I’ve been beta testing Open Congress off and on for a couple of months, and now that they’re open, want to point all of you Americans over that direction. The folks there have created a dynamite source of information on the goings-on in Washington, including pages for every bill in the Senate and the House, each Senator and Representative, and pages for Committees, Issues, and more. Even better, there are RSS feeds for each, making it really easy to track a bit of interesting legislation or to see what your Senator has been up to lately. It’s a fantastic window into what’s going on in our Federal Government, and which I hope is mimicked for each of the states now that there’s such a fine model upon which to build.

Sorry for the spare updates of late, gentle readers. When life gets full, the weblog gets empty. Here’s what’s been going on:

• The most significant event of late has been Mom McMains going in for neurosurgery to deal with an aneurism. Her operation was a week ago — on Valentine’s Day, ironically. She’s recovering nicely and is feeling good; the doctors are very pleased with how everything went. Thanks to all the support from those of you who have been in the know about this.
• Daniel and his dear wife Fanny completed their emigration from Canada and have taken up residence with us. As they are two of my favorite people, I couldn’t be more pleased to have them around, though we haven’t gotten to spend as much time with them as I’d like yet.
• We welcomed Seth, Adam and Celeste’s first child, into the world. He’s a beautiful and sanguine baby who his folks are enjoying and doting on a great deal. His room, which features a wraparound tropical undersea mural with special rippling water lighting effects, is the most beautiful nursery I’ve ever laid eyes on. Congratulations, proud parents!
• We’ve been beset by illnesses of various description. The low point in all of that was Wednesday two weeks ago. I had already been home two days with Maggie who was on a vomiting jag. Then Emily started feeling bad, so I had to go get her from school. (Aside: it’s interesting to watch the progression of illness in children. When Maggie first started throwing up, she wasn’t quite sure what was going on and was somewhat frightened by the process: “Daddy, I don’t feel good. Daddy! DADDY! BLEEEAAARGHH!” By the end of the two days, she had become so used to it that she barely interrupted what she was doing: “Daddy, can I watch BLEEEAAARAGHHH! Cinderella, please? And have a cookie?”)

  A few days earlier, Kathy had made arrangements to watch the older of a friend’s two boys. Realizing that they might not want him exposed to the Black Death that was marching steadily through our house, she gave them a call to give them the opportunity to make other arrangements if they wished. “Well, we don’t have any other options at this point, so we’ll have to take that risk. And, by the way, our plans for our younger son fell through — could we send him over as well?” Their two boys arrived right after school, bringing our count of children up to six, a third of whom were incapacitated with illness. What could make it better? Why, Kathy getting sick too, of course! Her illness progressed rapidly from feeling a little funny to leaking every bodily fluid imaginable (and a few that weren’t) in the shower while shouting with all the strength her disease-wracked body could muster “I’m going to die!”

  And as the final bit of icing on the cake, I got one of my vision-imparing migraines. Thus, if you had been so unfortunate as to walk past our house and glance in the window, you would have heard Kathy’s anguished wails from the bathroom accompanied by the sight of me stumbling over and through the furniture as I raced half-blind around the house with assorted buckets and pitchers trying to catch the vomit and worse pouring out of various people while simultaneously trying to persuade a half-dozen wound-up kids that yes, it really is time to sleep.

  Man, that was a good day.

Random Items of Interest:

• Maggie lost her first tooth! And by that evening, she’d lost it again. Fortunately, Liam found it for her, though not without three days of it being MIA. Thanks to her brother’s efforts, the Tooth Fairy was at last able to make a visit. (Fortunately, it wasn’t this version that dropped by.)
• Kathy has torn back into school with a rabid vengeance. She’s really enjoying the opportunity to be challenging herself and learning at such a rate, and has taken advantage of the opportunity to sign up for some very interesting courses, including one in which she works with players of wheelchair rugby (or “Murderball”, as it is sometimes reassuringly known).

  As part of one of her assignments, the whole family went to a tournament last Sunday afternoon. It was pretty amazing to see these guys charging around, slamming into each other, talking smack, and making quite a show of it. I was particularly impressed by one fellow whose arms and legs were amputated just above the elbows and knees. I didn’t see how he would pull off playing, given that the game requires a bit of dribbling and a good deal of passing, but he had worked out a fascinating system of tossing the ball in front of him while moving quickly so that it would bounce back up to his lap or lobbing it a few inches into the air and giving it a mighty whack with one of his stumpy appendages. It was really a sight to behold.

