Elementary Rhetoric

Man, it's just been one of those nights. ES was just in a mood-and-a-half tonight.

Shortly after I came home, I looked out the sliding glass door to see ES digging a hole in the middle of the grass in our side yard. I opened the door and said, "ES, please don't dig holes in the yard."

ES looks at me with the shovel in his hand and the mound of dirt at his feet, and says, "I'm NOOOT! The hole was already THERE, we're just taking the DIRT out of it!" He said it with a tone of voice as if to say, "Duh, Dad! Get a clue!" Um, yeah, well, I could have sworn there was GRASS there when I left for work this morning.

Then again, maybe he's just a zen master in training. The hole really WAS already there, it just happened to be full of dirt and covered by grass. It sounds like some deep philosophical debate like - which came first... The chicken or the egg? The neutron or the fission? Anyway, moving on...

At the Cub Scout Pack Meeting tonight, we had the "graduation ceremony" where each of the scouts were advanced to the next level. I knew in theory that some sort of ceremony was happening and that ES and his pals in the Tiger Cub Den would be moving up to become Wolves, but I didn't know anything about the ceremony. There was a little wooden bridge they walked across, and when they reached the other side, then the Cub Master and one of the Wolves took off the Tiger's orange neckerchief and put on a Wolf's yellow neckerchief and gave them a Wolf book.

ES crosses the bridge wearing his orange Tiger Cub neckerchief for the last time.

ES gets the yellow neckerchief of a Wolf Cub

All the other kids happily walked across and got their new neckerchiefs and books and didn't think twice about it. ES got back to his seat, he had a nuclear meltdown. He tore off the yellow neckerchief and threw it and the wolf book on the ground. There was more drama than that to go along with it, but I'll spare you the details. I was just really frustrated that he was making such a scene and having such a cow about it when all the other kids were fine.

On a happy note, ES was really excited about the Recruiting Award he received for convincing E, his best friend from school (and now neighbor) to join the pack.

YB wasn't in particularly a bad mood, but he was taking a lot of cues off of ES and playing monkey-see-monkey-do. He would see Brian all in a huff and upset and stomping his feet, so he would find something pointless to be upset about, too, just so he could be like his big brother.

Case in point: We finished getting the boys' jammies on and I told YB to pick up his dirty clothes and put them in the laundry hamper. You'd think I'd just asked him to carry a seabag full of TDU weights from the sonar sphere to shaft alley and back. (Aside: For any non-bubbleheads, that'd be like carrying several hundred pounds across about two football fields with a few sets of stairs and ladders along the way.) He let out a tremendously dramatic SIIIIIIGH and in an exasperated tone said, "Why do I have to do everything for you???"

Oh yeah, and where did YB pick up the sudden pirate obsession??? Tonight we went to Bravo's for dinner, and he was saying "ARGH!" a lot. Plus, he rolled his paper kid's menu into something that he was using alternately as a spyglass and as a sword. Of course, when he's using it as a sword, then we get to listen to his sword-fight sound effects - ching! ching! ching! All the way out to the car, YB was continuing his "ARGH!" routine and looking through his spyglass. I got him strapped into his booster seat and got in the driver's seat. Things were peaceful for about a minute. Then, all of a sudden in my peripheral vision I saw the "sword" jut out between the driver and front passenger seats and poke LW in the arm with another ching! ching! ching! from the back seat. I'm thinking he must have seen something pirate related on TV today, because I'm not sure what else would have brought all this on.

Maui - part 4 - wrap up with a trip to Lahaina

This is Part 4 of 4 about our trip to Maui. Click on the links here to visit Part 1, Part 2 (Iao Needle & drive around the island), and Part 3 (Snorkeling Trip). Also, for a comparison of Maui versus the Big Island, see this post.

Today was our last day in Maui. We got up and checked out of the hotel this morning. We said goodbye to the wonderful "tree tunnel" as we left the driveway of our hotel for the last time and hit the road for Lahaina on the western end of the island. It was a pretty and scenic drive that took us by the spot where we went snorkeling on the Four Winds II yesterday.

Downtown Lahaina was nice. This is a shot of Front Street in downtown Lahaina. The Maui Revealed book said if you came to this side of the island and DIDN'T go for a walk down Front Street, then you were missing out. I found it to be a typical upscale coastal tourist trap sort of like Cannery Row in Monterey, California, or Mystic, Connecticut or Newport, Rhode Island, but I enjoyed it nonetheless. There were lots of art galleries, restaurants, historic sites, and of course the touristy t-shirt shops.

On the site of this lighthouse, King Kamehameha III ordered the first lighthouse (well... a pole with a light on it) erected in 1840 - the first navigation aid in Hawaii. The current lighthouse that is there was built in 1915. (Yes, this was a virtual geocache).

Believe it or not, all the leaves you see in this picture is ONE banyan tree. It's over 100 years old!

