Growing Up Haines

On a recent slow day at work, I had a philosophical discussion with a coworker about our family trees and the roots that support that family tree, sparked by the fact that my father had recently had our book of Haines genealogy rebound and refurbished. Not knowing his father’s family very well, he had considered recording conversations with his deceased-father’s brother about his father and trying to capture a different perspective of him. Thisgot me thinking back to why I had started blogging some ten years ago – despite being cliché, today really is tomorrow’s history.

Talking more about it, I thought about my now growing family and how everything is focused on our only son right now. Most of our picturesare of him rather than of our whole family. With today being tomorrow’s past,wouldn’t it be neat to have a multi-media documentation of our family as it isday-to-day from Erika and my perspective for our family to someday read? I knowthat reading back through my own blog I feel nostalgic, and I’m sure that someday I will feel the same if Erika and I can commit to keeping this thing upto date. Not only that, but there are small things that I remember from when Iwas a child and there are things that spark memories of that era. What things will Oliver remember as being special times, and wouldn’t it be interesting forus to try to capture those from our perspective? I could ramble on and on butthe conclusion I came to is that it’s never too late to start (or restart!) recording our lives, so why not start now?

Yesterday, despite being a slow work day, was actuallypretty bust. I started my Advanced Spanish 3 class at Hunter college with mostof the same students that were in the Spanish 2 class. I find taking Spanish to be an interesting experience and so different to when I was learning German back at Cal Poly. With German (and before I had lived there), I learned all the grammar, vocabulary, reading, writing, etc. before I could *really* put it topractical use. Of course it’s better this way because once I lived in Germany,I was able to learn the practical part of communication pretty quickly. In Spanish, I don’t know the specific rules, but I actually use the rules when I communicate by implicitly understanding them from being around someone who speaks it. In class, I have difficulty with reading and pronouncing words in sentences out loud (ha!), quickly and efficiently translating and comprehending written text, but I am able to communicate. In any case, I’m looking forward to this second class of Spanish, even if it’s going so much faster than the previous class and I have difficulty in understanding my teacher’s gatling-gun-speed Spanish with a Chilean accent!

Yesterday was also exciting because I finally made acommitment to purchasing a commuting bike. Last year Sean let me use hissailing-boat-like tank of a bike for commuting, which was nice but a royal painto ride. Short crank, fenders, steel saddle bags, wheels that would go out ofalignment on a whim, and just a few gears is not ideal for the windy conditionson Vernon Blvd, my major biking thoroughfare. I bought a co-workers bike thathe was trying to sell after only a year because the “geometry wasn’t ideal”.Huh? Feels fine to me, and thank you very much for the discount! Of course Iimmediately went online to order a New York-grade lock (actually, to save $12 Iordered one-level lower than New York-grade) and picked up a helmet in my localstore. I’m looking forward to riding home on Friday!

Oliver really is a little human now. He can now see (and grab) over the kitchen table, he enjoys dancing to all kinds of music (from Salsa to Taio Cruz to the ice cream truck on our ghetto streets), and especially enjoys holding his shirt up with one hand and playing with his belly button with the other, saying "tickle tickle".