Vergil’s Coffee

We’ve been visiting a local church and the boys are really clueless. Both Colin and Evan have eaten breakfast, but as soon as they walk into the foyer, they are eying the food (“refreshments”) on the church-length folding table. Last week, the church had a special part in their service for those who wanted to renew their vows. Guess what was served after the service? And I’m a bit irritated at Evan and Colin because they simply can’t help themselves and is it worth withholding the white icing from my sons while everyone else was eating the wedding cake?

• My boys are good at celebrating with dessert-like food.

We’re also going through this battle of what to bring on trips (even if it’s just a 3-minute trip to this particular church). Evan manages his stuff pretty well and I think he’s bringing a 3-ring binder that houses all of his schematic drawings and lists for a video game he was working on with a friend. Colin, though, isn’t as sure, but he’s been going with the Garfield at the Movies book and he’s been copying down the Garfield movie title with the actual real film title (“Catablanca” and “Scarf-face” are “Casablanca” and “Scarface”). Front and back of a wide-ruled paper, Colin has two columned his compare and contrast of the movie titles…accurately.

• My boys are list makers and they get it from their mother.

It’s not that I have an aversion to lists: I’ve used them throughout my life and though there was a time when I only made mindmaps because I thought it was just plain cooler, I will list things as a temporary noting of “todo” and “brainstorm.” Lori, though, lives through lists and I think my sons are following in her 6 1/2 shoes.

One of my earliest lists I came across one of my earliest lists a couple of years ago. For some reason, I’ve always been the type to bring something to write in or on to whatever place I may be (I’m at piano lessons now, and I’m typing on my eeePC and using my composition book as a lap surface). So I must have purchased this little blue 4 by 6 spiral notebook for an upcoming week of camp at Hartstone in the summer of 1981.

• A box score that I made while watching the San Francisco Giants play the Houston Astros on television when we lived in an apartment on Mendocino Avenue in Santa Rosa. The stats abruptly end at the top of the 4^th when the Astros got 6 runs that inning.
• Me practicing my signature, several times as “Chris S. Judson” “Chris Judson” and “Christopher S. Judson”…my cursive was, well, not that great.
• Notes from a sermon or a talk at camp. (It’s interesting that one of the more valuable things I learned at camp was that you could learn something from anyone. And I have tried to maintain that thought in life…though I found it difficult one year when the old man talked about the “Holy of Holies”… Old Testament stuff that he really got jazzed about; we were looking forward to swimming in the Eel River later that afternoon).
• A “what to bring” list for the six-day, rustic-setting camp and it was pretty typical. Here’s the first column:
• Pants (jeans and one formal pair)
• Socks (3 pair)
• Shirts (4, including one formal pair)
• Shoes (2)
• Guitar
• Underwear (3 pairs)

(and it’s at this point I wonder also at the quantity of my underpants).

• Sometimes we have these conversations that “he gets that from you” or “he cries about things just like you do” may be intended as a jovial jab, but sometimes can be an attack on those attributes we dislike in our partner or in ourselves or even more, our parents.
• Sometimes lists have taken on a “one of those things” in a relationship some call the “honey-do” list (a phrase that makes me want to punch a panda in the gut). I admit: there’s been times that I’ve haven’t looked forward to a Saturday morning beginning with a list from Lori on things that she wants done by me. She’s gotten clever and now frames the process as a question: “So, what do you want to get accomplished today?” She’s subtle, isn’t she? But I think I’ve put aside the tension response “I don’t know, maybe watch TV” and have come to appreciate and honor the list. See, I think when a list is made, that list is an etching of things that come to mind that I might not recognize or see. I think I viewed the list as sort of an accounting for my inadequacies because I was just plain too stupid for either not noticing or because her intent was to nag me on stuff I really don’t want to do on my time.
• “My time” … funny little saying, isn’t it?
• As I was glancing through my composition today, I’ve noticed that Lori has made a list which appears to be knitting code: something about Size 8 needles and “Small Thee”  and “Yarn is double stranded” and then, because I’ve glanced at enough knitting pattern books, to know that the rest is the pattern for the … oh, I think it’s a “Small Tree” because there’s two other headings of “Med tree” and “Large Tree.” I’m a bit irritated because she’s written this in my composition book and didn’t bother to tear it out. (Now that I think of it, I remember that this was from a trip to Borders in the Fall because the knitting pattern list appear before a mindmap of my CV I was putting together for an application and a mindmap/list of my most recent Lilly Grant proposal (and the brainstorming via list on what I should do and the circled “40 plays in 40 days” title when I knew I had a good idea).
• As a teacher, I have a Lesson Planning book that really is a place to make lists of stuff I’d like students to do. Lately, I’ve been using it for making lists of things I want to do.
• The envelope is probably the most portable and most accessible planning tool. I am still amazed at how I’ll make lists and notes on the back of envelopes….perhaps this is the great way to stay green and I wonder if pretty-boy Leonardo DiCaprio will give up on his brain-killing florescent light bulbs that you can’t simply throw away…no, he should go on the Today Show or Oprah and tell us the marvels of using the back of envelopes for our writing of these temporary thoughts.
• Talking is fine, but there’s something about jotting down stuff as it hits you and for some reason, you can always find the back of an envelope.
• Evan’s playing music that has a lot of notes on it. He has to act up them, says his piano teacher. (I’m not sure what that means either).
• Colin’s watching Kung Fu Panda on the portable; he’s obsessed with chopsticks and China Buffet.
• There’s an idea out there that we should save all of our stuff in digital format so that we can never again lose that scrap of paper that has that important note or number on it. So we then go through the process of taking those quick notes and scraps of information, key them all into some program with the hope that somewhere down the road we’ll be able to re-access that information when it becomes necessary. Only thing: it usually doesn’t. For example, I’ve tried, on several occasions, to keep our checkbook register on a software program. I am diligent for that first month and I am happy to see how reconciling and balancing our checkbook is some much more easier on the computer. But then, I go a week or two or even a month and I have to have these marathon sessions to enter all the stuff from the check register into the computer.
• I’ve given up on the whole double-entry thing. Isn’t the idea to not repeat yourself? Why do the same thing and take more time for what?
• As if information in digital form is of more use; I think not.
• So who cares if you lose a number or a piece of information; what about all the information that is lost with a delete button? I
• I think I’ve come to terms with list making and there are times that I can almost hear, to the tune of “Matchmaker” (Fiddler on the Roof) “Listmaker, listmaker, make me a list…” in our house. We have people who make lists in our house and those lists are temporary and they serve a purpose. It reminds me of that part of the brain that is the processing center; its function appears to temporarily hold (about 17 seconds, some say) information and to either move it into a longer term holding tank or to just dump it because it doesn’t have much meaning.
• Lists are temporary and sometimes reflect temporary thinking that may or may not lead to some type of action. For me, next on the list is to cut this down from 1707 to under 1300 words.
• So long, and thanks for all the fish.
• Spellcheck.
• Post to blog via the eeePC.
• Insert Flickr pix into the post (tweak the stupid code for text wrap).
• Better ending.

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