This was absolutely THE COOLEST shop we saw in Lahaina. They had all these really cool ship models made out of wood. I was surprised they only cost on the order of $300 bucks! If I were playing The Price Is Right, I would have guessed upwards of $1,000. They had lots of historic ships like HMS Victory and USS Constitution. They even had the Mount Washington (the ferry boat that runs across Lake Winnepesaukee, NH). Anyway, LW had to drag me and the boys out of there.

Oh, yeah, did I mention they had the stereo-typical tourist t-shirt shops? Some people wonder why I have a problem with our kids glamorizing pirates.

Aside for anyone else shopping for t-shirts in Maui: We shopped several places all over the island for our souvenir t-shirts. Out of all the places we went, the place I liked the best was the shop in Kihei downstairs from Denny's. They had the best selection of t-shirts that I saw in any of the stores we went to, and the prices weren't bad. By "best selection," I mean that they had a variety of nice, classy looking, conservative Maui t-shirts, unlike the stereotypical tourist-trap obnoxious-slogan, cheap, or cheesy t-shirts.

Okay, so now for the best part (in my opinion) about Lahaina. I wrote previously about LW's propensity to look for things that had cross-referenced good reviews in multiple books. Both the Maui Revealed book and the Frommers Hawaii with Kids book contained high praises for Cilantro.

Looks can be deceiving. It may not look like much from the outside, but...

[Cue sound effect: Angels singing the hallelujah chorus] This place was AWESOME. They take "fresh" to a new level and put one of our old NoVA favorites, Baja Fresh, to shame. The food was both SO fresh and absolutely-to-die-for-delicious. I don't think I've ever had tortilla chips that tasted THAT good. The guacamole was ALMOST as good as LW's fresh guacamole. The pork adobo burrito I had was legendary. The churros were even better than Costco's! If you like Mexican food and you go to Maui, then you absolutely MUST go to Cilantro. This place ROCKS!

Of course, if you've been reading my blog for any length of time, you know that seeing this sign made my day!

After our awesome lunch, we hit the road toward back toward the airport and stopped to look for a couple of geocaches along the way. The boys entertained themselves with the camera in the backseat. Now we have hundreds of pictures of YB taken by ES and ES taken by YB, plus pictures of their stuffed-animals. Thank goodness electrons are free (in the 2GB SD card variety in the digital camera I mean).

Those darn paparazzi found this celebrity dude again.

Luckily for us, Maui is mostly a rural type of place and Kahului is not a big town. The power was out, so all the traffic lights were out. It was chaos on the roads. Plus, we couldn't buy gas for the rental car, so we just sucked up the penalty at the rental car place and turned the car in with a half-full tank.

Follow-Up: Now, sitting in my recliner watching the evening news, I see it's a big story that they lost power on almost all of Maui today. The other big news around here is the impact of Aloha Airlines going under and all the people stranded at the airport. The news crew interviewed one couple that's been stranded here for 3 days. Yikes! That's why I just sucked it up and bought new tickets for a Hawaiian Airlines flight back - I didn't want to take any chances with the "space available" travel with so many people holding useless Aloha Airlines tickets and trying to get into those limited available spaces.

Overall, we had a great trip and really enjoyed having the family vacation time and the opportunity to see another one of the islands.

Follow-Up 4/12/08: I had a hit from someone doing a Google search for BlackbBerry signal coverage on Maui. In all the places we went on Maui, I always had a good signal on my BlackBerry. Even when I was over the side of a cliff searching for a geocache, and all I could see was the ocean on one side and sheer rocks above me on the other side, I was still able to access the internet on my BlackBerry to review the geocache listings.

School Vacations Should Be Outlawed

Back to School Today.

OMG what a royal pain in the arse it was getting ES to go back to school today. He refused to get out of bed. He refused to get dressed. He refused to tell LW what he wanted to lunch. He ate his breakfast with the speed of a desert tortoise trying to devour a rubber ducky. He refused to do anything LW or I told him in order to get ready to leave for school. I dropped him off at school on my way to work, and it's a miracle we were just barely on time.

Then, tonight, we had another episode with trying to get him to do his homework. I mean, it's FIRST GRADE. His homework is three simple worksheets that I KNOW he's perfectly capable of doing. He could have finished it in 15 minutes EASILY, but instead he wastes an hour and a half with high drama - pretending he wasn't done with dinner (because when he asked to be excused, we told him yes and to go do his homework), dragging his feet, claiming he can't find a pencil (there's a box of them on his homework table), making long dramatic sighs and holding his head in his hands, whimpering and crying. He NEVER would have finished if I hadn't stood there behind him directing him to do each task. With the commotion he was making, LW jokingly asked from the other room, "Is Daddy pulling out your finger nails in there?"

YS was also a challenge to deal with today. At one point tonight, he was wearing this headband with three colored feathers sticking out the back like a Native American warrior, and it reminded me of one of my favorite stories my Grandpa Ernie used to read to me when I was a kid. It was a short story called The Ransom of Red Chief by O Henry, and it was about a couple of not-so-smart criminals who kidnapped a holy-terror of a boy who pretended to be an Indian savage named Red Chief. Much to my surprise, I found the entire story available at this website.

