GimletBlog

Back in the very early days of GimletBlog, Thing One had just begun cello lessons.  Thing Two was quite intrigued; he liked to play next to the cello and especially crawl over to tug at the endpin or touch the strings.

Six years later, it’s time for Thing Two to begin his own music lessons on the violin.

We’ve been clients of a local string instrument shop for several years for Thing One’s cello needs, but this time it was Thing Two’s turn, and he was delighted to be fitted for his own 1/8 violin and accessories.  Later at home, Thing One taught his little brother the similarities and differences between the cello and the violin.

He enjoyed his first lesson; he’s practicing learning how to hold his violin and bow properly and how to care for his instrument.  His teacher has a large (but very gentle and friendly) dog who likes to sit at the student’s feet during lessons; Thing Two is very nervous around dogs, especially large ones, but by the end of the lesson he felt brave enough to feed Bodhi a biscuit.  During the course of the lessons, Thing Two will learn to play the violin and to become more comfortable around dogs — a bonus we didn’t expect!

Thing Two will be learning traditional Scandinavian music.  As he progresses,  he’ll have the opportunity to join the Seattle Lilla Spelmanslag, a local performance group of young musicians ages 8-18 who play Nordic folk music for dances, community organizations, parades and festivals such as Yulefest at the Nordic Heritage Museum, Skandia Folkdance Society’s Midsommarfest, and the Northwest Folklife Festival.

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After last year’s spring never came, these occasional sunny days are irresistible.  Happily, they are becoming more and more frequent, so we may enjoy a real spring this year.  In all the years we’ve lived in Seattle and spent time on the University of Washington campus, we’ve never deliberately made the trip to see the Quad’s famous cherry blossoms … until today.

It was a glorious day to be out in the Quad.  Incredibly crowded and busy, with plenty of people-watching to do.  Lots of engagement shots, family pictures and just picturesque scenery meant there was a lot of camera gear to check out as well.  While watching the world go by, part of the world looked especially familiar:  friends from our church ward several years ago had made a day trip to the city and just happened to walk past us!  We keep in touch on Facebook, but it was so fun to see them again.

After taking pictures of the cherry blossoms, we decided to wander through Red Square to Rainier Vista to see if Drumheller Fountain was on.  The fountain wasn’t on, but we found something better:  a supercar show was taking place in Red Square.  Team Gimlet are huge Top Gear fans, so this was a real treat to see so many of the cars which have been featured on the show.

The Gimlet and Thing One quickly headed off to look at their favorites (the Aston Martins, the Lamborghinis and the Ferraris) while Your Humble Narrator and Thing Two stopped to geek out over examine the Ariel Atom.

And then the Atom’s owner asked Thing Two if he’d like to sit in it!

Thing Two is less like The Stig and more of a Captain Slow, but he was pretty pleased to be in the driver’s seat, checking out the instrument panel.

He doesn’t realize that his entire automotive experience has now peaked at age six.  Sorry, Thing Two, it’s not going to get better than this.

Sunshine, sakura, serendipity and supercars all combined to create a wonderful Saturday afternoon.

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We’ll let Curly and Bee tell the whole story when they’ve got the time (and more sleep) but Uncle and Auntie Gimlet (and the Gimlet Cousins) can’t resist showing off a few photos of the new little cousin who has been keeping the family so busy and entertained:

Curly and Bee’s sweet little girl was born early in the morning on February 16 after a long, difficult labor.  Grandma Hå has been recording the story on her blog (where, among other things, she explains why the baby has a large bandage on her hand in this photo.)

Thankfully, the baby has been strong and healthy.  After a few setbacks, Curly is finally making a recovery as well.  Go Curly!

Welcome to the world, little one.

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Thanks to snowstorms, we have had a day and a half off from school this week.  When Thing Two returns to kindergarten, he has something exciting to show the class:  he lost his first tooth!

