Pilcrow

Well, I hadn't intended to let another two weeks go by without posting, but the end of the year was fairly busy, mainly with work. This year for only the second time ever, "home for the holidays" meant staying in Seattle rather than going back to my parents' place in New Hampshire. Because of the lack of work I had back in the summer, I couldn't afford to fly home; by the time work picked up, it was too late, I needed the sudden influx of extra funds to catch up on my bills and obligations. I am still sorry I missed the family Christmas celebration, it means a lot to me. But it was kind of nice to not have to fuss with the packing and flying across the country and rushing about trying to visit others during the busy holidays and not having enough time to visit before wanting to be back in Seattle for my birthday. And I have been saying for several years now that I want to go back to visit New England some time when it isn't freezing-cold December, so my plan is to make a trip later this year, probably in the spring.

As it happens, in a sense I can't go home for Christmas anymore. Back in the summer, my parents finally put their house, my childhood home, up for sale and started looking for a smaller place of their own; they moved into a condo in October, and the house has now been sold, with the closing day pending later this month. I expect that I'll always feel at home to some extent in Nashua, and I'll probably continue to refer to visiting my parents as "going home", but I really won't be going home anymore, I'll just be going to my parents' place. And even then, it's been over eleven years since I moved out of my childhood home, first to live in a rental house outside Boston, and then moving from there to Seattle. Home, whether for the holidays or for everyday, is here in Seattle.

I had wanted to continue my archive concert summaries today, rolling June and July together, but I've been busy today editing a paper and now I don't have enough time left to get that done. So the rest of the 2010 concert reviews/summaries will probably be pushed into next week, with the new year's weekend upon me. 

Instead, I'll write a bit about my Christmas vacation. Despite going into it with a cold, I ended up having a very enjoyable trip home. My flights there and back were miraculously smooth and trouble-free, which was really nice. And my cold cleared up within the first couple days, so I never felt really miserable. I did not get to spend as much time in Boston as I wanted to, but I did have a nice brunch at a restaurant in a part of Boston I've never really spent time in before, so that was good, and I did get to make my obligatory pilgrimage to Pizzeria Regina, which was satisfying as always. I also didn't get to see as many friends as I wanted to, though I didn't even try contacting some of them just because I knew the holidays are such a busy time for everyone, and because I had a cold at first; however, I did get to have that brunch with my new KEXP friend Sarah "from Boston", and despite the weather's efforts to thwart me, I did get to hang out with two of my oldest and closest friends, Scott and Doug. I enjoyed visiting my parents, hanging out with my younger brother and seeing his new place, and seeing my older sister and other relatives on Christmas (well, the day after, actually) as well as talking to my younger sister and her partner via Skype.

I finally tried my hand at running a game of "Dungeon World", based on Vincent Baker's Apocalypse World, and although I could see right away where I need more practice at running it, I felt it went very well for my first time and I enjoyed it a lot. I also finally finished reading Apocalypse World, which gave me some ideas on further customizing parts of it for "Dungeon World", and made me more eager to get back to finishing the character class I've been working on as well as preparing an adventure to run for people here in Seattle.

On the topic of spending time in Boston: people occasionally ask me if I ever miss New England, and I usually say no, although I do still love it, I'm very happy here in Seattle and don't intend to leave. However, for some reason on this trip, I found myself feeling a bit homesick for Boston while I was there visiting it. I know it so well, and yet at the same time there are parts of it like the South End that I've rarely visited or spent any time in, so I'd still love to spend time exploring it as well as simply hanging out in the parts that are familiar to me. And I have to say, Boston has so much character and beauty that Seattle rarely if ever comes close to, not just because it's so much older but also because it developed over time with distinctive styles. Too much of Seattle strikes me as bland and modern and similar, and Seattle could really conform to its terrain a lot more, with the resulting interestingly-shaped buildings and neighborhoods, instead of having the grid mercilessly imposed on top of everything. I could probably rant at further length on this topic, but I'm just about out of time for now. In any case, though I do miss Boston and do feel Seattle has some shortcomings in comparison, I'm still happy to be back here and to call Seattle home.

Today I should be writing a list of things I'm thankful for. The thing is, I basically did that already last week with my post titled "Reminders". So now I'm wondering what more I could say.

