Rick’s Rants and Raves

I’ve come to the conclusion that Thanksgiving is the holiday that Christmas wishes it could be.

As a kid, I always was amazed that Christmas was only one day. It seemed like there was so much to do, so much fun to have, such great stuff to explore, that it really should have been three or four days long. Thanksgiving, in contrast, is a four day long event in my family.

This year, Thanksgiving started in the traditional way, on Thursday, at my aunt’s house. This was the gathering of my mother’s near-by family and we did much of the typical stuff–spent time with family, ate great food (contributed by everyone), and marveled at the first snow of the year, and played with army men. When we got home, we relaxed with a bit of TV (Mythbusters, of course).

Friday was spent doing various things with relatively little stress. First up, we got to see one of Emily’s friends playing ice hockey. I, of course, used this as a photographic opportunity. Emily’s friend was playing defense the whole time, so I didn’t get any good shots of him on the puck.This one, however is about the best I could do a) shooting through plexiglass, b) with crappy stadium lighting.

After we got home from the hockey game, we ate lunch, then the kids continued a recent fascination of theirs: knocking army men off of blocks using Playmobil canons!

They’ve spent hours together playing like this over the last couple of days, and it has to be one of the most heart-warming experiences a parent can have: kids playing together incredibly well.

We also cleaned up the house a bit in preparation for the only Thanksgiving meal that we’re hosting this year. After the house was pretty well prepared, we diverted into jamming to the tunes of DJ Rick spinning the MP3s on the whole-house stereo. Special request from Nathan: Black Sabbath Crazy Train; from Emily: Guns ‘N Roses Welcome to the Jungle. Some day we’ll probably be astonished we let them listen to this kind of music, but for now it was great fun to have watched them jamming to a mix of classic rock and modern pop.

Finally, we departed for an OSU Women’s Volleyball game. OSU played Michigan, and swept them 3-0. All three games were tight and very exciting.

We spent much of Saturday in relaxed preparation for my father and his wife to come over for dinner. We even pulled out Anne’s Grandmother’s china for the first time in our kids’ memories.

We were pretty laid back about getting the pork roast in the oven. My dad and his wife were to arrive at 4PM and we figured the roast would be done between 4:30 and 5PM. Unfortunately, it turned out to be closer to 5:30PM, and my dad’s wife had to leave to go work on the suicide hotline. Its incredibly meaningful work, I just wish we’d known that earlier than “Dinner’s on the table!”–”Oh, I’ve gotta go.” But quite honestly, that was the WHOLE DRAMA for the entire 4 day weekend. At least I remembered to get a shot of the kids with grandpa before he left.

Anne and I got up late on Sunday, and prepared our dish for our final Thanksgiving meal. We were tasked with making salad. Not content with dumping a salad out of a bag, Anne glazed some pecans to go with the spinach, red leaf, red onion, feta, and dried cranberries.

I enjoy salads, but I don’t normally rave about them. This one was fabulous, yummy, and perfect.

We descended upon Anne’s dad’s house to feast upon roast beast with a bunch of her step-siblings and their assorted “others”. Again, this event was relatively low-key, especially for us. I think Anne’s step-mother spent way too much time cleaning the grout (as she is wont to do) and every other nook-and-cranny-that-no-one-will-notice. But she would probably do that in preparation for a camp-out.

The evening, and our Thanksgiving weekend in general, ended in a rubber band fight–all the kids against uncle Lance.

So, back to my original point: Thanksgiving is better than Christmas precisely because there is none of that gift-giving stress. And for religious significance (and I ain’t religious), Jesus really wanted his disciples and followers to break bread and have meals together. I’m pretty sure he didn’t say anything about stocking suffers, gift exchanges, or putting yourself in debt to prove how generous you are. Thanksgiving has become the holiday that Christmas should be.

In early September, I got an e-mail from the Youth Sports Director at our local YMCA with this plea:

Would you want to coach again with an assistant? :):):):):) I may need one more….are you in? PLEASE

She followed this up with a phone call and another plea to the three most likely dads on the team:

The 3 of you have had lots of experience with YMCA Soccer!  I have total faith in you to help out with the 7-9 team that needs a coach!   I have placed [your kids] on the same team so you 3 could help each other with covering games and practices.

My “lots of experience” consists of watching my kids’ games for a couple of years, and assistant coaching my son’s team this past spring. I’ve never played soccer. I was a bit skeptical that I was a good choice for the job, but I didn’t want there to  be three co-coaches. Without a clear leader, I was afraid that would lead to confusing practices, and potential conflicts of leadership style (or lack thereof). So I replied “I’ll take the lead role.” And with those 5 words began my first ever experience as a coach of a sports team.

Fortunately, the YMCA sports program is low competition. That means I was coaching for participation and could spend time working on basic skills rather than trying to figure out how to win games. I checked out a couple of books from the library, and read through the material provided by the YMCA, and formulated a plan for my first practice. I used much the same plan for every practice:

• warm up and stretching
• low stress ball handling practice (dribbling with various goals)
• speed and physical mobility (short sprints, stops, turns)
• medium stress ball handling (one-to-one team work, one-vs-one handling, “knock-out”)
• scrimmage, forcing everyone to play every position

When I coached the games, I had a clip board with a grid of the kids names on rows, and four columns to write their positions for each quarter. I had witnessed as a parent other parents questioning coaches as to how much their kids played, and whether or not they got their fair share of time. So I wanted to be sure I was as fair as possible, and in the first couple of games, I tried to rotate the kids through a variety of positions so that they could all get a feel for them. In the later games, I tried as much as possible to honor the kids’ requests for their position of choice.

