Vacation, Vacation, Vacation

Sigh. Well, I’m freshly back from 5-day road trip with my two boys. (My long-suffering wife kept working, enduring lonely nights at home with nothing to keep her happy but having the TV, the bed, the popcorn all to herself. Poor thing.)

Most important lesson I learned from this trip was not to pack too much in.

Second most important, boys eating lots of junk food and being cooped up together in a car and motel rooms = lots of farts – live with it.

Third most important was, if you’ve travelling to another city, get a real map. a handful of google map print-offs won’t do. Canberra is the most bizarrely laid out city on earth. You literally drive in circles, under one cross streett and over the next until you are heading in the opposite direction you think you are. In fact, oldest son came up with the best advice: “Dad, just drive opposite to what you think.” It worked…

Anyhoo. It was definitely worthwhile, and I’m so glad I took the time out to do it, and grateful to the wife for helping me plan accomodation etc. Left to me, we’d be doing the Mary and Joseph thing, roaming around a town after dark looking for an inn…

Without boring you with anecdotes and too many slides, here’s some photos…

Youngest Son (pretty much the only Aldin willing to be photographed). Here you see said youngster posing by a vehicle of destruction at our War Museum in Canberra, probably dreaming about hotwiring it…

 

This is one of the amazing sets of models at the Museum depicting famous scenes from the Great War. Absolutely breathtaking.

 

Constable Pete putting his son in the tree-trunk jail for farting  in the car. 

Dads n Lads Retreats

Dudes and dudettes, it’s on! During the 90s I worked with youth. During the naughties I’ve increasingly worked with Dads. About time we combined them.

In 2010, we are putting on the most outrageously good-time retreats for Dads and their 11-13 year old sons where we can share some tried and tested strategies for building the kind of bond our sons need from us Dads while actually DOING THE BONDING! And everyone will be having so much fun they won’t even realise it’s happening.

See our Events page  here for more.

Tell me if you have corporate contacts who can help us take  this to the highest level and quality possible. I truly believe 2010 will see dozens of families with restored relationships, with an unshakeable bond between father and son, and with preventative meaures in place to save young people from the slippery slope of substance abuse and violence that’s plauging their generation.

Behold, the Anti-Cricket!

I thought I’d blog a little before I start work for the week. At the moment I have a couple of private clients who are fun to work with – and then I have a couple of contracts which are a little less fun.

Of late, my weekends have been punctuated with anxious sessions at the computer answering emails, preparing documents that I didn’t get time for during the workweek, and sometimes bouts of do-i-really-have-to-work-tomorrow-depression on Sunday afternoons where I’m no good to anyone.

This weekend I decided no emails, no stressing about work, no wondering how I’m going to fit it all in on Monday. I decided to recharge me and recharge the relationship with the family. I spent Saturday morning attending a great seminar (where I caught up with Chris of Pink Apple and actually met Mad Cow). Once I was home it was seminar notes and briefcase into the office and Pete into the x-box room where Oldest Son was arrogantly destroying the other teams in the Polish premier soccer league (FIFA10, folks).

The rest of the day was spent in such activities. It was amazing, though,  how often a little voice would try to steal my attention (and action) away. The voice said  “I’ll just go and check my emails” and “Wouldn’t you like a nap?”  and “Your son will be fine without your attention” and “This is unproductive” and “Watching your son do stick figure animations is boring, go read a novel or draft a marketing plan or draw up a timetable or something“. I call that voice my Anti-Cricket, as in the opposite of the Jiminy Cricket conscience character in Pinoccio (or however you spell it). It’s the opposite of the voice of reason (which we blokes seem to do a better job of not listening to). Well, if I can habitually not listen to the voice that tells me “Eat the apple, not the cream bun”, then I figured I could not listen to the Anti-Cricket.

So I spent Saturday afternoon and Sunday locked in occasional battle with the Anti-Cricket and apart from couple of moments where the diary came out, I largely defeated the little bugger. It’s been a lot of fun just hanging out, rebooting my own centredness and enjoying the boys having fun.

And wierdly, sitting down to work this Monday morning with a little more to do than usual, I actually feel calm. The late Sunday depressive illness only hung around the edges of my awareness for about the length of a commercial break and was chased away by more FIFA10 and stick figure animations.

I must say, I highly recommend chilling out with a focus on the kids. Good for the soul, good for the family, and I suspect good for the work output overall.

The Anti-Cricket can go chirp up someone else’s tree next weekend too.