I'm thankful for my loving family. I'm thankful that despite the increasing number of health problems he's had in the past few years, my dad is still alive and fairly well; I'm thankful he's had such good care. I'm thankful that my mom's also had lots of support from my siblings still in New Hampshire, from our extended family, and from her friends. I'm thankful for my cool and smart siblings. I'm thankful that my family is close and gets along well, when it's not uncommon at this time of year to hear that many others aren't so fortunate.

I'm thankful for my adopted Seattle families: my college friend Tony and his wife Farida, and their friends Tony and Pam. I'm thankful for all the love, care, and support they've given me since I moved to Seattle, standing in for my physically-distant family. They've done a lot to make Seattle home to me, even though I still reflexively refer to back East as home. 

I'm thankful that I made some close friends while growing up that I still have today. Those guys have kept me going so many times in so many ways. I'm thankful for the many more friendships I've made over the years, in school, at college, at work, through music, through gaming, through KEXP, through other friends, through the Internet. 

I'm thankful for my KEXP friend Brittney and her husband Ben inviting me for Thanksgiving today.

I'm thankful that KEXP exists, and for all the great music it plays. I'm thankful for the opportunities I've had to attend shows and festivals as a volunteer for KEXP, and thankful for the opportunities to volunteer in different ways to help support their mission to promote music. 

I'm thankful for the people who've helped to support me and keep me going as a freelancer. I'm thankful I've had the opportunity to give that a try.

I'm thankful to you for reading.

I am American. My parents are Franco-American. My grandparents were French Canadian.

My mom has traced the family tree for our two primary lines (her side and my dad’s side) back 300+ years to 16-sometime-or-other, when our ancestors first emigrated from France. My grandparents were born and at least partly raised in Canada; I forget exactly who moved down to the U.S. when, but it happened during the first few decades of the twentieth century. I know the family on my mom’s side moved to Vermont first before coming to my hometown in New Hampshire, while I believe my dad’s grandparents brought the family directly to my hometown. Actually, I know, or remember, a lot less of this than I feel I ought to. Although this was part of the time period when many French Canadians were moving to New England to work in the mills, I don’t believe great-grandparents or grandparents were mill-workers. In the case of my dad’s grandfather, he opened a restaurant in my hometown during the Great Depression which, except for a couple years when it was sold to an outside interest, stayed open and in the family for over sixty years, and was considered a city institution.

My hometown had a large French-Canadian population when my parents were growing up. Not only did my parents speak French at home when they were growing up, but also at the local Catholic parish school, they took all subjects in both English and French. However, the city was still predominantly English-speaking, and so my parents (and grandparents) did learn English and adopted that as their primary language. When my siblings and I were growing up, we heard French spoken in two situations: my parents would curse in French, and they would speak in French occasionally with my grandparents—mostly, no doubt, simply when they didn’t want us to know what they were saying. They still tend to slip into French cursing when they’re really angry, and my dad’s English pronunciation still bears a hint or two of his French-Canadian background, in particular a tendency to pronounce ‘th’ as ‘t’. (This, combined with the general New England accent, can be amusing: “thwart” comes out as “twat”.)

I’ve always considered myself Franco-American, like my parents, but it’s more my heritage than a substantial part of my identity. Being Franco-American, for me, means insisting that the R in my last name should be capitalized—even though it turns out that in Canada the French-Canadians themselves no longer do. It means knowing how to pronounce the various French family names still common in my hometown. It means having many aunts, uncles, and cousins—some of whom I’ve only seen a few times in my life despite living in the same city, some of whom I’ve never met—and thinking families with a minimum of four kids are not unusual. It means knowing what gorton is and how to pronounce it.

Still, I feel like I’m missing much of my cultural background. Beyond gorton, I can’t think of any particularly French-Canadian dishes my parents would make. (Crepes, I suppose, though I think of those as more French-French than French-Canadian.) We don’t have any distinctive cultural dress, we never celebrated any traditional French-Canadian holidays. I only learned French when I started taking classes in eighth grade. I still have a fairly decent basic reading comprehension, but my speaking skills were always weak even when I was studying, and I now have a hard time recalling vocabulary if I’m trying to compose sentences in my head. I never even really picked up the swear words (although I know them now). I can claim to be Franco-American because of my family name and background, and a few cultural tidbits as I’ve mentioned, but really when it comes down to it, I’m just American. Sometimes I regret that and wish I could reclaim more of my heritage, but overall I’m okay with being just another American.

