At Year's End

The last day of the year is here.  Tomorrow I pull off the Makoto Hasebe calendar off my wall.  

Despite the fact that it rarely if ever functioned as a calendar, it brought me a year supply of smiles.  Every time I looked at that "calendar" on my wall, I had to chuckle at the hilarity of a calendar that doesn't do much, at my impulsiveness to buy such a thing in the first place, at the fact that I still kept it on my wall.  

This year has kind of been that way.  I've made a lot of mistakes.  I've been foolish and impulsive.  Sometimes, I feel like I've done little to serve in the capacities to which I've been called.  However, I've learned from my mistakes and laughed a lot at myself in the process.  I've continued to do my best with what I've been given.  I've never given up.  

Thank you 2011.  

And I never thought I'd say it, but I think I'll miss having a non-functioning calendar on my wall.  

On to 2012.  

Waylaid

Sometimes the best laid plans go awry...

One of my sisters taught my niece how to fist bump.  It is the most adorable thing, with her little fist held out and her eyes looking at you expectantly.  And when she fist bumps one person in the room, she has to fist bump everyone.

Over the weekend, my brother-in-law tried to teach Baby how to fist bump her beloved Teddy bear.

Now it goes more like this:  Baby fist bumps someone and then pounds her teddy bear in the face a few times.

Verbal Awkwardness: Holiday Edition

In case I ever think that I'm starting to make headway in maneuvering in the world of speaking, something always comes back to remind me how verbally awkward I really am.

Scene 1: While my sister is out with my niece doing some Christmas shopping, I hear a knock on the door.  Assuming it's the mailman (or someone like that) I skip over to the door and open it to find some vaguely familiar person holding out some gifts.  She smiles, "For Anna and the baby."  I look out at her van in the driveway and dumbly nod.  She looks past me and waves to my mother who she knew from previous visits.  Still struck dumb, I just nod.  I don't invite her in.  I don't explain that my sister is out along with my niece.  Instead, I just stand there, awkwardly holding these gifts.  The woman waves again, wishes me a Merry Christmas and runs back to her car.  I walk back inside the house to find another sister laughing at me.  "Why didn't you say anything?  Why didn't you explain that Anna and the baby were out?"  I shake my head.  "I have no idea.  Should I go tell her now before she leaves?"  My sister laughs again, "Yes!  Go run outside and chase her down the street. 'Hold on!  I can explain everything!'"  I laughed back, half ready to do just that.  Instead, I just waited until my sister got home, explained the situation to her and told her to write a really nice thank-you note and apology for her sister.

Scene 2: While waiting to leave church yesterday, a woman walks up to me, "I just want to tell you that you look so much like my daughter that I thought she had driven all the way up here to surprise me at church."  I look at her, take a deep breath, and fight for words to say.  But what can I say?  Struck dumb, I just nod at her and try to look as optimistic as possible.  She smiles at me, still kind of hoping that I was her daughter.  I nod, hoping that her daughter was sitting somewhere else in the chapel.  After this awkward exchange, her other daughter jumps in to save me, "Mom, do you really think she drove all the way up here to sit with another family?"  The mom laughs and the family moves away.  I turn to see my family looking at me curiously.  My sister speaks up, "Why didn't you say anything?"  I look at her, "What could I say?  'I'm sorry your daughter is not here for Christmas?'"  She shrugs.  Is this another one of those moments when you run after them to explain your awkwardness?

I should start just wearing a shirt that reads: Verbally Awkward.  Please excuse.

My Niece the Adorable

Yesterday, I picked up niece up from her daycare in place of her mother.  It was the first time she has seen me in a while.  She just stared at me as I gathered her up, and her coat and took her out to my car.  She didn't mind being with me - in fact, she chose me to hold her over others at some points.  However, I wasn't sure that she knew which aunt I was.

Then, we had a moment alone.  Alexis looked up at me and put her hand on my mouth.  I looked at her confused, so she did the same thing to her own mouth.  And I recalled a funny little trick I had taught her over the summer - Yayaya.  I looked at her and laughed.  "You do remember me!"  She smiled and then giggled.

In the time since I last saw my niece, she has changed a lot.  She has new teeth, she no longer has a turning radius of five feet and "Baby" has almost completely left her vocabulary.  She also knows how to perform simple tasks, "Take this to your Mommy."  "Here, Baby, help me hold this."  "Make sure you hold my hand."  "Riley is trying to go outside - go get him!"  (For that one, I ran after her to find her trying to close the door to make sure her beloved cat did not run outside)  She also says, "Oof, oof!"  when she sees an animal that resembles a dog and can make the sign language sign to tell you that she's hungry.


