When I started talking about getting a ‘sporty’ car a few years back, I saw it as the final realization of a dream that started when I was about fifteen. My first two car choices were driven primarily by a severe income shortage. The 70′ VW Beetle that was given to me with only 220,000 gentle miles on it and the ’93 Civic VX hatchback which was the first car I actually bought.

These days when I think back to ’93 it’s usually to recall the year in which I met Julie. We got married a year later, started talking about having kids, and rather suddenly I found myself driving an ’00 Honda Odyssey. Now there’s nothing at all wrong with the Odyssey. I still think it’s the greatest minivan on the planet and when I bought it I was very much taken with the idea of carting the family around in a big comfy boat van.

As the kids grew up and started calling it “Daddy’s car” to differentiate it from the Prius which was of course “Mommy’s car” I started to think that perhaps it would be fun to get something a little smaller and more responsive. I missed driving a manual transmission and feeling a connection with the pavement.

Which takes us back to the quest for a ‘sporty’ car and several years of trying to reconcile my new, family-oriented life with my nearly twenty year old lust for something fast and entirely irresponsible. I have read reviews, stared at specs, and created massive spreadsheets. It turns out the main problem I had wasn’t picking a car, it was picking an acceptable level of practicality. All the cars I wanted in my teens were two-seaters or 2+2 at best. Given the realities of picking up the kids after work every day, these cars would end up sitting in the driveway while I slogged around town in the minivan M-F. Then there were the times I swung the other direction and convinced myself that I really didn’t need much ‘sport’ in my sports car to be happy.

K: Well, I’ve picked my new car.
J: Again?
K: Yep. Civic Si Sedan.
J: A Civic?
K: No no, it’s fine, it’s a 5-seater. They’re bigger than they used to be.
J: A Civic?
K: It’s the Si…
J: Your mid-life crisis car will NOT be a Civic.

Well, I’m definitely too old to be having a quarter-life crisis so lets call this a one-third-life crisis. Whatever. I’m fortunate to have a wife who absolutely refuses to back down when she knows I’m being a stupid-head, so she forcibly kept me away from Honda dealerships until I found something better.

Yesterday she bought it for me.

Seats five. 6-speed manual transmission.
Five doors. 1/4 mile in low 14s @101mph.
Room for groceries. Turbocharged 2.3L DFI.
Nice smooth ride. 18″ alloys on multi-link suspension.
Did I mention the five seats? Limited slip differential.
$21,800. 263hp and 280ft*lbs of torque.

When Alex first saw it yesterday he said “Yeah! Daddy got his race car!” and when I picked Ana up from the babysitter today she ran out into the driveway, hugged my car (!) and jumped into her car seat.

Categories: kids and parenting, shopping, toys
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Today all the news outlets were running silly little summaries of a new Pew Center report called One in 100 that addresses the prison population in the US. The report itself is well worth a read as it’s very well written and there are excellent graphics and charts throughout. The (currently popular) outrage over civil rights abuses in China is put in some context by the knowledge that there are 50% more people incarcerated in the US, despite China’s vastly larger population. One in 100 US adults is behind bars, one in fifteen black men.

Oh wait, did I mention that California spent $8.8 billion last year on corrections? Texas took a distant number two in that regard at $3.3 billion. Governor Schwarzenegger wants us to spend $10.3bn in 2008 according to his January budget Proposal. For those who’ve been following the news, this is the same budget proposal where he suggested that it would be a good idea to cut $4bn from education. I can’t imagine a better recipe for disaster.

I’ve read reams of literature on the increased effectiveness (not to mention vastly lower cost) of community-based reform for non-violent criminals. 48.4% of our prison population is incarcerated for non-violent offenses. There’s something terribly wrong with these statistics and nobody is doing anything about it.

Categories: politics
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A lot of people at work brought up Valentine’s Day this week. When they asked what I was planning I told them that we already had our Valentine’s Day outing last Sunday. Some people seemed to think that celebrating V-day at the opera was a perfectly appropriate thing, but others didn’t seem to get the concept. I know art in general and opera specifically is not for everyone but how could lovers not be touched by great singers, a fabulous orchestra, and luscious set-design telling a timeless story of tragic love? On top of all that, the audience was much younger than I expected. There were loads of twenty-something college students and hipster couples in attendance challenging any assumptions about the appeal of opera to the younger generation.

When I was getting blank stares at this point I segued briefly into the more material gifts like the lovely Merkur double-edge safety razor, badger hair brush and shave soap Julie got me.

It’s hard to believe that from roughly the turn of the century until 1971 everyone used these razors and now there’s not a single US manufacturer. It’s too bad, because all the marketing and downstream revenue lock-in is costing everyone the chance to enjoy a closer, more comfortable, cheaper, and more environmentally friendly shave.

Today Alex came home with a Valentine’s Day magnetic dart set given by a classmate to each of the kids in his second-grade class. We were *greatly* amused to see that it had items such as “clean the kitchen” and “breakfast in bed” printed in the various sections. Amused doesn’t even begin to describe the reaction he got from us when he told us that two of the other items were “shave” and “wear a dress.”