Today is my dad's birthday! He is now 69 years old. Since my last post about him, his recovery from the colectomy has progressed fairly well. He spent about two weeks in Boston after the operation, and then transferred to a rehab center in Nashua, which is close to home and much easier for my mom. He's been working on building up his strength again, and although he has days when he's just very tired, he seems to be doing well and is in decent spirits.

I may not have mentioned before that my dad is a ward alderman on the city's board of aldermen. Of course, he's been unable to fulfill his duties over the past month or two, but once he returned to Nashua from Boston he started watching the aldermanic meetings on TV, which was a good sign that he was feeling better. Recently the mayor let him know that a new state law allowed for board members to vote by telephone. As a result, he was able to participate and vote through speakerphone in an important meeting last week concerning the Broad Street Parkway, a project that's been under serious consideration for at least 20 years. The Nashua Telegraph has an article about the meeting, which talks a lot about the controversy over my dad's unexpected participation, apparently almost as controversial as the parkway project itself. The opportunity to resume his duties even on a limited basis really helped cheer my dad up, and I'm glad he's able to continue doing something he's always enjoyed a lot, serving in local government. 

The ups and downs of my dad's health have hit a new low: the antibiotic treatment he was on for his knee apparently reduced other, good bacteria in his digestive system, resulting in him developing colitis - infection of the colon by the C-diff bacteria that live there. Last week the doctors determined that his knee infection was cleared up, and took him off the antibiotics; however, the C-diff bacteria weren't under control, as it turned out on Saturday when he fell violently ill and had to go to the hospital. Although the doctors put him on new medications, they determined that the best way to end the problem would be to remove the colon, which they did in surgery last night. The word from my mom this evening is that he's recovering well, even laughing when he mistakenly said "Hi Phil" to my younger brother as he often does even in normal circumstances. 

Hopefully once he's recovered from this operation, he'll be able to get back to a somewhat normal life and be free of further infections and complications for a while. It's difficult because, after so many years taking anti-rejection medication for his heart, his body is very weak against any kind of infection. On his fifteenth rebirthday - the anniversary of his transplant - this year, I expressed the hope that he'll see another fifteen years, which aside from his heart issue would be reasonable for someone from his long-lived family. Now, his 69th birthday is coming up at the end of September, and although I expect he'll see that, I worry about how he'll be by the time his 70th comes around next year. Still, the semicolon is a pause, not a full stop, and I can hope my Dad's got a lot left to say after this pause.

I did not use the available time last night to make a post in my journal, so now I have to squeeze out a quick note while I eat dinner before I head out to a party at a friend's house.

Dad had another short hospital stay a few weeks ago, while they determined that the pain he'd been having in his knee was caused by an infection in the bone. He's now on an antibiotics treatment as an outpatient, and hopefully it'll all be cleared up in a few weeks.

I had another several-day bout of bodyaches and whatnot that led to me visiting the doctor yet again, and yet again determining that it was stress and anxiety. We did an EKG just in case and the doctor said it was the best EKG result he'd ever seen. So I really have to learn to chill out. This time I agreed to try out a prescription for a "rescue" medicine (lorazepam, if you know about these things) to take when I'm undergoing the aches and anxiety in order to help me calm down. We'll see if that helps. I tried one that night before going to bed, as the symptoms hadn't fully gone away yet, and I did feel more relaxed and the aches were gone the next day.

Meanwhile, this afternoon Nimiel started her repetitive litterbox visit behavior that she's suffered from before. Her box was due to be cleaned this weekend so I made sure to do that, and I'm hoping that maybe she'll chill out too and not need a vet visit and medication.

In more positive stuff, work's been good so far this summer. I finally am for real clearing out my credit card debt, it'll be paid off next month. I'm hoping maybe I'll be able to do the next step of the dental work in the fall, maybe November. Also next month, my sister Andrea and her girlfriend Jen are coming to visit, and in September my brother Jeremy's coming for his first visit.