I was really fortunate in the kids that were on my team. Of the 11 kids, I had one fantastic player, 8 reasonably strong players, and only 2 “Space Cadets”–the term one of my friends uses for the kids who just don’t seem to get it. I was typically able to keep the Space Cadets separated, and paired with a stronger player to help compensate.

My assistant coaches were decent guys and were generally helpful during practices and games. One of them, Kent, had a habit of constantly yelling instructions at the kids during the game. “Get on that ball. Go! Go! Go! We’re going that way guys! Get down there. Go! Go! Go! Pass it to the center! Pass it to the center! Get up the field!” all in the space of about 10 seconds. It was incredibly tiresome, and drowned me out on a number of occasions. Rather than tell him to tone it down, I just let it go, and instructed the kids as much as possible during play stoppage.

Kent also had a habit of getting onto the field by a step or two. Normally I didn’t worry much about it especially when play was not close to us. But one time he was about three steps into the field, and play had come pretty close to us. I was afraid the referee was going to reprimand him so I said to Kent “You may want to step off the field.” His response? “You should read the rules. We’re allowed to have one coach on the field.” I corrected him: “I have read the rules, and that applies to the younger groups, not this age group.” He stepped off the field. The next game when he found himself accidentally on the field, he quickly stepped off.

In the end, it was a positive experience. The kids were a lot of fun, and the parents were generally communicative when their kids weren’t going to be at a game or practice. At the end-of-season “banquet” a number of them thanked me for my efforts. I’m glad did it.

Oh, and by the way, our record (”We don’t keep track at the Y”) was 6-0.

I’ve finally taken the plunge into off-camera lighting. This past week, I bought a nice manual flash, the LumoPro 120, a light stand, umbrella, and Cactus radio triggers. Why did I do these crazy things? Because I think it will improve shots like family portraits, (most especially like this), and other fun an interesting stuff. I’m also committed to taking pictures of Emily’s volleyball team in a professional style in order to hone my skills. So here are some results, playing with my gear.

First, dinner and homework, with the flash behind the umbrella, camera right.

Second, Nathan holding the new flash, triggering in optical slave mode-the built-in flash fired, causing the flash he was holding to fire.

Next is a still life with flash behind the umbrella, camera left, medium height.

By the way, I’ve intentionally not cropped any of the back ground material out of the still life shots so that I can see the effects shutter (none) and aperture (smaller = darker background) have.

Now the still life without the umbrella.

Next I put the light up high, around 7 feet, no umbrella, and pulled the zoom out all the way (85mm)

And for comparison, flash at wide angle (28mm).

Finally, just to see what it would look like, flash high but toward the back left.

It was trigger with the built-in flash, manually set to 1/32 power.

I didn’t make anything particularly great. These are just some experiments with the off camera flash angles to help me understand the impact.

Today we visited the India Festival. I’d been given complimentary tickets by a coworker who is on the executive committee. In recent years, Anne and the kids and I have been really enjoying exploring Indian food around town. Indian food tends to be more expensive than Chinese or Mexican, but not quite as pricey as Japanese, so as a result, we usually reserve it for a treat. The exception however is that I can get a very nice Indian lunch for $6 at work every Thursday thanks to Cuisine of India, who brings in some excellent chicken tikka masala and saag panir, among other things.

So I looked forward to visiting the India Festival, but didn’t really know what to expect. As we pulled into the parking lot and didn’t see another Caucasian, I knew we were in the right place.

We stepped inside and were immediately hit with the smell of curry and garlic. We wandered the aisles looking at the vendors’ wares.

The vendors could largely be lumped into four broad categories: food, clothing, Indian DVDs & CDs, and mystics/spiritualists. One of the clothing vendors was tickled by Emily’s curiosity in the saris and helped her try one on.

The aisles were frequently packed such that it was difficult to move through without being bumped. It felt a lot like a bazaar, at least to my limited experience.

However, we spent the majority of our time sampling the food. We tried dishes from four different restaurants (Udipi Cafe, Bayleaf India Bistro, Taste of India, and a vendor from Virginia), most of which I don’t even know the name of. The food from Bayleaf and Taste of India was excellent. One of the dishes we got from Udipi would have been better had it been fresh and hot.

I especially appreciated Bayleaf’s $3 sampler plates. They were reasonably sized and perfect for sharing a variety of interesting dishes.

The best part was that the kids tried everything! And then came back for more.

Years ago, Anne and I ran into some acquaintances at a local Japanese restaurant and we were jealous that their daughter was with them. At that time in our lives, our kids were picky eaters at home with grandma, and we didn’t realize just how soon that would change. Today our kids ate a lot of dishes that were entirely foreign (in nationality) but not so foreign to their experience.

We sat in on a few performances in the auditorium. One was a really adorable childrens’ song expressing unity although we have different names and faces. When the final girl, face painted orange, white, and green sang “I am Bindia and I come from India”, the crowd roared.

As we went home, Anne and I agreed that it was fun and interesting, but perhaps not worth the $6 per person it would have cost us if it were not for the free tickets. The India Festival was geared toward the Indian population of our city, as a celebration of their culture by them, not so much as outreach or education of the non-Indian residents. So although it was interesting, I don’t think it was worth $29 (tickets plus parking) to us to have a bunch of Indian restaurants in one location.