  It was also fun to see Mark Zupan, one of the players who is featured in the excellent documentary on the sport.

• Thanks to the awesome power of the Internet, I was finally able to successfully place on order for a Wii. If anybody out there is still trying to lay hands on one, I highly recommend the OuttaStock Wii Finder, which even includes a widget that you can float over the other windows on your computer to let you know if there are any in stock around the net.

  I expect I’ll post a mini-review on the Wii once it arrives and the various family members have put it through its paces. Until then, bated breath!

It is happening at last. Through millenia of human history, we have tackled progressively greater challenges, overcome increasingly difficult obstacles. From fire, to the wheel, to water power, to decent hygiene, to the iron horse, to nuclear energy, to electric toothbrushes, nothing has been able to stop our advance as a race.

And now, the pinnacle of our collective existence is finally coming to light: behold, the Geostationary Banana Over Texas, an art project in which a 300 meter lighter than air banana will be floated over the Lone Star state for a period of 2 months. You can bet that I’ll be out in the yard with binoculars in one hand and a banana split in the other, thanking God that I live in such a time as this.

via Fusion Reaction

Timeline of my dealings with Ultra Products:

• February: Built a PC with an Ultra Power Supply.
• Mid-December: Power Supply Failed. Called Ultra. They shipped a replacement, indicating that I would both have a $60 charge on my credit card until I returned it and that I would be responsible for return shipping.
• Christmas: Got the replacement power supply. Installed it. It failed 5 minutes later. Figuring it couldn’t be a 2nd faulty power supply, brought PC to repair center. Faulty power supply was confirmed. I bought a replacement (non-Ultra) power supply at the repair center which has been humming along just fine ever since.
• Late December: Contacted Ultra. They wouldn’t pay for return shipping of the second power supply, nor would they send out another replacement until they’d received the first back. I mailed it to them with the understanding that they would send another replacement as soon as they got it.
• January 9: Post office showed that Ultra received the unit.
• January 10: Sent an email requesting the tracking number for the replacement supply. Got no response.
• January 17: Sent another email requesting a status update and wondering why I still had an outstanding charge on my credit card. Got no response for this one either.
• January 18: Credit was issued to my credit card. The promised second replacement was apparently never sent.

So, now I’m out $40 for the diagnostic visit to the shop, $10 for shipping, and $40 for a new power supply, and still don’t have a functioning replacement under their “lifetime warranty”. They’re definitely a company I’ll be avoiding in the future.

Today was the 3rd day of what is looking like it will be a 4 day weekend, thanks to MLK Day and the ice storms, tornadoes, plagues of locust and rivers of blood that have been besieging our fair city recently. What to do when the family is cooped up indoors all day? We made card houses, raced Hot Wheels, played computer games, looked all the way through a big book of exotic trains, and still had half the day ahead of us. The surefire cure for boredom? Ordnance.

I had a 6′ length of aluminum tubing leftover from my adventures a year or two back trying to make wind chimes. The 1/4″ inner diameter made me think that it might make a spiff-dandy blowgun. For ammunition, I tried rolling paper into small cylinders at first, but they showed a frustrating tendency to get stuck in the pipe. Next I unearthed a small eye shadow applicator from one of the drawers in the kitchen. This worked pretty well for a time, but eventually began to break apart. Finally, we hit upon the perfect ammunition: a Q-Tip cut in half. The cotton on one end worked nicely as wadding to trap the air and force the shaft of the swab out of the barrel at high speed. (My inner crossing guard was also pleased that they were of very small weight, thus minimizing the damage that we could cause with them.)

After a bit of practice, Liam and I both got quite good with the things. We were able to hit a piece of paper from across the room (and put a hole in it). We also shot some of the plants outside, leaving them peppered with tiny cotton-tipped darts, and launched Q-Tips to the other side of the street from our front porch. We also shot up a Fresca can, leaving it dented and bruised:

Remember kids, it’s all fun and games until someone loses an eye. Then it’s still fun and games; you just can’t see it.