Talk like a Pirate – yar!

Before I abandan the computer for a two week holiday, I had to bring this one to your attention (assuming you haven’t already ironed your eyepatch in readiness that is).

September 19th be Talk Like a Pirate Day. And I be the kind of scurvy dog that drags his kids into the fun!

My boys and I will be swordfighting with rolled up towels and addressing shop assistants as “Me Hearty”.

How will you celebrate it?

Breaking Routine

I don’t know about you, but I’m a huge believer in routine. Routine helps keep things on track, lowers stress, enables punctuality and completion of tasks, prepares the children of the family for adulthood (and protects the adults from a nervous breakdown).

But. It can be a great thing to break that routine, in the sense of doing something out of the ordinary. Like the times I played Pumpkin Rugby and Zombie Tag with the boys. The time Youngest Son and I went to an audition together. The time I took the boys for an hour’s drive to another beach (we live at the beach) where I knew there was a tidal stream we could dam with logs and such, put up with their complaining at the length of the drive and their requests to turn around, and partook of their joy at damming that stream when we finally got there.

It’s an effort to break routine. And it doesn’t always pay off. But the potential is there for the unexpected, the memorable, the “bonding-moments” to happen.

How could you do something out of the ordinary with the kids over the next week? For me, I’m planning to take Oldest Son out for icecream on Sunday. The best conversations seem to happen out of the house and over food (well sugar anyway)…

Garfield without Garfield?

One of the wonderful things about the internet is that people with way too much time on their hands have a way to share their whacky musings with the rest of us.

I cite a site called garfield minus garfield  where the basic premis is this:

Who would have guessed that when you remove Garfield from the Garfield comic strips, the result is an even better comic about schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, and the empty desperation of modern life? Friends, meet Jon Arbuckle. Let’s laugh and learn with him on a journey deep into the tortured mind of an isolated young everyman as he fights a losing battle against loneliness in a quiet American suburb.

I’m grateful to Logical Emotions for alerting me to this one! There’s something about the allusions to mental illness coupled with the sheer randomness of the results of removing Garfield from the frames that works for me. Maybe that says a lot about my mental state, I dunno…

Here’s a taste…

and my favourite:

Obscure Lightbulb Jokes

I cleaned up Great Circle this week. As in, I took out the obscure and “unprofessional” content. And seeing as THIS blog is intentionally obscure and unprofessional, I’ll simply transplant some of it over here.

Like these riddles from a week where I had way to much time on my hands in early 2006…

Q: How many jugglers does it take to change a light bulb?

A: One, but it takes at least three light bulbs.

Q: How many Daleks does it take to change a lightbulb?

A: 1,500,000: To conquer a race than can climb ladders for them.

[That one's for Dr Who fans only]

Q: How many mystery writers does it take to screw in a light bulb?

A: Two, one to screw it almost all the way in and the other to give it a surprising twist at the end.

Q: How many evolutionists does it take to change a light bulb?

A: Only one, but it takes eight million years.

On the 9th Day of Christmas…

Ho ho ho, Merrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrry Chrissstmas!

On the 5th Day of Christmas … MORE WIERD GIFTS!

More gifts for Christmas … if you’re struggling for ideas ….

What’s that you say? Something about “bottom of the barrell”? Oh, no there’s worse than that…

***

My kids would do it. Don’t tell me yours wouldn’t!

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Who made these action figures? Weren’t they ever children??

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You think that’s tasteless? How about this next one for a finale?

***

At $13.95 – ya just gotta doo it.

And now finally, we’ve scraped the bottom of the barrell…

…actually, that towel wasn’t too bad …

Tee Hee

I was listening to a speech by Dr Richard Swenson MD on the subject of Happiness and Health. He was making the well-worn statement that laughter is good for the body as well as the soul.

He also made the following points:

• The peak age for laughter for human beings is 4 years old
• 4 year olds laugh on average 400 times a day, or once every 4 minutes!
• By the time we’re 42 (the age I’ll be in 2008), we’re down to laughing 15 times a day (actually, that’s 15 times a day more than many adults I know!)
• Follow a 4-year-old around for a day, laugh at everything they laugh at and you’ll be less-stressed, saner and healthier overall.

It made me wonder: what happens to us between 4 and 40? Where do all our laughs go? Maybe the older we get, they get stolen by children??

Whatever the answer, it seems that kids (given the chance of course) intrinsically know something we grown-ups don’t: life is wonderful.

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