The tooth has been bothering him for a few days, and we remembered that Bopa was always the one who extracted loose teeth from children and grandchildren (well, just Thing One), usually with the assistance of his vintage dental tools.  (We don’t know how or why he ended up with these terrifying implements, but a visit to the regular dentist was tame in comparison to Bopa’s tool kit.)  He would have removed the tooth long before now, but finally at lunch today Thing Two was having difficulty eating, so it was time for the tooth to go.

The tooth was definitely ready, but there were plenty of tears.   After it was out, Thing Two was asked, “Does it really still hurt?”

He paused mid-wail, and replied, “No.”  And that was that.

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Is it really the end of the year already?  To paraphrase another blogger, 2011 has been a year never to be forgotten and we hope never repeated.

Since we last posted in mid-October, the Gimlet and his employer parted ways just before Halloween, and the Things’ great-grandmother (whose 90th birthday was celebrated in grand fashion) passed away Thanksgiving Day, exactly six months to the day after Bopa died.   With so much sorrow and uncertainty occurring in a short space of time it’s been challenging to think positively and move forward, and we’re so grateful for the support of family, friends and our church community during this difficult year.  We’ve especially taken to heart some advice given to the Gimlet to focus on the abundance in our lives:  not just the good things we currently enjoy, but the great potential for future success:

• “The Liturgy of Abundance” by Dr. Walter Brueggemann (from religion-online.org)
• “Living the Abundant Life” by President Thomas S. Monson, January 2012 Ensign

We’ve had a genuinely happy holiday season, with plenty of delicious food, lively conversation, and continuation of the traditions from years past as we remember our loved ones who are no longer with us.  We agree it has been the sort of season they would have wanted us to have.  While we dropped the ball on blogging, our newest family blogger, Hå, has been busily recording all of the past months’ events in great detail.  (That is why she is the unofficial family historian!)  Just remember: it’s not shamelessly harvesting all of her hard-written content if we call it outsourcing.  Visit her blog and read all about our November and December there:

• We love Yulefest at the Nordic Heritage Museum
• Remembering great-grandma
• Thanksgiving 2011
• A day trip to Lynden, WA would not be complete without watusi cattle, caramel apple pie from the Dutch bakery, and a sedated angry cat in the back seat of the car.  Well, we could do just fine without the cat next time.
• Santa’s annual visit
• Christmas Eve dinner party

To provide our readers with a little original content, here are a few photos from a Christmas shopping visit to the Pike Place Market.

We had fresh Dungeness crab for Christmas Eve, but we buy ours at a neighborhood fish market much closer to home.

Seattle-native uncles will find it heartwarming to learn that Thing One discovered one of their favorite Market haunts (and a must-stop for any geek tourist):  Golden Age Collectibles.   Meanwhile, Thing Two keeps an eye out for more Daleks.

Several adventures are already in store for the coming year and will be revealed in good time … until then, best wishes to you and your families for an abundant 2012!

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Old Scoutmasters never die, they just smell that way become Committee Chair.

When last we left you, I was Scoutmaster in my ward troop and also the Boy Scout District Training Chair.   After a wonderful week as a Course Co-Director for NYLT, I hoped to be able to be Course Director in 2012, but was waiting to find out if I would have the opportunity.

Wow, the changes a month can bring!   First, I was asked to be the Stake High Councilor over Young Men/Scouting and sustained on September 11.  As that precludes being Scoutmaster, the Assistant Scoutmaster was asked to be Scoutmaster and I became the Troop Committee Chair the next week on September 18.  Meanwhile, on Saturday, September 17 I was asked to be a NYLT Course Director, and then Monday, September 19, I was asked to be the District Commissioner.   It appears that both life and the Boy Scouts abhor a vacuum of time!

So now, I am recruiting constantly:  As Troop Committee Chair, I recruit troop committee members; as NYLT Course Director I recruit staff and participants for the program; and, as District Commissioner, I recruit Unit Commissioners.   Beware — I may be calling you!

This ends my five and a half year stint working directly with Boy Scouts as a Scoutmaster/Assistant Scoutmaster.  I still am working with Scouts directly as the NYLT Director but it is not a weekly activity.  I once again return to working with adults to try and get them to run the program to help out the boys.

