama and I talked about watching movies together as a family more often.
Over the years, I had developed a silly notion that Spirited Away is ponderous. It is slower than blame western animation’s junk food freneticism, but it earns every minute. Each frame is gorgeous and no time is wasted. It’s paced perfectly.
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The Nightmare Before Christmas, Henry Selick, Tim Burton, Danny Elfman, 1993
Watched it again for Halloween, I suspect this will be a annual tradition.
Last year, I suddenly noticed Mr. Burton’s cuddly spookiness everywhere. I wonder what it feels like to be an artist who has visually conquered a holiday.
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Mickey’s Christmas Carol, Burney Mattinson, 1983
As I remembered it from growing up. Fun like The Muppet’s Christmas Carol, but shorter. But we haven’t found our Christmas movie yet.
The boy kept counting how many ghosts were in the movie.
But as a compliant citizen of these United States, I’ve embargoed this painstaking painful rendering from public consumption until 12:01 AM, Pacific Standard Time.
If you want to see a fun video on the subject, check out Jake’s analysis on the Corridor Crew.
To get political for a moment (before things get really political this year), I can’t help but rue the opportunity cost of coddling Disney over the past four decades. We can’t see what didn’t happen, but I suspect that our artistic cultural malaise is partly due to giving mega-corps an extended monopoly to milk their cultural content when they should have been inventing new properties (like a Chibi Mannequin) to opiate the masses.
Then again, if I’ve learned anything from foreign cinema, the machine always wins. <Insert commentary on late stage capitalism and neo-liberalism>
Oh well, AI will solve all our problems.
Prompt: Mickey Mouse as Steamboat Willie with a Fu Manchu moustache to hide mistaken shading during the initial drawing. Style to be fountain pen with purple ink on a lined notebook. Add handwritten calligraphy to celebrate the New Year in Gothic blackletter and label the drawing with cramped Uncial.
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(The kids thought the first drawing’s head was a bit small so I gave the people what they wanted)
I’m trying a new format where I just comment on things with three bullet points. Hopefully it will help me blow through the backlog of old blog drafts. Thought I’d try it out by looking at the year in review and the year to come.
My theme this year was “catching up”. I feel like I did just OK with the theme, but the more that I think about it, it was an eventful year as we started re-integrated back into society despite our pandemic caution.
Highlights
Buying a House
Visiting San Diego (twice!)
Two great architects joined the Division
Hobbies
Reading — Homer and Tarot
Substack — finding fellow wanderers on Notes
Fountain Pens — Sketching and Calligraphy
Lowlights
Getting the house ready for move-in, renovations are still miserable.
Didn’t exercise nor eat well enough, gained weight.
Distractions, unfocused focused, especially the second half of this year.
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a year a life goodbye tomorrow smiles and sorrow hello
When calligraphing, I have to be completely focused. This morning I chose John Coltrane’s Giant Steps instead of the usual Chicken and Dumplin’s by Bobby Timmons. That slight change was enough to add an extra O to the page. Fortunately, the early mistake kept me ultra-concentrated for the rest of the exercise.
It’s been twenty years since hand drafting at the ground floor of Ron Bogley’s house. Small residential doesn’t pay well, but it was the most fun I’ve had as an architect. Graphite on vellum is a lot more forgiving so I would listen to the baseball games as I lettered.
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2024
My theme for next year is “settling in”. For the new house and everywhere else. The first half of the year will be a mess between the house and the biennial cycle for my government job. Hopefully the second half will be a time of customizing the home to fit our needs, it’s been a decade of always thinking we’re moving soon.
Settling In
At the new House
Returning to the Office (again)
Digital Places and Processes
Practices
Sketching and Calligraphy
Exercising
Reading my repeating “little library” and pushing forward on the classics
Tiny Targets (and goals)
Three deep breaths on a yoga mat every morning. (I’d love to do the 8 Brocades three times a week, but I’ll start tiny.)
Sit down and say a small mantra before eating anything, including snacks. (The big goal is to lose a couple of pounds a month, but the numerical goal failed spectacularly last year. Maybe instilling a mindfulness practice is the first step in the process.)
Do something with a pen every morning (It would be nice to finish my OPM Letters and clear out my pile of read books to be blogged.)
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new book new year new month new week new day Foundational Hand new font
I wrote this on 12/26 with a new-to-me font from The Art of Calligraphy by David Harris. I messed up the word order on the last line (working from bottom up) and kept it for the rest of the poem. But it sounds wrong so I went back to the original wording in the light blue scribbles.
I’m not sure if I will stick with Foundational Hand for a long period (as I did with Uncial) but I’ll give it at least a week before exploring other fonts.
This morning habit of writing a tiny poem for calligraphy practice has a highlight of this season to close out the year. Thanks to Beth Kempton and Nadia Gerassimenko for catalyzing the #tinypoem project! I just got Mary Oliver’s A Poetry Handbook — hopefully her wisdom will help me write gooder before I start publishing them in earnest.