Categories: art, kids and parenting, toys
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I just found this interesting blog post by Swedish archaeologist and blogger, Dr Martin Rundkvist who thinks that our “entire bipartisan system maps onto the conservative half of European politics.” Specific mention is made of the fact that all of the US candidates are pro death-penalty, none are strict gun control advocates, and all make frequent mention of their religious views in public. All of which would apparently be extremist views in Sweden.

In search of a more international view of the political spectrum I found The Political Compass. Apparently this is quite a popular test (even has a Facebook app!) but it was my first time coming across it. Six short pages of questions map your views onto separate economic and social axis. The four corresponding quadrants are liberal-left (Ghandi), liberal-right (Milton Friedman), authoritarian-left (Robert Mugabe), and authoritarian-right (Margaret Thatcher). Having gone through the survey and accompanying information I would tend to agree with Dr Rundkvist’s assertion about our presidential hopefuls. Other than Ron Paul, who I would throw in the liberal-right quadrant, all of our candidates would seem to reside in the authoritarian-right.

High-minded political theory discussion aside, however, the real reason I loved his blog entry was this quote:

The Republican presidential candidates are really, really scary people in my view. So all of us in the world at large who live under the shadow of US political hegemony are holding our breaths, hoping that Clinton or Obama will make it into office. They’re pretty bad, but the alternative would be unspeakably dreadful.

Fabulous.

On a slight tangent, does anybody know if the people working tables in the cosmetics/vitamins section at Costco are on commission? The lady handing out Ocean Mist Saline coupons got into a fight with me tonight over whether I had a cold or not!

authoritarian-right: mumble mumble mumble OCEAN MIST! mumble mumble.
me: No thanks.
authoritarian-right: I saw your red nose. It’s allergies!
me: Actually I have a cold.
authoritarian-right: It’s NOT a cold! It’s ALLERGIES!
me: Uh… believe me, it’s a cold.
authoritarian-right: No, it’s allergies. mumble mumble (fades into the background noise)

Categories: politics, shopping
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Julie sent me an excerpt from today’s Unshelved blog discussing a problem we’ve been banging our heads against for a while now. I’ll quote the pertinent section:

Our old family office had stations for me, my wife Sara, my housemate … Jana, and our kids. But while I work in the office 8 or more hours a day, everyone else just drops in for a half hour now and again. So now in addition to my permanent station the new office … has a nice old round wood table … two chairs, and a power strip (the printers and server went into a closet). Jana and Sara drift in, plug in their laptops, do some work, and drift out. The table is perfect for meetings (family and otherwise), paying bills, and the occasional need to spread out.

When we furnished our home office five years ago, Alex was two and Ana was still over a year off. The boy already had his own computer (for educational games) and we were planning on having another child so we decided to cram four desks into the smallest room of our house. The logic was that naturally everyone would need their own computer and that putting them all in the same room would give us the opportunity to keep an eye on the kids’ web browsing habits. We also felt strongly that each of the kids would need their own horizontal space for doing homework.

Well, five years went by and over time it has become pretty obvious that nobody goes into the study unless they absolutely must. The furniture is nice, the task lighting is adequate, and there’s a small window for natural light and fresh air. The problem is, when you put the necessary paperwork and office supply storage for running a family into the same small room as four desks it just becomes an unpleasant environment. As soon as Julie and I each had laptops, the study became storage rather than workspace. The allure of the cozy wingback chairs and sofa in the living room combined with the house-blanketing wifi was too great to resist. You get more work done (and have more fun doing it) when you’re in the most comfortable space. This is also the case for homework of course. Alex does his in the same place I did as a kid – at the dining room table while dinner is being prepared. We’re right there to help him through any problems and he has a vast, well-lit table to spread out on and be more productive.

In the ensuing conversation we hammered out the details of our new workspace. It ended with Julie proclaiming her undying love for sofas and both of us anxious to clean off and disassemble two desks so there’s room for a sofa and a nice coffee table in their place. Eventually we’ll replace the two remaining desks with one big desk and lots of shelves/cubbies over it to hold the necessary stuff. The big desk will be for paying the bills, doing taxes, or anything else that requires having lots of paper out at once. The sofa and coffee table will be the perfect place (when combined with the existing lighting) for reading, blogging, uploading photos from our cameras, doing homework, etc. We’ve already replaced the home server with an NSLU2 and two Passports so our file server now requires about a quarter of a square foot of shelf space. The printers can go on an end table next to the sofa with USB cables an easy reach for nearby laptops. As a final touch, we’ll remove the (previously closed and blocked by a desk) door between the study and living room and close the one leading to the hallway instead. It will end up being a semi-secluded extension of the living room rather than a room in its own right.

Tonight Alex learned how to Google by watching me locate his favorite flash games. Julie wandered into the study this evening and found him on YouTube watching nintendo character related fan animation. After getting over the initial shock (and concern) we laughed about the coincidental timing. It’s going to be fun converting our old-school office into the home productivity equivalent of the corner coffee house. A place we can all hang out, get things done, and have fun together.

Categories: home improvement, kids and parenting, toys
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