Finally, in concert news I've decided to go to Bumbershoot this year. Saturday, Beehive and Mono In VCF are playing; Sunday, Sons and Daughters are back; and Monday, Battles are back. Those are all good enough reasons to attend. Kinski is also playing at Bumbershoot Saturday night, but Freezepop are going to be in town for PAX on Friday and will be playing a club show on Saturday, so I'll go see them instead.

And I'm done dinner and it's time to head out to the party.

p.s. I tried out swing dancing last week with my friend Dawn. Getting the timing right for the super-basic step is surprisingly tricky. I intend to sign up for a short class that Dawn's also taking, starting next week, although I think I have a conflict that will make me miss at least one class.

Let's see, I have a bunch of general updates.

My dad's doing well, he's in a rehab center working with occupational and physical therapists to build up his strength. He's able to stand up and go for walks on his own now, and he's hoping he'll be able to go home next Monday. He said he's eager to get back home and start cooking again.

My nose has remained persistently congested since last week, with some sneezing bouts, but I haven't had a bad day of near-incapacitation since last Thursday. Tony did show up with Claritin later that evening, and that seemed to help for a couple hours but then the non-stop sneezing and nose-running resumed, so I just went to bed. But to my surprise, my nose behaved manageably well throughout the night. I don't see why lying down would make a difference, but in any case I've been better since then, although I'm still waiting for the rest of the congestion to clear up.

Nimiel's also been doing well, the medicine alleviated her symptoms pretty quickly. Unfortunately, after a few days she decided that she really doesn't like the medicine after all, so she's been fussing and making more effort to avoid the medicine and get away. Hopefully she won't start putting up a serious fight, we've still got at least another 9 days to go.

I finally settled on going to see X at The Showbox on Monday for my March show. I had decided to go direct to the Showbox's box office to get tickets for the Ladytron show coming up on May 24, because paying $8.75 extra per ticket as Ticketmaster's "convenience fee" is not as convenient as simply going downtown to the box office and paying only $2 extra for advance tickets. So when I finally got around to doing that last Monday, I checked and tickets were still available for X, so I got one. I'm not quite sure what to expect from the opening acts (or the audience), but it should be an interesting show.

I've also got my eye on a few concerts in April. There are three shows at Neumos I'm considering: Meat Beat Manifesto on Wednesday April 9, Simian Mobile Disco on Thursday April 24, and Sons and Daughters on Tuesday April 29. Of those I'm most likely to catch Sons and Daughters, but I did like Meat Beat Manifesto last time I saw them, and I've also been digging Simian Mobile Disco's current album Attack Decay Sustain Release, so if the shows don't sell out in advance I'll probably try going to each. However, there is another show in April that I will definitely attend: the live broadcast of KEXP's Audioasis local-music show at the High Dive on Saturday April 5. This show is part of their monthly series benefitting local charities, and this one benefits the Seattle Public Library Foundation. It's not so much the particular charity that's drawing me out as it is one of the bands on the lineup, Mono In VCF. I'm very interested to see how they sound in a small club, and whether they can recreate the ambience that fit so well at the Triple Door.

Finally, speaking of KEXP, I was very pleased on Tuesday to discover that the photo I took of "the last pledge" at KEXP's recent pledge drive was used (with credit to me) for an article on the Seattlest blog about KEXP's Radio Liberation NYC broadcasting project.

"Look," said Arthur, "I'm a bit upset about that."
Ford frowned to himself and seemed to roll the thought around his mind.
"Yes, I can understand that," he said at last.
"Understand that!" shouted Arthur. "Understand that!"
Ford sprang up.
"Keep looking at the book!" he hissed urgently.
"What?"
"Don't Panic."
"I'm not panicking!"
"Yes, you are."
"All right, so I'm panicking, what else is there to do?"
"You just come along with me and have a good time. The Galaxy's a fun place. You'll need to have this fish in your ear."
-- The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Douglas Adams

My dad, whose health problems I've written about before, hasn't been doing so well lately. It seems the years of taking anti-rejection drugs have taken their toll, and he now has a hard time dealing with wounds and infections. For months now he's been dealing with a problem with swelling in his legs that the doctors still haven't managed to clear up. Several times in the past few months he's had to stay in the hospital for 3-4 days to deal with infections or other problems, most recently just this past weekend. Overall he hasn't been feeling any worse, except for some bouts of pain when the leg swelling's gotten bad, but he's definitely sick and tired of being sick and tired.