Instead of the usual everyday magic, here is the holiday card that I posted onto Facebook for my friends.
For the past two years, I’ve been hassling the family to take a hike in the hills above our house. Once you get up the slope, it’s an easy jaunt down the old mining road.
About a half a mile in, you come across the foundation of an old building. I have no idea about its original purpose, but it’s now a canvas for graffiti artists and a delight for the occasional wanderer.
The kids jumped around this colorful place as the sun set behind our heads, bathing the Las Vegas strip with a golden orange aura.
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While cleaning up our PC desktop, I found a photo from our visit to Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego at La Jolla last March.
This was quite the treat because Vegas regrettably is short on art museums.
It wasn’t easy to wrangle two young kids around high priced pieces of art; the guards were not amused. But after years of not seeing high art, it was so totally worth it.
With a location a block away from the Pacific ocean, this museum was magic for sure, though hardly “everyday”.
Here’s to finding magic throughout the new year!
A five year old dangerously close to a Peter Alexander sculpture
Sixteen years ago, I was trapped in the studio over Christmas because the master’s thesis was presented in early January. During a sleep deprived break, I slammed together a silly holiday email to friends and family.
That started a personal tradition of sending a physical postcard at the end of every year. After the kids arrived, I went digital with three cards — for work, family, and social media.
Each December, I comb through our photos and clean up my contacts. It’s a great way to re-live the year and still a lot faster than handwritten postcards.
Please enjoy this selected history from my post graduate life (minus the family mugshots!)
2024
New job with the airport, so I’m starting with an establishing shot. As part of Planning, I doubt there will be many jobsite photos, and even then I would be concerned about security clearances. I suspect future photos will be interesting details found around the public areas of this small city.
2023
After the completing the building, we discovered that it did not have enough safety factor for the fire sprinkler system water pressure. We spent half a million dollars replacing the backflow prevention devices with low pressure loss units. It was an incredible headache, but the team worked hard together, and it could have been much worse.
2022
The stucco exterior wall of an building for mental health services. This was originally built as an outdoor stage. It’s now a mechanical room and the seating area has been fenced-in as a yard for the chiller. One of the highlights of 2023 was when the architect on this project joined our division.I’ve been blessed to work with great people.Same photo with a giant holiday greeting in the sky. We decided to play it safe. As a government worker, it’s prudent to be slightly boring.
2021
A partially ground concrete slab where the polishing was stopped where the future carpet finish would be installed.The transparency glitched as I was picking the font, inspiring a this frenetic postcard with lots of words and some strange bars on the sides. As with 2022, we stuck with the moderately stale option for final distribution.
2020
A construction photo of the central stairs at the new Education Building at Nevada State College. During the pandemic, I would visit the jobsite on my own on Sundays. It was a meditative activity.
2019
An odd clerestory (without windows) in an administrative building for a agency serving disabled clients. I have no clue what the original architect was trying to do, but the best perk of being an architect is discovering into oddball conditions like this.
2018
A pit toilet at Valley of Fire State Park foregrounded by red desert sands and scrubby bushes. This photo has been the wallpaper on my work phone ever since. It was so hot that the Ranger’s station had a giant sign warning against hiking in the park.
2017
A flash of lights from the Cactus Garden Christmas display at the Ethel M Chocolate Factory in Henderson. At the time you could just walk up and meander. They now charge for entry and it takes an hour to get in.
2016
Looking up at the ceiling and the queue monitor at the Clark County Building Department. Now, everything is submitted digitally and the building is a ghost town.
2015
Blurred lights inside a bus. The readable neon is written in English, but it was taken in China. I pray for peace between these two superpowers. A few leaders will “win” while the rest of the us suffer greatly. I’d almost feel sorry for ourselves, but then I remember we still have the great privilege of being inside the empire instead of being among those outside looking in.
2013
Our loaded truck for moving out to Las Vegas. The compartment is only half filled because this was the smallest truck that could tow our car.
2012
Two rabbits chilling underneath a coffee table, Peppercorn is splayed out on the floor while Badger is washing his white face.
2011
The dining area after the bookshelf had an unfortunate reckoning with gravity. The homemade shelving system was based on something my dad used years ago in from a Sunset book, but Ikea is too cheap to beat now.
2007
An eye-bleeding page with horrific fonts married to diagrams and preliminary renderings from my master’s thesis project. I’m awful at graphic design, but I have fun making bad graphics.
And with this, I am finally, fully done with “work-work” for the year! What am I going to do with myself next week (and how shall I survive the tsunami of delayed tasks in 2024)?
I don’t believe in Baby Jesus no more so I Christmas all the Harder
I grew up conservative Christian. And Asian-American. My parents left Hong Kong and Taiwan and met here in the States. With the clarity of immigrants, they sensed that Christmas was a frivolous, secular holiday.
When my sister and I were teens, they gave in. We started exchanging small gifts. My mom added small decorations around to the house but never bothered with a tree.
