Andy Smallman

That’s right, I’m sure you’re thinking football, especially given all the nuttiness in Seattle this week around the sport. First the Seahawks played on Monday night and *won* a crazy game. And tonight the University of Washington beat Stanford in a huge upset.

But I’m not talking football. I’m talking Nutrition. I’m talking Fitness. And I’m talking for Life. The N.F.L.

Ella, Melinda & I are taking a class on Thursday night that is helping us learn the latest information about good eating and exercise habits. The class is pretty entertaining, too. It’s a small group of families meeting with a former pharmacist who decided she’d help people be healthier if she taught them about nutrition and being active instead of providing them medications for, wait for it, not eating well or keeping fit.

Tonight’s picture is of Ella showing us the amount of fat in a large size movie popcorn. The fat, represented by 31.5 teaspoons of Crisco, is in the baggie. It’s supposed to be kind of disgusting.

I had a really fun experience, totally unexpected, at school today. Tawni, our new teacher at PSCS, and I took our group of eight 6th & 7th graders on an outing this morning. Our ultimate destination was a huge park in south Seattle with a couple of zip lines. We rode the light rail to our stop, about 6 blocks from the park, and then started our walk. Along the way we passed a number of fun looking shops, among them a printing shop.

But Day Moon Press is no ordinary print shop.

This shop is like stepping back in time. We gazed in the window, all ten of us, enjoying the view of industrial age era printing presses and gadgets and inks and tools and such. Inside, a friendly-looking woman smiled at us, taking note of our presence. Then she came out to chat, showing us what she was working on. It was obvious she loved her job so I asked her, wanting the middle schoolers to hear it from her. I said, “Do you love your job?”

To which she took a step back, her face relaxing into a lovely smile, “Oh, yes. I have the best job in the world.”

Of course, after that she invited us all in to tour the store and to see the linotype machine she had in the back.

So much of what I wanted to do when I started a school was to connect young people to adults who love what they do. Passion is contagious. Catch it!

Translated from French, today’s blog post title is “My Father-in-law.” Translated literally, it’s “My beautiful father.” That’s a pretty cool literal translation, don’t you think? And mother-in-law is “belle-mère,” as in beautiful mother. Sometimes languages can be such fun.

Anyway, I’m writing about my “beau-père” because today is his, Dwight’s, 78th birthday. Happy birthday, Dwight! I went digging in the photo archives for an apt shot to illustrate today’s entry and found this one. There he is, young Dwight, maybe before he was Melinda’s dad, playing the bagpipes. That’s a pretty cool instrument to play, the bagpipes. Way back in 1994 Dwight came in to PSCS (actually, PSCS came to him – the class met at his house) to teach a group of teenagers how to play the bagpipes. His creativity in teaching the class became one of my favorite stories from that school year, the school’s first.

Dwight designed a way for all the students to have their own bagpipes. They made them, following his directions. The bag used to hold air was the most ingenious part of the apparatus. Each one was made from a turkey oven roaster bag.

Here’s to you, Dwight!

Thanks for the feedback shared about who’s reading this blog. I really appreciate the responses and am taking them all to heart. I know I can be a little silly at times and many (most?) of the posts here are lighthearted. I try to sprinkle in some serious things now and then.

Regarding serious things, unless you’re a professional football fan, this is not one of those. Melinda & I watched the end of the Monday Night Football game tonight, it being interesting because the Seattle Seahawks were playing (and, hey, they’re practically our next door neighbors at PSCS!). The game ended amid huge controversy and with the Seahawks winning. It was so crazy that even Melinda got involved. She suggested I post something silly on a national blog in which people are ranting about the officiating.

See, if you’re a football fan this is a serious post. If you’re not, this is ridiculous stuff.

Oh, regarding the photo, it’s from Florence, Italy in 2011. I like it. Melinda likes it. No controversy here.

First off, I’m curious how many of you are still out there reading this blog. The blog count, something I check regularly, has dropped considerably lately. Yesterday, for instance, only had 30-some unique visitors recorded. That’s quite a contrast to some of the past counts, back when the blog hit count was consistently over 100 and sometimes even much higher.