I've been experiencing some mysterious problems of my own over this weekend: occasional mild headaches, tension at the back of my head or slight pressure all around, flushed and tingly feeling in my head, just hints of tingling on the frontside of my ankles and a bit at the knees, and occasional cramps/pains in my abdomen. I've written about having these sorts of problems before; the most recent bout was the end of last April and the beginning of May. As I mention in those entries, the problem seems to be sublimated stress; in fact, I believe that I'm subject to panic attacks, although I've never been formally diagnosed with a panic disorder. Certainly my symptoms match well to panic attacks, and they do seem to occur in connection with stressful times. The problems of course are that I don't necessarily realize that I'm stressed about something, like my dad being very ill, and that the onset of symptoms feel like some more serious problem, so I get more panicky.

Sunday afternoon I realized duh, I'm just anxious!, and that helped some, but then this evening the problems continued, so again I started feeling freaked out. Panic attacks aren't purely psychological, there are physiological reactions, so even when I realized again tonight that no, really, it's most likely just a panic attack, and laughed at myself, that didn't make all the symptoms go away. I feel extra-stupid about the whole thing since of course it's my dad who has the serious problems, but I can't forget the small worry that maybe I really do have some serious problem and oh no what if I don't see the doctor about it?!?

One thing I really should do is get a general physical check-up, because regardless of panic attacks it's been a couple years at least since my last physical. Maybe that'll help me deal with the stress. Also I'm hoping to return to tai chi in a couple weeks when the next session starts, and I think I really need to start taking regular walks up the Queen Anne stair climb. For now, I have to get to bed and hope I can fall asleep.

Recently on the Sk8J forum, there's been a nostalgia thread for people to post old photos of themselves. This prompted me to finally pull out my photo album and shoebox of photos and to start scanning them. Instead of keeping them in the shoebox in my closet, unseen by anyone for years and years, I can put them up in Flickr, or at least have them available to email or display on my computer.

This is one of the photos I scanned for the thread:

It was taken some time in the summer of 1973, making me about 3.5 years old. My parents had gone to see a Red Sox game the night before, and they brought home a couple kiddie batting helmets for me and my older sister Liz. One of my oldest memories is of finding the helmets on the couch that morning. By now it's barely more than an impression, but I do remember being surprised at the helmets and wondering where they'd come from - I don't recall if I'd been told that Mom and Dad had gone to the baseball game, but if I had then I didn't make the connection for some reason (i.e., I was three and a half).

Another one of my oldest memories also dates from that summer, although I don't have a photo to go with it: the day my dad almost drowned. My cousins had an in-ground swimming pool, and we'd go visit them a few times every summer for a cookout and swimming, always a treat. My dad never learned how to swim, and would just wade in the shallow end of the pool. Apparently on this particular visit he stepped into a deeper part of the pool without realizing he was doing so - there was a steeper slope that he hadn't noticed - and fell under, swallowing a lot of water.

What I recall - and I'm not sure how much this is real memory and how much just reconstructed - is that I was out of the pool, eating a hamburger or something, and suddenly there was a lot of fuss and alarm. I really don't have any clear memory of the accident itself or the immediate aftermath. I know that Dad was fished out of the pool and he was taken to the hospital in an ambulance, although I don't remember any of that either. What I do remember is being back at home and asking my mom about what had happened: where was Dad, what was wrong, was he going to be all right, and most importantly why did we have to leave the pool? Obviously I was too uncomprehending to be that upset, but it's only in thinking back on this that I wonder whether this event was partly responsible for my later reluctance to take swimming lessons and in particular to put my face underwater.

I feel that I ought to finish on a cheerier note, so here's an older photo of me, taken the previous autumn:

I do remember the jacket I'm wearing, although again as no more than a vague impression of really liking it - you can't quite tell, but the design on the upper left is from Winnie-the-Pooh, though I can't recall whether it's Pooh, Piglet or Tigger. The house in the background is the neighbor's, our house is behind and to the left of me. We'd actually just moved in to the house that August, either right before or right after my younger sister was born. I believe my older sister remembers the trailer home that my family first lived in, but for me that's the yard of the only childhood home I ever had.