YONDER BREAKS

The other day my Dad sent me a picture of my future step-brother-in-law's college graduation. We went to the same school , but I missed my ceremony because I was driving back from my last semester at the Los Angeles Film Studies Center . I didn't really get too involved in my college, having gone to another one my freshman year and also being a commuter, so I didn't feel terribly connected to the school. However, seeing the picture made me ask myself, Did I regret anything about my college experience? Would I have done something differently? I think regret can be a dangerous thing. I remember having a friend in high school tell me he never regretted a single decision he made. How he could go through life not wanting to do  anything  differently? Even at this young age, I felt I would have liked to have done some things over again. It has taken several years, but I am only recently understanding the wisdom in his statement. Still, I reflected for a moment, and couldn...

I used to say that often -- "You can sleep when you're dead." It was my "carpe diem" of sorts. I had just graduated college and came through a pretty rough summer with no job and only a couple friends in town. Towards the end I made some new ones and got a job (Blockbuster Video, every 2008 graduate's dream job), and as late night freedom came about, I adopted the saying as my own. Now, ten years later with two kids in my life, "You can sleep when you're dead" has taken on new meaning. Lately, I'm thinking I won't be able to sleep until  I'm dead... If you read this blog, you know I've written often about the struggles of maintaining any  kind of sleep schedule with young children. Of course the hope is that, as they get older, they'll sleep more. I'm finding this is only partly true. They sleep pretty well most nights, but I sure don't. In fact, I think I'm only averaging about one night a week of uninterru...

Growing up, my favorite band was Five Iron Frenzy . Their EP, Quantity is Job 1 was one of the first albums I ever bought, and still is one of my favorites, especially from FIF. Never heard of them, you say? Congratulations -- you're normal! Five Iron Frenzy, along with the O.C. Supertones , the Insyderz , Bunch of Believers (B.O.B.), The Dingees and a few others were part of the 90s ska movement, but on the Christian record labels. Back then, Christian music is all I listened to, and so these guys were some of my favorites. Later on, my good friend Korey introduced me to all the secular punk and ska I had missed during that time period -- Goldfinger, Lagwagon, Save Ferris , Rancid, and others -- and though I was a late-bloomer, it's all good stuff. Well, a couple weekends ago, Korey and I were lucky enough to attend the Back to the Beach Festival, which featured so many of the bands from that era, a modest $65 ticket felt a little like stealing. I love music festival...

Today, Waverly was playing with puzzles. I mentioned earlier she is gaining an affinity for them, and I'm happy to say that, several months later, she is becoming quite good. (There's a proud father moment for you.) Anyway, today she pulled out a Minnie Mouse puzzle and started at it, but only with a few pieces out of the bag. "Daddy, I need help!" she kept saying, trying to force together the three pieces she had pulled out. "You need to dump all the pieces," I said more than once, which she promptly ignored...more than once. And again , as in other seemingly mundane instances of fatherhood, something profound was illustrated before me. She couldn't make the puzzle work without all the pieces, and certainly not with only a few. Of course she couldn't! Now imagine those pieces are excerpts of knowledge and experience -- maturity. How many of you, in your youth, said or did things you regret, having acted dogmatically on principles you t...

Lately I've been scared to go street skating. It's mostly because of my age -- ramps don't hurt my knees as much as ledges and stairs do -- but also because of ability. Any skater will tell you he or she dreams of tricks at spots all the time. In fact, if you see a skater gazing longingly out the car window as you drive, it's probably because he or she noticed a good skate spot and is thinking of what he or she would want to do there. (That's a lot of "he or she," huh? I had a tough English teacher in college, so you'll like my grammar or deal with it!) I was walking to a kid's birthday party with my family (talk about a Dad move...kids' birthday parties have dominated our lives lately), and noticed this great ledge-to-gap in front of an apartment building. But finding the time to get there and skate it was tough, and so I was left only to my dreams. Manuals to gap, flip tricks and combinations of the two floated through my head like the clou...