Aside: Although I'm complaining about what a pain the boys were today, I have to offer two disclaimers. First, LW is the one who bears the brunt of the boys, and I applaud her for her patience and ability to deal with the frustration our boys can produce at times. I don't have as much patience as she does, and I tend to snap a little easier or a little sooner than she would. Second, we have to count our blessings. Our boys can be frustrating at times, but overall they're very good boys and we're very truly blessed to have them both.

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Small World.

I just about fell off my chair when I got an email from one of my Nav-ET's from my previous boat yesterday. He's stationed in the DC area now and living VERY close to where we used to live in Ashburn, VA. He recently discovered geocaching, and as he was finding some of the geocaches around Ashburn he kept noticing this name "blunoz" and thought that sounded kind of like a Navy-related user name. He looked up this "blunoz" guy on the geocaching website and was blown away to find out it was his old Navigator. Turns out there are two other guys from my usetafish that are also living out in Ashburn and working in DC now. Small world. What are the odds of reconnecting with an old shipmate like that???

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Unexpected Visitors.

Yesterday (Sunday), I went with ES and his Cub Scout Pack on a tour of USS RUSSELL, an ARLEIGH BURKE Class DDG. I was really impressed. They really put on the full-court press for our tour. They had static displays set up all over the ship with crew members standing by to show us guns and torpedoes and fire-fighting gear and fire hoses. The tour concluded on the bow of the ship with chocolate chip cookies and fruit punch. It was great!

Daddy and ES on tour of USS RUSSEL

As we were standing on the flight deck with a crew member showing off his Visiting Boarding Search and Seizure (VBSS) gear (black vest, black helmet, black goggles, black knee pads, black rifle, black pistol...), I looked across the water at the sub base side of the harbor and did a double-take. I said to myself, "Self, that is most definitely NOT a 688 Class submarine parked over there!" I was pretty sure I read the name on the brow banner correctly, but confirmed it with another bubblehead in our tour group.

It turns out, a long time friend of mine is on that boat. Nate and I were classmates and became friends in Nuclear Power School in Orlando and then roommates in Prototype in Charleston. He's the guy I previously mentioned I had gone to the Army-Navy Football Game with in '95. Later, we were both Navigators at the same time in San Diego. Then, we both went through the Submarine Command Course together.

So after leaving the RUSSELL, ES and I headed over to the other side of the harbor to welcome our unexpected visitors and invite Nate to dinner. We took Nate down to Ryan's in the Ward Center for an excellent dinner (see my previous post for more info about Ryan's). This time I had the corn chowder and the fish tacos. They were both really good. I think the corn chowder was a little bit of a rip off though - 5 bucks for a very shallow bowl that didn't hold much. Although the fish tacos were not at all like Rubios (THE best place for fish tacos in SoCal), but they were still really really good.

After dinner, Nate came over for a while for us to play some Halo 3 on the XBox and reminisce about old times.

The boys were both really excited and looking forward to going for a tour of Nate's boat today. After I picked ES up from school this afternoon, we headed over to get the tour. In spite of his excitement beforehand, YS complained almost the ENTIRE tour, "I'm thirsty," or, "I'm want to go home." He was a real joy (tack this comment onto the first section above). Anyway, it was good to see Nate, and good to see what life is like on a floating hotel.

Double Standards and Hypocrisy

My 6-year old son attends a Catholic school. We're not Catholic mind you, but we just moved to Hawaii and we'd heard very good things about this school. I went to a Catholic university after all, and it wasn't so bad. :-)

Our son's teacher informed us that the kids would not be allowed to dress up or otherwise "celebrate" the pagan holiday of Halloween. This, in and of itself, doesn't really bother me. Bear with me here.

The school is going to have a fall festival. Wanna take a guess what the theme of this festival is?

Pirates

Yes, they get to dress up as pirates and participate in pirate-themed activities for the fall festival.

So let me see if I get this straight...

1) The kids are NOT allowed to dress up as firemen or doctors or cowboys or angels or princesses or astronauts or power rangers or Luke Skywalker or cute animals and "celebrate" a holiday that, although it may have some pagan origins, has become so widely commercialized and ingrained in our society that it's lost it's original pagan meanings.

2) The kids ARE allowed to dress up as murderers, thieves, and scoundrels and celebrate the profession of piracy.

Somehow that just doesn't make sense to me. Don't get me wrong. I'm not trying to say they shouldn't be able to have a pirate-themed fall festival either. Like Halloween, I think "pirates" have become a commercialized popular icon through rides at Disneyland and movies like Pirates of the Caribbean. (Heck, I just took my kids to see The Pirates of Penzance.)

The two policies just seem very contradictory to me. I thought about writing to the school about it, but I figured they'd say, "Ya know what? You're absolutely right! We're hereby CANCELING the fall festival!" I don't want to ruin the fall festival for the kids, so I just decided to vent about it here in the blogosphere instead.

...My sons will still have fun dressing up as a Military Policeman and as Luke Skywalker after school gets out on Halloween this year.