Bullet points from my brain:

• A tornado touched down here in San Marcos (!) yesterday. We’re all fine, concerned citizens of the Internet. Thanks for the cards, calls, and well-wishing.
• We watched An Inconvenient Truth last night. It was interesting to me to note how closely the presentation style of Al Gore, who is on Apple’s board of directors, mirrors that of Steve Jobs (or vice versa). Oh, and it was an excellent, compelling film as well.
• We had to get to church early this morning so that Kathy could help in the nursery. Since I don’t much care for chasing the kids around among the Sunday morning crowds, we walked over to the Alkek Libary, in which I work, to browse in hushed awe the literary delights therein.

  The children, upon seeing the assembled wisdom and knowledge the human race has accumulated over the last several millenia, turned to me with shining wonder in their eyes and said “HEY! Can we play hide and seek?”

  “Yeah, sure!” I said and raced off to hide. Liam and Maggie quickly found bits of furniture to cower beneath while I claimed a particularly inky pool of darkness between two rows of shelves as my own. I didn’t think that sprawling on the floor would be an especially effective hiding place, but was proven wrong after Abigail found the other kids. In the course of their charges up and down the aisles trying to locate me, Liam tripped over my feet and sprawled headlong across me, still not having noticed my presence until I became the unwitting cushion for his fall.

• It occurred to me this morning that “When the moon hits your eye/like a big pizza pie/that’s amore!” is a very curious lyric, unless there are a rash of pizza-related blindings in Italy that we Americans seldom hear about. “Ah, I told-a Alfonso to always-a wear his safety goggles when-a passing by the pizzaria! His poor mama!” (This bit of racial stereotyping brought to you at no extra charge by the good people at Epithets R’ Us.)

I’ve been tracking my reading pretty diligently on bibliofile this year. Here are a few interesting stats from my reading log for 2006:

Noteworthy reads:

The Transparent Society: A thought-provoking look at whether it will be possible to maintain any kind of privacy in the future and whether its loss would be a bad thing.

Digital Game-Based Learning: A really good introduction to and exploration of the use of computer games as teaching tools.

Flicker: This book had been out of print for ages, so I was thrilled to finally find a copy (in a new edition, no less) in a bookstore on a trip to Seattle. I was even more excited to see on the cover of the new edition that Darren Aronofsky is on tap to do a film version. Engaging novel, though quite dark.

Blue Like Jazz: Lovely and engaging account of how the author, who has a superb, honest writing voice, comes to the Christian faith. An especially good read for those who are drawn to Christ but have difficulty with the church.

Dead Man: I’m not generally a huge fan of poetry, but I find Daniel’s stuff riveting. More of his work is on his weblog.

The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay: A super novel, chock full of friendship, adventure, love, plans gone amok, wrongs righted. Well worth the time.

The Natural House: I’ve developed an interest in green building this year. Chiras’ book provides a nice, high-level introduction to the subject, covering a variety of different techniques and systems.

Everything Bad is Good for You: Of all the books I read this year, I probably mentioned this one to other people the most. Johnson’s premise is that the pop culture that is often decried as empty amusement has actually become much more intellectually demanding over time and is, to some degree, making people smarter. Thought-provoking stuff.

The Sparrow: An compelling science-fiction novel in form, it explores the themes of God’s will and how we relate to it in a really affecting way.

Pandora’s Star and Judas Unchained: The biggest, baddest space opera one could ever hope for. Hamilton keeps the whole story impressively engaging throughout its 1800 page span.

Greetings, Friends!

It’s that time again when we try to compress 365 1/4 days into a page or two of purple prose. Given that formidable challenge, we’ll doubtless fail to capture all the interesting bits, but will hopefully give our long-lost friends (and friends who wish that we were long-lost) a bit of insight into what these 12 months have included for us. On to the parade of stars!

Margaret is now 6 years old, and started kindergarten this fall. She got the short end of the educational stick from us, I’m afraid — all the other kids went into school reading, but we got a bit lazy with her. While the first week or two was a bit tough on her, having not been away from us parents on a regular basis previously, she quickly got into the swing of things, developed a deeply-rooted affection for her teacher, and began to thrive. She’s a mischievous little rascal, and loves to climb on people, tell jokes (some of which even make sense), play games, snuggle, walk on Daddy’s feet, and be read to. One of Maggie’s bon mots this year, in reference to Harry Potter: “They should really make a book out of that movie!” She also named her hermit crab “Fluffy”, which made me very proud indeed, and stuffed a rock in her ear, which necessitated surgery to have it removed, and which made me considerably less proud.