We still drove down to LA from the Bay Area on Christmas because traffic was lighter. We’d eat at my grandparent’s favorite dim sum place in Monterey Park. (My aunt suspected that they liked that spot because the tea was brewed extra strong.)
We didn’t buck the holiday, but we never gave it religious significance. For a real Christian, every day is Christmas and Easter. Picking out holy-days still feels kind of pagan.
I drifted away when I grew up. It didn’t do much for me emotionally, and I finally bailed when George W. Bush co-opted the religious establishment to support his optional war. Even so, I always planned on taking my kids to church on Christmas, so they could feel the religious origins of this season.
That notion died with the election of the Trump. My wife (never religious) was so disgusted with white evangelicals that she didn’t want our kids anywhere near such cruel hypocrites nor be tempted by the pomp and circumstance of their celebration.
Instead, every year I put up a plastic tree from Ikea on Thanksgiving, buy a few toys, wrap the last six months of library book sale finds in old architectural printouts, watch a Christmas movie, and clean everything up on New Year’s Day.
Last year ago, I told my daughter the myth of Jesus. It blew her mind. I might as well have grown a third head (or narrated the nsfw story of Lot and his daughters).
An all-powerful deity came down to this filthy planet to be born in horse shit, grow up as a carpenter, start a small cult as a wandering sage, only to be executed in excruciating fashion. All to pay the blood penalty for the evil committed by his own shithead creatures.
So here I am, suddenly marveling at the magic of Christmas. Say what you will about the religion, that’s an awesome story.
A month later, I had to get better paper. Cheap steno pads are great for work, but they don’t show inks at their finest.
Hedonic treadmill!
Rhodia paper is great (as advertised!) Love the smooth buttery slide. The colors pop. They shade.
Every morning I’d draw a hand in this book. (Whoa! Minus ten pages of doodles, that means I have about a hundred fifty hands in here!)
I barely used the dots. If given a choice I’d go blank. (Then again, it was nice to have guides for the few times I played with calligraphy.)
Absolutely love the square. I don’t have to compose a sketch for the rectangle. 1:1 simplifies the mind before pen strikes paper.
But I’m not tossing out the other sketchbooks. I’m far too cheap to abandon unused paper.
In the meantime, I hope Rhodia keeps making these Reverse Books. (I’ll be back.)
It’s been a good year for my hand. With the new fountain pen habit, I’ve started a morning journal / sketching / calligraphy practice. And worked through several small notebooks (random product show gifts) at the dinner table. I’m slowly getting over my old hangups about sketching.
Much as I hate to admit it, social media+consumerism sometimes hits the spot.
Postscript — I restarted my Blick 5.5″ x8.5″ sketchbook with this note:
Christmas 2023 Restarting a new-old notebook & drying up old pens. I wonder what will show up on these pages? What will be discerned in manipulating pen & ink on paper — privileges unthinkable to our ancestors of previous generations. When paper was a fucking trade secret. In a fraught time — we still owe the world our art. To much has been given — lets return this gift to the present (and maybe the future too.)
The Sunday after Thanksgiving, we went to the park to so they could ride their bikes. He proudly said knew how to ride a bike. I said, not really — I had taken the training wheels off his bike. He was unhappy about the change but made a go at it. Not perfect and couldn’t keep it up for a sustained period…but he did it!
In the month since, his skill has jumped with each trip to the park. He needs to learn how to brake, but it’s remarkable how quickly they pick things up!
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I finished grad school in time to get slammed by the Great Recession. I avoided being laid off but dropped to 30 hours a week. I spent some of those extra 10 hours as regular at Cafe Brasil.
When things picked up, I still showed up on Friday mornings to sip an espresso before heading out to the office. I’d ponder the week that was almost complete and consider the coming weekend.
Normally these sessions wouldn’t result in any insight. I’d often just chat with another regular. But occasionally something would pop up. Once in a blue moon the “brilliant” idea might surprisingly turn out to actionable.
Unfortunately, adulting means outgrowing a loving parent who can disappear training wheels at the right moment. A distant second best may be regular semi-contemplative practice to reset the mind.
A few nights ago, kids brought Mommy Bear, Daddy Bear, and Adventure for my bedtime. They also gave me an old sweater to dress Daddy Bear. I put it on him this morning, brought in Bear Bear and took a family portrait.
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This post is an example of why I am such a huge proponent of sharing your work online, again and again over time.
Can you see it? (Clue: I’ll keep original formatting on the previous alphabet.)
As I was setting this post up for this next round of images, I accidentally hit a comma instead of a period.
Of course! I always wanted an non-intrusive spacer, and what’s smaller than a period? But a period is a touch too insubstantial and carries weight as an ending. A comma is a tad bigger and actually means “pause”.
It took me six posts to figure this out….or sixty-one posts including my OPM letters, which used a ~ tilde. I could have never thought this up in the abstract.
A digital space of your own gives you the space to grow. It lets you experiment one step at a time. Just start! With something imperfect! Now!
And one day, the gods may grant you a flash of insight, possibly the perfect typo at the right time. But you gotta show up, again and again.