Tonight, I pulled out my camera and she spent the evening taking pictures of herself.  After each photo, she would flip around the camera to look at the digital display of the picture.  "Who is that?"  I would ask.  "Mama," she always said back while pointing at her nose.  I laughed at her and she'd turn the camera around again and take more pictures of herself.  I tried to teach her to say, "I love you" tonight.  It ended up with her pointing at me and saying, "I, I, I"  I think nouns and formal names are not her forte.

Here are some selcas (self-portraits) of the baby.  She thought they were all masterpieces.

Idle Thoughts

A few thoughts I had while driving today:

<while listening to Hairspray, the movie soundtrack> The speed of sound?  At atmospheric conditions, that is 343 m/s.  But of course at lower temperatures, that would be much lower.  Next time I fly, I should find out the airplane's external temperature so I can figure out how fast the the airplane would need to travel in those conditions to be traveling at sonic speeds.

<while driving on extremely wet roads> I always assumed that speed limits were something designated by the engineers who designed the roads, accounting for a safety factor.  i.e. a speed limit of 65 mph would actually correlate to safe driving at speeds up to about 90 mph.  However, now that I think about it, I wonder why I ever assumed engineers had any say in this.  Isn't it lawmakers who set speed limits?  Do they understand/know the parameters the roads were designed for?

Nerd much?

Yes.

To be James...

This morning, over breakfast, I idly flipped through a calendar of upcoming events at the Kennedy Center in DC.  I happened upon the picture of James Gaffigan (shown below) who is scheduled to conduct the National Symphony Orchestra in a few months.  

I was surprised by how young he looked.  After breakfast, I did a little searching on this conductor and found the 32 year old studied a Julliard and has conducted for a number of orchestras all over the country.  That searching led me to his blog where his latest post told about his adventures in conducting the Vienna Philharmonic.  His tone was conversational - he seemed like a good friend sitting down to a cup of coffee with me, describing the rush of pulling together a piece of music at the last minute.  I understand that to some extent - as conductor of a ward choir, I am learning above all things how to be flexible.  However, I also have no concept of his life.  We're not talking about ward choir here; these are professional musicians who actually can pull off Boheme at the last minute.  I just stared at his blog post in shock.

You see, lately, I've realized, I don't often share much about my day-to-day life on my blog.  I don't write about the latest work in research.  I thought about trying to include more of the normal goings-on of my life.  When I think about what to write on a blog post, though, I often find myself grasping at straws.  What did I do today?  Ummm....

And yet, when this man goes to his computer, creates a new blogpost and asks himself the same question, the answer is something like, "I conducted professional musicians in Vienna."  I can't even imagine having those memories and images captured in the bank of my brain called, "my personal experiences".  It's baffling.

People like James Gaffigan actually lead lives like James Gaffigan.

This isn't jealous even though it may sound like it.  It's such sheer amazement.  As small and connected as this world sometimes seems, it still is so vast and diverse that one lifetime is not enough to even traverse the smallest fraction of it.

International Relations

Dear Bulgarian,

After my brief stint with you back in 2000, I never thought I'd use you again.  And yet, somehow in my very last assignment for my very last class EVER in my academic career, there I was, relying on my understanding of the Cyrillic alphabet to study and analyze an engineering paper in Russian.  I'm kind of looking forward now to seeing where/when Welsh will pop up.  Life continues to twist and turn ...

Love,
Me


Dear North Korea,

Your Dear Leader is dead.  It's so funny to realize where people stand on the issue by their reactions.  Some people wonder what this mean for Beijing.  Some people wonder what this means for Kim Jong Eun.  Some people simply wonder what this means.  I feel like I'm about to burst, anxious to understand what your future will hold.  Here's hoping for good things.

Love,
Me


Dear Eiji-san,

You've only been on your team for a year, you aren't even from Europe and you're already the team captain?  If that was not impressive enough, there's the fact that you bought season tickets in Frontale for underprivileged kids to attend games for free and you see nothing wrong with sleeping in on a Sunday.  For the record, if you're going to be teased about looking like a Pixar character, you have to admit: Buzz Lightyear is lightyears ahead of Mr. Potato Head on the 'attractive' scale.  

Love,
Me


Dear MH,

Your dirty, stinky cleats are worth more than I make in 3 months.  How does that even work?  I mean, soccer is soccer, but it's not exactly rocket science.  ;)  No, seriously, kid, all my love.  But would you please update something about your life other than the already well-documented TV spots on you?  I'm starting to think you actually enjoy having your face blown up and plastered on people's walls under the ruse of being a calendar.

Love,
Me

** edit.  Dear Hasebe-san, looking at you arrival in Narita, I realized how exhausted you must be.  Go home and rest up.  Love, Me.


Dear Julian,

Thanks for making me realize how much I miss Germany all over again.  Even if I can't express my love in words, I promise it's there.  Germany is special.

Love,
Me