Scoutmaster is one of those “jobs” that really becomes a self-identification and that has been a little bit hard to let go of.   When the boys went camping last month, and I had nothing to do other than answer the new Scoutmaster’s questions, it felt odd not to be going.  However, next year Thing Two starts Cub Scouts and I get to start all over again!

Triple Threat: New scoutmaster, visiting Japanese scoutmaster, old scoutmaster

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Thing One is starting his junior year of high school.  His school class schedule includes AP French, Chamber Orchestra, and Drama.  At home he’ll continue taking BYU Independent Study courses, finishing up the sophomore language arts and geometry series, then working on US history, junior-level language arts, and Algebra 2.  As a junior, he’s now eligible to sign up for Running Start at the local community college, so we’ve started the admissions process and hope that he can enroll in community college courses beginning winter quarter.

While Thing One is nearly done with his public school experience, Thing Two has started kindergarten!  He attends Thing One’s old elementary school along with a few of his friends from preschool.  They aren’t in the same kindergarten class, but they meet up at recess and play together.

When we toured schools for Thing Two, we were intrigued by the local alternative school’s Expeditionary Learning curriculum, which we thought would be an excellent fit for Thing Two’s abilities and interests, but he didn’t get into that school during the open enrollment period and the waiting list was so long that there was no hope of him finding a place in one of the few available late summer openings.  As it was, it was only a few days before the first day of school when we finally were notified that Thing Two had been granted a spot at Thing One’s old elementary school, so that uncertainty made for extra stress this summer.

The school is large, and at first Thing Two was a little taken aback by the number of kids and size of the building, but the school does a great job of breaking the classes down into smaller groups, and in no time Thing Two was very comfortable and happy in his new surroundings.  He likes riding the bus every day (he sits with a new friend from another kindergarten class) and Your Humble Narrator is getting used to this empty nesting thing.

We’re very excited to be back at Thing One’s elementary school with its vibrant community and wealth of after-school opportunities.  In addition to kindergarten, Thing Two has a French class after school once a week.  He already speaks with a slightly different accent from his big brother.

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This summer Thing Two started to collect Lego minifigures.  For those who haven’t seen these yet, Lego has come up with sets of sixteen unique minifigures, individually wrapped in opaque packages.  Like the packs of Star Wars cards back in the day, these goodies pack both a cool minifigure and the thrill of mystery.  We like ThinkGeek’s name for these mystery treats: Schrödinger’s collectible.

That said, after a run of bad luck with the random choice, resulting in a soccer team, an artist colony and not much else, we wondered if there were some way to stop choosing artists and soccer players.

The very helpful folks at Math N Stuff guided us through the art of detecting each minifigure’s unique pieces inside the bag, which has worked almost perfectly.  (One notable recent incident we were sure we had found a figure we didn’t already have, but when we opened the bag, we found … a soccer player.)

If scrunching the packages isn’t good enough (or if you are looking for any excuse to play with a smartphone), yes, there is an app for that.  Mini Collector uses a combination of bar and dot codes to detect which minifigure is in the package.

We like Mini Collector because not only can we keep an inventory of the minifigures we already own, but then if the app detects a minifigure we don’t have, you can opt to keep its identity a secret, and preserve the excitement of the surprise.

Mini Collector is free to download and the support for the first three series of minifigures is included.  Series 4 (currently in our local stores) and Series 5 (coming soon) can be unlocked for $0.99 and $1.99 respectively.  We love The Oatmeal’s take on buying apps because we too are guilty of spending an unholy sum for our iGadgets, then balking at paying a whopping $1 for an app. (N.B.:  Depending on your family, The Oatmeal’s content is not entirely family-friendly; consider yourself warned.)

After seeing his big brother at work, Thing Two set up his own Trading Post in his room, complete with an open/closed sign which he carefully turns at bedtime and when he returns from preschool.  Unlike other trading posts, the customer may choose a minifigure, but the storekeeper both assembles and keeps it.  Thing One may have to teach him a few lessons in customer service.

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