Have I lost my audience? Am I boring you?

For instance, how interesting is it to see this photo from 1991? Yeah, that’s Melinda and me, less than a year into our marriage. Chloe and Ella, even PSCS, were mere glints in our eyes. We were mere babies!

But, boy, weren’t we cute?

Melinda was regularly riding horses back then and was participating in a horse show at the Kirkland Hunt Club, not far from Seattle. It was fun to see her doing something she loved doing.

Say, on blog counts. My Compassion Game Kindness Mission site had well over 350 unique visitors yesterday. Maybe that’s part of what’s making me wonder about the interest in this blog.

Ducks fly south for the winter, right?

Well, I’m not sure what happens with them when summer turns to fall, but I sure know what happens to me in terms of duck. I want me some confit de canard!

Today’s picture is of an individual serving of said confit that I brought back from France in July, saving it for just such an occasion as last night. Melinda wanted her favorite enchilada. I had already made a quick meal for Ella prior to her babysitting gig. Chloe is away at college. And the weather had turned to cloudy and cool. Time for me to eat some duck!

I was so excited. It’s made to be cooked in the microwave so I popped it in, heated it up, and presto! 2 minutes later I was a happy dinner eater.

It was pretty darn good, too.

Yeah, I pretty much make Ella’s breakfast every morning. It’s a tradition that goes back to my dad, who proudly made me breakfast every day when I was in school. Truth be told, he was a pretty fine short order cook!

This morning, as has been the case all week, Ella had a waffle with almond butter, a strip of turkey bacon, some yogurt, and a glass of orange juice. Let me just say that’s a yummy breakfast. She seemed to think so, too.

But I have to keep on my toes. She gets tired of the same thing each day so the trick is trying to vary it before she announces she wants something different. Any suggestions for the next variation?

On a side note, I unveiled the first not-so-secret secret mission in the kindness class I’m facilitating for the Compassion Games. Wanna play?

You know, it really is good advice to be wary of who you meet online. Certainly, some untoward things exist in the world and the Internet is a place to be careful. That being said, the Internet is also a place to meet some wonderful people, interesting folks from far-reaching places that in a bygone era you’d never have a chance to connect with.

Take my Internet buddy, Fish Astronaut.

I don’t really know him. All I know is that I stumbled across his website one night while I was in France and I liked his art. I asked if might be willing to create some illustrations for one of my kindness classes. Now he illustrates all of them, and the Kind Living website.

Today’s image is the illustration he created for the first mission in the kindness mission compassion game I’m facilitating that begins tomorrow. Consider this your lucky sneak peek.

Melinda is doing a lot of walking these days, trying as she is to get in 10,000 steps each day. That’s hard to do, especially when we stay at PSCS until almost 7pm, like today. But it’s easier on the weekends. For instance, this picture comes from last Saturday when Melinda & I walked to her sister’s house. You may recall hearing about Perrin, our niece. She lives there, too.

Arriving, we saw the sidewalk chalk statement, “I (heart) Perrin.” There next to it was a piece of chalk. Melinda picked it up and added her comment, to which tonight’s blog post title is my addition.

All this lovie-dovie stuff has got me thinking about the Compassion Games which start in Seattle on Friday. As I mentioned a couple of nights ago, I’m leading a kindness activity as part of the games and it’s getting some serious publicity. The website I’ve set up for it has gotten over 400 hits in three days.

Nice!

Two times each year, right? We all should have our teeth cleaned twice a year. I don’t know about you, but I really don’t look forward to those two days. I mean, it’s only 2 out of 365 days, which, by horse racing standards, is a longshot to come in. But I’ve got this little spot behind my lower front teeth, right by a salivary gland, where the tartar builds up and has to be scraped away. I don’t find that fun. And I floss every day!

Wait a second. This post is about Ella going to the dentist. That’s not nearly as bad! In fact, Melinda & I dropped her off and dashed out for a little bite to eat while Ella had her teeth cleaned. That was downright pleasant!!

We got back in time to chat with the dentist, who brought us back to see Ella and hear her compliment Ella on her brushing and flossing. And she got to wear these cool sunglasses…