Liam just celebrated his eighth birthday, and continues to blaze the boy trail among the kids. He has joined Cub Scouts this year, and has been enjoying building boats and racecars, fishing, camping, and spending time with his peers there. He also loves computer games, playing ball, swimming, and sports in general. His scholastic performance is quite good — I was startled as we prepared for a Christmas church service to find him able to read through a couple of passages in Isaiah without any difficulty at all. One of the highlights of his year was knocking out two of his own teeth within 30 minutes of each other one day. He received a radar gun for Christmas this year, and has had a grand time sitting in front of our house trying to catch speeders as they whiz past.

Now 10 years old, Abigail is still the most girly of our girls, showing more interest in hair, makeup, and matching clothes than the rest of the kids combined. Her sweet nature provides an amusing counterpoint to her incessant stream of rowdy jokes and pranks, which she harvests diligently from joke books, magazines, and her own fertile mind. (Thanks to her, I found bite-size Snickers bars cascading from the ice maker one morning instead of the ice I’d expected.) She has intermittently been doing some singing in a voice class and with her Daddy, and really enjoys doing fun and special things with the family. She’s also gone down to San Antonio to ride with Sean’s sister Meara a couple of times and is developing an affection for anything to do with horses as a result.

Emily is 14, is firmly into teenager territory at this point and has a lively (and sometime ornery) sense of humor. She’s still doing spectacularly in her art studies at school, and has been making great progress learning guitar. She’ll occasionally consult with Daddy on chords or tricky songs, but has been remarkably diligent in that pursuit on her own. Her best friend got a bass guitar for Christmas, so I fully expect them to have a successful girl band by age 15 and to rake in enough royalties off of their music to support us in our dotage. She has continued participating this year in Youth Service Bureau, a local service organization that combines hanging out with friends and doing various community service projects.

The kids are all doing fine academically and have a good collection of friends. It’s a rare day, in fact, that we don’t have a few extra young ones running around the house playing guitar, hide and seek, Lazer Tag, or dress-up — sometimes all at once.

Kathy has found herself this fall, for the first time in 14 years, without any child care responsibilities during the day. The adjustment has taken a bit of getting used to, but once the celebratory shouts died down, she settled nicely into regular visits to the coffee shop (where she’ll often hobnob with the mayor), and time spent building her own business — a sort of personal assistant service she has been building clientele for. She’s also planning to start college again in the spring at Texas State University, where she’ll be pursuing a degree in Health and Fitness Management with a certification in Recreation Therapy. She’s quite excited about getting back into the world of academia and finishing off her long-postponed degree. She had sinus surgery this year, which would not really be a highlight but for the fact that it put an end to her seemingly endless string of sinus infections. Her quality of life has improved significantly as a result.

Sean has marked two and a half years at Texas State University now, where he has steadily been getting more responsibility leading a small team of programmers with the Instructional Technology division there. He also continues to play with The Patio Boys, who had their biggest audience yet this summer at the San Marcos Summer in the Park concert series, and up at church from time to time. He is enjoying dabbling in cooking, photography, writing, and building trebuchets, cannons, and other implements of destruction. He also enjoyed a marvelous trip to Seattle in March with his brother and a few good friends, as well as a several day stopover in Victoria with yet more friends on the way to Vancouver for a business trip, and yet another trip to Atlanta late in the year for a conference. You can keep up on his shenanigans at <https://www.mcmains.net/ruminations>.

As we turn off the jukebox, wipe down the tables, and lock up 2006, we’re grateful for all of the good times, and hopefully a bit wiser from the bad. Thanks to all of the friends and family who have surrounded us, supported us, and enriched our lives. Those relationships are the currency by which we count ourselves truly wealthy.

Pax et bonum,

The Clan McMains

This one goes out to Brian Burwell, my partner in orchestral crime, wherever you are:

I started cello in 4th grade, and played Pachabel more times than I care to remember, so this hits awfully close to home. Funny stuff. (He does cheat with the chords a bit at the end, but we’ll give him a pass.)

via Paul